We have a new website where you can hear all about our activities- check it out at
www.ofasierrafoothills.org
We have had our rest, now it is time to change hope into action!
~Christa Darlington and the Sierra Foothills team
The California Democratic Council is offering a free workshop covering a variety of different topics that activists should learn about if they want to become more involved with the party.
Whether you are a candidate or a volunteer, these topics will help prepare you for rising in the ranks of the Democratic Party.
The next workshop is on March 21, 2009 and will be held in Folsom, CA.
For full details, check out the event listing:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gptp5l
Please not that you must register here: http://www.cdc-ca.org/Training/
Don't miss out!
Today is about hope. And change. I'm thinking of this as I see McCain supporters working out of the building next door. They are working on getting Yes on 8 passed here in California. And, to get McCain votes in Nevada.
But, a few friends and I have been calling people to let them know where the polling places are. I've been calling Montana. Many people aren't home, or it's been a wrong number, but a few people there have said they already voted for Obama, and know many others who are voting for Obama. This is encouraging. I spent 6 years of my early life in Montana, and would only think that people in Missoula and Bozeman would be voting for Obama. Thank goodness in small towns like Libby and Three Forks, people are casting their votes for change.
So, tonight, let's say cheers to change, and here's to hope. We'll raise our glasses as a record number of voters have gone to the polls and voted. And, that they voted for change.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALAST
These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.
Maez was not alone in being denied his right to vote. On Super Tuesday, one in nine Democrats who tried to cast ballots in New Mexico found their names missing from the registration lists. The numbers were even higher in precincts like Las Vegas, where nearly 20 percent of the county's voters were absent from the rolls. With their status in limbo, the voters were forced to cast "provisional" ballots, which can be reviewed and discarded by election officials without explanation. On Super Tuesday, more than half of all provisional ballots cast were thrown out statewide.
This November, what happened to Maez will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."
Suppressing the vote has long been a cornerstone of the GOP's electoral strategy. Shortly before the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Paul Weyrich — a principal architect of today's Republican Party — scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. "Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome — good government," said Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
Today, Weyrich's vision has become a national reality. Since 2003, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, at least 2.7 million new voters have had their applications to register rejected. In addition, at least 1.6 million votes were never counted in the 2004 election — and the commission's own data suggests that the real number could be twice as high. To purge registration rolls and discard ballots, partisan election officials used a wide range of pretexts, from "unreadability" to changes in a voter's signature. And this year, thanks to new provisions of the Help America Vote Act, the number of discounted votes could surge even higher.
Passed in 2002, HAVA was hailed by leaders in both parties as a reform designed to avoid a repeat of the 2000 debacle in Florida that threw the presidential election to the U.S. Supreme Court. The measure set standards for voting systems, created an independent commission to oversee elections, and ordered states to provide provisional ballots to voters whose eligibility is challenged at the polls.
But from the start, HAVA was corrupted by the involvement of Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, who worked to cram the bill with favors for his clients. (Both Abramoff and a primary author of HAVA, former Rep. Bob Ney, were imprisoned for their role in the conspiracy.) In practice, many of the "reforms" created by HAVA have actually made it harder for citizens to cast a ballot and have their vote counted. In case after case, Republican election officials at the local and state level have used the rules to give GOP candidates an edge on Election Day by creating new barriers to registration, purging legitimate names from voter rolls, challenging voters at the polls and discarding valid ballots.
To justify this battery of new voting impediments, Republicans cite an alleged upsurge in voting fraud. Indeed, the U.S.-attorney scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began when the White House fired federal prosecutors who resisted political pressure to drum up nonexistent cases of voting fraud against Democrats. "They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal voters away," says David Iglesias, a U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was fired in December 2006. "We took over 100 complaints and investigated for almost two years — but I didn't find one prosecutable case of voter fraud in the entire state of New Mexico."
