Hello All,
I’m happy to report that service events in support of the community are alive and well.
On Saturday, August 22, several local grass-root organizations collaborated on the service event, “Supplies For Change”. The donation drop-off areas were located at Shaker Square; an immensely popular location for the community. The organizers of the North Union Farmer’s Market generously donated a tent for us to receive donations in the morning. The Coral Company opened the doors of the former Obama Campaign headquarters for us to use this space in the afternoon.
In summary, cash donations exceeded $260. In addition, we collected a vast variety of useful school supplies that filled many bags and boxes. The items were donated to the Adlai Stevenson School, a K-8 school in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District and the monetary donations were used by the CMSD to purchase school supplies for Audubon School on Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive.
The organizers of this event thank everyone for their generosity and support. “Supplies For Change” may become an annual event, and we look forward to your continued interest and support.
All the best,
Maureen
ohio_voter_44120@sbcglobal.net
Just another couple of jaw droppers! OMG when are they going to pack her back to AK? Wait! They can't do that. It would a cruel thing to do to all the beautiful indigenous animals for her to continue her bloody reign on the pristine wilderness. Susan Federighi (sfed)
Latest Palin Gaffe: Can't Name Supreme Court Case Other Than Roe V. Wade
September 29, 2008 06:30 PM
Today, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported on potentially embarrassing clips of Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric that haven't yet been aired. The Politico has more information on one in particular:
Of concern to McCain's campaign, however, is a remaining and still-undisclosed clip from Palin's interview with Couric last week that has the political world buzzing. The Palin aide, after first noting how "infuriating" it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.
The Palin aide, after first noting how "infuriating" it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.
After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.
There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.
Sam HarrisNEWSWEEKFrom the magazine issue dated Sep 29, 2008Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer whoâ€"being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could. Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady's misfortuneâ€"and, above all, upon the "liberal elites" with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal. The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history. The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary. We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security ... the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them. Palin's most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase "Bush doctrine." And I am quite sure that her supporters didn't care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to knowâ€"or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain's advisers. What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth. I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn't: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with mil-lions of Americansâ€"but we shouldn't be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either. There is no question that if President McCain chokes on a spare rib and Palin becomes the first woman president, she and her supporters will believe that God, in all his majesty and wisdom, has brought it to pass. Why would God give Sarah Palin a job she isn't ready for? He wouldn't. Everything happens for a reason. Palin seems perfectly willing to stake the welfare of our country even the welfare of our species as collateral in her own personal journey of faith. Of course, McCain has made the same unconscionable wager on his personal journey to the White House. In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations. Every detail that has emerged about Palin's life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land. Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the "end times." Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that "God's going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you"? You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy "baptism in the Holy Spirit," "miraculous healings" and "the gift of tongues." Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of "the final generation," engaged in "spiritual warfare" to purge the earth of "demonic strongholds." Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: "All options remain on the table"? It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska. But we cannot ignore the fact that Palin's impressive family further testifies to her dogmatic religious beliefs. Many writers have noted the many shades of conservative hypocrisy on view here: when Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin's daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who "intends" to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of "the dysfunction in the black community"?Teen pregnancy is a misfortune, plain and simple. At best, it represents bad luck (both for the mother and for the child); at worst, as in the Palins' case, it is a symptom of religious dogmatism. Governor Palin opposes sex education in schools on religious grounds. She has also fought vigorously for a "parental consent law" in the state of Alaska, seeking full parental dominion over the reproductive decisions of minors. We know, therefore, that Palin believes that she should be the one to decide whether her daughter carries her baby to term. Based on her stated position, we know that she would deny her daughter an abortion even if she had been raped. One can be forgiven for doubting whether Bristol Palin had all the advantages of 21st-century family planningâ€"or, indeed, of the 21st century.We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment.What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she representsâ€"and her supporters celebrateâ€"the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth: "Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?""Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter.""But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind.""That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earthâ€"in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated. I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex and dangerous with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization. Harris is a founder of The Reason Project and author of The New York Times best sellers
Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer whoâ€"being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could.
Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady's misfortuneâ€"and, above all, upon the "liberal elites" with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal.
The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history.
The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary.
We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security ... the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.
