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Utah for Obama
Grassroots supporters of Barack Obama, organizing to spread the message of Hope across the state of Utah.
Photos from our events can be found at http://www.flickr.com/groups/utahforobama/ and anyone can join the group and post their own photos to it.
Join us on MySpace.
Hello, I am planning on driving from Berkeley, CA to Denver, CO for the Democratic Convention, and I will be volunteering/campaigning along the way in Nevada, Utah, & Wyoming. I'm looking for some local supporters who might let me couch-surf for a night or two while I am passing through your town. You can view my planned itinerary by clicking here. I'd like to stay a night or two in Salt Lake City (Aug 23-24 and/or Aug 31) and possibly a night in Salina (Aug 30/31). If you would be interested in meeting and hosting an enthusiastic Obama supporter as I make my contribution to the campaign, I would be most grateful!! To learn more about me, check out myBO.com profile or my blog (there's more on the blog). You can contact me at rubymsw@gmail.com Take Care, RubyThis music video shows what America wants...
and it sure ain't McCain! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMSsm_B8iaE Vote responsibly, not traditionally. Benny Skyn Today, Al Gore urged all of us to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels. Within 10 years he challenges us to acheive 100% of our electrical power from renewable energy sources. Gore emphasized that the climate crisis is at the root of our economic crisis, our environmental woes and solving it is the key to our national security. We are 30 years behind where we could be in accepting these notions and moving forward to build a new economy and cleaner, more secure future. Here is the text of Gore's speech. Dear Members and Friends,
When the Obamas said they'd promised their kids they'd get a family dog after the election, the American Kennel Club started a campaign to encourage the family to get a "pure" breed from a pet store or commercial breeder. How much better it would be if they were to adopt one from a shelter or rescue group. In just over a day, 27,000 of you signed our petition at www.obamafamilydog. com, asking them to do just that. It's a great start, but we still need lots more signatures. So please forward this e-mail to friends and family and ask them to sign it, too. (And if you haven't signed it yourself, please go ahead and do it now.) This is not about politics, by the way, it's about saving homeless pets. So let's get all of America talking about why adopting a pet is a winning choice. One other thing: You can also send a Letter to the Editor to your hometown newspaper. I've put an example of one at the end of this e-mail. Use it, or adapt it, or write your own. Best Friends members have made a big difference already. Wouldn't it be great to see homeless pets find their way onto the agenda of this year's election news! Thanks again, and good wishes from all of us,
Michael Mountain P.S. Here's the draft of a letter you could send to your local newspaper or post on a blog:
I am passing on this appeal from Andy Gilbert, Campaign Coordinator for Luz Robles' Utah State Senate Campaign. Please consider showing up to support Luz this Saturday. If change is to happen from the bottom up, helping to get Luz to the State Senate is every bit as important as stumping for Obama in Utah. Hello All, If Obama's campaign is upset by a magazine satire, what will it do when the real attacks begin? July 15, 2008
Let's be frank. People sophisticated enough to read, say, newspaper editorials are smart enough to know that the New Yorker's cover art this week -- portraying Barack Obama as a be-turbaned Muslim and wife Michelle as an Afro-sporting terrorist with an AK-47 across her back -- is a work of satire. But what about the millions of dumb Americans who will think otherwise?
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-newyorker15-2008jul15,0,3558701.story I couldn't believe what is on the cover of The New Yorker. I usually look forward to the funny and often deeply satirical cover art, but this one shocked and outraged me.
The cover shows Obama in a turban and traditional Muslim garb and his wife Michelle dressed in fatigues--rocking an afro and combat boots--and packing an assault rifle. They are giving one another a congratulatory "fist-bump." There is a portrait of Osama Bin Laden above the fireplace where the American flag is burning. Oh, and by the way, the room they're standing in... it's the Oval Office! Now I know that The New Yorker is known for cartoons that people either "get" or "don't get"... But I have to say, "I don't get it!" Could someone please explain the joke to me? The New Yorker described Barry Blitt's work as lampooning of "scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama's campaign."Cartoonist Barry Blitt defended his work, saying this: I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.Although this may be the intention, the damaging impact of reinforcing rumors of the "Manchurian Candidate" variety by depicting imagery like this in the American popular media cannot be underestimated. Throughout America, it is still widely believed that Barack Obama is a Muslim--and many readers may not realize that the cover is meant to be satirical. In its attempt to point out the obvious--that Obama is NOT a terrorist or Muslim or Black Power/"kill whitey" candidate--it may unfortunately have the opposite effect. I'm not including the cover image here because I don't want to proliferate it unnecessarily, but I would like to encourage you to write a letter to the editor of the New Yorker to express your outrage at this racist, divisive, offensive and generally unfunny cover art. Conflict resolution The discreet charms of the international go-betweenJul 3rd 2008  FOR two months, Kenya, East Africa’s most prosperous and supposedly stable country, hovered on the brink of self-immolation as two warring political factions ripped the country apart after a disputed election at the end of 2007. Kofi Annan, the former secretary-general of the United Nations, was brought in to try to resolve the conflict between the ruling party, which was accused of rigging its presidential victory, and the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). As ethnic violence raged nearby, negotiators from the two sides would sometimes almost come to blows themselves as Mr Annan tried to find common ground between them. But when deadlock loomed, both sides’ negotiating teams were smuggled off to a secret location in a game park for two days, with just Mr Annan and his secretariat, including a team from a little-known group called the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD). There, with no distractions from the media and far from the political circus in the capital, Nairobi, came the vital breakthrough. The main outlines of a deal between the two sides were talked through in an atmosphere of relative calm; a new national unity government, comprising both the ruling party and the ODM, was inaugurated a few weeks later. <a target="advert" href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/main.economist.com/opinionart;pos=v5_art350x300;sect=opinion;sz=350x300;tile=1;ord=66250057?"