There's a reason Iglesias couldn't find any evidence of fraud: Individual voters almost never try to cast illegal ballots. The Bush administration's main point person on "ballot protection" has been Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department attorney who has advised states on how to use HAVA to erect more barriers to voting. Appointed to the Federal Election Commission by Bush, von Spakovsky has suggested that voter rolls may be stuffed with 5 million illegal aliens. In fact, studies have repeatedly shown that voter fraud is extremely rare. According to a recent analysis by Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voting crime at Barnard College, federal courts found only 24 voters guilty of fraud from 2002 to 2005, out of hundreds of millions of votes cast. "The claim of widespread voter fraud," Minnite says, "is itself a fraud."
Allegations of voter fraud are only the latest rationale the GOP has used to disenfranchise voters — especially blacks, Hispanics and others who traditionally support Democrats. "The Republicans have a long history of erecting barriers to discourage Americans from voting," says Donna Brazile, chair of the Voting Rights Institute for the Democratic National Committee. "Now they're trying to spook Americans with the ghost of voter fraud. It's very effective — but it's ironic that the only way they maintain power is by using fear to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to vote." The recently enacted barriers thrown up to deter voters include:
Since 2004, the Bush administration and more than a dozen states have taken steps to impede voter registration. Among the worst offenders is Florida, where the Republican-dominated legislature created hefty fines — up to $5,000 per violation — for groups that fail to meet deadlines for turning in voter-application forms. Facing potentially huge penalties for trivial administrative errors, the League of Women Voters abandoned its voter-registration drives in Florida. A court order eventually forced the legislature to reduce the maximum penalty to $1,000. But even so, said former League president Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti, the reduced fines "create an unfair tax on democracy." The state has also failed to uphold a federal law requiring that low-income voters be offered an opportunity to register when they apply for food stamps or other public assistance. As a result, the annual number of such registrations has plummeted from more than 120,000 in the Clinton years to barely 10,000 today.
Under the Help America Vote Act, some states now reject first-time registrants whose data does not correspond to information in other government databases. Spurred by HAVA, almost every state must now attempt to make some kind of match — and four states, including the swing states of Iowa and Florida, require what is known as a "perfect match." Under this rigid framework, new registrants can lose the right to vote if the information on their voter-registration forms — Social Security number, street address and precisely spelled name, right down to a hyphen — fails to exactly match data listed in other government records.
There are many legitimate reasons, of course, why a voter's information might vary. Indeed, a recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that as many as 20 percent of discrepancies between voter records and driver's licenses in New York City are simply typing mistakes made by government clerks when they transcribe data. But under the new rules, those mistakes are costing citizens the right to vote. In California, a Republican secretary of state blocked 43 percent of all new voters in Los Angeles from registering in early 2006 — many because of the state's failure to produce a tight match. In Florida, GOP officials created "match" rules that rejected more than 15,000 new registrants in 2006 and 2007 — nearly three-fourths of them Hispanic and black voters. Given the big registration drives this year, the number could be five times higher by November.
The Help America Vote Act doesn't just disenfranchise new registrants; it also targets veteran voters. In the past, bipartisan county election boards maintained voter records. But HAVA requires that records be centralized, computerized and maintained by secretaries of state — partisan officials — who are empowered to purge the rolls of any voter they deem ineligible. Ironically, the new rules imitate the centralized system in Florida — the same corrupt operation that inspired passage of HAVA in the first place. Prior to the 2000 election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and her predecessor, both Republicans, tried to purge 57,000 voters, most of them African-Americans, because their names resembled those of persons convicted of a crime. The state eventually acknowledged that the purges were improper — two years after the election.
Rather than end Florida-style purges, however, HAVA has nationalized them. Maez, the elections supervisor in New Mexico, says he was the victim of faulty list management by a private contractor hired by the state. Hector Balderas, the state auditor, was also purged from the voter list. The nation's youngest elected Hispanic official, Balderas hails from Mora County, one of the poorest in the state, which had the highest rate of voters forced to cast provisional ballots. "As a strategic consideration," he notes, "there are those that benefit from chaos" at the ballot box.
