Posts with the tag work

Are you working?

Sheena B. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:33:12 EDT

Work as citizens wholeheartedly with passion and perserverance, along with determenation

In the end you wont be disappointed if you PUSH(Pray Until Something Happens)

SOCIAL NETWORKING AND YOU

hrhjudy — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 10:43:51 EDT

learn the secrets of social networking websites and let your online activity pay.

http://www.strandenterprise.co.uk/umba2/

http://www.strandenterprise.co.uk/umba2/cloud/

Love spells as T - I - M - E is M - O - N - E - Y and courage gets you LOVE!

Carlos Santiago Scott — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 21:16:59 EST

Hi everyone,

This is to share some things I do to schedule my self to achieve my goals.

It also may sound simplistic, but in simple little tasks is how we can move forward. Including my writing of this simple blog. Or step by step. It took me 2 hours to write this message to you. But this blog will last forever, that is called levarage.

1st Get a notebook. You are going to be writing notes.

2nd Schedule your self to design a plan schedule that works for you and your family matters.

3rd Schedule your self to activity upon this plan.

Next Saturday I will give your task for the week. Just remember is about time management. And don't forget to come back here. Bookmark the page now.

Before anything get informed: http://website.ws/carlossscott Please copy and paste onto your browser. We offer in our pay plan 10 % comissions and weekly bonus. And don't worry about this one, it is not a scam... Their customer range from Intel, Dell, ATT and Yahoo. So their is nothing to worry about. This is a secure targeted business.

This is the number 1 step for anyone starting an online business, to get your own a web site. Mr Obama did and his business is up and rinning. So do this.

So, let's get started for 7 days FREE trial. Let's get to work right now! You can cancel any time.

God Bless America,

Carlos Santiago Scott

(954) 381-0592

SKYPE ID: carlos.santiago.scott

For whatever you do enjoy LIFE... It is a wonderful trip.

"Many people took out loans they were never going to be able to afford!"

Jake from San Jose, CA — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:55:52 EST

"Many people took out loans they were never going to be able to afford,
never! That means somebody knew from day one they were never going to
be able to pay back the loans." The bankers approved these loans and used the money to pay themselves bonuses and payed our government representatives to look the other way…that’s where we are…any suggestions for getting us out of the mess are welcome…but if you just want to play the blame game…where does that get us?

Read what was spammed on the comments section of my blog:

The people that bend the rules GET PAID!

You too can bend the rules by printing out fake paystubs w-2 w2 1099 forms using
http://www.PROOFOFEMPLOYMENT.com

Buy a home, car or get a huge irs tax refund just for being you! Do what you have to do to get yours! EVERYONE ELSE DID!!

http://www.FAKEPAYCHECKSTUBS.com

Print out Fake Employment and Fake Income, Wages, 1099, w2, w-2, using your home computer printer!

Oy vey!!

"Many people took out loans they were never going to be able to afford!

Jake from San Jose, CA — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:52:53 EST

Read what was spammed on the comments section of my blog:

The people that bend the rules GET PAID!

You too can bend the rules by printing out fake paystubs w-2 w2 1099 forms using
http://www.PROOFOFEMPLOYMENT.com

Buy a home, car or get a huge irs tax refund just for being you! Do what you have to do to get yours! EVERYONE ELSE DID!!

http://www.FAKEPAYCHECKSTUBS.com

Print out Fake Employment and Fake Income, Wages, 1099, w2, w-2, using your home computer printer!

Oy vey!!

THANKS...AMERICA...reply

Citizens for Change in America! — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:55:16 EST

Where are the thanks for AMERICANS...

we pay our taxes

we pay our bills

we pay our house off

we pay our car off

we pay our childrens educational expenses

we pay our childrens college expenses

we pay into our 401k

we pay into our retirement

we pay for our business expenses

we pay for our food

we pay for our clothes

we pay for our gas

we pay for our heat and electricity

we pay for our cost to be an American...explain it to me...

WHAT DID I DO WRONG...what went wrong in AMERICA?

tell me your thoughts...

Economic Recovery Meeting -- Health Insurance

Brian Chesney — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:15:40 EST

Continuing with topics covered at our Economic Recovery Meeting:

Health Insurance
- This is such a big issue for a lot of reasons, but the main reason it came up in this discussion is its connection with jobs. We talked about the outrageous cost of health care and the advantages and disadvantages of a nationalized system. While we didn't settle on an approach to health care, the consensus was that something needs to be done. The employer-provider model limits job mobility, which doesn't help an already-tough job hunt.
- We also touched on a mixed employment/retirement model that will probably be more popular in the coming decades. We questioned the viability of a labor model where individuals work for 30 or so years and then retire for 30 or so years. Will most Americans actually be able to make enough money or will pensions be fiscally viable enough to sustain it? With longer lifespans and the ability to work from home, most of us would actually prefer to be working, challenged and stimulated later in life.
- We also touched on the idea of several small businesses banding together to get better health care rates. This seems like a good idea and could be expanded more.

It's The Economy, Friend!

Janice C. from Chicago, IL — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:04:24 EST

The Committee For Economic Development, Obama for America, Chicago-Hyde Park endorses the “I House at a Time Project” (see below) as a national green community service model for reducing carbon footprint, saving energy, rebuilding low-income communities, helping families save money, and creating green jobs. Our committee also endorses piloting this model in Hyde Park, Chicago and surrounding communities.

It's the Little Things that Help

Ann P — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:47:22 EST

My son works in what is euphemistically called "the service industry". He works on the Spirit Cruise (you know, there's one in every city with a decent waterfront location). He brings people their drinks and replaces their dropped forks and makes tips on the strength of his charm and witty repartee. Other times he serves as part of a crew of mercenary caterers swooping through the banquet hall at local colleges or convention center hotels. He aspires to tend bar--the tips are better.

He has mentioned to me on so many occasions that if the workers would just pay attention to the little niceties of service they'd get better tips (as he seems to do). "Mom, it's not that hard to be polite...and it pays better too."

I've noticed in my work and family that I meet people who sometimes withhold mannerly expression as if it might run out if they said "Thank you" or "Excuse me" too often.

Certainly there are folks to overdo it, gushing effusive praise or apologies for no good reason, but some folks are just manners misers!

Kids especially...and I'm talking pre-teens here...seem to have no concept of those "Magic Words" my folks and teachers crammed into my brain.

And drivers! On my 10 mile city commute I rejoice when just one driver waves "Thanks" when I let them in, or just one driver stops to let another get into a parking lot. There have been a lot of things that have made me too late to get the close-in parkiing spots at work. Letting a driver merge is not one of these things.

Maybe that's why I don't like debates. I hate the "gotcha" atmosphere of most political debates and some interviews as well.

So give some thought to the limitless supply of kindnesses you can do for others.

Thanks!

Another American in Crisis Remains Hopeful

Stephanie Sulger RN, MS — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:06:26 EST

A friend of mine has just been laid off from his job. I know this man. He is a hard working, competent American who has always been willing to do the right thing for his family and his country. He sent me this in response to my question about his health care coverage while he is unemployed. This was his answer:

"For the moment we do have (health care) coverage. I will lose my group coverage from work at the end of the month. However, luckily, my wife was able to get me on a group plan through her company. That is supposed to pick up on the 1st of January. She also has - for now - coverage through GM because her ex husband (deceased) was a GM employee.

The more I think about all this the more depressed I get. This is the second time in as many years, that I've lost a job. The fear of financial insecurity is again hanging over my head. It's nice that I went to a trade school and learned how to work on RV's because that means when the weather here starts getting better I should be able to get a job. But I thought that way when I lost my job in March 07. I'd been a production control coordinator for so long - plus I had taught myself the fundamentals of Lotus Notes database design using Lotus command language, that I thought I'd be quickly employed. Alas, 9 months later I found myself making 1/2 the 50k I'd become used to making. I sit here and just want to cry. Blah, blah, blah. My bit of self pity. Sorry. This too shall pass.

I don't even yet have the RV knowledge to start my own business. And even if I did, right now the weather is bad so nobody's getting work done and no banks are giving loans - especially for a new business and I wouldn't know the first thing about running a business and what's involved.

There I go again. Sorry. I remain optimistic.

D.R."

Attending My FIrst Barack Obama House Party

Barbara from Nashville, TN — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:10:20 EST

I attended my first event yesterday on December 13 for Barack Obama. Before the election, I was working and did not have time to attend events. I made a few phone calls to North Carolina. Plus I voted for Obama. That was all I had time to do.

Now, I'm unemployed. I lost my job a week after the election. While I'm looking for work, I want to volunteer some time to the Obama message. The real work starts now. We need to stop the looters in Washington, D.C.

It is up to us!

Mochinho — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:01:25 EST

After the successful Obama-Biden-campaign people can apply for (non-career) jobs in their administration. Just go to http://change.gov/page/s/application an fill in the form! It is up to us now!

Job Creation

Tony — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:03:25 EST

Greetings everyone, Obama's team could make a special web page on the website and have people import their online resumes into an emergency state or federal job application. This may not be possible, or legal untill January of 2009. If we can start doing background checks on people beforehand it would speed up the process. This would also give a morale boost to people all over the nation and give them hope that no matter what, there is work to be done if you have the will.

I myself just lost my job installing sprinkler systems for a local company (sigh). I go to college full time and could help modernize schools with ethernet and network computers.

God Bless.

What November 4, 2008 Meant to Me

S Lesesne — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:52:46 EST

People around the world said "Yes we can" on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. Yet, the work has only begun. While I am really delighted that Barack Obama is the President-Elect of the United States, I see my journey towards change in a more personal way. It is about who I help.

As with any leader, if the people do what the leader does change will come about. Otherwise, it was just hype. What President-Elect Obama has done so far is serve. And he's also opened himself up for major criticism. But at least he has done something and is willing, despite the criticism, to do more.

How many of us ordinary folk have gone to neighborhoods unlike our own to talk to people about the things they can do to make change? How many of us ordinary folk have the courage to put ourselves on the front lines in order to inspire others?

Barack and Michelle Obama have taken on a great task. They are the face of the service and of course they will get the most criticism. But what does it mean for me? It means volunteering in my community. It means being active in changing the things that negatively affect people who are not like me. It is a great undertaking and I am scared to death. But doing something is better than doing nothing. That is what Barack Obama has inspired me to do. Something.

While I may not change the entire world (who can?) I can change the part of the world that I live in. And that is what November 4, 2008 meant to me.

GA team we are not Done Yet!

Marie — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:06:24 EST

FYI~~

For Volunteers: https://services.myngp.com/ngponlineservices/volunteer.aspx?X=NqjXO81IXYbcH6qS8A%2fCTQ%3d%3d

Absentee Ballots

IF YOU INTEND TO VOTE BY ABSENTEE BALLOT, PLEASE APPLY FOR A BALLOT IMMEDIATELY AND NO LATER THAN NOVEMBER 19.

If the ballot does not arrive before November 25, please call your county's elections office. You can find the phone number at the Secretary of State's website, by clicking on this link.

Absentee ballots will not be counted unless they are received before the closing of the polls (7:00 p.m.) on the day of the runoff, December 2.

For information on applying for an absentee ballot, please see the Secretary of State's website by clicking on this link. You will have to: 1. Download, print, and fill out the form provided (it is a PDF); and 2. Mail, fax, or hand-deliver the completed form to your county elections office. You can find the address and fax number for your elections office at the Secretary of State's website, by clicking on this link. Given the short amount of time before the runoff, we recommend that you fax or hand-deliver the application if possible.

Advance Voting Advance, in-person voting for the runoff will run from Monday, November 24 through Friday, November 28 (the week before the runoff) - with the exception of Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 27, when there will be no advance voting. It is also possible that your advance voting location will be closed on Friday, November 28.

Please go to the Secretary of State's website and find out information regarding the advance voting schedule in your county (please note that, as of November 8, the site is not currently up to date with runoff information).

There is no advance voting on Monday, December 1, the day before the runoff. You will likely have to vote at a location that is different from your usual polling place during the advance voting period.

Please see the Secretary of State's website for more information on where to advance vote by clicking here (as of November 8, the site is not currently up to date with runoff information). You will need an approved photo ID in order to vote in person.

Please see the Secretary of State's website for more information.

Election Day Runoff Election Day is Tuesday, December 2.

To find your Election Day polling place, Please use the Secretary of State's poll locator. Again, you will need an approved photo ID in order to vote in person.

Please see the Secretary of State's website for more information.

Military and Overseas Ballots GO HERE: http://www.martinforsenate.com/runoff_voting_information.html

!We can Decide the 58th seat in the Senate, YES WE CAN!!!

HAPPY OBAMA DAY!!!

Stay Blessed!

E. Marie

Voice: 678-516-6591

for My Basic Business Solutions:

http://www.mybiztogo.com

Specialties: Accountants To Go (ATG); Computer Gladiator IT (CGIT) US: 800 363.7212 phone: 678 525.3939 fax: 866 903.8556

Is it time, again, for WPA?

Diva JC — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:58:56 EST

Digital HistoryIn January 1935, Congress created the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Roosevelt's program employed 3.5 million workers at a "security wage"--

Harry Hopkins, one of Roosevelt's most trusted advisors, asked why the federal government could not simply hire the unemployed and put them to work. Reluctantly, Roosevelt agreed. [Source]

If you ask the feds, they'll quote you a figure of 8.7 million people, for an almost-respectable unemployment rate of 5.9 percent. But let's add in all the people who are working part time because they can't find fulltime work, and the ones who've given up on trying to find a job. When you add these 6.4 million people to the ones counted in the official numbers, you get a pretty dismal unemployment rate of 9.7 percent. [Source]

I suggest that President-Elect Obama revisit the WPA program to establish jobs to create a NATIONAL RAILWAY SERVICE that would connect cities in all states across America and into Canada and Mexico. Since our borders are already breaking down, this would create jobs in many different fields: construction, building engineers, train engineers, porters, ticket takers, border control officers, ticket sales, public relations. Of course, this is a HUGE endeavor, but it would also reduce pollution from auto emissions, cars on the road, the need for fuel, while uniting our nation.

Instead of pumping money into the auto industry, that lump sum could be applied to improving transit systems across the nation. I know, from experience that the Metro System in South Florida really needs improvement. AMTRAK is as expensive as some airlines, which is way off-base, but probably due to the lack of patronage. The transit system in New York is always in need of repair, but I found the Long Island Railroad to be efficient, when I used it from JFK to Penn Station, in October 2008.

The Japanese and French have "fast trains" that get people from point A to point B in a minimal amount of time. The Bullet Train in Japan, one of the first countries to realise the problems of the car. Created the bullet train, which lead to Europe taking interest in making trains go fast. The fares are affordable. For eight years, I traveled throughout Europe in the nineties and it was a pleasure to ride the trains in UK, France, Switzerland and Italy.

Obama should appoint a delegate of advisors to work with transit authorities in these countries to create the best possible solution to a growing crisis in the United States, transportation, thus, developing a means of employing even more than the 9.7% of people out of work, today, and providing a means of continual employment for generations to come.

Sincerely,

Joan Cartwright

Fort Lauderdale, FL

November 2-8, 2008: A week to remember

Anna Maria — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 10:53:15 EST

This has been the greatest week for me in a long, long time.

Like so many others, Tuesday night's election results were the culmination of a dream. Even now, four days later, reflecting on what happened brings tears of joy to my eyes. I know it does the same for many others I witnessed it just last night at a cocktail party.

While I understand we must manage our expectations, that a president does not act alone, and that the President-elect will not even assume office for more than two months, I know better days are coming. I have never felt so proud to be an American. What a great time for our country.