><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/main.economist.com/opinionart;pos=v5_art350x300;sect=opinion;sz=350x300;tile=1;ord=66250057?" alt="" /></a>Originally, Mr Annan had flown into Nairobi with just two people from the CHD, a Swiss-based organisation of mediators. During his six weeks or so of mediating he drew on the considerable resources of the UN, but he also made constant use of his CHD backup. They provided him with tactical advice on the mediation process, such as when to take the negotiators on “retreat” and how to involve the media. And they also drafted agreements as the two sides spoke during the negotiations, so that at the end of a day an agreed statement could be issued immediately to the press. This gave the mediation the vital momentum that Mr Annan wanted. The Kenyan talks provide a good example of the sort of skills that a new kind of international mediator can bring to the age-old work of conflict resolution. For as the nature of the world’s conflicts has changed in the past decade or so, so the demand for a new type of mediator has grown too. The CHD, for instance, founded by just four people only nine years ago, now has a staff of over 70. The UN has traditionally provided a forum for the discussion and resolution of international disputes. However as Kreddha, a Dutch-based mediation group, argues: “There are no equivalent mechanisms for intrastate dispute resolution...despite the fact that most violent conflicts today are not international but intrastate in character.” The new mediators provide the new mechanisms. Many of these contemporary conflicts involve insurgents, secessionists or even “resource-warriors”, like those in the oil-rich Niger Delta of Nigeria, who clash with governments. Rival politicians can be brought into open conflict by elections, such as in Kenya, or now Zimbabwe. The new kinds of disputes involve non-traditional parties such as international mining or oil companies pitched against indigenous people, as well as national governments tackling more established terrorist groups. One study has shown that over the past 15 years military victories have resolved only 7.5% of conflicts, while negotiations have prevailed in 92% of cases; “the challenge is thus not being a skilful warrior but a skilful negotiator.” The UN might, at best, offer some bureaucratic and political clout, but it is also big, cumbersome and leaky. In its place, the new mediators operate on a much smaller scale and offer discretion, secrecy and flexibility. Mr Annan used the CHD in Kenya because it has no political agenda, so could be relied upon not to leak material in order to influence the talks one way or another. These mediators are ideal for getting involved in highly charged disputes between governments, for instance, and indigenous “terrorist” groups; they can set up back-channels, of the sort that proved vital in bringing about the eventual peace deal between the British government and the Irish Republican Army. Thus the CHD provided a first conduit between the rebel Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian government, as the Indonesians refused to use the UN because of anger over its role in East Timor. In Nepal, the CHD established the first links between the government and the Maoist insurgents in 2000. Here a key factor was “plausible deniability”, as was trust. Andrew Marshall, who sought out the first Maoist interlocutors, says that “neither side wanted their own people and cadres to know they were talking to the other side”, so the leaders of both the government and the rebels invested their trust in the third party, CHD, to keep the talks secret. Eventually, several countries got involved and this year the Maoists prevailed in elections. The CHD also acted as a back-channel between the Spanish government and the Basque separatist movement ETA leading up to a ceasefire in 2006; it is currently trying to bring together the Darfur rebel groups in Sudan as one negotiating body. Kreddha has been involved in mediation work in the Niger Delta, and in New Caledonia between a mining corporation, Goro Nickel, and an indigenous environmental organisation called Rheebu Nuu. Such disputes are often called “resource conflicts”, and require specialist mediators with a knowledge of international law. Another new organisation called Conflicts Forum, founded by a former British intelligence officer, Alastair Crooke, attempts to serve as an interlocutor between militant Islamist groups, such as Hamas and Hizbullah, and the West. Some mediation work can be instantly glamorous and hugely fulfilling, as in Kenya, but most of it is attritional; often it is pretty boring. Negotiations can drag on for years, but here again the small mediators can add a lot of value. Foreign politicians from America and Britain, for example, may bring a lot of pressure to bear on a dispute for a short amount of time, but inevitably they come and go according to the whims and demands of domestic politics. Professional mediators can stick with a conflict for years, thus building up a level of trust and knowledge that cannot easily be replicated. Much of a mediator’s work lies in getting the logistics right; trusted third-party interlocutors are needed simply to arrange meetings and book hotel rooms which will not be bugged by the other side. In the case of CHD, it can also get visas and facilitate travel for “terrorists” taking part in talks in neutral venues like Switzerland or Norway. Both are strong financial backers of the centre, and neither is a member of the EU; they are thus outside the conventions restricting travel for those on some terrorist watch lists. Small countries backing small mediators can make a big difference; the betting now is on Mr Annan and his team trying to repeat their Kenya trick in beleaguered Zimbabwe. How do I support thee?
