One Week.
I've been making calls. It's easy. Easier than you think.
If you're reading this between 9am and 8pm, stop reading this and start making calls via n2n. Now.
If you're feeling complacent, here are four reasons not to.
If McCain pulls off an upset, you'll be kicking yourself for not doing more. So do more.
The New York Times
Editorial: Barack Obama for President
Excerpt:
Mr. Obama has withstood some of the toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He’s been called un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith. The Republicans have linked him to domestic terrorists and questioned his wife’s love of her country. Ms. Palin has also questioned millions of Americans’ patriotism, calling Republican-leaning states “pro-America.”
This politics of fear, division and character assassination helped Mr. Bush drive Mr. McCain from the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John Kerry in 2004. It has been the dominant theme of his failed presidency.
The nation’s problems are simply too grave to be reduced to slashing “robo-calls” and negative ads. This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of those qualities.
Read the full article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/opinion/24fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
For some time I've been searching for a single image that simultaneous encapsulates and gelds the Neo Con approach to politics. This morning watching Oberman's Special Comment on FISA, I came up with a possible solution. I realized that in simple terms, the Emperor has no clothes.
The Neo Con approach is all about deception and misdirection. It capitalizes on our cultural desire for the quick, Cliff Notes summary. Some examples:
1. Want to pass legislation that will aid and abet corporations who use practices that taint the atmosphere? Simple, call it the "Clean Air Act". You can then simultaneously serve your corporate masters while touting your environmental record. After all, the average voter won't look into the actual legislation or its impact.
2. Your candidate has become a career politician who's position on issues changes with the vagaries of the political breeze the moment he seeks to become President? Paint your opponent as the epitome of these vices. It doesn't matter which candidate actually has the vices, only who the public perceives to possess them.
3. A freshman Senator from the opposition succeeds in putting together a package of Veterans benefits you worked to defeat? No problem, claim credit for spearheading the bipartisan effort.
4. Your candidate has policies that maintain the unpopular status quo? Make a commercial that claims that his presidency will result in all of the goals of a progressive agenda that would appeal to moderates without actually having any policies that will accomplish those goals.
The Neo Con strategy is based on the understanding that much of politics is governing through perception. Control the perception and you can control the populace. We need a sharp pin to help break the bubbles. A shorthand image that cuts through the spin and exposes it quickly with the truth. The Emperor has no clothes.
The Bush/Cheney/McCain doctrine doesn't accomplish what it claims. Because service was never it's goal. It's goal was to survive politically while achieving wealth and power. It preys on the people it purports to serve. So how do we cut to to the heart of the matter when our culture won't listen to a detailed rebuttal? Whenever the Neo Cons start spewing bubbles, get out a pin and point out that the Emperor has no clothes.
Abbott Smith
Redmond, WA
So, let's have another little reality check here. At most blog sites you have the ability to create any username you wish. If I wanted to call myself Mata Hari or Britney Spears or the Queen of Sheba, I could do so with the web site's blessings.Just for grins and giggles, who might this particular Bill Cosby be?Perhaps...he is the infamous William J Cosby, head honcho of the Clay County Klu Klux Klan. Or, maybe...he is Wilhelm V Cosby, eldest son of the dock worker in Brindlesmire, Scotland. Does either of these individuals exist? Not to my knowledge. Is there a Brindlesmire, Scotland? I doubt it...I just made it all up.Perhaps...it is even the illustrious current President, George Bush, giggling in that demented little way he has, as he sets up an account under the name of Bill Cosby to wreak havoc on the election. Could it be? I don't know. And that's my point. You just don't know. Could it be true? Yes. Is it true? I doubt it.