All told, states reported scrubbing at least 10 million voters from their rolls on questionable grounds between 2004 and 2006. Colorado holds the record: Donetta Davidson, the Republican secretary of state, and her GOP successor oversaw the elimination of nearly one of every six of their state's voters. Bush has since appointed Davidson to the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency created by HAVA, which provides guidance to the states on "list maintenance" methods.
Even if voters run the gauntlet of the new registration laws, they can still be blocked at the polling station. In an incident last May, an election official in Indiana denied ballots to 10 nuns seeking to vote in the Democratic primary because their driver's licenses or passports had expired. Even though Indiana has never recorded a single case of voter-ID fraud, it is one of two dozen states that have enacted stringent new voter-ID statutes.
On its face, the requirement to show a government-issued ID doesn't seem unreasonable. "I want to cash a check to pay for my groceries, I've got to show a little bit of ID," Karl Rove told the Republican National Lawyers Association in 2006. But many Americans lack easy access to official identification. According to a recent study for the Election Law Journal, young people, senior citizens and minorities — groups that traditionally vote Democratic — often have no driver's licenses or state ID cards. According to the study, one in 10 likely white voters do not possess the necessary identification. For African-Americans, the number lacking such ID is twice as high.
Even intrepid voters who manage to cast a ballot may still find their vote discounted. In 2004, election officials discarded at least 1 million votes nationwide after classifying them as "spoiled" because blank spaces, stray marks or tears made them indecipherable to voting machines. The losses hit hardest among minorities in low-income precincts, who are often forced to vote on antiquated machines. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in its investigation of the 2000 returns from Florida, found that African-Americans were nearly 10 times more likely than whites to have their ballots rejected, a ratio that holds nationwide.
Proponents of HAVA claimed the law would correct the spoilage problem by promoting computerized balloting. Yet touch-screen systems have proved highly unreliable — especially in minority and low-income precincts. A statistical analysis of New Mexico ballots by a voting-rights group called VotersUnite found that Hispanics who voted by computer in 2004 were nearly five times more likely to have their votes unrecorded than those who used paper ballots. In a close election, such small discrepancies can make a big difference: In 2004, the number of spoiled ballots in New Mexico — 19,000 — was three times George Bush's margin of victory.
In 2004, an estimated 3 million voters who showed up at the polls were refused regular ballots because their registration was challenged on a technicality. Instead, these voters were handed "provisional" ballots, a fail-safe measure mandated by HAVA to enable officials to review disputed votes. But for many officials, resolving disputes means tossing ballots in the trash. In 2004, a third of all provisional ballots — as many as 1 million votes — were simply thrown away at the discretion of election officials.
Many voters are given provisional ballots under an insidious tactic known as "vote caging," which uses targeted mailings to disenfranchise black voters whose addresses have changed. In 2004, despite a federal consent order forbidding Republicans from engaging in the practice, the GOP sent out tens of thousands of letters to "confirm" the addresses of voters in minority precincts. If a letter was returned for any reason — because the voter was away at school or serving in the military — the GOP challenged the voter for giving a false address. One caging operation was exposed when an RNC official mistakenly sent the list to a parody site called GeorgeWBush.org — instead of to the official campaign site GeorgeWBush.com.
In the century following the Civil War, millions of black Americans in the Deep South lost their constitutional right to vote, thanks to literacy tests, poll taxes and other Jim Crow restrictions imposed by white officials. Add up all the modern-day barriers to voting erected since the 2004 election — the new registrations thrown out, the existing registrations scrubbed, the spoiled ballots, the provisional ballots that were never counted — and what you have is millions of voters, more than enough to swing the presidential election, quietly being detached from the electorate by subterfuge.