Let me count the ways. How do I respond to the New Yorker? With the sound of silence. How do I answer all the baseless criticism? With another contribution to the campaign. I've invited bloggers to commit to writing one post per week about Obama for the next 10 weeks. This will take us through the convention in Denver. Our guidelines are simply that the posts are positive and honest. The movement is building: already 20+ bloggers signed up, so that's at least 200 posts over the next 10 weeks, and more folks sign on everyday! It would be great to get folks who live in so-called "red states" involved, since you may have the strongest need for Operation HOPE! Especially if you are already an active blogger, it doesn't take any extra effort. and your blog will probably get more traffic, since I'll be linking all the bloggers and promoting the event.If you're new to blogging, I can get you set up with you own blog in less than 5 minutes! so why not? Join Operation HOPE! Please check out the event details and sign up if you're interested in blogging for Obama: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/44hfj The George W. Bush years have been a holiday from reality with our heads buried in the sand. Now is the time to elect Barack and pull our heads out of the sand to take a look at the real world. We can no longer pretend the we can spend our way out of a recession, drill our way out a petroleum shortage, talk our way out of job losses or close our eyes to global warming. Shutting our eyes and wishing our problems away will not make our problems go away. Only hard decisions and strenuous efforts with great leadership will begin to right the errors and omissions of the Bush years. That is why this election is so important. We cannot afford to wait 4 more years for a true leader; we must elect Barack in 2008.
The surge is working The surge is working The surge is working The surge is working The surge is working Repeating a falsehood ad infinitum does not make it true.Whoever is the next president will have difficulty withdrawing from Iraq because the surge has only put a lid on the violence. The underlying tensions between Shiites and Sunnis remains unresolved and the majority Shiites have yet to unite behind a single leader. When our troops leave, the Iraqis will settle matters to their own satisfaction. The Republicans and the media would have you believe that the surge is working so that the violence that will follow our withdrawal can be blamed on the next president, Barack Obama.  The Audacity of Listening   By GAIL COLLINS Published: July 10, 2008 We have to have a talk about Barack Obama.  Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Gail Collins Columnist Biography: Gail Collins I know, I know. You’re upset. You think the guy you fell in love with last spring is spending the summer flip-flopping his way to the right. Drifting to the center. Going all moderate on you. So you’re withholding the love. Also possibly the money. I feel your pain. I just don’t know what candidate you’re talking about. Think back. Why, exactly, did you prefer Obama over Hillary Clinton in the first place? Their policies were almost identical — except his health care proposal was more conservative. You liked Barack because you thought he could get us past the old brain-dead politics, right? He talked — and talked and talked — about how there were going to be no more red states and blue states, how he was going to bring Americans together, including Republicans and Democrats. Exactly where did everybody think this gathering was going to take place? Left field? When an extremely intelligent politician tells you over and over and over that he is tired of the take-no-prisoners politics of the last several decades, that he is going to get things done and build a “new consensus,” he is trying to explain that he is all about compromise. Even if he says it in that great Baracky way. Here’s a helpful story: Once upon a time, there was a woman searching for a guy who was ready to commit. One day, she met an attractive young man. “My name is Chuck,” he said, grinning an infectious grin. “I’m planning to devote my entire life to saving endangered wildlife in the Antarctic. In five weeks I leave for the South Pole, where I will live alone in a tent, trying to convince the penguins that I am part of their flock. In the meantime, would you like to go out?” “I have just met the man I’m going to marry,” she told her friends. She had been betrayed by poor listening skills, which skipped right over the South Pole and the tent. Of course, after five weeks of heavy dating, Chuck flew away and was never heard from again. A year and a half of campaigning and we still haven’t heard Obama’s penguins, either. It’s not his fault that we missed the message — although to be fair, he did make it sound as if getting rid of the “old politics” involved driving out the oil and pharmaceutical lobbyists rather than splitting the difference on federal wiretapping legislation. But if you look at the political fights he’s picked throughout his political career, the main theme is not any ideology. It’s that he hates stupidity. “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war,” he said in 2002 in his big speech against the invasion of Iraq. He did not, you will notice, say he was against unilateral military action or pre-emptive attacks or nation-building. He was antidumb. Most of the things Obama’s taken heat for saying this summer fall into these two familiar patterns — attempts to find a rational common ground on controversial issues and dumb-avoidance. On the common-ground front, he’s called for giving more federal money to religious groups that run social programs, but only if the services they offer are secular. People can have guns for hunting and protection, but we should crack down on unscrupulous gun sellers. Putting some restrictions on the government’s ability to wiretap is better than nothing, even though he would rather have gone further. Dumb-avoidance would include his opposing the gas-tax holiday, backtracking on the anti-Nafta pandering he did during the primary and acknowledging that if one is planning to go all the way to Iraq to talk to the generals, one should actually pay attention to what the generals say. Touching both bases are Obama’s positions that 1) if