The other great thing that happened to be this week is that I learned that next year I will be transferred to Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. What an exciting assignment, and what an auspicous time to be going to Africa. I will be doing public affairs work there, promoting the policies of the new administration, and am so looking forward to that

YES WE CAN, WE DID AND WE WILL - a great week all around!

Will you work for Hope?

Chris from Lilburn, GA — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 02:17:43 EST

I am 45 years old. I can remember being taught about fallout shelters in grade school, of what to do during a nuclear attack. I remember the fear even we children felt... how at times when we looked up at the night sky, it wasn't to see the stars, but rather, to wonder what it would be like to see the bombs falling. Our world seemed built on fear, as daily the newscasters covered the latest rounds of bull-chested huffing between us and the Soviets... we all sensed the hair-trigger we lived under, how our world might end because of the pride, the temper, or the paranoia of a tiny handful of men.

I also remember the things that gave us hope in that time of darkness: the space program encouraged us to work together... to have hope... to think that their might be a future after all, so what did we want it to be like? I remember my Dad calling me into the living room to watch, live, our first steps on the moon. The sight filled me with such joy: not just for the accomplishment it was (and in the face of those who'd said "Impossible!"), but more importantly, because it was a very powerful symbol of Hope.

Then came Watergate, and the turning of the Viet Nam war. Up until that time, while we had, indeed, had many dishonorable presidents, none had ever accumulated such widespread public scandal. The nation's attitude toward presidents, and politics in general, changed at that time.

I've watched over the years as this attitude continued to grow... and the attitude was, "In general, politicians are crooks and liars and power-hungry people." Soon, things that had been unthinkable were common practice, especially in the media: they went from portraying Gerald Ford as a clumsy buffoon, to worse things... to the point that, in the realm of political coverage, our media became nothing more than National Enquirer reporters: All the Scandals, All the Time.

People began picking apart political figures in the most minute detail, and fanning the flames of infamy over every little fault and flaw they could find. We, ourselves, with our hunger for gossip and scandal, fed the beast. We gave them ratings, we gave them reactions... and the beast fed us in turn, digging ever deeper, turning minor flaws into major scandals, taking the focus away from what a political figure actually did in office, and turning it toward what they ate, how they dressed, who they screwed, what tv they watch, their latest hemorrhoid.

And as this grew, fewer and fewer people of honor and ability wanted to run, much less hold office, under this microscopic scrutiny of themselves, their families, their daily lives, their past personal mistakes. Frankly, we grew abusive, we became gossip bottom feeders... and we got what was coming to us: a political system that grew more corrupt by the hour, one that "dumbed us down" and took pains to make us feel powerless. We consumed propeganda like candy, and rejected the few honest facts out there like they were brussel sprouts.

Corporate lobbyists saw the opportunity for a much grander playing field, and seized it. They ran with the ball, helping to feed the idea that we can do nothing to change things, that "they" are too big, too powerful, that the system is "too corrupt," that all of us are "the little guy."

Tonight, November 4, 2008, marks a change in all that. Somehow, an honorable, responsible, dedicated, honest, and capable person decided to do his part to do something about what our country's politics have become... and by some miracle and a lot of hard work, he won. But as President-Elect Obama stated in his acceptance speech [paraphrased]: The real work is now beginning. This election didn't change or fix anything that's wrong with this country---it merely gave us the opening in that once-locked doorway, to do so.

It will not happen overnight. We have a long haul ahead of us. He will make mistakes. So will we. My question is, will we, as a people and as individuals, do what he is committed to doing? Will we see where we are going wrong, acknowledge it, and step onto a different path to try to fix our errors? Will we become responsible human beings? Will we carry into tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, the knowledge that we CAN create change, we CAN make a difference... or will we act like children who, once they get their treat, stop doing the good work and good behavior with which they earned it? Will we go back to believing we can't make a difference, that what we say or do doesn't matter, that the opposition is too big and too powerful? Will we eagerly seek out, discuss at watercoolers and online, whatever personal details the media drag into the public light on Obama and his family as if they were the most important thing in the world? Will we continue dismissing the rest of the world as "unimportant"? Will we CARE? Will we WORK? Will we take RESPONSIBILITY for our own parts in what has happened, and in what NEEDS to happen? Will we continue to carp at each other while the house burns down... or will we reach out to one another and try to put out the fire TOGETHER?

Obama has opened the door. He stands there, holding it open for us... but it's up to US to walk through it, and keep walking, no matter how hard the struggle may be.

Will YOU?

Bittersweet Excitement

LibbyLand — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:35:40 EST

First I must express my condolences to the Obama family. Please know that you are in our thoughts and prayers. I just know 'it's going to be alright' Your JOY will come in the morning when it is confirmed that you will be the next PRESIDENT of the US. Wednesday you can gently reflect on "Grandma's Hands" for their is no love like a grandma's love. Be comforted by all the strength and vitality her spirit now enjoys.

This Obama campaign has been a fantastic journey! I have not been so commited to volunteering for a political campaign in 20 years. I met some wonderful people in the Obama campaign answering phones, knocking on doors, checking out the new folks that came to the meeting; I even have a new BFF I met and have been working with. Many of us are planning to stay in touch and do some business networking...but right now...I am looking forward to spending tomorrow with them as we 'wrap this thing up'.

It was my Pleasure and Honor to be on the Conference call Saturday night with 20,000 other volunteer captains around the country that Barack called. He was so gracious to us for our hard work and pushed us hard like a great coach in the locker room at half time, "leave it all on the field"!

I beg of each of you WORK TOMORROW: give your country and Barack a few hours of your time; take water to the people in line; buy some pizza, sell the slices - help make it easier on the people standing in line; help keep them there!

Baby-sit for a young mother (couple); drive people to the polls; keep the kids busy in the line - knock on doors; find something to do to help! You'll feel so good for having been a part - I know I do. I'll work at a staging location tomorrow as comfort captain from 6am - 7pm or whenever its all over - and then I'm going to 'get my party on'!!!

We're bringing noisemakers that say 'Obama-Biden' and we plan to use them!! I feel like a part of history - this has been some kind of journey - can't even imagine how the Obama's feel.

I feel like I'm a part of history; I'll be able to tell MY grands one day about the Obama Campaign and I was there!! Tomorrow will be historic! hope you guys and girls enjoy it!! I sure am...............

Work like your LIVES depend on it!!!

Mickiboop (P.O.B.) Be the Change — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:05:50 EDT

Obama Family - In the spirit of "KNOW YOUR ENEMY", I held my nose and watched the McSame/Palin team perform their stump speeches this morning. They are still lying and hateful but they've changed their wording to sound more credible - in fact, McInsane has stolen words directly from Barack's speeches and is now talking about "providing relief for the middle class", "creating a working majority" and "changing the way Washington works". I would have laughed because I know he's lying, but he has become better at selling the lies. Sarah has added hearts and flowers to her speeches so that she is connecting more with everyday folks by softening her image.

We have got to push through the finish line with all of the energy we can muster. We cannot let up one ounce! I can't imagine waking up on November 5th and hearing a newscaster tell me that John McInsane is the POTUS!!! I think I would go into a deep depression. I'm a little concerned because some of the polls are showing slight increases in McOldness's numbers, C-SPAN's analysts are reporting that currently, the 18 to 30 yr old voters are not increasing their voting block's numbers, and there are many pundits talking about the great unknown - RACE!!!

I'm not an alarmist, but I want all of us to keep pushing and not get complacent. I think we should fight as if Barack and Joe are 20 points down in the polls. WE HAVE GOT TO WIN THIS ELECTION FOR OURSELVES, OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE AND THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY & THE WORLD!!!

Obama / Biden '08

AMERICA IN THE YEAR 2016

Peter from Portland, OR — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 06:02:06 EDT

I had a dream: We are writing the year 2016, America has left behind the economy crisis of 2008 and developed to a green, social and prosperous society. The unemployment rate is down at 2.3 %, the number of poor people dropped from 37 to 9 million, the national deficit is only a fourth of that in 2008. Every American has affordable health care now, and Obama`s tax cuts have put more money into the pockets of the middle-class American, which led to higher consumption, re-fueled the economy, and created millions of new jobs. Above all 5 million new created green collar jobs and a better, more effective environmental policy with solar, wind and other renewable energies dropped America`s energy bill, air pollution and CO 2 balance by 25%, making the country cleaner and almost independent of foreign oil. America´s is about to become the world leader in green technology, especially due to the broad-scale introduction of US built hybrid cars. In foreign politics America has restored faith and regained respect in the world community of nations as a wise and peaceful mediator in all conflicts. This and other measures also led to an improvement of the national security. The dark Bush years are history and America has made the real CHANGE to a better future - YES WE COULD - And due to the great achievements of Barack Obama`s successful 8 years in national and international politics a committee was founded, proposing the extension of his presidency for 4 more years, as applied during the Roosevelt administration.

Was all of this just a dream ? - No, you can make it happen by voting for OBAMA next Tuesday - It is now up to you, America !

SHOP AMERICA SUPPORTS OBAMA

The most Important week starts NOW!

Frank — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:27:11 EDT

We Must all work harder this week than any other week! Nothing has been won yet and this isnot time to sit back and wait, our time is now we must WORK! One more week! Now isa sthe time for our best!

Join the Obama vote for change

Workathomemom — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:34:27 EDT

Join my net work, Obama has changed the way things are done in America, Join the change for the better of America.
Thandi Zulu
For Obama

http://www.freetoworkathome.net/

Polls Have Tightened

Steve — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:39:19 EDT

Just as I predicted Wednesday, the polls have moved two points closer. I thought Barack's answer to Joe the Plumber was weak. Worse, it is being exploited by McCain.

If you were falling asleep at the wheel, wake up! Time to double your efforts if you want to win this election for us and for Barack.

Don't Get "Cocky!"

Khaidji — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:50:08 EDT

During the primary for New Hampshire, Obama was guaranteed a win by the polls but Hillary found her voice and the rest is history and a valuable lesson for Barack Obama. He can never take the people for granted and certainly not the system. With 19 days to go he may have climbed the highest steeple but if he is to win the race he now has to descend a tight rope to the other side.

Don’t Get "Cocky!"

Democrats have the lead but there are still 19 days

Obama in advising his Campaign, here’s what he says

New Hampshire was an example in the primary

The polls thought I was sure to win but alas no victory

Getting “cocky” at this time is setting up to lose

Every voter is careful with the man they’ll choose

The work up this hill was very rough

Campaigning on the trail was unusually tough

On this day and at this time we can’t afford to relax

Can’t hold off the throttle, we must press on to the max

Keep fighting though the battle is won, there’s no victory

You haven’t won the war yet so Don’t Get “Cocky!”

Get an easy download or a hard copy of
”Path to The White House”
More Acrostic Poetry on Barack Obama
By Khaidji

WHAT IS TO BE DONE 12

DAN R. TAYLOR — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:37:11 EDT

Good Morning:

This passage sums up the debate last night.

“I apologize if I sound like a broken record. But once again, Obama won the debate according to essentially every objective metric. And recall that, even if the debate were a tie, this would not have helped John McCain; he needed a clear win tonight. Instead, he's continued to dig himself into a deeper electoral hole.

The sense I had tonight was that McCain was overcoached -- that he was trying too hard. I don't think that he made any significant tactical errors. But he came across as nervous and awkward. And he is longer really fighting on a level playing field. In order to win this election, McCain needed to keep the Republican brand at arm's-length. He had largely managed to do that until the Lehman Brothers collapse scared the Hell out of Main Street and reminded everyone of the failures of the status quo. McCain needed to empathize on the economy; his "fundamentals" comment made that very difficult. He needed to find some way to position himself in opposition to Senator Obama on the bailout, but he had boxed himself in with his gambit about suspending his campaign. McCain lost tonight, but the reasons for his failure stem from long before this evening. -- Nate Silver at 12:28 AM” fivethirtyeight.com

I only caught parts of the debate at the beginning and end but what I did hear formed the clear impression that Obama was in his zone and more importantly acted like a true leader.

That said I return to my familiar chorus. This election is too important to let up one iota. In fact, the reverse is true. Now is the moment to double down on our efforts and call forth all the reserves we have not only to give Obama a mandate but also to provide the democratic majority to carry out the mandate.

CALL BATTLE GROUND STATES: MORE KEEP POPPING UP EVERYDAY!

FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

TALK TO PEOPLE IN PUBLIC WHEN THE OPPORTUNITY ARISES: SOME SAY I TALK TOO MUCH; HOWEVER, I HAVE NOT RECEIVED A NEGATIVE RESPONSE ANYWHERE.

DONATE MONEY.

ACT! ACT! ACT!

Dan

p.s. THE REALLY HARD WORK BEGINS THE DAY AFTER THE ELECTION!

McCain's Kids

KiDS for OBAMA - Missouri — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:51:22 EDT

"And in all of this, we will create millions of new jobs, many in industries that will be the engine of our future prosperity – jobs that will be there when your children enter the workforce." (McCain, Independence, Missouri, 10/01/08)

Not "our" children.

Will his children not be working?

Forgot... they don't have to work.

OBAMA for PRESIDENT '08

Clearly Republican's Don't Believe that Women and Women with Children Deserve A Better Life!

Mary — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:05:40 EDT

Congressional Legislation Details Paycheck Fairness Act
Bill # S.766

Summary:
A bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide more effective remedies of victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex, and for other purposes.

http://www.capwiz.com/now/webreturn/?url=http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:S.766

All Cosponsors and Non-Cosponsors from All States

Original Sponsor:
Hillary Clinton (D-NY)

Cosponsor Total: 24
(last sponsor added 09/11/2008)
23 Democrats
1 Independents

Bill Name: Paycheck Fairness Act Bill Number: S.766 Cosponsor?Cosponsor NameCosponsor DateSend MailAlabamaRichard Shelby (R)---Jeff Sessions (R)---AlaskaTed Stevens (R)---Lisa Murkowski (R)---ArizonaJohn McCain (R)---Jon Kyl (R)---ArkansasBlanche Lincoln (D)---Mark Pryor (D)---CaliforniaDianne Feinstein (D)---Barbara Boxer (D)03/06/2007ColoradoKen Salazar (D)---Wayne Allard (R)---ConnecticutChristopher Dodd (D)03/06/2007 Joseph Lieberman (I)---DelawareJoseph Biden (D)03/07/2007 Thomas Carper (D)---FloridaBill Nelson (D)---Mel Martinez (R)---GeorgiaSaxby Chambliss (R)---Johnny Isakson (R)---HawaiiDaniel Inouye (D)---Daniel Akaka (D)---IdahoLarry Craig (R)---Mike Crapo (R)---IllinoisRichard Durbin (D)04/23/2007 Barack Obama (D)04/24/2007IndianaEvan Bayh (D)---Richard Lugar (R)---IowaTom Harkin (D)03/06/2007 Charles Grassley (R)---KansasSam Brownback (R)---Pat Roberts (R)---KentuckyMitch McConnell (R)---Jim Bunning (R)---LouisianaMary Landrieu (D)---David Vitter (R)---MaineOlympia Snowe (R)---Susan Collins (R)---MarylandBarbara Mikulski (D)03/06/2007 Benjamin Cardin (D)09/11/2008MassachusettsEdward Kennedy (D)03/06/2007 John Kerry (D)03/15/2007MichiganCarl Levin (D)04/26/2007 Debbie Stabenow (D)---MinnesotaAmy Klobuchar (D)03/06/2007 Norm Coleman (R)---MississippiThad Cochran (R)---Roger Wicker (R)---MissouriClaire McCaskill (D)---Christopher Bond (R)---MontanaMax Baucus (D)---Jon Tester (D)---NebraskaBen Nelson (D)---Chuck Hagel (R)---NevadaHarry Reid (D)03/06/2007 John Ensign (R)---New HampshireJudd Gregg (R)---John Sununu (R)---New JerseyFrank Lautenberg (D)03/07/2007 Robert Menendez (D)03/06/2007New MexicoJeff Bingaman (D)---Pete Domenici (R)---New YorkCharles Schumer (D)03/06/2007 Hillary Clinton (D)03/06/2007North CarolinaRichard Burr (R)---Elizabeth Dole (R)---North DakotaKent Conrad (D)---Byron Dorgan (D)---OhioSherrod Brown (D)04/10/2007 George Voinovich (R)---OklahomaJames Inhofe (R)---Tom Coburn (R)---OregonRon Wyden (D)---Gordon Smith (R)---PennsylvaniaRobert Casey (D)---Arlen Specter (R)---Rhode IslandJack Reed (D)03/06/2007 Sheldon Whitehouse (D)---South CarolinaLindsey Graham (R)---Jim DeMint (R)---South DakotaTim Johnson (D)---John Thune (R)---TennesseeLamar Alexander (R)---Bob Corker (R)---TexasKay Bailey Hutchison (R)---John Cornyn (R)---UtahOrrin Hatch (R)---Robert Bennett (R)---VermontPatrick Leahy (D)03/06/2007 Bernard Sanders (I)04/11/2007VirginiaJames Webb (D)---John Warner (R)---WashingtonPatty Murray (D)03/06/2007 Maria Cantwell (D)03/06/2007West VirginiaRobert Byrd (D)---John Rockefeller (D)---WisconsinHerbert Kohl (D)---Russ Feingold (D)03/06/2007WyomingMichael Enzi (R)---John Barrasso (R)---

Declare a Federal Disaster for the Mortgage Market.