"Jim Crow was laid to rest, but his cousins were not," says Donna Brazile. "We got rid of poll taxes and literacy tests but now have a second generation of schemes to deny our citizens their franchise." Come November, the most crucial demographic may prove to be Americans who have been denied the right to vote. If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat John McCain at the polls — they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering.
Contributing editor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of the nation's leading voting-rights advocates. His article "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002] sparked widespread scrutiny of vote tampering. Greg Palast, who broke the story on Florida's illegal voter purges in the 2000 election, is the author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." For more information, visit No Voter Left Behind and Steal Back Your Vote.
A horrified America watched John McCain stagger up from his debate chair last night and turn into a monster. He almost caught our Barack Obama! What was happening? Clearly, the special anti-monster juice McCain drinks before public appearances was starting to wear off. They got him in the titanium-lined SWAT van just before he fully transformed. But fully transformed into what?
HORRIBLE MEDIEVAL WEREWOLF: This would actually explain a lot, including, probably, why McCain is always talking about medieval Ireland, when he was a boy, before he was bitten by a werewolf, which put a terrible end to his happy carefree days of being a Celtic warrior who always crashed his horse into the enemy’s village.
HORRIBLE CHILD-EATING DEATH CLOWN: No wonder McCain’s handlers try to get him away from those debate audiences so quick! He was just moments away from turning into this evil-ass thing, the New Hampshire Primary Murder Clown, Rich Uncle Pennywise! Imagine being stuck on Secret Service duty with this campaign. Imagine having to bury the bodies every night.
EVIL GORGON MEDUSA: Walnuts has always roamed the Earth, in his various guises, but by night, he shows his true death’s head, the GORGONEION from Hades, where he spent Five and a Half Million Years. (This is also the face he makes when he has sexytime! Your tax dollars pay for his Viagra!)
DISGUSTING CLASSIC-ROCK GIMMICK CAR: There is nothing more hideous than 700-year-old arena rocker Gene Simmons, so it stands to reason that John McCain is the demon father of the KISS monster. Legend says shitty ‘71 Volkswagen Beetles with home paint jobs and huge styrofoam monster skulls/tongues were frequently on the scene before the Crusaders lost Jerusalem to the Arabs led by Bill Ayers the Terrorist Muslin.
EVIL SILENT-MOVIE GERMAN VAMPIRE: And now, a quote from Bram Stoker’s Dracula: “As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me… a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal. When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demonaic fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat.”
Yes, that sounds about right.
THE BEAST: But our demonic experts here on the Wonkette staff finally concluded McCain was turning into this hell-beast of yore, as seen here in a 16th Century woodcut. These demonic shit-monsters once roamed the Eastern Seaboard, until they were captured by Benedict Arnold in 1776 and taught Naval Command skills at Annapolis. The creatures spawn a single fetus from the “egg duct” every hundred years; the fourth spawn of the cycle is always a crazy, self-obsessed idiot who has no military skillz.
I'm so glad that McCain wouldn't denounce his rabid followers...because they are lovely people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRqcfqiXCX0
I am currently watching the second debate. And I have to write this now. John McCain keeps saying, "My Friends...I am..." and it is driving me nuts. He's trying to be folksy like his running mate. We don't want our "friends" in the White House (most of mine would not be qualified!)...we want educated, cool-headed people at the helm.
He just doesn't get it. We don't want an ancient man and a cheerleader in the White House. And...he's not my friend.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, a day after flatly rejecting the idea of a taxpayer bailout for American International Group Inc., said Wednesday that the government had been "forced" into proposing an $85 billion loan to the nation's largest insurer.
McCain appeared to soften his opposition to the bailout proposed by the Federal Reserve, treating the plan as a necessary evil to protect ordinary Americans with finanical ties to AIG.
This is an AP report on McCain's stance for how to handle the financial crisis. My position is to not bailout the big guys...help the small guys. If the government gave each small business $10,000, do you know what a positive impact that would have on the economy?