people are going to ask him every day why he’s not wearing a flag pin, it’s easier to just wear the pin, for heaven’s sake, and 2) there’s nothing to be gained by getting into a fight over whether the death penalty can be imposed on child rapists. His decision to ditch public campaign financing, on the other hand, was nothing but a complete, total, purebred flip-flop. If you are a person who feels campaign finance reform is the most important issue facing America right now, you should either vote for John McCain or go home and put a pillow over your head. However, I believe I have met every single person in the country for whom campaign finance reform is the tiptop priority, and their numbers are not legion. Meanwhile, Obama has made it clear what issues he thinks all this cleverness and compromising are supposed to serve: national health care, a smart energy policy and getting American troops out of Iraq. He has tons of other concerns, but those seem to be the top three. There’s definitely a penguin in there somewhere. Click here to be connected directly to the senators:
http://tools.advomatic.com/7/fisa --> Call/ Fax/ Email NOW, they vote SOON! ******************************************************* By Timothy B. Lee | Published: July 07, 2008 - 11:30PM CT Telco immunity is the icing, not the cake Last month, the House of Representatives passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, Congress's latest response to President Bush's demands for expanded eavesdropping authority. The Democratic leadership, seemingly intent on avoiding real debate on the proposal, scheduled the final vote just a day after the bill was introduced in the House. Touted by Democratic leaders as a "compromise," it was supported almost unanimously by House Republicans and opposed by a majority of Democrats. The 114-page bill was pushed through the House so quickly that there was no real time to debate its many complex provisions. This may explain why the telecom immunity provision has received so much attention in the media: it is much easier to explain to readers not familiar with the intricacies of surveillance law than the other provisions. But as important as the immunity issue is, the legislation also makes many prospective changes to surveillance law that will profoundly impact our privacy rights for years to come. Specifically, the new legislation dramatically expands the government's ability to wiretap without meaningful judicial oversight, by redefining "oversight" so that the feds can drag their feet on getting authorization almost indefinitely. It also gives the feds unprecedented new latitude in selecting eavesdropping targets, latitude that could be used to collect information on non-terrorist-related activities like P2P copyright infringement and online gambling. In short, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 opens up loopholes so large that the feds could drive a truck loaded down with purloined civil liberties through it. So the telecom immunity stuff is just the smoke; let's take a look at the fire. The importance of judicial scrutiny The most fundamental question in the FISA debate is whether judicial oversight will be required when the government spies on international communications originating on American soil. FISA has never limited spying on purely foreign communications, but under current law, the government must obtain court approval to tap a phone line or fiber optic cable in the United States, even if the other end of the communication is abroad. An application for a FISA warrant must specify the person or organization being targeted and present evidence that the target is an "agent of a foreign power," such as the Chinese government or Al Qaeda. The Bush administration has chafed at these restrictions, insisting that the president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists without court oversight. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell argues that that the FISA process is so cumbersome that it impedes the intelligence community's efforts to spy on terrorists. Civil libertarians disagree, noting that FISA sets a lower bar for approving surveillance than the process for obtaining ordinary criminal warrants. And in emergency cases, FISA allows the government to begin spying immediately and seek a warrant after the fact. Most importantly, civil liberties groups emphasize that without judicial oversight, there is no way to know if the government is respecting any limits that Congress establishes. Consider, for example, the case of National Security Letters, administrative subpoenas that the Patriot Act allows the FBI to issue without court oversight. Last year a government audit last year found hundreds of cases in which the FBI had issued NSLs without following even the permissive rules of the Patriot Act. Civil libertarians warn that similar corner-cutting is inevitable if the NSA is allowed to choose eavesdropping targets without judicial scrutiny. No individual warrants for international calls When it comes to judicial oversight of domestic-to-foreign calls, the legislation the House passed last month is an unambiguous victory for the White House and a defeat for civil libertarians. The legislation establishes a new procedure whereby the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence can sign off on "authorizations" of surveillance programs "targeting people reasonably believed to be located outside the United States." The government is required to submit a "certification" to the FISA court describing the surveillance plan and the "minimization" procedures that will be used to avoid intercepting too many communications of American citizens. However, the government is not required to "identify the specific facilities, places, premises, or property" at which the eavesdropping will occur. The specific eavesdropping targets will be at the NSA's discretion and unreviewed by a judge. Moreover, the judge's review of the government's "certification" is much more limited than the scrutiny now given to FISA applications. The judge is permitted only to confirm that the certification "contains all the required elements," that the targeting procedures are "reasonably designed" to target foreigners, and that minimization procedures have been established. Crucially, there appears to be no limit