I just sent this through the contact form on the site. I urge you to send your own thoughts on the matter as well:
Dear Barack, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun” (source) Violent rhetoric is unacceptable to me. Our nation has enough violence. Having a presidential candidate use the rhetoric of violence during a campaign enforces the violence. We need you to speak out against and work to reduce our culture of violence, not to enforce it with poorly chosen analogies. The violent rhetoric is not change and is not a new kind of politics. It is one of the very things we need you to change. Please retract and apologize for your remarks and find a better analogy. Card games, sports... anything but violence. Peace, ~Steven
On May 17th, I was one of ~80 men who stood as candidates to become delegates to the National Convention from the 1st CD. Even though I came from one of the smaller delegations, I was honored to be one of the four finalists. I was not selected, but throughout the day and the weeks that have followed, I have received a number of comments thanking me for what I said. Here is the transcript of my one minute speech.
The Hope We Represent
My name is Abbott Smith and I'm from Redmond. Like many of you, I've spent months now working on my first campaign. But today isn’t about me. It isn’t about any of us as individuals. The delegates that we elect today will represent 700,000 Washington voters; their hopes, their dreams and their future. Not our individual pasts. Today isn’t about who gets to go to Denver because of what they’ve done for the campaign or the Democratic Party. Denver isn’t the prize. Our delegates need to help Senator Obama secure the nomination and heal the party. Our hope lies in ordinary Americans embracing the challenges of changing how we govern. Those challenges require a commitment that transcends the campaign. The commitment Barack Obama inspires. Our delegates must help others see our future beyond Denver; the work, the personal involvement and the rewards. I would be honored to serve as a delegate. But that honor pales in comparison to the hope we represent. My name is Abbott Smith and I’m in this for the long haul. Our future is the reason we are here today.
First of all, John, you weren't in New Orleans.
You were in Kenner, Louisiana. I have spent a fair amount of time in both Kenner and New Orleans, and believe me, the people who live there are acutely aware of the difference. The competition in CYO basketball alone runs at fratricidal levels. So your very first words were stunningly dumb.
And not only wrong, not only dumb, but wrong, dumb, and mis-pronounced: it's not New Or-lee-eyens, as any resident of New Orleans (or Kenner) will insist on telling you: it's New Or-lins. Down there in New Orleans -- sorry, I mean Kenner -- these are life-and-death issues.
So: one sentence into the single worst speech in the history of American politics, in front of what looked like seventeen tired white people in a room, John McCain -- comb-over plastered down, grinning inanely, with his strange collection of jowls and wattles a-quiver at various tempos (a separate flopping-rhythm to every fleshy sac, in a display of trembling facial-jelly unmatched since the heyday of Jesse Helms) -- had:
a) proved he didn't know where he was,
b) showed he was too lazy to even ask a random passer-by the name of the city he wrongly believed himself to be in, and
c) beamed out to America -- for the first but unmercifully not the last time on a crucial night of political theater--that bizarre frozen rectus of a grin that he quite wrongly thinks is charming and down-home.
Mere seconds into an address that gladdened Obama supporters everywhere and drove giant ripples of buyer's-remorse down the gut of every Obama-hating white Clinton supporter, John McCain had proudly displayed his Wooden Soldier persona to the world.
It was a miscalculation of stunning proportions -- not just by McCain, but by the once-fearsome Republican strategists who'd propped him up in front of that eye-torturing green backdrop. How the mighty have fallen: last night, we witnessed the arrival of the Anti-Reagan, the pitiful obverse of the Great Communicator. Here, instead, was the Grating Obfuscator, mangling an already-terrible speech like some mildewed Howdy Doody with Alzheimer's Disease.
His ideas were puerile -- and his ideas were the best part of the speech. He turned instantly-forgettable phrases into unforgettable moments of black comedy, at one point so garbling the phrase "change in strategy" that it almost came out as "strange in tragedy" -- which would have been a far better description of his support for the war than any he gave in his remarks.
For the love of God, you should pardon the expression, is nobody coaching this man? At several points he actually spoke the phrase "heh-heh-heh" as if reading it from a Teleprompter. He paused after what he believed to be winning lines, blatantly milking applause from those seventeen tired white people (and here's a Note to John: when the applause is so sparse that you can actually hear and identify the separate clapping-patterns of individual clappers, dispense with the dramatic pauses.)