I am a small business owner: I could hire an employee, do more marketing in the local/regional markets, and bring in new, innovative products made in the US. The financial crisis is hitting everyone hard, but the smallest fish in the barrel are being hit the hardest.
Our government needs to help overhaul this financial system...but it also needs to start thinking outside of the box. Don't bail out institutions that have ignored the signs that they will not be successful, that have used shady business practices, and relied on greed and ignorance. $85 billion injected into the economy through small businesses would ensure people keeping jobs, and small businesses would be able to stay afloat in tough times.
If anyone has the ear of a staffer in Obama's camp...forward this blog to them. The little people need to be heard for once. After reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and being halfway through The Secret History of an American Empire, I am not encouraged that the US government will look out for the small people. Obama gives me a little bit of hope that he will address this...and stop giving so much power to the corporatocracy.
Power to small businesses. Want to know how you can help give it to them? Buy locally, support local industries, farms and businesses. Don't buy from those who use cheap labor to keep costs low. And avoid any business who is not wide open with their intentions, their supply chains, and always has a board room of lawyers at their disposal.
Tonight we are showing the documentary "Darfur Now" at our Fair Trade shop at 6:30 pm. And, I wanted to be sure about Obama's position on Darfur before showing this movie. If you can watch this documetary, please do. It is one of the most encouraging films as it portrays people who are from different walks of life that are doing something to end the Darfurian genocide now.
Here is Obama's position on Darfur as stated in his issues tab...go to foreign policy to find out more about his stances in Darfur and throughout Africa.
Stop the Genocide in Darfur: As president, Obama will take immediate steps to end the genocide in Darfur by increasing pressure on the Sudanese and pressure the government to halt the killing and stop impeding the deployment of a robust international force. He will hold the government in Khartoum accountable for abiding by its commitments under the Comprehensive Peace Accord that ended the 30 year conflict between the north and south. Obama worked with Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) to pass the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act in 2006.
We are the government that called what is going on in Darfur as genocide. And yet, we've done nearly nothing through our foreign policies to stop it. It has been a grassroots effort to divest from Sudan through pension plans, and private individuals have kept humanitarian flights going into Darfur time and again because countries and the UN aren't doing enough.
If you want to know how best to help, read Not on Our Watch by John Prendergast & Don Cheadle. Go to www.savedarfur.org and donate, or educate. But learn how to help through lobbying local, state and federal government officials, and mobilizing your families, friends and co-workers. Have a "Darfur Friday" instead of Casual Friday.
Do what you can now, and pressure Obama to be very active about Darfur once he's elected.
Read and share - with everyone! The truth will set us all free!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
When the chat on The View turned to Palin’s record on earmarks McCain got it wrong:
Barbara Walters: She also took some earmark spending.Joy Behar: A lot.McCain: Well, not as governor she didn’t.
McCain’s wrong here. It’s true she scaled back the state’s federal spending requests within the last two years. But she didn’t eliminate them. She sent a letter on her gubernatorial stationery with $197 million in earmark requests, directly contradicting McCain’s statement. Palin writes:
Palin:In preparing these requests, the State has been mindful of congressional concerned about budget deficits and earmarks. Accordingly, the total number of requests has been reduced significantly from previous years. Approximately two-thirds of the requests involve programs that have been funded previously.
It’s clear Palin knew the gravy train was slowing (in large part because McCain was applying the brakes), but that didn’t stop her from sending the nearly $200 million request (nearly $30 per Alaskan, according to the 2006 Census Bureau population estimates). And we’ve already reported that Palin’s history with earmarks dates back to her time as mayor of Wasilla.
McCain would have been on more solid ground if he were informing his View-ership of his own earmark-busting record. The Arizona senator’s requests have amounted to a big, fat zero. But Palin’s still asking for pork by the barrel, even if the barrels have been downsized.