Palin's most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase "Bush doctrine." And I am quite sure that her supporters didn't care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to knowâ€"or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain's advisers. What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.
I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn't: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with mil-lions of Americansâ€"but we shouldn't be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either. There is no question that if President McCain chokes on a spare rib and Palin becomes the first woman president, she and her supporters will believe that God, in all his majesty and wisdom, has brought it to pass. Why would God give Sarah Palin a job she isn't ready for? He wouldn't. Everything happens for a reason. Palin seems perfectly willing to stake the welfare of our country even the welfare of our species as collateral in her own personal journey of faith. Of course, McCain has made the same unconscionable wager on his personal journey to the White House.
In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations. Every detail that has emerged about Palin's life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land. Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the "end times." Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that "God's going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you"?
You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy "baptism in the Holy Spirit," "miraculous healings" and "the gift of tongues." Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of "the final generation," engaged in "spiritual warfare" to purge the earth of "demonic strongholds." Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: "All options remain on the table"?
It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska. But we cannot ignore the fact that Palin's impressive family further testifies to her dogmatic religious beliefs. Many writers have noted the many shades of conservative hypocrisy on view here: when Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin's daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who "intends" to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of "the dysfunction in the black community"?
Teen pregnancy is a misfortune, plain and simple. At best, it represents bad luck (both for the mother and for the child); at worst, as in the Palins' case, it is a symptom of religious dogmatism. Governor Palin opposes sex education in schools on religious grounds. She has also fought vigorously for a "parental consent law" in the state of Alaska, seeking full parental dominion over the reproductive decisions of minors. We know, therefore, that Palin believes that she should be the one to decide whether her daughter carries her baby to term. Based on her stated position, we know that she would deny her daughter an abortion even if she had been raped. One can be forgiven for doubting whether Bristol Palin had all the advantages of 21st-century family planningâ€"or, indeed, of the 21st century.
We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment.
What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she representsâ€"and her supporters celebrateâ€"the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:
"Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?"
"Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter."
"But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind."
"That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."
The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery.
Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earthâ€"in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.
I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex and dangerous with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.
Harris is a founder of The Reason Project and author of The New York Times best sellers
The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation
His Web site is samharris.org.
Please forward- This is horrible if you care about women. The fired Commissioner wanted to assign some law officials to cover “sex crimes” (like SVU) and Palin forbade him to do it.
Tania Tetlow, Associate Professor and Director, Tulane Law School Domestic Violence Clinic and Former Assistant U.S. Attorney,has written a must-see article on Palin and her record as mayr and governor dealing with the issue of rape:
http://www.motleymoose.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=166
"When asked why we were attacked on 9/11, Sarah Palin answered because the terrorists hate our freedoms. While she has been derided for her lack of foreign policy experience, she may have come up with the most innovative program yet to deter terrorists: taking those freedoms away. Just like many Middle Eastern countries, Mayor Palin punished the women of Wasilla for reporting rape. Her administration charged them substantial fees for the rape kits used to prove the crime.
After being attacked, a Wasilla woman could look forward to being billed up to $1200 in return for a grueling forensic pelvic exam."
A diary referencing the article is currently top of rec list at DKOS:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/17/16937/2631/149/601917
-chris
The Moose is Loose!
http://motleymoose.com
This is from today's blog by Will:
"I heard this morning that McCain has a measurable lead amongst those 55 and over -- a cohort into which many of us fit. So while we fret and fume over support in other areas this is one we can seriously ask ourselves how to address. "Dear age-mate ... what on earth are you thinking!?! " In particular, McCain's health issues, which the campaign is trying to bury under cries of ageism, ought to concern us all. McCain’s embarrassing confusion is already pretty major news in Spain today, but at this point, the only major U.S. outlets who’ve picked up on this are the online sections of Time and the Washington Post. (I saw it on CNN-Pati)Forgetting Zapetero’s name is almost forgivable, though hard to explain for a candidate who claims to be an expert in foreign policy. But the interviewer kept using the word “Spain.” She even gave him a big hint with the word “Europe.”Let’s also not lose sight of the broader pattern. McCain thinks the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia was “the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War.” He thinks Iraq and Pakistan share a border. He believes Czechoslovakia is still a country. He’s been confused about the difference between Sudan and Somalia. He’s been confused about whether he wants more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, more NATO troops in Afghanistan, or both. He’s been confused about how many U.S. troops are in Iraq. He’s been confused about whether the U.S. can maintain a long-term presence in Iraq. He’s been confused about Iran’s relationship with al Qaeda. He’s been confused about the difference between Sunni and Shi’ia. McCain, following a recent trip to Germany, even referred to “President Putin of Germany.” All of this incoherence on his signature issue.I’m curious. What do you suppose the reaction would be from the political establishment if Barack Obama had made these mistakes over the course of the campaign? What would reporters, pundits, and Republicans have to say about Obama’s ability to lead a complex world in a time of war and uncertainty?I think an intellectually honest person would agree that if Obama had made these same mistakes he’d be labeled “clueless” on foreign policy. So, why the double-standard?"