Worst of all was The Blinking. It should be against the law to hustle John McCain in a poker-game, because his "tell" is so freaking obvious: whenever he's spoken a lie that he knows flat-out is a lie, he stops dead in his tracks and suddenly performs a nightmarish combo of The Rictus and The Blink, a rapid eye-flutter that reads like a Bettie Boop parody and should not be attempted by anyone even vaguely male.
Do I focus more on theater than on substance? Well, so did McCain. And so did Ronald Reagan, for that matter, but according to popular opinion -- one I have always been unable to share, since my loathing for the man put the whammy on objective judgment -- Reagan played his games of political three-card-monte with skill and charm. The fact that the Republican Party has fallen on such hard times that it can only offer a John McCain as their presidential candidate means that not only have they lost their Reagans, but they have lost their Michael Deavers, Lee Atwaters, and (vintage) Karl Roves as well. And that loss is the truly critical one.
Case in point: Republican strategists knew that Obama would be taking the stage an hour later to deliver a typically hypnotic speech in front of an SRO house of ecstatic devotees. So the fact that they threw McCain into the gladiator-pit of American TV armed only with his own charisma -- which, of course, is to say without any weapons at all -- is further proof that it's now Amateur Hour at the GOP. To which -- John Hagee and Jeremiah Wright aside -- one can only say: thank God.
The process of selecting the delegation to attend the National Convention has one more tier. On Sunday of the State convention, 3 additional groups of delegates will be selected. The State Chairman will nominate 2 unpledged delegates. Then the Election Committee will elect 17 At Large delegates and 10 PLEO delegates. (The Elections Committee is comprised of the delegates to the National Convention who were elected at the CD caucuses.)
At Large delegates are used to round out the delegation and fill holes in representation. There are set demographic targets that need to be met. These include African American, Hispanic American, Asian/Pacific Island American, Native American, LGBT American, Disabled American and Youth (under 25) demographics. Once these demographics are met then the positions are open to all.
PLEO (Party leaders and Elected Officials) are positions that are open to elected officials down to the level of PCO who are not superdelegates.
As with the CD delegates, At Large and PLEO candidates must file the appropriate paperwork with the State Democratic Party prior to the State Convention. The deadline is 5:00 PM, Tuesday, June 10th. Additional information and links to forms can be found at
http://wa-democrats.org/index.php?page=display&id=283
Also note that the At Large and PLEO delegates are also apportioned by candidate. The latest numbers that I have seen indicate that Senator Obama will get
6 PLEO delegates
13 At Large Delegates
2 At Large Alternates
From DailyKos:
Myrtle Strong Enemy, 101, waits for US Democratic presidential candidate and US Senator Barack Obama, (D-IL), to speak in Crow Agency, Montana May 19, 2008. Strong Enemy is the oldest woman in the Crow Nation. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
On Saturday, the following delegates to the National Convention were elected from the 1st CD.
Luis Moscoso 1st LD
Ronald Oshima 21st LD
Kendall Hamilton 21st LD
Jessica Beckett 23rd LD
Alternate: Marsha Scutvick 44th LD
Congratulations to all of the delegates who participated and to those who were chosen. Thank you for representing all of us and helping to insure that Senator Obama secures the nomination.
Former President Jimmy Carter said in an interview today that he will vote for the Pledged Delegate leader. This, of course, will be a vote for Barack Obama.
"It would be undemocratic if the super-delegates blatantly went against the decision of Democratic voters across the nation. And I think that many super-delegates who have not yet declared their preference have the same feeling that I do, including the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. She's said over and over that whoever gets the most [pledged] delegates by June 3rd ought to be the nominee."-- Former President Jimmy Carter
"It would be undemocratic if the super-delegates blatantly went against the decision of Democratic voters across the nation. And I think that many super-delegates who have not yet declared their preference have the same feeling that I do, including the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. She's said over and over that whoever gets the most [pledged] delegates by June 3rd ought to be the nominee."
-- Former President Jimmy Carter
This makes 9 super delegates in the Pelosi Club.