Hal — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:23:35 EDT

Declare a Federal Disaster for the Mortgage Market.

Take ownership of the issues under the commerce clause

Promote Home Ownership

Promote Savings and Stabilize the Mortgage Market

Promote Volunteerism

Promote American Financial Institutions backed by the power of the US Government and its People

Promoting Home Ownership

Freezes home sale by reason of foreclosure
Form a bipartisan plan to regulate the foreclosure market. (We're now the biggest mortgage broker and insurer in the world; let's use that to stop the foreclosure hemorrhage)

Offer mortgages to everyone at a low rate.

Give people back their homes until the mortgage mess is resolved.

Promote Savings and stabilize the Mortgage Market

Encourage the American people to save for at least 3 months. If we started now we could have a great Christmas.

Have people save 10% of their income in a savings account to apply to their mortgage when their case is reviewed. They keep the money in trust, in their own savings account, and their savings helps stabilize banking.

Tell the last owner of record to inhabit the house and obtain proof of the date occupied. Only if a person is living in the home, can the homeowner file for mortgage protection and have his case arbitrated. If this is a second home, require the owner to rent it out within 2 months or his loan won't be guaranteed because the property is prima facie worthless.

Promise a nonpartisan group made up of local leaders to arbitrate and review their mortgage and their story of how they got in trouble. The group can determine actual home value and either the bank can dispute or let the government guarantee the loan at the amount determined by the committee.

Promote Volunteerism

Ask for volunteers in every city, county and state to sit on their local board, or sit in the audience. Get involved and help your neighbors.

Volunteer to Increase Savings Now

Encourage the American people to save for at least 3 months. If we started now we could have a great Christmas.

Then return to normal spending.

Rebuild

Subsidize homebuilding in the hurricane stricken areas, ensure mortgages, get the Army Corps involved in rebuilding. Ask for volunteers.

Work

Dwain from New Albany, IN — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:47:03 EDT

The example is out there in front of us. Barack and Joe are running themselves silly trying to get this country back on track. It is very simple people, every one of us needs to work as hard as they are. We all have different strengths we can offer this campaign, in this push to the election, offer them!!! Go down to your local campaign office and say "How can i work for Barack and Joe?", "How can i help them get elected?"....and do it. Do it for your children, do it for your country, do it for yourself, but do it! We no longer have the luxury of sitting on our hands waiting for the right thing to be done in our country, of just giving money(as important as that is) and watching the whole thing on TV from our couches. We've got 50+ days to change the world and it won't happen if we sit by and watch it, show Joe just how much 'we the people' care, show Barack that 'we can' roll up our sleeves and get in there by his side and push this country back into the American Dream.

dwain-i'd post more, but i have to get down to my local and make sure this hope gets elected

We have WORK to do!

Larry from Las Cruces, NM — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:58:38 EDT

Friends,

I am sure that most of you have been affected by the current political situation and find Barack Obama a major inspiration.

Yet, I find myself amazed at the Republican campaign being mounted against Obama, which drops to new lows, with continuing lies, distortions, and downright slander directed at him. Mostly I feel greatly disappointed in the American people, those who are buying the blatant Republican misinformation.

There was a time when my response to the "in your face" overbearing politics of my associates on the right wing fringe was to bite my lip and remain silent. What I soon found out, however, is that silence is interpreted by these people as tacit approval of what they are distributing.

I admit, I'm retired now, so I have no job threatened by my overt expression of personal political views. But I also behaved as I do now for a good decade of my latter working years. I now speak out, and openly decry the blatant stupidities of those "right wing" political positions.

I have come to understand that great things can be achieved by small actions by a large number of people. My personal philosophical bent, which I coined "incrementalism", recognizes the power of integration. By integration, I refer to the mathematical process which is a summation, an accumulation of things (good or bad) over time. I recognized just how much "all things add" (algebraicly).

So, all those small harmful things that the Republicans have brought to our government and politics over the years have accumulated an enormous and very harmful negative sum. Just look at the damage that has been done, in small steps.

Just as starving oneself for a day or even a week will not overcome bad effects of years of overeating, the harmful negative sum we are looking at must be slowly erased by a long period of good behavior. The favorable news is that the good behavior does not have to be on a massive scale; small positives by many people, integrated over time to become a large positive.

So, before I have your ears bleeding about this point, I'll simply remind you that we have a lot of work to do. And small efforts, continued over longer times, yield very good results.

Be optimistic, my friends. And get to work, doing some small good things for the Obama campaign.

Thanks kindly. ;->

Obama Green Inititives

Barry — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 01:20:17 EDT

1.Implement Cap and Trade Program to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Barack Obama

supports implementation of an economy‐wide cap‐and‐trade system to reduce carbon emissions

by the amount scientists say is necessary: 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. This market

mechanism has worked before and will give all American consumers and businesses the

incentives to use their ingenuity to develop economically effective solutions to climate change.

Obama's cap‐and‐trade policy will require all pollution credits to be auctioned. A 100 percent

auction ensures that all industries pay for every ton of emissions they release, rather than giving

these valuable emission rights away to companies on the basis of their past pollution. A small

portion of the receipts generated by auctioning allowances ($15 billion per year) will be used to

support the development of clean energy, invest in energy efficiency improvements, and help

develop the next generation of biofuels and clean energy vehicles – measures that will help the

economy and help meet the emissions reduction targets. It will also be used to provide new

funding to state and federal land and wildlife managers to restore habitat, create wildlife

migration corridors, and assist fish and wildlife to adapt to the effects of a warming climate. All

remaining receipts will be used for rebates and other transition relief to ensure that families and

communities are not adversely impacted by the transition to a new energy, low carbon economy.

2.Convert our Manufacturing Centers into Clean Technology Leaders. America boasts the

highest‐skilled manufacturing workforce in the world and advanced manufacturing facilities that

have powered economic growth in America for decades. Barack Obama believes that America

companies and workers should build the high‐demand technologies of the future, and he will help

nurture America’s success in clean technology manufacturing by establishing a federal investment

program to help manufacturing centers modernize and help Americans learn new skills to produce green

products. This federal grant program will allocate money to the states to identify

and support local manufacturers with the most compelling plans for modernizing existing or

closed manufacturing facilities to produce new advanced clean technologies. This investment will

help provide the critical up‐front capital needed by small and mid‐size manufacturers to produce

these innovative new technologies. Along with an increased federal investment in the research,

development and deployment of advanced technologies, this $1 billion per year investment will

help spur sustainable economic growth in communities across the country.

I believe in sustainability. I believe we have a significant amount of waste in our society and lifestyle that could make up a considerable amount of the difference between what we have and what we import in the way of energy (NOT oil). The remainder of the difference is doable by existing alternative energy sources and by the incredible amount of innovation our people have if they put their mind to a specific problem. There are countless unconfirmed stories about people inventing devices that could save millions of gallons of gasoline but one way or the other were not allowed to come to 'market'. We can DO what is in front of our faces if we only decide to DO IT! Lets see what ideas any of you can come up with that are practical and implementable solutions so that a President like Barack Obama would use the Office of The President and all the resources available to help develop your dream for our country. The only limit I know of is our imagination.

Commitment!

BRGHTSD1 HOPE & COURAGE — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:32:51 EDT

Ask yourself this, what would I do to make sure Barack Obama and Joe Biden win?

There's data entry to be done, calls to be made, canvassing to do, voters registration to be completed, volunteers to encourage and to match up with teams in their communities.

There are signs to be made, pins, bumper stickers and shirts to be sold & distributed.

There are fund raising events that need helpers. There's fund raising to be done. There's donations to be made, large and small.

If you're really committed to seeing Obama-Biden win...I urge you to give your time, your effort, your energy, today and through November 4. Work for the change you want to see. This is OUR task...no one else is going to do it for us.

Motivational Note

Friends of President Barack Obama — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:19:02 EDT

Even though it may not look like it or feel like it, you are making progress.

Continue working towards progress instead of perfection.

Nothing or no no one is perfect.

Just keep taking steps.

Keep making those phone calls.

Continue following your plan.

Remain focused on your goal.

Do what you have to do right now to get to the next level.

Complete every task.

Keep every promise and commitment.

Don't look back.

Stay on track.

Let no one weaken your walk of faith and determination.

Remain teachable.

Place yourself in a blessing position by associating with people on-the-grow.

Talk with teachers.

Walk with winners.

Climb with champions.

Study successful people.

Something great is about to happen for you!

Start giving thanks right now before you can even see the outward manisfestation of your prayers and desires.

Everything you do from this day forward will take you further away or closer to your potential for successful living.

-by Dr. Jewel Diamond Taylor, Motivational Speaker & Author

Michelle Obama, First Wife and Mother in Chief...

Nia "Hussein" J. — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:50:40 EDT

Michelle Obama describes duty as mother-in-chief
Posted: 04 Aug 2008 09:41 PM CDT
By ANN SANNER
WASHINGTON - Forget the pearls. Michelle Obama says her best accessory is her husband.
"Barack and I -- as partners, as friends and as lovers -- we accessorize each other in many ways," said Obama, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. "The best thing I love having on me is Barack on my arm and vice versa, whether it's having him standing there smiling at me, or watching him mesmerize a crowd or talk to some seniors in a senior center."
Michelle Obama discussed her marriage, fashion sense and how she balances motherhood and work in an interview with Ebony magazine. The issue hits newsstands nationwide on Aug. 12.
Should she become first lady, Michelle Obama says her primary focus will be on their two daughters -- Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.
"My first job in all honesty is going to continue to be mom-in-chief," she said, "making sure that in this transition, which will be even more of a transition for the girls ... that they are settled and that they know they will continue to be the center of our universe."
Michelle Obama said the challenges women face in balancing their families and jobs should be highlighted in government policies -- whether it's through better health care or more family leave time.
She also expressed her support for military wives and the additional stress they face when their husbands are away and have done multiple tours of duty. "Tack on the fact that there is no sustained mental health support for these families as they are struggling with loved ones who are coming back dealing with emotional issues," she said. "You've got people in pain and we don't hear those voices a lot."
Michelle Obama, 44, has worked as a lawyer and hospital executive. She has been active in her husband's campaign and is scheduled to speak to military spouses on Wednesday in Norfolk, Va.
Like her husband, she exercises regularly -- an activity that was hard to find time for when the girls were younger and Barack Obama was away working in the Illinois Senate, she said.
She said realized she was putting on weight after her oldest daughter was born. She started working out at 4:30 a.m. and would let her husband help with the children if they cried in the early hours.
"I found it wasn't that Barack wasn't interested in helping," she said. "It's just that when the baby cried at 4 a.m., I got up faster than he did because I would hear the baby and I would be up."
Michelle Obama said she tries to teach her daughters the importance of exercising. The family also eats organic as much as possible, she said.
"(Being fit) has become even more important as I've had children, because I'm also thinking about how I'm modeling health to my daughters," she said.

Obama Leads by 100 Electoral Votes

Nia "Hussein" J. — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:52:46 EDT

I by no means posted this for use to start partying because we still have alot of work to do in order to get Obam into the White House and get Obama's message out to folks who want to know but don't or are on the fence due to misinformation. I just want to prove the point that we cannot focus on the media polls. They can be manipulated to give whatever message they want to give for the day. it is my thought process that they [media] are keeping this election close for ratings and relovence. The only numbers that matter are the Electoral Votes.

With all the breathlessness over the minute movements in the irrelevant national polls, the one thing no one seems to be noticing is that the electoral map is still trending very poorly for John McCain (R).

I realize that it cuts against the media narrative right now to focus on anything that doesn't suggest a dead-heat, but it's quite instructive to see how the independent groups (and even right-leaning ones) currently see the state of the race through the only prism that matters -- the Electoral College:

                   Obama McCain    Margin
Real Clear Politics   322    216    Obama +106
Electoral-Vote.com    316    209    Obama +107
FiveThirtyEight.com   303    235    Obama + 68
Pollster.com          284    147    Obama +137
AVERAGE               306    202    Obama +104

If you think about the reporting of the fluctuating state polls lately that show a tight race, all of them involve red states that McCain can't afford to lose: Colorado, Montana, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Alaska, Georgia, etc.

Despite the media narrative that a number of blue states are competitive, the truth is none of the recent polling shows McCain making any significant inroads in the blue states. Consider:

In Michigan, McCain had not led in any poll since May;
In Pennsylvania, McCain has not led in any poll April, and a Republican poll released last week showed McCain trailing by 9, in line with the current Pollster.com average;
In New Hampshire, McCain has not led in any poll since April;
In Minnesota, while one recent poll showed McCain within the margin of error, no other poll in the past month (including one poll taken more recently) has him within 12 points.

So, while the media breathlessly reports the national tracking polls which shows a close race, the state polling is still showing a pretty significant Obama lead.

P.S. -- Again reminding us how big of a joke CNN's political reporting has become, their current electoral map has it Obama 221, McCain 189. What a farce.

I hope this motivates people to get out there and do all you can...we need all we can get!

Busy at work

Dave — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:33:17 EDT

Our volunteering network is absolutely fantastic. We have a well established organisation that we can all be proud of. Barack Obama stands a fanstastic chance if we all do our part.

Whosoever Controls Your Money......

Michael Hubbard — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:41:20 EDT

While you read this, remember that when you go in and punch that time clock and fight those nasty office politicians that part of that hunk o' tax they take out of your check is going back into your company's CEO and board members pockets by way of corporate welfare....all so they could pit you in competition with communists overseas.

Still gonna vote Republican??

From our good friends over at conceptual guerilla....

http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/625

Greetings good citizen,

Are you sick and tired of hearing what a 'great deal' free trade is (especially when your own experiences with 'global labor arbitrage' have come back to haunt you recently). Your paycheck couldn't feed a fly and you have zero leverage to demand a raise.

Well, how about if I were to tell you that it's even worse than that?

You know how I'm always saying 'whosoever controls your money, controls you'?

Well, the 'evidence' that some elite group has indeed seized control the global economy by creating a 'monopoly' on how goods are priced (as well as having 'a near' monopoly on being able to create that currency as well) puts 'free trade' in a somewhat different light.