to the breadth of "authorizations" the government might issue. So, for example, a single "authorization" might cover the interception of all international traffic passing through AT&T's San Francisco facility, with complex software algorithms deciding which communications are retained for the examination of human analysts. Without a list of specific targets, and without a background in computer programming, a judge is unlikely to be able to evaluate whether such software is properly "targeted" at foreigners. The House legislation also drastically extends the timeline for reviewing surveillance activities, potentially allowing the government to commence eavesdropping and then drag out judicial review for months. Under existing law, the government must obtain judicial approval within 72 hours of the start of emergency wiretapping. In contrast, the judicial review of "certifications" can stretch out as long as four months. After beginning eavesdropping, the government has a week to submit its "certification" to the FISA court, which has 30 days to review the application. If the judge finds problems with the certification, the government can continue eavesdropping for another 30 days before it is required to comply with the order. And the government can buy still more time by filing an appeal to the FISA Court of Review. The appeals court may take as long as 60 days to make its decision, and the government will often be allowed to continue eavesdropping throughout the process of judicial review. This means that in many cases, the government will have completed its spying activities long before the courts reach a decision on its legality. No "targeting" Americans The legislation does provide modestly enhanced protections for Americans living overseas. The "authorizations" described in the previous section are only available when they "target" those who are not American citizens or legal residents. When the target of an eavesdropping program is an American, the government must satisfy more stringent requirements, including the traditional requirement that the target is an "agent of a foreign power." The surveillance also must cease within seven days if judicial approval for it is not forthcoming. This section is a modest restriction on the government's prior eavesdropping powers. Traditionally, FISA did not govern purely overseas eavesdropping activities, even if they targeted American citizens. Under the new legislation, the government will need court approval to "target" Americans overseas, even when the surveillance is conducted overseas. However, as a practical matter, this enhancement of Americans' privacy rights may prove extremely limited. The government may not "target" Americans under the broad "authorizations" discussed in the previous section, and in some cases the government may discard information obtained about Americans as part of the required "minimization" procedures, but the government would retain significant latitude to decide which information it retains. The paradoxical consequence is that broader wiretapping orders may be approved more easily than narrower ones. For example, the government could not unilaterally "authorize" the "targeting" of a particular San Francisco resident's international communications. However, it could "authorize" a dragnet surveillance program that intercepted the international communications of all San Francisco residents under the pretext that it was "targeting" any foreign terrorists who might happen to communicate with San Francisco residents. This is particularly troubling when we remember that in 2002, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review held that FISA does not prohibit coordination between foreign intelligence gathering and domestic law enforcement. That suggests that the FBI could ask the NSA to tailor its filters to intercept evidence of Internet gambling, copyright infringement, or other ordinary crimes. The Americans whose communications were turned over could not be the "target" of the surveillance, but the House legislation requires only that foreign intelligence gathering be "a significant purpose" of eavesdropping programs. If a terrorist surveillance program also catches American citizens who are gambling or infringing copyright law, that's even better! I have read under the issues tab Barrack’s position on energy. It seems smart and thought out. I think that if managed right it could pay for itself. However, I believe that it MUST be thought out well to avoid the law of unintended circumstances. As Barack appears to surround himself with intelligent people, listen and take advice, weigh the options and then make good decisions I expect things will work out - perhaps not without some bumps.It is the naive that think big oil is 100% evil - raping and pillaging the land, creating environmental disaster, etc. US refineries are actually much cleaner than they were 10 years ago because of new environmental regulations enacted by both the Clinton and Bush administrations (as an independent I can actually say the everything Republicans do are not wrongevil etc. and visa-versa with Democrats). Also - I know as I am in the oil industry as a consultant... What many people do not realize is that hundreds of millions of the so-called refinery "wind fall" profits are actually going into refinery maintenance the refineries couldn't afford to do only several years ago because oil was so cheap and in meeting new environmental regulations.America runs on cheap energy. Americans are used to and expect cheap energy. Cheap energy allows Americans to have the lifestyle we have become accustomed to. Cheap energy includes wind, solar, hydro-electric, nuclear, coal, and oil. Cheap oil also means cheap plastics. American society is filled with cheap plastic and plastic derivatives... to include CDs, DVDs, food containers, and even this keyboard I am typing on. Extremists who shout to end all oil are actually saying to end society as we know it and the society that empowers them to launch their ill-informed crusade. Smart energy is the realization that we need to move towards more sustainable non-polluting sources and in the interim we optimize the oil that we do use... and need. Optimize in research towards drilling, refining, burning cleanly, and carbon sequestration. We need Smart Energy.