A new website has been created by Alaska women with all the good links and nitty gritty from Alaska.
It's called "Alaska Hocky Moms for Obama". Bookmark this link and you'll be able to keep up to date on the latest and best Obama movement in Alaska.
http://alaskahockeymomsforobama.com/
Posted Tuesday, September 16, 2008 12:29 PM
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/09/16/palin-s-favorability-ratings-begin-to-falter.aspx
The following is a letter to John McCain from Erica Jong
Dear John McCain:
We're not that stupid. Sure it would be nice if the women of America believed that everyone with breasts and a vagina believed in equality. But it ain't so. Women have differing views -- just like men.Some like beer; some like chardonnay. And some prefer AA. Some like automatic weapons; some don't. Some think every pregnancy is sanctified; some don't. Some think presidents should be qualified for office; some don't care.But to take the struggle for equal rights that has gone on for two centuries and embody it in the person of Sarah Palin is not just misleading but abusive.
Charging rape victims for rape kits is a travesty of equal rights. Insisting that government impose your own views of abortion on others is anti-equality. Cutting funding for black teenage mothers is anti-feminist and racist. Lying to the electorate about your record is insolent. Do you think we're too stupid or indolent to check?We have checked. You are lying and so is she. But you must think that a big lie repeated over and over becomes the truth. And it seems that many Americans are with you on that. You are so good at the bold-faced lie that you even seem to believe it yourself. When Barbara Walters and Joy Behar accused you of lying on "The View," you claimed you weren't.I guess your handlers have decided that after eight years of Cheney-Bush saying one thing and doing another, truth no longer has any meaning. Say it often enough and we'll believe anything -- like the good commercial-watchers we are. So, prep Sarah to sound like Hillary -- and we'll be fooled. It remains to be seen how many will.
But one thing is clear. You have reached a new low in your regard for the public. You have blown your credibility. Usually politicians wait to be elected to do that.It's fascinating to watch you and your party try to co-opt the idea of change, the idea of equal rights after eight years of being in total control and trashing the country for women, for workers, for taxpayers and for anyone who earns dollars.Do you really think we're that stupid? Apparently you do.Tax cuts for the rich have produced trickle-down unemployment. You want to try that again? We don't. The private sector has not policed itself. Failing banks and mortgage companies prove that. The deficit has swelled. Insurance rates for health care have swelled. Women are joining the ranks of the poor faster than ever. Play it again, John?As Sarah Palin said, lying about her lust for earmarks, "Thanks but no thanks.
"Sincerely,
Erica Jong
The Cincinnati Enquirer has a story about dirty tricks in Ohio intended to influence the election there. The McCain campaign printed a form on which a voter can request an absentee ballot and sent out about 1 million of them. The form included an unnecessary box asking if the voter was eligible to vote. If the voter didn't notice the box and didn't check it, he or she is in fact admitting that he or she is not eligible and the application has to be rejected by law. Secretary of state Jennifer Brunner is hopping mad about this stunt but she is required by law to reject invalid applications.
CQ Politics Presidential Race Rating: No Clear Favorite
Electoral Votes: 20
Ohio’s close presidential contest in 2004 made it the last among the states to be decided, and Bush’s win by slightly more than 2 percentage points over Kerry gave him the 20 electoral votes that clinched his re-election.