From today's Asia Times we have this piece from Dr. Henry C.K. Liu:

CHINA'S DOLLAR MILLSTONE, Part 1
Breaking free from dollar hegemony [The following is from page one]

Page 1 of 4
CHINA'S DOLLAR MILLSTONE, Part 1
Breaking free from dollar hegemony
By Henry C K Liu

The vast expansion of US-led globalized trade since the Cold War ended in 1991 had been fueled by unsustainable serial debt bubbles built on dollar hegemony, which came into existence on a global scale with the emergence of deregulated global financial markets that made cross-border flow of funds routine since the 1990s.

Dollar hegemony is a geopolitically constructed peculiarity through which critical commodities, the most notable being oil, are denominated in fiat dollars, not backed by gold or other species since then president Richard Nixon took the US dollar off gold in 1971. The recycling of petro-dollars into other dollar assets is the price the US has extracted from oil-producing countries for US tolerance of the oil-exporting cartel since 1973. After that, everyone accepts dollars because dollars can buy oil, and every economy needs oil. Dollar hegemony separates the trade value of every currency from direct connection to the productivity of the issuing economy to link it directly to the size of dollar reserves held by the issuing central bank. Dollar hegemony enables the US to own indirectly but essentially the entire global economy by requiring its wealth to be denominated in fiat dollars that the US can print at will with little in the way of monetary penalties.

So, the US has a 'lock' on the world's economy. What Dr. Liu is pointing out here is that the world has been turned into some greedy fuck's piggy bank because they control the 'asset' used to price all of those goods.

The arrow points to Ben Bernanke, but I will remind readers that our 'central bank' the Federal Reserve is not a part of the Federal Government and that its full name is the Federal Reserve CORPORATION! A company that is 'privately held' and reputed to be 'owned' by several foreign banks/banking 'families'.

Well good citizen, somewhere within this snake pit is a 'cartel' or a single individual that quite literally 'owns the world'! (And he or she used the US nuclear card to get it.)

Since whoever it is has been actively working to destroy the US economy, I don't think this individual is a US citizen…not that it particularly matters. Let us continue:

World trade is now a game in which the US produces fiat dollars of uncertain exchange value and zero intrinsic value, and the rest of the world produces goods and services that fiat dollars can buy at "market prices" quoted in dollars. Such market prices are no longer based on mark-ups over production costs set by socio-economic conditions in the producing countries. They are kept artificially low to compensate for the effect of overcapacity in the global economy created by a combination of overinvestment and weak demand due to low wages in every economy.

Such low market prices in turn push further down already low wages to further cut cost in an unending race to the bottom. The higher the production volume above market demand, the lower the unit market price of a product must go in order to increase sales volume to keep revenue from falling. Lower market prices require lower production costs which in turn push wages lower. Lower wages in turn further reduce demand. [You see, an 'unending death spiral'…]

To prevent loss of revenue from falling prices, producers must produce at still higher volume, thus further lowering market prices and wages in a downward spiral. Export economies are forced to compete for market share in the global market by lowering both domestic wages and the exchange rate of their currencies. Lower exchange rates push up the market price of commodities which must be compensated for by even lower wages. The adverse effects of dollar hegemony on wages apply not only to the emerging export economies but also to the importing US economy. Workers all over the world are oppressed victims of dollar hegemony, which turns the labor theory of value up-side-down.

In a global market operating under dollar hegemony, the world's interlinked economies no longer trade to capture Ricardian comparative advantage. The theory of comparative advantage as espoused by British economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) asserts that trade can benefit all participating nations, even those that command no absolute advantage, because such nations can still benefit from specializing in producing products with the lowest opportunity cost, which is measured by how much production of another good needs to be reduced to increase production by one additional unit of that good.

This theory reflected British national opinion at the 19th century when free trade benefited Britain more than its trade partners. However, in today's globalized trade when factors of production such as capital, credit, technology, management, information, branding, distribution and sales are mobile across national borders and can generate profit much greater than manufacturing, the theory of comparative advantage has a hard time holding up against measurable data.

Under dollar hegemony, exporting nations compete in the global market to capture needed dollars to service dollar-denominated foreign capital and debt, to pay for imported energy, raw material and capital goods, to pay intellectual property fees and information technology fees. Moreover, their central banks must accumulate dollar reserves to ward off speculative attacks on the value of their currencies in world currency markets. The higher the market pressure to devalue a particular currency, the more dollar reserves its central bank must hold. Only the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, is exempt from this pressure to accumulate dollars because it can issue theoretically unlimited additional dollars at will with monetary immunity. The dollar is merely a Federal Reserve note, no more, no less.

Dollar hegemony has created a built-in support for a strong dollar that in turn forces the world's other central banks to acquire and hold more dollar reserves, making the dollar stronger, fueling a massive global debt bubble denominated in dollars as the US becomes the world's largest debtor nation. Yet a strong dollar, while viewed by US authorities as in the US national interest, in reality drives the defacement of all fiat currencies that operate as derivative currencies of the dollar, in turn driving the current commodity-led inflation. When the dollar falls against the euro, it does not mean the euro is rising in purchasing power. It only means the dollar is losing purchasing power faster than the euro. A strong dollar does not always mean high dollar exchange rates. It means only that the dollars will stay firmly anchored as the prime reserve currency for international trade even as it falls in exchange value against other trading currencies.

In recent decades, central banks of all governments, led by the US Federal Reserve during Alan Greenspan's watch, had bought economic growth with loose money to feed debt bubbles and to contain inflation with "structural unemployment", which has been defined as up to 6% of the workforce, to keep the labor market from being inflationary. Central banking has mutated from being an institution to safeguard the value of money so as to ensure wages from full employment do not lose purchasing power into one with a perverted mandate to promote and preserve dollar hegemony by releasing debt bubbles denominated in fiat dollars. (See Critique of Central Banking, Asia Times Online, November 6, 2002.)

Despite all the talk about globalization as an irresistible trend of progress, the priority for the United States in the final analysis has been to advance its superpower economic objectives, not its obligations as the center of the global monetary system. This superpower economic objective includes the global expansion of US economic dominance through dollar hegemony, reducing all domestic economies, including that of the US, to be merely local units of a global empire. Thus when the US asserts that a healthy and strong economy in Europe, Japan and even Russia and China, all former enemies, is part of the Pax Americana, it is essentially declaring a neocolonial claim on these economies.

The concept of "stakeholder" in the global geopolitical-economic order advanced by Robert B Zoellick, former US deputy secretary of state and now president of the World Bank, is a solicitation from the US to emerging economic powerhouses to support this Pax Americana. The device for accomplishing this neo-imperialism is a coordinated monetary policy managed by a global system of central banking, first adopted in the US in 1913 to allow a financial elite to gain monetary control of the US national economy, and after the Cold War, to allow the US as the sole remaining superpower controlled by a financial oligarchy to gain monetary control of the entire global economy.

Move over Napoleon, Hitler, Caesar, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed, someone's about to show you the 'right' way to conquer the planet. Where both military might and God have failed, money (and anonymity) may well succeed.

With the help of supranational institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements, the US aims to negate national economic sovereignty with globalization of unregulated trade conducted under dollar hegemony. Unregulated trade globalization in the 21st century aims to neutralize national economic sovereignty to preempt national development financed by sovereign credit. Trade through export has become the sole operative path for national economic growth in a political world order of sovereign nation states that has existed since the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648. No national domestic economy can henceforth prosper without first adding to the prosperity of US-controlled global economy denominated in dollars.

Before you start 'jumping for joy' I'd like to point out that the US is merely the vehicle chosen to 'execute' this plan…it has not nor will it 'benefit' the US or its citizens. No good citizen, whoever is behind this diabolical scheme has deliberately placed us/this nation in the crosshairs of every freedom loving nation in the world.

Holy Dollar Empire

Echoing the Holy Roman Empire, the global economy has been operating as a global Holy Dollar Empire with [someone inside] the Federal Reserve as the Holy Dollar Emperor. Similar to the Holy Roman Empire, which disintegrated from the rise of Lutheran nationalism, this Holy Dollar Empire will eventually disintegrate from progressive centrifugal forces of a new populist economic nationalism. This new nationalism is not to be confused with regressive trade protectionism. The formation of the new Group of Five (G5 - China, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa) in the 2008 Group of Eight Summit in Tokyo (G8 - the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and the European Union) is a sign of this new trend of progressive economic nationalism. The 2008 US presidential election may herald in a new populism in US history to reform the structure of US debt capitalism. [The latest attempt to resuscitate the Doha round of trade talks ended in failure today…]

In his speech to the G5 leaders, China's President Hu Jintao said: "It is necessary to take into full account the issue of food security in tackling the challenges in energy, climate change and other fields." Apart from calling for the setting up of an UN-led international co-operation mechanism and a global food-security safeguard system, Hu said all countries should strengthen cooperation in grain reserves, a process of proven success in China but not recommended by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, which views such scheme as a distortion of trade.

Liberation from this Holy Dollar Empire of dollar hegemony can only come from sovereign nations withdrawing from the global central banking regime to return to a national banking regime within a world order of sovereign nation states to put monetary policy back in its proper role of supporting national development goals, rather than sacrificing national development to support global dollar hegemony through wage-suppressing export-led growth.

While Dr. Liu is absolutely right, he faces the same problem we confront when it comes to the 'political will' to make the necessary changes.

Perhaps more importantly is what will happen if the US fails to drive this demon from its bosom. Think about it good citizen, would our creditors even hesitate to pull the plug on the dollar?

They needn't 'invade' or risk the nuclear wrath of the world's only remaining superpower…all they need to do is stop accepting our 'scrip'…and it's 'game over'.

The question to ask yourself good citizen is do you want to die defending the right of this reckless, greedy S.O.B. to exploit the world?

I didn't think so,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Hello Mr. President Obama!

Nia "Hussein" J. — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:59:27 EDT

I'm in no way taking for granted that there is still alot of work that needs to be done to get mr. obama into the Oval office and keep him there for the next eight years. But I thought i would share this article that puts my thoughts into context:

How Obama Became Acting President

By FRANK RICH <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/frankrich/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

IT almost seems like a gag worthy of 'Borat': A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama's magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.
He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even 'Access Hollywood' mustered <http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/access-sees-an-obama-ratings-bump/> a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.

The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was 'wrong' about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities <http://www.icasualties.org/> later, they're still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American 'bloodletting' and 'be paid for by the Iraqis.'

Never mind. This election remains about the present and the future, where Iraq's $10 billion a month drain on American pocketbooks and military readiness is just one moving part in a matrix of national crises stretching from the gas pump to Pakistan. That's the high-rol ling political casino where Mr. Obama amassed the chips he cashed in last week. The 'change' that he can at times wield like a glib marketing gimmick is increasingly becoming a substantive reality -- sometimes through Mr. Obama's instigation, sometimes by luck. Obama-branded change is snowballing, whether it's change you happen to believe in or not.

Looking back now, we can see that the fortnight preceding the candidate's flight to Kuwait was like a sequence in an old movie where wind blows away calendar pages to announce an epochal plot turn. First, on July 7, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, dissed Bush dogma by raising the prospect <http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL0353522920080707> of a withdrawal timetable for our troops. Then, on July 15, Mr. McCain suddenly noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan than Iraq< /A> and called for more American forces to be sent there. It was a long-overdue recognition of the obvious that he <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/01/terror/main4221986.shtml> could no longer avoid <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/15/is-obama-forcing-mccain-t_n_112890.html> : both Robert Gates <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/world/asia/05gates.html> , the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already called for <http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-07-14-afghanistan_N.htm> more American troops <http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/25/world/fg-usafghan25> to battle the resurgent Taliban, echoing the policy proposed by Mr. Obama a year ago <http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/07/31/obama_to.html> .

On July 17 we learned <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/17/usa.iran> that President Bush, who h ad labeled direct talks <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/us/politics/16obama.html> with Iran 'appeasement,' would send <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/washington/22diplo.html> the No. 3 official in the State Department to multilateral nuclear talks with Iran. Lest anyone doubt that the White House had moved away from the rigid stand endorsed by Mr. McCain and toward Mr. Obama's, a former Rumsfeld apparatchik weighed in on The Wall Street Journal's op-ed page: 'Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran.' <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121659929379969123.html>

Within 24 hours, the White House did another U-turn, endorsing <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/07/20080718.html> an Iraq withdrawal timetable as long as it was labeled <http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/44720.html> a 'general time horizon.' In a flash, as Mr. Obama touched down in Kuwait, Mr. Maliki approvingly cited the Democratic candidate by name while laying out a troop-withdrawal calendar <http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/maliki-backs-obamas-troop-withdrawal-plan/> of his own that, like Mr. Obama's, would wind down in 2010. On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced a major drawdown of his nation's troops by early 2009.

But it's not merely the foreign policy consensus that is shifting Obama-ward. The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has now joined another high-profile McCain supporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in knocking the McCain nostrum <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/04/17/pickens-supports-mccain-but-not-his-energy-policy/> that America can drill its way out of its energy crisis. Mr. Pickens, who financed the Swift-boat campaign smearing John Kerry in 2 004, was thought to be <http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A4416D05-3048-5C12-009DB0481F25202A> a sugar daddy for similar assaults against the Democrats this year. Instead, he is underwriting nonpartisan ads promoting wind power <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/21/AR2008072102563.html> and speaks <http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20080718_4628.php> of how he would welcome Al Gore as energy czar if there's an Obama administration.

The Obama stampede is forcing Mr. McCain to surrender on other domestic fronts. After the Democrat ran ads in 14 states berating chief executives who are 'making more in 10 minutes' than many workers do in a year, a newly populist Mr. McCain began railing against 'corporate greed' -- much as he also followed Mr. Obama's example and belatedly endorsed <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/us/politics/11mccain.html> a homeowners' bailout he had at first opposed. Given that Mr. McCain has already used a refitted, hand-me-down Obama campaign slogan <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/04/mccain-rips-off-obamas-sl_n_105266.html> ('A Leader You Can Believe In'), it can't be long before he takes up fist bumps. They've become the rage among young (nonterrorist) American businessmen, according to USA Today <http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2008-07-21-fist-bump-handshake_N.htm> .

'We have one president at a time,' Mr. Obama is careful to say <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/us/politics/20OBAMA.html> . True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party's candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in 'Chicago.' The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most s triking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad <http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/07/24/world/0724-OBAMAGERMANY_index.html> to wave American flags instead of burn them.

Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush's de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip -- will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? -- few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain's behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.

Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining <http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/21/mccain-warns-o f-hard-struggle-on-the-iraq-pakistan-border/> an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling <http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/mccains_mixedup_timeline.php> the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants <http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/07/24/mccain_wont_back_down_on_obama.html> to 'lose a war' isn't even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.

The week's most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama's Berlin speech with a 'Mission Accomplished'-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana's coast. The announcement was posted <http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0708/McCain_to_counterprogram_Obama_in_Germany_with_visit_to_Gulf_Coast_oil_rig.html> on politico.com <http://politico.com/> even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately 'postponed' but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.

When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat's triumphant trip, so its ins istent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain's wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.

Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year's G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country's No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.
During Mr. McCain's last two tours of the Middle East -- conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors -- the only news he generated was his confusion <http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/18/a_mccain_gaffe_in_jordan.html> of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll <http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/opinion/08rich.html> throu gh a 'safe' Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic <http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/07/24/with-mccain-scenes-from-a-bethlehem-grocery-store.aspx> Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.

The election remains Mr. Obama's to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we've learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama's post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That's some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation's big chall enges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.