July 7, 2008
The Facebooker Who Friended Obama New York Times By BRIAN STELTER Last November, Mark Penn, then the chief strategist for Hillary Rodham Clinton, derisively said Barack Obama's supporters "look like Facebook." Chris Hughes takes that as a compliment. Mr. Hughes, 24, was one of four founders of Facebook. In early 2007, he left the company to work in Chicago on Senator Obama's new-media campaign. Leaving behind his company at such a critical time would appear to require some cognitive dissonance: political campaigns, after all, are built on handshakes and persuasion, not computer servers, and Mr. Hughes has watched, sometimes ruefully, as Facebook has marketed new products that he helped develop. "It was overwhelming for the first two months," he recalled. "It took a while to get my bearings." But in fact, working on the Obama campaign may have moved Mr. Hughes closer to the center of the social networking phenomenon, not farther away. The campaign's new-media strategy, inspired by popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook, has revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool, helping the candidate raise more than two million donations of less than $200 each and swiftly mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters before various primaries. The centerpiece of it all is My.BarackObama.com, where supporters can join local groups, create events, sign up for updates and set up personal fund-raising pages. "If we did not have online organizing tools, it would be much harder to be where we are now," Mr. Hughes said. Mr. Obama, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, credits the Internet's social networking tools with a "big part" of his primary season success. "One of my fundamental beliefs from my days as a community organizer is that real change comes from the bottom up," Mr. Obama said in a statement. "And there's no more powerful tool for grass-roots organizing than the Internet." Now Mr. Hughes and other campaign aides are applying the same social networking tools to try to win the general election. This time, however, they must reach beyond their base of young, Internet-savvy supporters. By early April, Mr. Obama's new-media team was already planning for the election by expanding its online phone-calling technology. In mid-May, to keep volunteers busy as the primaries played out, the campaign started a nationwide voter registration drive. And in late June, after Senator Clinton bowed out of the race, the millions of people on the Obama campaign's e-mail lists were asked to rally her supporters as well as undecided voters by hosting "Unite for Change" house parties across the country. Nearly 4,000 parties were held. The campaign's successful new-media strategy is already being studied as a playbook for other candidates, including the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain. "Their use of social networks will guide the way for future campaigns," Peter Daou, Mrs. Clinton's Internet director, said at a recent political technology conference. Mr. Daou called Mr. Obama's online outreach "amazing." The heart of the campaign's online strategy is a teeming corner of Mr. Obama's headquarters two blocks from the Chicago River, a crowded space that looks more like an Internet start-up company than a campaign war room. During a visit in late May, a bottle of whiskey sat, almost empty, atop a refrigerator (there had been plenty of victories to celebrate lately, a staff member explained). Sitting amid a cluster of cubicles, Mr. Hughes, whose title is "online organizing guru," handles the My.BarackObama.com site, which is known within the campaign as MyBo. Other staff members maintain Mr. Obama's presence on Facebook (where he has one million supporters), purchase online advertising, respond to text messages from curious voters, produce videos and e-mail millions of supporters. Before helping build Facebook, the social network of choice for 70 million Americans, the fresh-faced and sandy-haired Mr. Hughes, who grew up in Hickory, N.C., went to boarding school at Andover, where he joined the Democratic Club and the student government. In the fall of 2002, he went to Harvard, where he majored in history and literature. He and a roommate, Mark Zuckerberg -- now the chief executive of Facebook -- shared a room that was "just about as small as my cubby at work is these days," Mr. Hughes said. Mr. Zuckerberg and another Facebook co-founder dropped out in 2004 to work on the site full time, but Mr. Hughes graduated in 2006 before venturing to Silicon Valley. In February 2007, after showing interest in Mr. Obama's candidacy and being reassured that the campaign's new-media operation would be more than "just a couple Internet guys in a corner," he left Facebook, where he has stock options that are potentially worth tens of millions of dollars, and moved to Chicago, where he lives -- and dresses -- like any other recent college graduate. "Cabs are a luxury," he said. As supporters started to join MyBo in early 2007, Mr. Hughes brought a growth strategy, borrowed from Facebook's founding principles: keep it real, and keep it local. Mr. Hughes wanted Mr. Obama's social network to mirror the off-line world the same way that Facebook seeks to, because supporters would foster more meaningful connections by attending neighborhood meetings and calling on people who were part of their daily lives. The Internet served as the connective tissue. While many candidates reach their supporters through the Web, the social networking features of MyBo allow supporters to reach one another. Mr. Hughes's abrupt shift from Facebook pioneer to campaign aide was not easy. In the lonely months before the Iowa caucus, he grappled with the small scale of his new social network, measuring its membership by the thousands rather than the millions he was accustomed to. He had to learn mystifying political shorthand (VAN, for voter file management; N.P.G., for the donor and volunteer database) and figure out how campaigns operate. Eventually, he grew comfortable. At first, his main focus was a single state. Throughout last summer and fall, the prevailing attitude was, "What can you do for Iowa today?" Mr. Hughes recalled. Mr. Obama's win in the Iowa caucuses drove new supporters to the MyBo site in