This is an excellent message by Mike Bonifer, who grew up in Indiana, to his fellow Hoosiers back home. Read it here and pass it along.
There will be two training sessions in preparation for the May 17th 1st CD caucus. One session will be held in Bothell this Sunday, and one will be held in Poulsbo next Saturday. These sessions are for Delegates and Alternates to the 1st CD caucus and anyone else who is considering running to be a national delegate.
The Bothell training session is from 1-3 at the American Legion Hallon May 4. The address is 19213 Bothell Way N.E.. in Bothell. We willhave transportation from the Kingston Ferry to the Legion.The Poulsbo training session is from 12-1 at Hern Hall at OlympicCollege on May 10. The address is 1000 Olympic College Place NW Poulsbo. Afterthe event, we are going to conduct a voter registration drive.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Why isn't Barack winning the blue collar white vote? I submit that it's generational and not race or gender. I haven't done a deep analysis, but it just makes sense that as you get older, "change" is not what you want. I think if Barack re-framed the "change" for the older generation into something like a return to the belief that you will retire well, have social security, and see your kids and grandkids prosper, then he will tap into the right vein. It's a subtle shift from the change message of today which is geared more towards the younger generation and is about Washington process, etc. For the older set, this ain't about John Stewart politics, it's about the fear of having to call the number on the screen for a reverse mortgage that Pat Boone just told you about. I don't think these messages clash, in fact they are one in the same. Just freshen up the script Barack and reach across the generation divide...
On April 5, all or portions of 11 Legislative Districts - the 1st, 21st, 23rd, 32nd, 35th, 38th, 39th, 44th, 45th, 46th, and 48th, elected 240 delegates to the 1st CD caucus. Of those 240, 178 (or 74.2% are Obama delegates). From stories across the CD, we gained several (up to 5-6) delegates at the LDs as projected by the results of the precinct caucuses. At this point, it appears that we will elect 4 delegates (2 men and 2 women) to go to the National Convention, as well as one female alternate, to support Senator Obama. Looking forward to May 17th, the chair of the 1st CD is Kent Hanson (425.337.4419). He is currently putting together his team to run the caucus, so we should expect to learn more about the specific rules and agenda later this week or early next week.
For communication with and among delegates, the Google group is http://groups.google.com/group/WA1stCDObamadelegates.
Volunteers – We are working on finding volunteers to help with the organization and running of the 1st CD caucus. Volunteers will be needed with setup, credentialing, cleanup, the tally committee, etc. These volunteers need not be delegates. Food/Food Drive – Kerry Lee has volunteered to coordinate food for those attending the caucus (and perhaps the training sessions – see below) and lead a food drive for Northwest Harvest at the caucus. Her post on the delegate group on google gives more info on the food drive.
TRAINING SESSIONS We are planning two training sessions - one in Poulsbo the weekend of May 3-4 and a larger training session in Edmonds on May 10-11. The location of these events are not set. What was agreed upon was that in each location we would have a training session - what to expect, how to organize, etc. In both cases, the training session would be followed by a meet and greet - but in the case of the Edmonds event, it is envisioned that a larger social gathering might occur.
Finally, please remember to contact the delegates in your area and give them the address to our Google group list http://groups.google.com/group/WA1stCDObamadelegates. We hope that every delegate joins.
One other general resource for posting information and events will be our group on the Obama website. When you contact delegates, please have them join the group. Here is the direct link http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/Washington1stCDforObama
This is an e-mail sent to Sean Hannity and other Fox news mail addresses as well as CNN Thursday, 2008-Apr-17, after Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich discussed the Pennsylvania Democratic debate the evening of Thursday, April 18, 2008.
I have generally ceased to waste my time watching the Hannity & Colmes show because it quite obviously does not live up to Fox standards of “Fair and Balanced” reporting. If we want to see a picture of ‘elitism’ we can watch the expressions and comments of Newt Gingrich diminishing the parentage of Barack Obama while elevating his own upbringing in Pennsylvania and conveniently ignoring Barack Obama’s childhood and service on the south side of Chicago and to this country.