Posted under FactCheck.org, John McCain, Presidential Election 2008, Sarah Palin
McCain: His plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.
McCain: My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance.
McCain: [I]nstead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies.
McCain: We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much.
McCain: We will attack the problem on every front. ...We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.
McCain: Reducing government spending and getting rid of failed programs will let you keep more of your own money to save, spend and invest as you see fit.
Obama, Feb. 26: I will make sure that we renegotiate. … I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.
McCain: We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and restore the health of our planet.
Palin, Sept. 3: What does he actually seek to accomplish after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet?
SB 99: However, no pupil shall be required to take or participate in any family life class or course on HIV AIDS or family life instruction if his parent or guardian submits written objection thereto, and refusal to take or participate in such course or program shall not be reason for suspension or expulsion of such pupil.
SB99: Course material and instruction shall discuss and providefor the development of positive communication skills to maintain healthy relationships and avoid unwanted sexual activity. ... Course material and instruction shall teach pupils ... how to say no to unwanted sexual advances ... and shall include information about verbal, physical, and visual sexual harassment, including without limitation nonconsensual sexual advances, nonconsensual physical sexual contact, and rape by an acquaintance. The course material and instruction shall contain methods of preventing sexual assault by an acquaintance, including exercising good judgment and avoiding behavior that impairs one's judgment.
Keyes, Oct. 21, 2004: Well, I had noticed that, in your voting, you had voted, at one point, that sex education should begin in kindergarten, and you justified it by saying that it would be "age-appropriate" sex education. [It] made me wonder just exactly what you think is "age-appropriate." Obama: We have a existing law that mandates sex education in the schools. We want to make sure that it's medically accurate and age-appropriate. Now, I'll give you an example, because I have a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean. And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age. So, that's the kind of stuff that I was talking about in that piece of legislation.
Davidson (via Education Week): I don’t think [McCain] has a strong track record of putting education at the top of his priorities.
Chapman: ... the ad itself doesn't bother explaining how the candidates differ on school vouchers, the subject of my column. Instead, it insults our intelligence by expecting us to believe that Obama thinks kindergarteners should be taught how to use condoms before they're taught to read. Right. And Joe Biden eats puppies for breakfast.
Palin: Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, that I worked on as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas development in our state to produce more for the United States.
McCain: Well, I think Americans are going to be very, very, very pleased. This is a very dynamic person. [Palin's] been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply.
Alaska Resource Development Council: Alaska's oil and gas industry has produced more than 16 billion barrels of oil and 6 billion cubic feet of natural gas, accounting for an average of 20 percent of the entire nation's domestic production.
One of the things I haven't heard much about from either candidate is about Fair Trade. I am very concerned if either candidate gets in that the corporatocracy will still be so intertwined with government that the little people still will not benefit from either party's concern for the common American.
I'm reading John Perkin's second book (the name escapes me right now...but he wrote Confessions of an Economic Hitman) and I am just floored (not surprised at all) by how much the corporatocracy has a hold on our politics and how we treat others in the world. It is so disheartening to those of us who believe in Fair Trade and have tied our futures to Fair Trade and work so hard on behalf of disenfranchised people all over the world.
But...I do hope. And I want Obama to win. And I hope that he will listen to alternative trade options instead of business as usual when it comes to how our corporations deal in other countries. And, how the US exerts pressure on foreign governments by bullying them into accepting what the corporations have to "offer" countries with valuable resources.
These are the issues that lead us to work every day on behalf of people we've never met. Please participate in very visible ways during October. Fair Trade Month is upon us once again, and it is a great way to promote and educate about Fair Trade. Be very visible...YouTube, blogs, social networking sites, etc.
And let's make sure we let Obama know that Fair Trade is important to the American people.
I highly recommend attending a Camp Obama training session if you can. Last night I attended a local training, and there were about 60 people there. All of them were excited to work on behalf of Obama, and they are ready to go out into the community and surrounding areas to canvas, register and inform voters.