droves. Using the campaign's online toolkit, energized volunteers laid the groundwork for field workers. So far, MyBo has attracted 900,000 members, although aides play down the raw numbers. "The point is not to have a million people" signed up, said Joe Rospars, the campaign's new-media director, although he does expect to have well over a million signed up on MyBo by November. "The point is to be able to chop up that million-person list into manageable chunks and organize them." In some primary and caucus states, volunteers used the Internet to start organizing themselves months before the campaign staff arrived. In Texas on March 4, Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote, but Mr. Obama came away with a lead of five delegates, thanks to a caucus win. Caucuses are a test of organizational strength, and Mr. Obama's team used database technology to track 100,000 Texas volunteers and put them to work. This permitted campaign staff members to "skip Steps 1, 2 and 3," Mr. Hughes said. So maybe the Obama core does "look like Facebook." Mr. Penn's remark, made at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa and reported by The Politico, was cited by both Mr. Rospars and Mr. Hughes in separate interviews. Virtual phone banks greatly benefited Mr. Obama. During the primaries, volunteers could sign in online, receive a list of phone numbers and make calls from home. The volunteers made hundreds of thousands of calls last winter and spring. At the end of June, the Obama campaign began carefully opening up its files of voters to online supporters, making it easier to find out which Democratic-leaning neighbors to call and which registered-independent doors to knock on. One goal is to drive online energy into in-person support. From January to April, for instance, the Obama campaign spent $3 million on online advertising to steer would-be voters to their polling places with online tools that tell people where to vote. The locators "are hard to build, but once you build them, they have a very high return on investment," Mr. Hughes said. Much of the technology in the Obama toolbox was pioneered by Howard Dean's 2004 campaign. "We were like the Wright brothers," said Joe Trippi, the Web mastermind of the Dean campaign. The Obama team, he added, "skipped Boeing, Mercury, Gemini -- they're Apollo 11, only four years later." Mr. Rospars and other former Dean aides formed a consulting firm, Blue State Digital, to refine their techniques. The Obama campaign purchased the backbone of MyBo from Blue State and has set out to improve it. "It's still TheFacebook," Mr. Hughes said, comparing Mr. Obama's current site to the earliest and narrowest version of Facebook. "It's still very, very rough around the edges." Last month, acknowledging that attacks during the general election are likely to be more vociferous, the Obama campaign tried to capitalize on its network by creating a Web page, FightTheSmears.com. Through that site, the campaign hopes that supporters will act as a truth squad working to untangle accusations, as bloggers have informally in other campaigns and as many did when CBS reported on President Bush's National Guard service in 2004. People who have posted on the site have already taken up five rumors, including that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States (a birth certificate was displayed) and that he does not put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance (the site links to a YouTube video of him doing so). Republican strategists say, wryly, that Senator McCain's 2000 campaign was innovative in its use of technology. (The candidate held a groundbreaking virtual fund-raiser and enabled supporters to sign up online.) But that was back when Mr. McCain ran as an outsider; as the presumptive nominee, he is no longer an upstart. His social network, called McCainSpace and part of JohnMcCain.com, is "virtually impossible to use and appears largely abandoned," said Adam Ostrow, the editor of Mashable, a blog about social networking. By all accounts, Mr. McCain is not the BlackBerry-wielding politician that Mr. Obama is. But he has given credit to what he calls Mr. Obama's "excellent use of the Internet," saying at a news conference last month that "we are working very hard at that as well." The McCain campaign recently reintroduced its Web site and hired new bloggers to broaden its online presence. Patrick Ruffini, a Republican strategist who was the Webmaster for President Bush's 2004 campaign, said that a campaign's culture largely determines its digital strategy. The McCain campaign "could hire the best people, build the best technology, and adopt the best tactics" on the Internet. "But it would have to be in sync with the candidate and the campaign," Mr. Ruffini said. Mr. Hughes and other Obama aides say that their candidate gravitates naturally toward social networking, so much so that he even filled out his own Facebook profile two years ago. Mr. Obama has pledged that if he is elected, he will hire a chief technology officer; Mr. Hughes's face lights up at the thought. Other administrations have adapted to the Internet, "but they haven't valued it," he said. Mr. Hughes has not decided whether to return to Facebook, and the decision does hinge in part on the fate of the campaign. But the lessons he has learned in political life seem to reinforce those learned in Silicon Valley. "You can have the best technology in the world," he said, "but if you don't have a community who wants to use it and who are excited about it, then it has no purpose." Forty Years