<http://up.nytimes.com/?d=0/9/&t=&s=1&ui=26537562&r=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/opinion/27rich.html?ref%3dopinion&u=www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/opinion/27rich.html?ref%3dopinion%26pagewanted%3dprint> <http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/clientside/6f3180f8Q2FaQ5CQ51s7L9s__Q51Q2BjcQ5CJJQ2BjQ5Cr9rJ>

We've got work to do

Nia "Hussein" J. — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 21:00:36 EDT

This blog is short and sweet just click on the link to the video and enjoy. I hope this will motivate us to get out there and and do all the hard work it is going to take to get Obama elected into the White House:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPfv8JEEj8A

We have work to do!!!

Justin from Redondo Beach, CA — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:27:31 EDT

Mccain and the Republicans are in full spin mode! They have taken this trip and spun it into Surge" success story. If you look at what they are doing with Iraq, they have made the war in iraq as if it was ok to go in and now the surge is the most honorable strategic decision of this war!! The republicans are spinning any good news about Obama into a love fest and trying to paint him as a celebrity, so basically they are making the fact that he brings people together as a talking point to say that its not real!! Didn't Hillary try this??!! Lets spread the word that we want to unit over hope and we dont care if that comes off as wanting to pay attention!! Tell the Republicans that they can have it both ways! You can energize the people but then criticize that movement and talk about experience! He is the Democratic representative for a reason! He met all qualifications to run! Since when did those qualifications mean fighting ina war, or being in the office for 25years? If thats the case then why be allowed to run if your not a military vet and over 55 years old? Lets get to work people!!!!!!

How do I Handle Unfair Treatment at Work?

Ms CYPRAH — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:13:00 EDT

Q. My boss consistently gives me more work than another employee. Should I say something about it?

A. Yes you must, otherwise, you will simply get more of the same because he/she will believe that you don't mind that extra work. Of course, there is also the saying, "Work a willing horse."

Any behaviour which is not noticed will continue. Your silence merely suggests that it is all right to give you more work. Moreover, if you say nothing, you simply condone the action and become a doormat. If you are not sure how to actually deal with this problem, you could try the following way in your own words:

Guess Who Didn't show up to Vote...

Nia "Hussein" J. — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:53:21 EDT

Only one Senator missed the Medicare Vote...

by fbihop via www.dailykos.comWed Jul 09, 2008 at 02:44:16 PM PDT

There were 99 Senators on the floor of the Senate to cast their ballots for the Medicare vote. Barack Obama was there.
And even Ted Kennedy was there. Kennedy was not scheduled back until September. Kennedy had brain surgery not too long ago. Yet he was able to suck it up and get his ass on the floor to cast an important vote for cloture.

Who would miss not only this important vote, but also the FISA votes today? Well, John McCain.

McCain was probably too busy off campaigning in some state that Bush won last election to even show up for these votes. McCain has better things to do than, you know, his job. His opponent, Barack Obama, and 98 of his colleagues showed up, though.

The 69 Senators who voted for the bill showed up.

But remember, this bill came up before. And it received only 59 votes, not the 60 needed to prevent a filibuster. Who was missing that time? Ted Kennedy. Well, and John McCain, but that goes without saying. John McCain can't be bothered to show up for his job.

If I missed my job to go looking for another job, I would most likely be fired. Not John McCain.

John McCain can't be bothered to do the job that the people of Arizona elected him to do; instead, he is too busy looking for a promotion. A promotion which he doesn't deserve.

* Posted on Washingtopost.com by Ben Pershing*

McCain also missed votes earlier today on terrorism surveillance legislation. The Arizonan Republican's campaign did take the time this morning to lambaste Sen. Barack Obama for his alleged flip-flopping on the surveillance issue. Yesterday marked the two-month anniversary of the last time McCain cast a Senate vote, on April 8. The Medicare vote marked the 76th consecutive tally McCain has missed.

John McCain missed 65% of the votes in the Senate last year while he was pretending to represent the state of Arizona. McCain's pathetic Senate voting record last year was the second worst in the Senate, only Senator Tim Johnson had a worse voting record..and he was recovering from brain surgery.

Obama Campaign in Montrose County

jason. — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:12:10 EDT

It has been several weeks now since the primaries concluded and the general election campaign began. As part of the coordinated effort to elect Barack Obama, i have officially joined the campaign and have been given the responsibility for organizing Montrose County. This is a particularly special honor for me because Montrose County is not merely a crucial challenge in the fight for Colorado's electoral votes, Montrose is also my home.

i am excited at the opportunity to engage supporters, doubters, and critics alike and to share with all of them the hope and enthusiasm i have for reclaiming our government and returning it to its proper role: an extension of the people's will and advocate for the welfare of the people it represents.

Electing any candidate is no small task, much less a candidate who intends to put values of community and social justice above greed and the established hierarchy of power. That's why the need for our active participation is so vital. i am trusting that with a sense of pride, with a sense of hope, with a desire to see the United States of America once more respected as a great nation not just in word, but in deed as well -- i trust that these motivations will inspire individuals to overcome their doubts and their cynicism, will illuminate this truth: we work hardest for the things which are most important to us.

i will be organizing a number of events this summer and into the fall, and i look forward to meeting every single person in Montrose County. Well... okay, maybe just as many as i can. November 4th is coming up quickly, so let's all get to work.

Why I'm Here and What I Want

Detroit Wobbly — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:58:45 EDT

Greetings, all!

I'm pleased to be here, and look forward to meeting many of you, online and in our communities.

First, congratulations to Senator Obama on being the "presumptive" nominee (when can we just say "nominee"?). Why anyone would want this job, given the gigantic pile of garbage we have to clean up after 28 years of conservative rule, I'm not sure. But props to him for his willingness to tackle it.

I want to be clear about something. While I support Senator Obama for President, my policy preferences tend to be much more libertarian/left than he is. I don't hold this against him; I understand that "official" American politics is much more conservative than in other countries (see the chart at www.politicalcompass.org), and in fact, more conservative than most American citizens (see this poll from the good people at PIPA).

My point is that I'm not here because I think he's the end-all, be-all of America. I'm not here because I love his speeches (although the man absolutely DOMINATES that stage, surpassed only by Michelle Obama). I'm not here because I have faith in the Democratic Party or liberals (as the saying goes, Democrats are "10 degrees to the left of center when times are good, 20 degrees to the right of center when it threatens their interests").

I'm here because our country is in shambles. Because wages and salaries have been stagnant or declined since 1970. Because our courts are increasingly acting on behalf of the elite, and not the people. Because Americans have little or no control over their economy. Because education is obsolete at the K-12 level, and unaffordable at the college level. Because our foreign policy is imperialistic and profit-driven. Because workers lack the basic human right of association - the right to organize.

I'm here because while one person can't fix all of these things, a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority in the House and Senate will make it much easier for us to make these things happen. Every great change in American history, every expansion of democracy came not because our leaders woke up one day and decided, benevolently, to expand or protect our rights - it happened because we the people organized and struggled and MADE it happen. The greatest changes were in the 1930s and the 1960s, and it's no coincidence that Democrats controlled the government during both periods. It's easier for progressive citizens to get something done under Democrats than under Republicans.

With Obama in the White House, our job as citizens becomes a lot easier. That's why I'm here.

Help Wanted

Dr. Mark Elrod — Tue, 27 May 2008 07:19:56 EDT

If you're one of the millions of American college students looking for a job this summer, you're going to have some competition: the millions of other Americans who need a second job to pay for the gas they need to get to their first job. In either case, as a public service, I've compiled a few summer jobs that may be fun or lucrative for old and young alike.

Nuclear safety inspector in Maine. This position pays $71,000 a year and the best part is that it doesn't actually exist. Maine closed it's only nuclear reactor in 1997 and eliminated the position in 2005.
Sell a 10-year old cheese sandwich bearing an image of the Virgin Mary on eEbay for $26,000.
Work as a comment troll for John McCain. His campaign is taking applications now. There's no money involved but it's indoor work with no heavy lifting and no dress code.

Warning: No matter where you find that job, the FINRA wants you to know that there's a group of Latvians out there using certain job classifieds for identity theft. So, be careful.

Its still the Economy!

Heidi Jane — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:51:08 EDT

Here is a note from a previous BLOG post.

http://heydeesmeet.blogspot.com/

Dear Barack Obama,

I highly doubt you will read this, but hopefully one of your aides and campaign works will. What went wrong in Ohio, New York, and subsequently, Pennsylvania is that you need to hit home new economic solutions with low income workers. They care most about the economy. There needs to be a new policy suggestion to help the poor and downtrodden. That is what makes you a democrat and these people currently aren't seeing that. More effort needs to be given to these people directly. More than just changing healthcare, education and getting out of the war or appealing to their distrust in Bush. They are looking for a new approach for their economic blight. As much as I can see the booms in the 1990s was more attributed to new gadgets created by Microsoft and Apple than any industrial policy. I am a student in public administration in Miami, FL and I am interested in Local Economic Development. In the U.S. we have used the HUD's programs for engaging local communities but that is not enough. We need to refocus and launch a new attached on the less-fortunate communities and help them spur their economic competitiveness in the global economy.

Barack, you have not talked about this sufficiently. It can't be just that we will reassess NAFTA and CAFTA--that is okay but its not sufficient to really look at how to help the small towns build up. Why not engage these communities in the same grassroots efforts as your campaign and engage them to find pro-poor portable solutions to their economic problems. Their ingenuity in assessing the lack of concrete a industrial policy will make the difference. Below is what I proposed when I wanted to have dinner with you. Today, I am not so sure, I'd like to have dinner with you! You need to reach out and talk about the economy straight-on and reach out to the disenfranchised, who don't care about party unity nor, black white divides, but about their pocket books.

Now please, you are my hope to changing this around. Please focus on this section of the population that needs some solutions, especial now and into the future as these gas prices and foreclosures rates go up and up.

Grassroots “Opportunity Zones” for Economic Revitalization

Why not revitalize the HUD’s Renewal community program by providing block grants and technical assistance directly to Community Development Corporations (CDCs) for commercial activities and job-training programs? Such a policy will strengthen your grassroots political efforts by bring more financial services to the communities in-need. It will not only create a market-place effort for American communities to compete for federal financing (requiring private sector support for legitimacy and efficiency) but it will also provide direct technical assistance to strengthen the at-risk economy. Currently HUD’s Renewal community program is seeking congressional commitment for the third round of support. The CDBG, hosted separately, needs further revitalization for assisting American cities where the highest percentage of our poor resides. Your campaign could assist to strengthen America’s most prevailing community based programs CDC’s to perform better—by engaging citizens, assisting the poor and promoting economic development through urban revitalization. By transferring this public program to direct beneficiaries, instead of the government bureaucracies, this policy could make CDCs already successful role in development even stronger.

The ultimate result would be like a low-income housing tax credit but for commercial activity and job-training programs to speed-up local economies. Grassroots “Opportunity Zones” for Economic Revitalization is a similar policy I am working to execute in Latin America, the area of my expertise.

Work/Family Balance and the Working American

smffy — Sat, 17 May 2008 05:59:24 EDT

Surely as a child of a working single mother, Barack Obama knows about the challenges working families face as they try to juggle jobs and their personal lives. To remain competetive in world markets, employees have been asked to increase productivity by sinificant percentages. That means many Americans are working sixty, seventy hour work weeks. There is little time left to manage their private lives.

As children and spouses are put aside, all to make a decent living, families are weakened - often torn apart by divorce or financial disaster. Increased child care costs as bread winners work more increases. There are women who dare not leave the workforce lest their careers sputter and fail and yet they are working only to pay child and health care costs (that is if they can afford health care at all).

The price we pay in decreasing productivity due to the stress placed on working families is high. Absenteeism, and sick leave to care for children or aging parents increases costs and equals increased costs of goods and services. Obama's commitment to a work-family balance is in the best interests of workers in every socio-economic class.

Her $20 million debt

Mary — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:28:05 EDT

That's a whopping debt for anyone to make! Then the question comes to mind, will she do the same if she is put into the White House? I can only imagine how horrible it would be in our already indebted state as a Nation if we have a leader that instead of understanding the value of money and spending it like it grows on trees. Hillary Clinton is used to living high on the hog. She doesn't value the dollar and has little understanding of the average to lower wage cost of living. If she has any knowledge it is only on the level of observation and not from personal experience. This is why I find it so hard to understand how the blue collar workers have gotten sucked in to her lies of just being an average jane. She is not and never was and never will be. Anyone with the mentality to take out huge loans and indebt themselves, their campaign committee or our government "Among her options is transferring that debt to her Senate campaign committee and paying it off with contributions to her 2012 re-election effort."

Clinton campaign officials say they have not contemplated what she will do with the debt. Okay now maybe it's just me but when I'm planning on spending or borrowing I generally think ahead and figure out how I intend to pay back what I've spent and maybe that's because I live on the lower to average wage and so money means something to me. How can someone indebt themselves and never have an idea of how they will pay off the debt? Especially one that is that huge! I think that if people looked at her money management skills they would consider that she will take those to the White House with her and further our national debt instead of fixing it. That mentality of making a $20 million debt and not having a clue as to how it will be paid off isn't comforting to me as a citizen of the U.S. who knows that already our national debt is in a bad way and we owe third world country nations. Those same third world countries that Bill and Hillary Clinton introduced Nafta into and now our own country has less jobs for the average blue collar class. Men need to think that Hillary Clinton is a woman, and even I'll admit as a woman that I like to shop. She'll shop this nation into more national debt through one way or another. Is that what you want, Hillary with the "credit card" running off to indebt our nation more? She has the same mentality where money is concerned that all those rich oil owners have.

Common sense should tell any voter that she is not the candidate who will fix our economic crisis!

Flip me off

Corrinne Davies — Sat, 03 May 2008 12:30:18 EDT

A few days ago while I was at work a co-worker stepped into my office to say good-bye for the night and asked if I needed a ride home then she mentioned she remembered seeing my car in the parking lot, the car with the Obama bumper magnet. Right after she said that she flipped me the middle finger and said that was for the Obama sticker and continued to walk out before I could respond.

At first I was stunned into silence. Kathy is perhaps the only co-worker that will associate with me, the closest thing I have to a friend in that office. I was transferred from the Mercer campus, where I had good working relationships with nearly all the staff, to the Fuld campus, where I am viewed as an outsider, disliked and ignored by the majority of the staff. People talk about me behind my back, rack their brains for problems they can complain about to me, complain about me to my managers and bosses. Kathy was once a Mercer campus employee as well and has received the same icy welcome that I have when she began working at Fuld. Kathy knows that they talk about her behind her back and she tells me what they are saying about me behind my back.

To be flipped off by the only person I considered to be a friend hurt. My mind raced to try to explain her actions and made me wonder if I had lost the only positive thing at that campus. Obviously, she is not an Obama supporter but I was dying to know if the anger coming from her gesture was because she was a republican or a Clinton supporter.

I finally worked up the nerve to ask the other day. Turns out she use to be a republican but switched to democrat to support Clinton. I mentioned that I was familar with getting harsh responses while canvassing and that there were two variety of people that get that defensive over Obama and those people are Clinton supporters and republicans. I had secretly hoped that she was a republican. It seemed like it would be better knowing that she disliked the entire democratic party then the fact that she could be a Clinton supporter. If our base differences were so great I figured I wouldn't have to deal with canidate bashing or trying to defend Obama.

My dad is a republican and we just sort of have this agree to disagree stance, he's going to vote for McCain and nothing I say is going to change that - I can deal with this. If she were a democrat then its a whole different story, it would mean we feel the same way about the majority of the issues but we differ in opinion over who we want to go against McCain in the general election. I feared the fighting with your own teammate thing that is dividing the democratic party.