The fact that no Republican has ever won the presidency without winning that state, more than any other, speaks to the importance — and the uncertainty — of winning Ohio. The last Democrat to win the presidency while losing Ohio was John F. Kennedy in 1960. Ohio is one of just four states that has backed the presidential election winner in each of the past 11 elections dating to 1964, in a bloc that also includes Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee.
Ohio’s exalted place in presidential politics helps explain why prominent officeholders from that state routinely are mentioned as potential vice-presidential running mates. Rob Portman , who served as Bush’s trade envoy and then as his budget director is mentioned as a possible No. 2 for McCain in no small part because he is an Ohioan who formerly represented a Cincinnati-area House district. Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland was mentioned as a possible running mate choice for Obama until he removed his name from speculation.
Even with those developments, the longterm political track record suggests that the best Democrats can expect is for Ohio to maintain its traditional role as a bellwether state. That does not, of course, preclude an Obama win if he is running strongly in the national contest. But the outcome is likely to be close, whichever party ends up carrying the state.
Obama can expect a warm reception and plenty of votes from the state’s large urban centers of Cleveland and Columbus. Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, casts more votes than any other jurisdiction in the state, and in 2004 it backed Kerry by a 2-to-1 ratio and a margin of 227,000 votes (he fell short statewide by almost 119,000 votes). Columbus, the state capital and its most-populous city, dominates Franklin County, which Kerry won by 9 points.
Cincinnati, Ohio’s third most-populous city, leans Democratic, but the near-South quality of its environs, including its Hamilton County suburbs, typically create a Republican lean. Bush carried the county by 5 points.
Among mid-sized counties, Republicans run up huge margins in Butler, Warren and Clermont near Cincinnati and in Delaware County north of Columbus. The clincher for Bush was his strength in Ohio’s many conservative-leaning rural counties.
The presidential race in Ohio will dominate center stage in a year in which the state has no elections for governor or senator. But Ohio has drawn the close attention of House campaign strategists because the state is hosting competitive races in as many as seven districts, nearly all of which are being defended by Republicans.
Open seats tend to be more vulnerable than those in which incumbents are running, and the Republicans nationally are burdened with four-fifths of the open House seats. This problem is pronounced in Ohio, where three of 11 Republican House incumbents are retiring, and the Democrats appear to be at least even-money shots to win two of those seats.
In the district that takes in the western side of Columbus, some suburbs and rural areas to the west, Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy is seeking to succeed retiring eight-term Rep. Deborah Pryce after coming within 1 point of ousting the incumbent in 2006. Kilroy, a county commissioner in Columbus, got off to an early start in what she expected would be a rematch campaign against Pryce, who subsequently announced her retirement. Republicans are high on their own nominee, state Sen. Steve Stivers, an Iraq War veteran, though the Democrats have criticized his past work lobbying for the banking industry. CQ Politics rates this race as No Clear Favorite, our most competitive category.
The retirement of 18-term Republican Ralph Regula — a longtime Appropriations Committee member — in a northeastern Ohio district that includes Canton has spawned a highly competitive race there for the first time in many years. The contestants are state senators, John Boccieri for the Democrats and Kirk Schuring for the Republicans. Boccieri is an Iraq War veteran. Schuring represents Canton, which with about 81,000 residents is the district’s most populous city. CQ Politics also rates this race No Clear Favorite.
The Republicans will again be defending some seats in which the Democratic offensive is no less vigorous than in 2006. Seven-term Republican Rep. Steve Chabot will be opposed by Democratic state Rep. Steve Driehaus in a southwestern Ohio district that includes the bulk of Democratic-leaning Cincinnati but also some Republican-leaning suburbs north and west of the city. Chabot is more often than not a top target of the Democrats, but he’s been politically resilient and won with 52 percent in 2006.
The remainder of Cincinnati, along with more conservative and Republican-leaning turf east of the city, is represented by Republican Jean Schmidt . But her brief, three-year hold on the district since succeeding Portman in a 2005 special election has been shaky. She can’t be considered much more than a slight favorite against Democratic physician Vic Wulsin, who is waging a rematch campaign after coming within 1 percentage point of unseating Schmidt in 2006. We rate both Cincinnati-area races as Leans Republican.