Claim: During the 1960's, Robert F. Kennedy said he believed a black man could become President of the United States within forty years. Status: True. Example: [Collected via e-mail, June 2008] He gave a speech to the Voice of America all around the world 40 years ago. And despite what was going on in the country, particularly in Alabama, Bobby Kennedy said this: Things are 'moving so fast in race relations a Negro could be president in 40 years.' This is in 1968, we're now in 2008. 'There's no question about it,' the attorney general said. 'In the next 40 years a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has.' ... Kennedy said that prejudice exists and probably will continue to ... 'But we have tried to make progress and we are making progress. We are not going to accept the status quo.' - Robert F. Kennedy, Washington Post, May 27, 1968 Origins: Amidst the turmoil of the civil rights movement in the 1960's (and prompted by acts of violence such as those recently visited upon the "Freedom Riders"), Robert F. Kennedy spoke about race relations in a broadcast beamed to over sixty countries via the Voice of America radio network. As reported at the time, Kennedy said: Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, in a broadcast to the world, today acknowledged the United States' imperfections in the area of equal rights for Negroes. He pleaded, however, for recognition of the progress that had been made and for an awareness that everything pointed to continuing progress. "There's no question that in the next thirty or forty years a Negro can also achieve the same position that my brother has as President of the United States, certainly within that period of time," the Attorney General said. The Voice of America beamed his extemporaneous remarks to more than sixty countries through thirty-nine radio transmitters. Translations were superimposed in the delivery of the talk to thirty-seven language areas. Consistent with a Voice of America policy of acknowledging the worst in the news as well as the bright side, Mr. Kennedy began by citing the attack by whites on Negroes in Alabama in the last two weeks. "It's a matter that disturbs us tremendously," he declared. "But I think that people should also understand some of the good things that are being done in this area, that this doesn't really represent the American people or the American Government, that this is just a small minority group which is causing these problems and difficulties. "It doesn't represent the vast majority of people in the South, this kind of riot, this kind of lawlessness, and it certainly doesn't represent the feelings of the United States Government or the American people. That is why we took the steps that we took to try to prevent it, and we have prevented it." The Attorney General also told the world that the suppression of the recent outbreaks did not mean the end of them. "I am not saying to you, and I would be less than frank if I did, that these kinds of events are ended now and that they won't have any racial prejudice or violence of the future, because we will have them," he declared. But, Mr. Kennedy said, "we are not going to accept the status quo" in the matter of Negro rights. "We are not going to accept the riots or the disorders in Montgomery or Birmingham, Alabama," he said. "We sent people in in order to end it, and that is the feeling of the vast majority of American people, and that's the feeling of the United States Government." Robert F. Kennedy's remarks are of renewed interest now, in mid-2008, because of the very real possibility that a black man, Senator Barack Obama, might win the upcoming 2008 presidential election — an event which would make Kennedy's words of four decades ago prophetic down to the exact year. However, while the example quoted above accurately reflects the gist of Kennedy's remarks, it fudges a few details to increase the "wow" factor:
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/kennedy.asp Sources: Loftus, Joseph A. "U.S. Tells World of Rights Strife." The New York Times. 27 May 1961 (p. 8). Thanks to all of the volunteers that helped Rob and I with the booth and voter registration at the Sugarhouse festival. It was so much fun and it was great to get to know all of you.
We got contributions for an obscene amount of buttons, bumper stickers and yard signs. Those contributions will go a long way towards printing more campaign material for future events. Our volunteers registered over 100 voters today. Special thanks goes to Lauren, Igor, and Satia who worked non-stop to register people. The response today was overwhelmingly positive. We gave out a lot of LDS for Obama buttons and Republicans for Obama buttons. It is wonderful to see people crossing traditional boundaries to vote their concience. The energy on the part of the public is exhillarating. There was a huge amount of enthusiasm for the campaign. We created Kids 4 Obama stickers and had people add their thoughts to a wish book. We will bring the book to more festivals and send it to Barack. We are asking people to contribute their opinion on Hope for the world. Grownups and children shared their thoughts and drew pictures for Barack. One man summed it all up very eloquently. He simply wrote "SAVE US" It can't be said much better than that. Everyones wondering what I'll be doing for Independence Day, and I've decided to register new voters. I received calls from everywhere asking," What are you cooking"? When I tell them happily and full of joy, some Obama Stew with a lil voters registration and you can't forget about a ounce of love because right now we all need it. I experience a moment of silence for a minute, then the giggles. At the end, everyone tells me thats good!
Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research
Utah: McCain 52%, Obama 33% June 27, 2008 Abstract: (Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Republican John McCain could carry the Beehive State in this year's United States presidential election, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. 52 per cent of respondents in Utah would vote for the Arizona senator, while 33 per cent would back Democratic Illinois senator Barack Obama. (Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Republican John McCain could carry the Beehive State in this year's United States presidential election, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. 52 per cent of respondents in Utah would vote for the Arizona senator, while 33 per cent would back Democratic Illinois senator Barack Obama. A survey by Dan Jones and Associates gives McCain a 28-point lead over Obama. In 2004, Republican George W. Bush won the Beehive State's five electoral votes, with 71 per cent of the vote. No Democrat has carried Utah since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Content on blogs in My.BarackObama represents the opinions of community members and in no way should be interpreted as endorsed or approved by the campaign.
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