I've only been an official democrat for the last few months before which I was an independent. All this democat fighting really makes me want to go back to the middle again.

The one hopeful thing that came out of that conversation was when I asked what she would do if Obama got the nomination, curious if she was one of those Clinton supporters that would rather vote for a republican in the fall than Obama. She expressed her dissatisfaction with what the republicans have done to the economy and that she would not vote for McCain even if Clinton didn't win the nomination. I got the sense that she would vote for whoever the democratic nominee would be which is the important thing.

We March On...

Concerned Citizen, Iraq War Veteran, Equal Shareholder in the American Dream — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:43:34 EDT

North Carolina... Tobacco Road... Home of the Mighty 82nd Airborne Division, the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, and Pope Air Base... A historical state with a deep historical past in the United States; dating back to the original Province of Carolina that stretched from the Atlanta to the Pacific!!

Indiana.... The Hoosier State!!! Home of the Fighting Irish!! Just across the river from Kentucky... wedged in between Illinois and Ohio on its west and east borders... The great state of Michigan to the North... Home of the Colts!!! Land of the Indians.. a.k.a. Indian Land... Indiana!!!

Folks, we know that we are always going to have people who absolutely will ignore logic… consciously, and otherwise ignore the opportunity to get at the true roots of our inner most feelings about our individual lives, and where we have room for each other in our hearts and futures while living side by side… shopping in the same stores… going to enjoy the same arts… cheering for our own children and each others’ at the Saturday soccer game… joining each other for lunch from the roadside workers, to the college campuses around the country, to the factories and technology corridors that come and go from Indiana to North Carolina…

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have just seen history in the making again. The question after November 4, 2008, though, will be whether we find ourselves on the better side of the very making of the same… This is our time… This may be our last shot and time… Two weeks to go until we have another Carolina go to the polls, and another state from the great mid-west do the same… More folks from the New South and the wheat and Corn Belt have weighed in with the Hope of Today and Tomorrow… The Hope in Barack Obama…

It has been tiring for many of us… a process a lot longer than most of would have ever imagined… Just as Senator Obama mentioned, it is not just about winning, though… Rather, it is how we win… We can win… We must win… We will win…

How many phone calls can we each make? How many doors can we knock on? How many points can we win each state of North Carolina and Indiana by that will further close the door on this nomination for America; for Barack Obama?

Semper & Respectfully,

Kent D. Fletcher

Dist 46 Democrat Candidate

S.C. State Senate

Let's Put America Back To Work!

Thatcher — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:46:28 EDT

(cross posted on The Dead Guy)

This is not a new concept. FDR and The New Deal. The late Senator Paul Simon's 1987 book by the same title as this post (Which I have a signed copy of - I had Senator Simon autograph it for me when he was in Iowa campaigning for the 1988 Democratic Presidential Nomination).

With a country that has resources and infrastructure in dire need of help, we need to put America back to work fixing these problems. Where could we start? Well, there are 10 pieces of U.S. infrastructure we must fix now!

Bitter? Sweet!

Thatcher — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:38:53 EDT

(cross-posted on The Dead Guy)

So once again, lifelong politicians have taken words out of context and wielded them as weapons back at the person who spoke those words.

Senator Obama was 100% correct when he said after all the promises we have been given about improving the economic conditions, not just in Pennsylvania - but across America, and yet nothing has truly changed, that we are bitter and many of us blame that which we are told to blame: immigrants, people wanting to restrict the 2nd Amendment, the government supposedly trampling our religious rights, and so forth.

That's what Obama was saying. And if you hear the whole conversation in context - you know that is what he said. The American people have been given scape - goats to blame by the people that are really to blame - the politicians that won't do a damn thing to bring about the change needed to restore jobs and better conditions for our country.

But let me tell you something - I'm not bitter - I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!

Government Incentive for Work at Home Moms

Nancy from Avon, IN — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:09:14 EDT

There are a lot of companies out there still stuck in the old ages of thinking you have to be in a special office to do a job. If we could get more companies to open their eyes to the possibility of a work force that works from home. We would have fewer latch key kids and a better chance to keep kids out of trouble. We would also reduce the gas usagage because there are fewer people commuting to work.

The writing is on the wall ... but there is lots to do

Mike — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:55:53 EDT

Yes, there is a lot of sentiment out there that we have won. The main stream media keeps chanting that mantra. Well not so fast my friends. We still have one heckuva race in PA that if we can seal the deal so to speak it would be a nail in the coffin.

Positivity

Scott in Nac — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 02:25:08 EDT

I was a little bummed yesterday when I wrote my blog entry, courtesy of circumstances and Frank Rich writing about, you know, um...circumstances. The title of my entry was drawn specifically from the circumstance of Sen. Clinton seeming to have gone more negative than ever before on the de-facto Democratic nominee for president and best hope for our nation.

But a strange rash of positive things happened today, so I wanted to post again in a more, well, positive light. To wit:

I realized that, although America's best newspaper is nominally opposed to Obama, its rock stars, the names that drive New Yorkers to drop a buck and a quarter to see what's up, the columnists, are mostly bitterly opposed to Senator Clinton (and dismissive of Sen. McCain).

I suddenly got three comments on my blog from strangers--two more than I've ever gotten before--all telling me, in one way or another, to buck up, because smart, caring Americans are still really getting together behind this thing.

Out of nowhere I got an e-mail from a woman identifying herself as a heartland mom and Republican that has put whatever she's got behind Obama (her time, money and persuasive power) because, long before Gov. Richardson, she had realized (I'm inferring here, but I think I took her drift) that Sen. Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime leader.

I read a comment on a blog I had written three or four days ago. It was from my formerly right-leaning (still fiscally conservative) independent sister-in-law, the first contributor to my Obama fundraising effort. She said that her husband, my brother, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, had not only been intrigued and maybe even impressed by Senator Obama's ground-breaking speech on race in America, he had listened to the whole thing three times.

Although I'm guessing my brother will still end up voting for McCain in November, this was the single most hopeful thing I've heard about politics in America in the last several months. You see, my closest friend here in East Texas, a gay Democrat that doesn't pay much attention to politics except to talk to me about it, had told me that Obama's speech was too black, that Obama was too black, that he shouldn't be bothering us with talk of race right now when there is a war on and my friend's wealth is threatened by an economic downturn.

Yes, I said, Obama's speech was about just that: we need to unite, get beyond old racial divisions and work together on the things that matter to us all: peace, prosperity (prosperity for all of us, shared and useful to everyone) and justice for people of all genders, sexual orientations, classes, races, national origins, religions, creeds, states, regions and cultures. Well, he admitted, he hadn't actually heard or read the speech, but he had heard Obama say that he wouldn't reject the black community, so he assumed, based on long-established traditions of politics of America, that Barack was not speaking about anything relevant to him because my friend is white and Obama is black. The implication was that a Democratic white lady would keep him safe and rich and would fend off the Republicans that want to keep him from getting married and having the same rights to fairness in taxation, employment, housing, inheritance, health decisions and so on that are enjoyed by straight and closeted Americans.

He had not listened (don't worry, I will get him to listen as surely as I got him to contribute to Obama's campaign several weeks ago). But my brother, my straight white pro-business family-first law-and-order very conservative brother, apparently, actually listened. And if he's listening, maybe, just maybe, some critical mass of middle America is listening as carefully as my friend is not.

Let's hope, because the anecdotal evidence of my day is that the hope is real. But the hope is just the inspiration. The progress is only possible if we work for it. Please encourage everyone you can to actually listen to what Barack Obama has to say, rather than just assume that he's another politician worth ignoring because he must be concerned only with the interests dictated by his apparent identity.

What America needs to know--and can only understand if we are willing to do the work to help them--is that Senator Obama's identity is uniquely American: pluralistic, heartland-rooted, family-oriented, internationally contextualized, patriotic, meritocratic, immigrant-originated, tough, compassionate, faith-based, progressive, profoundly immersed in American institutions, traditions, contradictions, values, history and intelligence. This is the guy. This is America at its best, its most balanced, its smartest.

And this is the moment. The energy is still all around us. Even my brother is listening. Let's get to work!

Pam joins Obama for hope.

Pamela from Seattle, WA — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:33:09 EDT

I heard the controversy about racist remarks from a former pastor. I read the entire text of Obama's speech and then listened to him give the entire address. I was not only impressed, but my heart was touched. This cements the thought I was slowly coming to form. Barack is fostering a new kind of hope and energy throughout the nation. People who had come to believe that the politics of our nation had become too muddy, greedy and hardened, now actually have hope. Not only that, but they have a desire to make that hope come true.

I have started a blog on the Obama site. I have set a fund raising goal. I am ready to give resources, time and energy to this hope. I hope you will join me. Pam

Blog Slam - KEEP IT POSITIVE PEOPLE!

Julie Hensley — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:06:32 EDT

We have a Democracy... the decision is supposed to be in the hand of the voters. Why does everyone expect DNC to take sides at this juncture? I know, it's your fear talking.

Now is NOT the time to give in to FEAR! The English stood up to the bombing of London, the Civil Rights workers stood up to the whites all through Mississippi and women stood up to those who would not give them the vote and were beaten and imprisoned and even killed.

Now is the time for the fight. Not the time to worry about what MIGHT happen. Right now we can WORK to keep it from happening.

Donate to the campaign.

KEEP BLOGS POSITIVE.
Make phone calls.
Write postcards and letters.
Write blogs and comments on other sites.
Work on the ground as you can.
Organize an event.
Donate.
Host a Fundraiser.

Buy some gear and share it.
Get your copies of Obama's books out and loan them to someone.
Invite others to come to this site and help.
I'm sure there are other things...

QUIT WORRYING! Get some focus on what we STILL can do. Come August don't be one of those people kicking yourself cause you could have been contributing now instead of worrying about what MIGHT happen and thus helping it come to pass.

International economics, a proposal.

Grito — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:06:45 EDT

I am writing this message because of the serious financial problems my state, our country and foreign countries are encountering. Albert Einstein is quoted as having said "You can't solve the problems of the future with the technology that created them." I believe that the present circumstances require new and long term solutions and that the methods to those solutions are being used to a limited extent now,in part,in private industry and in state government.
My proposal is to(1) use currently available technology to create a basis for(2) allowing the state and federal work forces to reduce costs, increase productivity and promote tremendous economic benefits for all the citizens of our United States and, eventually, the world.

(1)More specifically, by funding the creation of a paper less system via the synergistic use of computers(most state and federal employees now have a computer),digital recorders,intelligent pens, digital video machines and their peripheral equipment(including cell phones-all available at reasonable prices)with the goal of replacing the use and cost of paper,writing instruments,files,documents,ordering and billing procedures,physical storage before use and the disposal, the faxing of and the transportation, mailing and the large storage costs(some documents have to be stored for 25 years or more)associated with the physical constraints of our present paper based system. Instead, all these functions could be accomplished by instant computer communication and server storage, all instantly available by remote access. A by product of this environmentally friendly system, would be an example of how to reduce our reliance on the source of paper; trees and dramatically reduce pollution and mitigate the threat posed by global warming. Once in place this system would permit the state and federal work forces to:

(2)Work at remote locations. Essentially, the workforce would not be limited to working from strictly from the office. The web of instantaneous computer communication would be viable from any point of Internet access. The net result would be that a worker could work at home two or three days a week and only come in to their office when required. The New Jersey State E.P.A. now uses this method. Thus, there is the potential of eliminating the cost of fifty percent of the office space that the state now pays for in buildings because alternating days at the office with days working at home for all employees would reduce the need for office space by fifty percent. This is the critically essential facet of my proposal that should save hundreds of millions of dollars, or much more, on a state level, and trillions of dollars on a national level, especially when combined with the savings to be realized during phase one as noted above.
The proper implementation of this two phase plan would eliminate the need to raise revenues through other avenues and would ultimately eliminate fiscal budget deficits.
Additionally, it would reduce travel to and from work sites, road congestion,road repair,vehicle depreciation(both state and private vehicles), gasoline consumption, insurance costs, reduce child care costs(work at home)environmental pollution would be reduced and worker productivity would be increased substantially(proven in private industry use).
These are some of the benefits but there are many more benefits inherent to this system because it can be applied to any level of government, including municipal and federal government. I would expect that the use of this plan on a national level has the potential of trillions of dollars in savings. Consequently, this system could be exported to other country's, with American guidance and expertise, that would engender good moral and political dividends.
In conclusion, the question is not whether or not to use this system because its' use is inevitable. The question is when and whom will implement it. It is my hope that Senator Obama will see the value of my suggestion for the citizens of our great nation and the world and seriously consider its merit.

Lest we forget....

Julie Hensley — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:44:01 EDT

what Barack Obama stands for is what he has stood for his entire adult life.

- honesty

- civility

- focus

- unity

- respect

- equality

- collaboration, cooperation

- community

- things you could add....

Which of these would you be willing to compromise? In the mass desire to see Barack Obama slay the dragons you see - would you ask him to turn away from being who he is? How easily do you think he would be able to recapture that virtue that was left along the way?

Becoming more like Hillary will not guarantee a victory. It will only guarantee that we'd have two Hillary's to choose from. Yes, I've seen the arguments and the rationales that to stand up is not to be 'dirty'. That to be forceful and defensive with a strong offense is not the same thing. You - and me - all of us, have an outsider's perspective. We are not, Barack Obama, he is more than aware of the rationalizations he could make and the positions he could take. I would be willing to bet that he is as if not smarter than anyone that might read this blog... more importantly he knows what feels acceptable in his own skin.

Should he take your advice and follow your suggestions and then hate himself for it because it wasn't right for him - what would you say to him? How would you reassure and compensate him for his lost self-respect? his lost supporters? his lost political career?

He trusts his instincts - he trusted them when he boldly announced that he was embarking on a completely unconventional campaign strategy and it's served him well. So NOW you want to re-invent him? Now you find that he's disappointed you by being exactly what he said he would be? Now you want him to go back on those promises because YOU are panicked? Sorry, the same man that had the courage to stand against the wave and say that going to war with Iraq was WRONG (even when the vast majority of his constituency was for it) ain't likely to value your rationalizations and panic now.

Guess what? That's WHY *I* SUPPORT him. It's time for more trust, more focus and more work and a lot less second guessing.

Reaching our Goals

Dr. Sophia — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:40:59 EST

Where are you on your road to achieving your goals? We all have goals and one of them should be to lead a healthy and productive life. Many of us are unemployed and uninsured. How do we solve these challenges in order to meet the goal of living a healthy and productive life?

We can support and vote for change! Change that would move us from uninsured to insured and unemployed to employed. Obama exemplifies that change. I am looking forward to it.

Excess Hillary Clinton Detector

Julie Hensley — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:38:37 EST

I have something like a smoke detector on my computer..when the environment in the barackobama blogosphere gets too toxic with focus on HRC it goes off and boy did it go off when I just checked on the most recent blogging!!

If you have something positive to say no matter how minimal you might feel it is... share it! That is was builds the wonderful environment we have in here but... as to this other stuff...

First off, the Hillary blogging/bashing even in the name of 'defending Barack' is counterproductive to our goals.

Second, proving that we can bash Hillary better than 'they' can bash Barack is counterproductive to our goals.

Inspirational Quote Today

Dan — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:35:20 EST

A very relevant thought on change and hope, and about moving forward...

“Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed is painful; yet ever needful; and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881, Sottish Philosopher)

Let's Refocus People...

Julie Hensley — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:01:45 EST

The tone has changed in our blogs. When I say our I don't mean a single group... I read blogs very often randomly but recent. We are no longer as energized - we seem alot angrier, alot more reactive. Angry that Hillary is not very nice right now, reactive when someone dares criticize Obama. And we're also a bit jumpy and looking for the boogie man in lots of places.