There are some other races that are more mildly competitive. In the northeastern district that stretches from suburbs east of Cleveland to the Pennsylvania border, Democrat Bill O’Neill, a former state appellate judge, is opposing seven-term Rep. Steve LaTourette, whom the Democrats didn’t vigorously challenge in 2006. CQ Politics rates this race as Republican Favored.
The Republicans are even more likely to retain retiring Republican Rep. David L. Hobson ’s district, which takes in parts of south-central Ohio and a small part of Columbus. Republican state Sen. Steve Austria is opposed by Democratic lawyer Sharen Neuhardt.
Of the seven Democrats in Ohio’s U.S. House delegation, the only one who faces a remotely competitive race is freshman Zack Space , whose easy 2006 win in a culturally conservative east-central Ohio district was branded a fluke by Republicans — resulting, as it did in large part, from six-term Republican Rep. Bob Ney’s resignation and conviction on corruption charges related to his ties to influence peddler Jack Abramoff. But Space may be headed toward a second landslide win despite the district’s usual Republican orientation. The Republicans really struggled in candidate recruitment, and party nominee Fred Dailey, a former director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture, has struggled to raise the money needed to vigorously contest a vast district with multiple media markets. CQ Poitics rates this race as Democrat Favored.
CQ © 2007 All Rights Reserved | Congressional Quarterly Inc. 1255 22nd Street N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037 | 202-419-8500
Doors open at noon for the Baldwin-Wallace appearance. They open at 7:15 a.m. in Youngstown.
The events are open to the public but require tickets. Tickets for the Baldwin-Wallace College event are available at Obama's Parma headquarters, at 5580 Ridge Road.
Tickets for his Youngstown event are available at the Trumbull County Democratic headquarters, from 4 to 8:00 pm on Sunday and on Monday from 10:00 am - 9:00 pm. Tickets are also available at Obama's headquarters in Youngstown.
Has anyone received the deceitful email which says Barack refuses to put his hand over his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance? I did. It had a picture showing Barack standing without his hand over his heart, but with Hillary and Bill Richardson standing with their hands over their hearts. The email said this was was proof that Barack does not put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. That email is a fraud. I checked on Urban Legends and found that the picture was taken during the singing of the National Anthem. How many of us too do not put our hands over our hearts during a National Anthem performance? Almost no one does.
Just to add a viral visual to Frank Rich's article in the New-York Times: Link
you can spread these videos:
Bush-McCain Challenge: Link
John McCain is Anti-Choice: Link
You may wonder why women prefer Obama and who are they:
Women For Obama '08: Link
Why Women Love Barack Obama? Part 1: Link
Why Women Love Barack Obama? Part 2 : Link
We need change.
YES WE CAN!
After today's speech by Hillary Clinton to her faithful supporters and the call to unite together in support of Barack Obama for President, I am grateful to be reminded that Hillary supporters and Barack supporters share a common purpose in the change we are seeking for our country, our world and our future. As a woman, I was equally grateful for her candidacy, as I know young girls in our country can actually believe that anything is possible because of her and now they are saying, "Yes, I can."
This is the time for unity: Hillary and Obama supporters together. I invite and welcome any and all Hillary supporters who are joining the campaign for Obama for President to request me as a friend here. Let's work together toward the change we seek!
Dear Women,
As some of you know, we are planning a Women for Obama Weekend in Pennsylvania for April 12th and 13th. We are trying to unite Women for Obama from all across the country in a show of strength with the Women for Obama in Pennsylvania.
As a part of this weekend, we are planning a large women's rally on April 12th. Additionally, there will be canvassing, phone banks, and lots of connecting with friends we may only know from their blogs. There will be plenty of work for all! If you are creative, you can begin making signs for Women for Obama, so that we can have a big showing at the rally.
In order to quickly pull our group together and judge how many of you are available to travel the weekend of the 12th and 13th, we need to compile as much information about you as soon as possible. If you can all go to this link and fill in your information and availability we will follow up with you from there: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pyE1nbB6LQVSsoOWj_EBnNA
If you are unable to travel this particular weekend, we could still use your help other days, weekends, or for an entire week before the primary on April 22nd. If you want to sign up to travel to PA another time, click on this link to sign up: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pyE1nbB6LQVQahDsOhB0bYQ
I will be in Philadelphia on April 11, 12 and 13, and hope to see you there.
Ginger