This is such an historic time and it's great to see people stepping up to the plate to effect change in the world and the US.
Thank you to Christa, Kira and all the other volunteers who led us last night and will be organizing us to make the positive impact this area needs.
"Look George!" said Johnny with the excitement of a young curious child making a new discovery, "all of the poor people look like ants from way up here!" George chuckled knowingly and proceeded to tell little Johnny about the time the poor little ants were in a wild frenzy after the mean ol nasty hurricane flooded their pathetic hovels. "Wow" exclaimed Johnny, smiling like an over ripe jack-o-lantern, "I cant wait to be king of the ants."
So McSame and his buddy George feel that the economy is fundamentally sound....Bullshit. An oil man and the beneficiary of his wife's beer inheritance know the economy is anything but sound. But if you were cusioned from the economic meat hooks and biting economic reality that 99% of Americans are facing, you might have the old "good enough for government work" attitude too. Besides, without extreme social and economic stratification who will these despondent crusty rich old white guys hire to do all of their yucky yard work, laundry, cooking, ass wiping, ect.
From Wonkette:
Here are the current Top Headlines at Bloomberg:
Can you say "Out of Touch"...I knew ya could
Happy days are here again...or.....brother can you spare a dime?
I guess since the GOP clings to their media network--Fox News--it is not surprising that the speeches lacked facts and truth. The GOP has never been fair nor balanced, and last night their true colors came shining through (probably another song they can't use!).
The snarky tone of both Guiliani's and Palin's speeches was just more of the same again. And, they say they are going to change Washington?! They are the party of change? They are the same party as the one for the last 8 years!
I just really didn't see anything substantive coming out of the speeches. Palin said she's a pit bull with lipstick. Great! Two aggressive personalities in the White House?! We'd really make friends around the world with that combo.
So...I'm going to a training to learn more of the facts and become a volunteer for the Obama campaign. The more I hear from the GOP, the more I realize I need to become involved and impact this election from the ground up...kind of like a community organizer. The people WILL have a voice in this election. We will not be marginalized and discounted by the likes of the GOP.
It has happened once before. Poor vetting and sensationalized stories of mental illness and drunk driving caused McGovern to jettison poor old Eagleton from the ticket. Perhaps Palin will suffer the same fate....
From Wikipedia:
Thomas Francis Eagleton was a United States Senator from Missouri, serving from 1968–1987. He is best remembered for briefly being a Democratic Vice Presidential nominee sharing the ticket under George McGovern in 1972.
Selection as vice presidential candidate
In 1972, Richard Nixon appeared unbeatable. When Senator George McGovern won the Democratic nomination for President, virtually all of the high-profile Democrats, including Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie and Birch Bayh turned down offers to run on the ticket.
Having been declined by the "name" Senators, McGovern turned to lesser-known candidates, and Eagleton, who had opposed the Vietnam War, was selected on July 14 with only a minimal background check. Eagleton made no mention of his earlier hospitalizations. Newspapers soon revealed them. McGovern and Eagleton initially joked about the case with Eagleton saying he would undergo a psychiatric examination if other candidates (e.g., Nixon) would do the same. But the charges kept coming. Columnist Jack Anderson wrote a column falsely accusing Eagleton of being arrested for drunk driving — a charge that Anderson had to retract.
Replacement on the ticket
McGovern said he would back Eagleton “1000%”, but on August 1, Eagleton withdrew at McGovern's request and, after a new search by McGovern, was replaced by Kennedy in-law Sargent Shriver.
A Time magazine poll taken at the time found that 77 percent of the respondents said "Eagleton's medical record would not affect their vote." Nonetheless, the press made frequent references to his 'shock therapy', and McGovern feared that this would detract from his campaign platform.[3]
McGovern's handling of the controversy was an opening for the Republican campaign to raise serious questions about his judgment. In the general election, the Democratic ticket won only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