It's understandable... we have something to lose now. We can taste it can't we? That light at the end of the tunnel seems entirely possible.

It is possible but we may be squandering some of that possibility with our distraction and anxiety. This is politics people. Today the candidates will be squabbling and tomorrow they make up and run on the same ticket (not my fondest desire but I'll accept Hillary or even Cheney as a VP if I get Barack in the bargain! I have confidence he could manage them even if Hillary did have a very slow learning curve - I think it's been a good 20 years since someone would have been her 'boss').

Valentine's and Temptation

Julie Hensley — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:01:41 EST

Maybe I am just too far gone... but, I thought it would be fun to give Barack a Valentine's present. Nothing to rival what Michelle may have in store for him but another pledge. Wouldn't it be cool if lots of people gave Barack a Valentine's present? We could offer what we can whether it's money, the commitment to make 100 calls or send 3 letters to the editor or put up signs or help at an event or help a newbie on the site or making calls come up to speed.

Is it as dumb as I fear it is?

Where do we go from here?

Jarene — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:26:49 EST

Hi. This is my first blog and my first post.

Obviously, this issue of poverty is one that I am very passionate about.

Most states offer some form of public assistance to those who are trying to survive while earning wages that are below the national poverty level. I used to be there. Going through the "public assistance process" is very uncomfortable and demeaning in a lot of cases. As a single mother who was trying to return to school for my bachelor's degree, I found it very difficult to get the assistance that I needed. Because I wanted to go to school rather than work a minimum wage job full time, I was denied cash and child care assistance. However, I did receive much needed health care and food stamps. On a more personal level I felt that going to school was actually frowned upon and unsupported by my social workers. I was required to go to a "Work First" program, where I was told that I was accused of lying about being a University of Michgan student. I was discouraged from attending classes and instead spend seven hours at a facility searching for jobs online and being bussed around town, filling out any and every minimum wage job application. Now for some, there may not be anything wrong with that, but for me I felt like it was not a permanent solution to my problem.

What do you think individual states should do to address this poverty issue? I appreciate your comments.

What have you done....today?

Rebekah — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:08:02 EST

News of the latest wins sweep across the news channels, sending supporters scrambling for their phones. It's happening again, just as we pictured it, with state after state choosing the hope-monger to be their candidate for President. It feels wonderful....but wait.

We can't stop now.

This momentum is building higher and higher. The once "inevitable" Clinton machine is clanking, with staffers going unpaid, grudgingly-admitted dips into personal fortunes and, today, news of the sudden firing of her campaign manager. All are signs of increasing disarray. All are proof of a complacency that once bordered on dismissive turning to shock as voters realize that they have the chance to change not just the policies, but the very policy development process itself.

But I must warn you, this is an extremely dangerous time. We, too, can fall into complacency. It's so easy to sit back and relax, serene in the knowledge that Washington has spoken. We've done our bit. We've worked hard, gotten out the vote, attended our caucus, made a difference.

But if we stop pounding out the message now, if we even allow ourselves to slow down a little, America will lose. The party machine is too tightly wound in favor of the politically entrenched. The deals are made, backs are scratched, and we face those who will do anything, literally anything, to win. After that, the national election looms and Carl Rove, along with the rest of his ilk, are preparing for the nastiest fight ever. They will not be easily brushed aside.

We must take it to the next level, committing ourselves to specific, tangible, daily goals -- one for each and every day. We have to continue to grow, moving away from our comfortable ruts and taking a chance to approach someone new.

It's OK to start small.

Maybe... wear your Obama tee shirt to the gym tomorrow.

Put a sign up in your window.

Put that bumper sticker on your car.

Download materials from the website and send them to acquaintances.

In order to win we must each take personal responsibility for our own apartment building, our own street, our own neighborhood. Knock on three doors today. Knock on three tomorrow. Make ten calls today, and ten tomorrow. We met some neighbors at caucus meetings; now go meet some more.

Make sure that every single new person you talk to about Obama gets at least three follow-up contacts. Make sure they find the website, and that they feel included in the movement. It's the personal contact that gets, and keeps, people involved.

So....what is your goal for today? For tomorrow? Write it down, and put it where you can see it often. Check off your accomplishments. Take the next step. We can do it.

Yes! We CAN!

The change is now

Dave — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:09:32 EST

No resting on our laurels. There's work to be done out there. Lets do this. Shall we?

Its time to get to work

Evanmack — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:36:41 EST

The last line of Obama's victory speech. And I do mean victory. He won a large majority of states and is very close in the delegate count. However, the victory will not gain legs through the media, through the spin. It will ONLY gain legs through grassroots.

Its time to get to work

LA, NE, and WA are next. They are leaning Obama. Make phone calls, attend a meeting, put a sign in your yard.

VA, MD, and DC are Tuesday. They are leaning Obama. Write letters, make phone calls, attend rallies.

It is time to get to work

Why do I support Barack Obama?

Isaac Tanner Madsen — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:25:01 EST

I’ve been raised by parents who taught me to cherish hard work. I work every day for the small apartment I currently live in and the food that I put on my plate that I don’t even have a table for. I share a room with another hard worker and I have two other roommates just across the hall. All of us know how to pull our own weight and work together for the common good of the whole. We aren’t your average apartment of single men. We are like a family though we’ve known one another for perhaps a month or two now.

Barack Obama is another hard-working individual that shares the same family values I hold dear to my heart, the same commitment to life and to serving others, the same dream of a nation — America, the beautiful. It’s been said time and time again, but many years it has been since we’ve seen a presidential candidate who brings us such great hope – hope for a better future, hope for a greater nation, hope for a healthier planet and healthier people, hope for international peace and prosperity. In my own lifetime, I have never seen a candidate or a president who brings me such peace of mind knowing that this person is a leader in our country.

I have faith in Barack Obama because Barack Obama has faith in God — the same God that we all serve, whether we are Muslim, Jew, Christian. Even if we might not believe in God, we can at least believe in the power of humanity as a whole and that is the God we serve for without serving that idea, we can do nothing … but I say along with the voice of Barack Obama and through the voice of our great nation, by serving one another, ”Yes we can!”

We can build a nation of people serving for a higher cause, a greater future, a moral freedom as agents both unto ourselves and unto others. We can fix our broken America. “Yes we can!” We can fix our broken families – maybe all of the difficulties won’t be resolved, but we can live in harmony and love and this can at least fix our broken hearts. We can be better people – every single one of use. “Yes we can!”

Visit http://www.ikerspot.com/ for more information about me (Isaac Tanner Madsen) and why I support Barack Obama.

Already voted

Jolene42 — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:08:38 EST

And am looking to be a poll worker on the 5th. Can anyone let me know who to contact. I can be at a polling place any hours that are needed. Please let me know.

Hello, and welcome!

Erin Foley-Machnik — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:45:31 EST

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had not made my mind up as to who I was going to vote for in this election; when I listened to Obama speak, I heard him speak from the heart. I did not hear him throw a bunch of rhetoric and words that are designed to fool the American people. I heard him speak the truth. I heard him speak for the middle-class, the class of American's whom have been forgotten about.

That is my family. A hard working family who is struggling because of high healthcare costs, outragious gas prices and housing that is simply not affordable.

My family is one of the lucky ones some would say, we have health insurance, a plan that is considered great by most standards. Yeah, it was great when I found myself having to have emergency surgery on my back. My 'great' insurance place paid for a lot of the medical attention that I needed. Until the co-pays killed us. Thousands of dollars in co-pays we are responsible for, and we simply can not afford it.

It has often been said that the only way out of poverty is through education. Ok, but education is not affordable, I am struggling to to complete my BA degree so I can have a higher paying job, the job I worked prior to my surgery I am not able to do. I can not afford to take the few classes left to finish because of my co-pays.

I am one of many people in the same situation, my husband and I have worked all our lives only to have everything gone because of todays economy.

I firmly believe that Obama will work for us, and the others who have found themselves not able to afford something that we all deserve and work for. Obama is the only candidate who truly knows what we need and the only candidate whom I TRUST to pull through for the average American.

The cost of negativity

Treigh Pug'h — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 12:55:01 EST

I'm really outraged by the strategy senator Clinton is using right now and I'm affraid she will mislead a few voters. We all know that all the quotes she's attributing to senator Obama as evidence for her case for change are all rudiculous. But we need to be as agressive as we were in the ABC debate that sparked her free fall if we are going to deal with this ill-conceived approach to campaigning.

We can still be positive and inspiring while making sure she doens't get too comfortable at doing a disservice to voters with false claims shortly after suggesting that she was not interested in attacking other democrats.

I suggest that senator Obama put her on the defensive for misquoting him, not opposing the law suit against the culinary workers Union long after the measure in question was approved by all campaings. Also, let's remind her that she's too calculating and this law suit is proof in case she's forgotten.

After her loss in Iowa, she had some concerns about the fact that the current caucus process causes "disenfranchisement" of working men and women who don't have the time to participate.

Well, these at-large precincts were approved since March 31 2007 and all campaigns had plainty of time to object it. Clearly Senator Clinton and her allies were on a high horse and could have never thought that our movement would be endorsed by the Culinary workers Union of Nevada. And now that it doens't serve thier purpose, they're complaining. Just like they did when those boys were ganging up on her or when the media was somehow praising saint Obama to their detriment.

It seems senator Clinton's camp is a big fan of gambling but hates the odds. Well, I've got news for them: America can't afford gambling anymore! We need clarity, vision and consistency from our elected officials. We need Obama.

First Thoughts 1/09/08

Paul Johnson — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:06:09 EST

As I look for a job,I've been unemployeed now for 20 weeks,I think about Obama talking about corporate greed.He is absoultly correct.The warehousing company I used to work for closed down,laying off all well paid workers,reorganized as a new private corporation and now contracts all workers at the Massachusettes minimum wage($8/hr).They admit they did this in order to not have to pay benifits and to save as much of the difference in wages as possible.In Ma.this is legal. A drinks company in this state is now doing the same putting union labor out of work in favor of minimum wage temp workers-again legally. Obama says he will work against such tactics as well as working to keep jobs here in the US. Coporate greed? It's not just big oil!

Taxes Housing Energy Education Economy

Another thing I worry about is taxes.Companies shelter their income overseas,where they take our jobs,so that they do not have to pay taxes while I can't afford to pay more. I don't have enough to live on now. I don't make enough to cover rent with the low wage jobs I can get unless I go without medicines,or other things that are neccesary in todays world. I am not alone in this. I know people who can't afford heat,or food,or housing. And I know about housing as I am a volunteer board member of a housing non-profit with a waiting list of HUNDREDS. We depend on oil imported from all over but give no real incentives to change. Many people can't afford to go beyond high school-It's just never going to be within reach for them. Older workers(like myself I'm 46) can't afford to reeducate themselves to be able to stay productive so when they lose their jobs they find they cannot compete-and the government seems not to care. Obama says he will make corporations pay their taxes rather than constantly raising the wage earners taxes.He says he will help with financial aid for people to go to school.He is for getting to energy independence. All these things together will help Americans to be able to be competitive,productive people.

Medical Costs (Obama Policy People Read This)

Obama is in favor of reducing how MUCH medical care costs. I am also. Just mandateing health insurance(the Clinton Plan) will not work. It has been tried--In Massachusetts. Mitt Romney passed such a bill in 2007. Some peope DO get free or reduced INSURANCE. What good is it when we can't afford our copays,medicines,and deductibles for hospital care?I Personally am putting off needed surgery for just these reasons. Besides what do I live on while recovering? Is mandatory disability insurance next? Another bad side effect of Mandated Insurance has been CORPRATE GREED. I know people who carried personal health insurance BEFORE it was mandatory who tell me their insurance increased by up to $700 a year as soon as everyone was REQUIRED to have it. Why? Because we in Massachusettes are a captive market! Rather than reducing costs of medical care Massachusettes residents are in effect being taxed again. Obama is right--the best way is to stop the COST of care from geting out of hand.

"Kevin Lewis"=Chicago Staff =Talking Points | Tax Fairness for the Middle Class

Danielle Clarke USA Vietnam Vet — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:15:50 EDT

From: Kevin Lewis
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 09:13
To: press ... AT ,,, barackobama ,,, DOT ,,,, com
Subject: Talking Points | Tax Fairness for the Middle Class

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Talking Points | Tax Fairness for the Middle Class

September 18, 2007

Barack Obama laid out a bold and innovative plan to reform America's tax code so that it works for the middle class. Obama's plan provides a substantial tax cut for all working Americans, homeowners, and middle class seniors.

"""Under an Obama Administration, work will be rewarded, and opportunity will be advanced for all Americans.""

Barack Obama knows that the core principle of the American economy is advancing opportunity for individual Americans. But he made it clear that America is not keeping faith with the middle class. As new wealth is being created in our new economy, wages aren't keeping pace and costs are rising.

Obama made the case that our current tax code reflects the wrong priorities.

1. It rewards wealth instead of work.

A. Special interests have achieved huge tax breaks and loopholes that shift the burden from the well-off to working people.

B. This isn't good for Main Street or Wall Street. Because as Obama said – when ordinary Americans are denied opportunity, that pain has a way of trickling up.

2. Obama would restore fairness to the tax code to strengthen the American economy.

A. First, Obama would cut taxes for all working Americans. This income tax cut would be worth up to $500 per person, and $1000 for each working family. All told, 150 million Americans will get a tax cut. Because this credit would be greater than their income tax bill, the Obama tax cut would eliminate income taxes for 10 million working Americans.

B. Second, Obama would ease the burden on the middle class by providing a universal homeowner's tax credit.

NOTE; This will immediately benefit 10 million homeowners, who will get a break of 10 percent of their mortgage interest rate. The vast majority of these will be folks who make under $50,000 per year.

C. Third, Obama will eliminate the income tax for any American retiree making less than $50,000 per year.

NOTE: This would undo a tax increase on social security benefits that went into effect in 1993, and will eliminate income taxes for about 7 million Americans. The savings generated will be roughly $1,400 each year.

D. Fourth, Obama will simplify tax filing for middle class Americans. He'll put in place a system where 40 million Americans with a job and a bank account who take the standard deduction can do their taxes in less than five minutes.

NOTE: To save people time, worry and expense, the government will simply send these Americans prefilled tax forms to verify.

Barack Obama's plan will provide $85 billion in tax cuts to Americas' workers, seniors, and homeowners. Unlike President Bush, whose fiscally irresponsible tax cuts created record deficits, Obama has a plan to pay for his tax reform plan. He will close corporate loopholes

Vice President canidate

Leo — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 23:17:40 EDT

Who do you think President Obama will pick as his Vice?

On Making Good Men Do Bad Things

Adoyo — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 11:04:04 EDT

C.S. LEWIS
Oration at University of London, 1944
THE INNER RING

May I read you a few lines from Tolstoi's War and Peace?
When Boris entered the room, Prince Andrey was listening to an old general, wearing his decorations, who was reporting something to Prince Andrey, with an expression of soldierly servility on his purple face. "Alright. Please wait!" he said to the general, speaking in Russian with the French accent which he used when he spoke with contempt. The moment he noticed Boris he stopped listening to the general who trotted imploringly after him and begged to be heard, while Prince Andrey turned to Boris with a cheerful smile and a nod of the head. Boris now clearly understood- what he had already guessed- that side by side with the system of discipline and subordination which were laid down in the Army Regulations, there existed a different and more real system- the system which compelled a tightly laced general with a purple face to wait respectfully for his turn while a mere captain like Prince Andrey chatted with a mere second lieutenant like Boris. Boris decided at once that he would be guided not by the official system but by this other unwritten system.
When you invite a middle-aged moralist to address you, I suppose I must conclude, however unlikely the conclusion seems, that you have a taste for middle-aged moralising. I shall do my best to gratify it. I shall in fact, give you advice about the world in which you are going to live. I do not mean by this that I am going to talk on what are called current affairs. You probably know quite as much about them as I do. I am not going to tell you- except in a form so general that you will hardly recognise it- what part you ought to play in post-war reconstruction.
It is not, in fact, very likely that any of you will be able, in the next ten years, to make any direct contribution to the peace or prosperity of Europe. You will be busy finding jobs, getting married, acquiring facts. I am going to do something more old-fashioned than you perhaps expected. I am going to give advice. I am going to issue warnings. Advice and warnings about things which are so perennial that no one calls them "current affairs."
And of course everyone knows what a middle-aged moralist of my type warns his juniors against. He warns them against the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. But one of this trio will be enough to deal with today. The Devil, I shall leave strictly alone. The association between him and me in the public mind has already gone quite as deep as I wish: in some quarters it has already reached the level of confusion, if not of identification. I begin to realise the truth of the old proverb that he who sups with that formidable host needs a long spoon. As for the Flesh, you must be very abnormal young people if you do not know quite as much about it as I do. But on the World I think I have something to say.
In the passage I have just read from Tolstoi, the young second lieutenant Boris Dubretskoi discovers that there exist in the army two different systems or hierarchies. The one is printed in some little red book and anyone can easily read it up. It also remains constant. A general is always superior to a colonel, and a colonel to a captain. The other is not printed anywhere. Nor is it even a formally organised secret society with officers and rules which you would be told after you had been admitted. You are never formally and explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable ways, that it exists and that you are outside it; and then later, perhaps, that you are inside it.
There are what correspond to passwords, but they are too spontaneous and informal. A particular slang, the use of particular nicknames, an allusive manner of conversation, are the marks. But it is not so constant. It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is inside and who is outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously out, but there are always several on the borderline. And if you come back to the same Divisional Headquarters, or Brigade Headquarters, or the same regiment or even the same company, after six weeks' absence, you may find this secondary hierarchy quite altered.
There are no formal admissions or expulsions. People think they are in it after they have in fact been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name. The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names. From inside it may be designated, in simple cases, by mere enumeration: it may be called "You and Tony and me." When is very secure and comparatively stable in membership it calls itself 'we.' When it has to be expanded to meet a particular emergency it calls itself "all the sensible people at this place." From outside, if you have dispaired of getting into it, you call it "That gang" or "they" or "So-and-so and his set" or "The Caucus" or "The Inner Ring." If you are candidate for admission you probably don't call it anything. To discuss it with the other outsiders would make you feel outside yourself. And to mention talking to the man who is inside, and who may help you if this present conversation goes well, would be madness.
Badly as I may have described it, I hope you will all have recognised the thing I am describing. Not, of course, that you have been in the Russian Army, or perhaps in any army. But you have met the phenomenon of an Inner Ring. You discovered one in your house at school before the end of the first term. And when you had climbed up to somewhere near it by the end of your second year, perhaps you discovered that within the ring there was a Ring yet more inner, which in its turn was the fringe of the great school Ring to which the house Rings were only satellites. It is even possible that the school ring was almost in touch with a Masters' Ring. You were beginning, in fact, to pierce through the skins of an onion. And here, too, at your University- shall I be wrong in assuming that at this very moment, invisible to me, there are several rings- independent systems or concentric rings- present in this room? And I can assure you that in whatever hospital, inn of court, diocese, school, business, or college you arrive after going down, you will find the Rings- what Tolstoi calls the second or unwritten systems.
All this is rather obvious. I wonder whether you will say the same of my next step, which is this. I believe that in all men's' lives at certain periods, and in many men's lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside. This desire, in one of its forms, has indeed had ample justice done to it in literature. I mean, in the form of snobbery. Victorian fiction is full of characters who are hag-ridden by the desire to get inside that particular Rind which is, or was, called Society. But it must be clearly understood that "Society," in that sense of the word, is merely one of a hundred Rings, and snobbery therefore only one form of the longing to be inside.
People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free, from snobbery, and who read satires on snobbery with tranquil superiority, may be devoured by the desire in another form. It may be the very intensity of their desire to enter some quite different Ring which renders them immune from all the allurements of high life. An invitation from a duchess would be very cold comfort to a man smarting under the sense of exclusion from some artistic or communistic côterie. Poor man- it is not large, lighted rooms, or champagne, or even scandals about peers and Cabinet Ministers that he wants: it is the sacred little attic or studio, the heads bent together, the fog of tobacco smoke, and the delicious knowledge that we- we four or five all huddled beside this stove- are the people who know.
Often the desire conceals itself so well that we hardly recognize the pleasures of fruition. Men tell not only their wives but themselves that it is a hardship to stay late at the office or the school on some bit of important extra work which they have been let in for because they and So-and-so and the two others are the only people left in the place who really know how things are run. But it is not quite true. It is a terrible bore, of course, when old Fatty Smithson draws you aside and whispers, "Look here, we've got to get you in on this examination somehow" or "Charles and I saw at once that you've got to be on this committee." A terrible bore… ah, but how much more terrible if you were left out! It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them free because you don't matter, that is much worse.
Freud would say, no doubt, that the whole thing is a subterfuge of the sexual impulse. I wonder whether the shoe is not sometimes on the other foot. I wonder whether, in ages of promiscuity, many a virginity has not been lost less in obedience to Venus than in obedience to the lure of the caucus. For of course, when promiscuity is the fashion, the chaste are outsiders. They are ignorant of something that other people know. They are uninitiated. And as for lighter matters, the number of people who first smoked or first got drunk for a similar reason is probably very large.
I must now make a distinction. I am not going to say that the existence of Inner Rings is an Evil. It is certainly unavoidable. There must be confidential discussions: and it is not only a bad thing, it is (in itself) a good thing, that personal friendship should grow up between those who work together. And it is perhaps impossible that the official hierarchy of any organisation should coincide with its actual workings. If the wisest and most energetic people held the highest spots, it might coincide; since they often do not, there must be people in high positions who are really deadweights and people in lower positions who are more important than their rank and seniority would lead you to suppose. It is necessary: and perhaps it is not a necessary evil. But the desire which draws us into Inner Rings is another matter. A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous. As Byron has said:
Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet
The unexpected death of some old lady.
The painless death of a pious relative at an advanced age is not an evil. But an earnest desire for her death on the part of her heirs is not reckoned a proper feeling, and the law frowns on even the gentlest attempts to expedite her departure. Let Inner Rings be unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?
I have no right to make assumptions about the degree to which any of you may already be compromised. I must not assume that you have ever first neglected, and finally shaken off, friends whom you really loved and who might have lasted you a lifetime, in order to court the friendship of those who appeared to you more important, more esoteric. I must not ask whether you have derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of the outsiders after you, yourself were in: whether you have talked to fellow members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might envy; whether the means whereby, in your days of probation, you propitiated the Inner Ring, were always wholly admirable.
I will ask only one question- and it is, of course, a rhetorical question which expects no answer. IN the whole of your life as you now remember it, has the desire to be on the right side of that invisible line ever prompted you to any act or word on which, in the cold small hours of a wakeful night, you can look back with satisfaction? If so, your case is more fortunate than most.
My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it- this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings then you may be quite sure of this. Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care. That will be the natural thing- the life that will come to you of its own accord. Any other kind of life, if you lead it, will be the result of conscious and continuous effort. If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an 'inner ringer." I don't say you'll be a successful one; that's as may be. But whether by pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in- one way or the other you will be that kind of man.
I have already made it fairly clear that I think it better for you not to be that kind of man. But you may have an open mind on the question. I will therefore suggest two reasons for thinking as I do.
It would be polite and charitable, and in view of your age reasonable too, to suppose that none of you is yet a scoundrel. On the other hand, by the mere law of averages (I am saying nothing against free will) it is almost certain that at least two or three of you before you die will have become something very like scoundrels. There must be in this room the makings of at least that number of unscrupulous, treacherous, ruthless egotists. The choice is still before you: and I hope you will not take my hard words about your possible future characters as a token of disrespect to your present characters.
And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still- just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig- the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which "we"- and at the word "we" you try not to blush for mere pleasure- something "we always do."
And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man's face- that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face- turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.
That is my first reason. Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.
My second reason is this. The torture allotted to the Danaids in the classical underworld, that of attempting to fill sieves with water, is the symbol not of one vice, but of all vices. It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had. The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel and onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.
This is surely very clear when you come to think of it. If you want to be made free of certain circle for some wholesome reason- if, say, you want to join a musical society because you really like music- then there is a possibility of satisfaction. You may find yourself playing in a quartet and you may enjoy it. But if all you want is to be in the know, your pleasure will be short lived. The circle cannot have from within the charm it had from outside. By the very act of admitting you it has lost its magic.
Once the first novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting than your old friends. Why should they be? You were not looking for virtue or kindness or loyalty or humour or learning or wit or any of the things that can really be enjoyed. You merely wanted to be "in." And that is a pleasure that cannot last. As soon as your new associates have been staled to you by custom, you will be looking for another Ring. The rainbow's end will still be ahead of you. The old ring will now be only the drab background for your endeavor to enter the new one.
And you will always find them hard to enter, for a reason you very well know. You yourself, once you are in, want to make it hard for the next entrant, just as those who are already in made it hard for you. Naturally. In any wholesome group of people which holds together for a good purpose, the exclusions are in a sense accidental. Three or four people who are together for the sake of some piece of work exclude others because there is work only for so many or because the others can't in fact do it. Your little musical group limits its numbers because the rooms they meet in are only so big. But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There'd be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.
The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.
And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.
We are told in Scripture that those who ask get. That is true, in senses I can't now explore. But in another sense there is much truth in the schoolboy's principle "them as asks shan't have." To a young person, just entering on adult life, the world seems full of "insides," full of delightful intimacies and confidentialities, and he desires to enter them. But if he follows that desire he will reach no "inside" that is worth reaching. The true road lies in quite another direction. It is like the house in Alice Through the Looking Glass.
SOURCE: Published: 1944 Author: C. S. Lewis

A New Era

Mr. Pecina — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:20:52 EDT

While I don't care much for labling myself and while there are many views of so called Liberals that I don't necessarily agree with, I can emphatically say that my view on American business, public, and forign policy is anything but conservative. I believe in a free-economy, but I also believe that that free-economy, when ruled by decency, justic, and compassion, can be an economy of equality; I believe in looking out for big business interests, but not at the expense of our nations labor forces and their ability to find work -- there is no excuse for the type of ensentives that were given to big business in the form of tax-breaks, to outsource their labor to other nations like china (you see how well that is working out). Big business is a part of our nations strength and it needs to be protected. What I feel is not being taken into account with the seriousness that it demands is the fact that without the securety of the working man's job and therefore his future, and without his confidence in that securety, our country will fall into perenial dependance under countries such as China, Germany, and worse, Iraq and other big-oil exporters. That is another thing that I feel strongly about and that Barack Obama is very passionate about, and that is Oil Dependancy. There are just so many areas that are in desparate need of new, or rather a return to old ideals, and I feel that Barack Obama can and will provide that during his time as President.

As for myself, I have only been an adimate supporter of Barack Obama for a little more than a month. I usually don't get as involved in politics as I plan on being this election. I do believe in our process, though I feel it could use some tweeking, but it has not been until now that I have found a candidate that I feel is worth, not only my vote, but my support! This, for me, is very exciting! I feel that this could be the beginning of a new era in our Country

WHAT HAPPENS OUT IN THE REAL WORLD, AND WHO'LL BE NEXT?

Faye Martin — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 23:53:46 EDT

Just a little story from one of MY first experiences in hanging flyers and posters to advertise our community kickoff campaign. I was hitting all the barbershops and salons, daycares, laundromats, schools and the grocery stores that would let me (one put our poster right above their weekly sales flyers!) and I was walking in a pretty rough area. I had learned at a commissioner's meeting the evening prior that the residents had many concerns because the area has a reputation for some crime, a lot of truancy, prostitution and also happens to be a main thoroughfare. I was on my way back to my car, carrying the remaining posters draped over my arm, my purse over the other shoulder, and a older man who was sort of disheveled and missing most of his teeth, pulled his car over toward me and said something that I didn't hear very clearly. I was trying to sort out his words over the noise of the traffic, feeling some excitement that maybe he'd seen my posters and leaning over toward his car to hear him better. Then I looked into his eyes and the grin on his face and realized what he'd said was, "wanna ride?" I quickly straightened myself out, nodded an emphatic "no, thanks!" and hurried toward the safety of my truck. The next wave of thought that hit me was about the meeting the evening before, and the residents discussion about "hookers" hanging out at this particular intersection and on the steps of a church a few doors down. It was then I decided not to wear my leather coat with fur trim any more while hanging posters in the city.

Anyway, there's a point to my story..... We've come to the point in this campaign, where the fantastic staffers and those of us here online have probably exhausted the supply of contributors that can be recruited from online. It's time for ALL OF US to take our efforts out into our communities. I know I'm not the only one getting out there and talking with people, so for those of you who are, blog your stories and experiences of getting out in public, here and on your local pages, so we can spur some forward momentum!

Could I be more psyched!

Karon O. — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 20:54:57 EST

Got a call last evening and was asked to come to the Obama for America Office downtown to help with a project today. Though I'm pretty sure I was the oldest person there, I was greeted with the enthusiasm you would expect and made to feel like part of something BIG. There are folks working long, long hours in a temporary suite of offices...volunteers paying for their own parking...lots of boxes all over the place...no copy machine working... but everybody pulling together to make things happen. I am so thrilled to be part of this movement to change. The more information I get, the more I know this is the real deal!

The Austin Rally, from a stagehand volunteer's perspective.

R. Lance Hunter — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:31:26 EST

Here are my pictures from the Barack Obama rally (more of them concerned with setup and the things that I did there. I didn't take pictures during the speech since I was recording for my podcast.)

Here's a few of the volunteers that were working with us on the stagehand crew. We were a smaller crew (there were only about 12 of us) and we worked like dogs almost the entire time. However, we also got to come in earlier than any of the other volunteers and had a great time.

This is what the stage area looked like before anyone was there. The black metal barricade was about five feet away from the stage, so that there could be a good security perimeter. However, having that much space between Obama and the crowd would look really lame. So, those of us who volunteered stood inside the perimeter, right up against the stage. (After watching some of the news casts of the event, I found that you could see the back of my head at the bottom of the stage in most of the shots.)

This is what Auditorium shores looked like before we got 21 thousand people there.

Starting work on the banner, aka: the nightmare project from hell.

Media getting themselves set up.

The sign, finally hanging properly (but before we raised it up.)

The rear part of the stage, where the band played (and where, in this photo, roadies are running sound check.)

We set up chairs for the seniors and others who didn't want to stand during the event. Somehow, I was put in charge of this project.

News vans, all lines up in a row. It was about an hour before the gates opened, and the number of reporters there had increased significantly.

This was my view of the crowd before the speech began, when I was somehow put in charge of the main entryway to the backstage area, making sure that only the right people got it (which was very tricky, as I was given no access list.)

This was backstage after the speech, where all the volunteers got to mob Senator Obama, and he graciously dealt with most of us acting like star-struck kids.

That's all I've got for now. I'm editing my recording of the speech and will have it up later. Then, you'll get to hear what it was like to be right up close for the speech (hint: there's lots of screaming.)

"It's Not Up To One Man, This Will Require All Of Us To Work Together" by Mudlake Slim.

lionanimal — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 11:39:47 EST

The follow essay was authored by Mudlake Slim. "It's Not Up To One Man, This Will Require All Of Us To Work Together"