Let me start by apologizing for being gone so long. Combination of exhaustion, long hours, and catching a couple of horrible colds. But I'm back now!
We won the primary last night. This is worth celebrating. But now it's time to get back to work. And one of the best ways to do that is to join the Joe Sestak Action Network. The set up may look a little familiar as it appears to be based on the same sort of software as the Obama network from the 2008 election. I joined up and took my first action through it today: a letter to the editor.
Here's some events from the Center for Repsonsible Poltics, on the Election, Prop 8, the Progressive Blueprint and our Mandate. Check out what's in your area!
First up:
Release of Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President
November 12, 2008, 9:30am - 12:30pm
Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President is a framework to help the next administration steer the government in a new, more progressive direction. In conjunction with the release, we are hosting a series of exciting panels on economic policy, national security, democracy, and climate change led by the authors of the book.
The very first official 2008 Election November 4th votes have been cast in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, where they cast their votes at Midnight Eastern Time.
Traditionally a Republican stronghold, albeit a very very small one - around 20 voters - this year is the first time that the Democratic presidential candidate has won the town since 1968.
A federal appeals court ordered Ohio's top elections official to set up a system by Friday to verify the eligibility of newly registered voters and make the information available to the state's 88 county election boards.
The full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must use other government records to check thousands of new voters for registration fraud.
A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit had disagreed last week. The full court's ruling, in which nine of 16 judges concurred, overturns that decision.
Ohio Republicans had sued Brunner, a Democrat. Her spokesman had no immediate comment Tuesday.
About 666,000 Ohioans have registered to vote since January, with many doing so before the contested Democratic presidential primary election last March between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Sarah Palin is against virtually everything that I've worked for my whole life. Yet, by allowing herself to accept the Vice Presidential nomination, she is taking advantage of the work that I have done and stood for with respect to equality for women and minorities. How can she on the one hand virtually pull the rug out from under me and on the other hand say give me my rightful share! I worked and have a long history of standing up for women and minorities, yet, she is using what we worked for but only for her own selfish advantage.
Well, the Democratic National Convention ended last night in Denver with Barack Obama's acceptance of his nomination for the presidency of the United States. It was a fantastic speech, well delivered, and launched us Democrats fully into the general election campaign.
In all, it was a pretty great convention the whole way through, with some very passionate speeches containing criticisms of John McCain and George Bush, full of biting wit, and sprinkled with hope, new ideas, and the American Dream.
I could have easily called this column Truths, Talking Points, and Tag Lines.
Jump below with me for some highlights of some of the key speeches from this past week... (And the poll is multi-choice - please pick 5...)
The boy just can't seem to stop making an ass of himself, can he? John McCain, who can't even tell Iraqi resistance fighters from Iranians, can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Iran -- because as far as he's concerned, they're all the same -- is criticizing Barack Obama for perceived foreign policy inexperience because the senator supposedly representing Illinois doesn't see Iran as a threat on the same level as the Soviet Union in its day.
CHICAGO - Republican John McCain accused Democrat Barack Obama of inexperience and reckless judgment for saying Iran does not pose the same serious threat to the United States as the Soviet Union did in its day.
McCain made the attack Monday in Chicago, Obama's home turf.
"Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama's inexperience and reckless judgment. These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess," McCain said in an appearance at the restaurant industry's annual meeting.
He was referring to comments Obama made Sunday in Pendleton, Ore.: "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, `We're going to wipe you off the planet.'"
Let's get something straight here, boy: you can't even tell one Arab group or nation apart from another. Where the hell do you get off chastising Obama? And what, may I ask, leads you to think Iran is as big a threat as the old Soviet Union was? Come on, I know you're a liar, but you're not stupid. You know as well as anyone else what the National Intelligence Estimate last year declared: that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons; that it abandoned any such attempts in 2003; and that its nuclear ambitions now seem to be geared more toward energy production than weapons.
An honest man might, in attacking his potential opponent over foreign policy naïvety, might have at least taken care to mention the NIE, why he disagreed with it -- based on available evidence, and pointed out any rhetorical flubs that might indicate said potential opponent might engage in talks incompetently. But John McCain is neither honest, or a man. He is a liar, a subhuman beast trying to pander his way into the White House by terrorizing the American public.
McCain needs to admit he was lying, apologize for having done so, and drop out of the race for the presidency. These are the only honorable things he can do. Anything less is unacceptable.
If the electoral disaster of 2004 should have taught us anything, it's that our votes are wasted when cast for those candidates who represent the status quo and refuse to fight it. How many of you regret throwing your ballots away on John Kerry? How many of you did so, knowing in your hearts that you would much rather have voted for someone else, because you felt it was more important to try to oust the shrub than to vote your beliefs?
I did the same thing. I had voted for Dennis Kucinich in the primary, and I knew Kerry didn't have the stones to win in spite of the inevitable vote fraud the Bush-Cheney campaign was pulling off, but I cast my November ballot for John Kerry anyway. I admit, I screwed up that year. I had voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, a protest vote, because I believed then as I do now, that the only fundamental difference between the two major political parties today is one of competence. The GOP is inept at, well, everything except committing crimes and getting away with them. The Democrats are surprisingly effective at everything except committing crimes and getting away with them. That's all.
I watched, growing up, as the party of the New Deal abandoned all pretense of remaining true to its principles to join the corporate-conservative DLC in embracing Republican policies. By 2000 I had had enough. I would no longer vote along party lines. Although a registered Democrat, if I thought a Green or a non-aligned progressive could do the job, I voted for that person. So, full of defiance, I cast my ballot for Ralph Nader in 2000.
And yet I "repented" that action a mere four years later. Not because I had ceased to believe in what the man stands for, but because I had partaken of the 'Anybody But Bush' wafer. Not all of it, mind you. Just a tiny nibble, after the primary season was over. I suppressed the urge to vomit, poked the hole in the punch card, and hoped I hadn't made a huge mistake.
Except I had made a mistake, the same one so many Democrats continue to do even after nearly three decades of unbroken conservative misrule in government. I had compromised my principles, thrown away my vote. I watched in disgust and horror as CBS interviewed Black voters, who told us how they had watched their Kerry votes flipped over to the shrub and his gargoyle before their very eyes, on those unholy Diebold election-rigging machines. I watched and shook my head at the party for Kerry in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, as the results went from a solid victory for the Democrats to a bare margin of fraudulent triumph for the shrub. Another election had been stolen, I knew. My last and only hope was that Kerry would fight it. The next day, that hope was dashed. The Democratic granny candidate had capitulated. Again.
Needless to say, I've learned my lesson since then. No more will I hand my vote to someone who never has and never will earn it. Oh, sure, you might ask; aren't I just throwing my vote away? I've done that, but not in the way you might think.
My vote for Kerry was wasted because of one, unalterable truth: the only wasted votes are those not cast, or those cast for candidates who don't represent our interests.
Those who say we cannot vote our beliefs because our preferred candidates "can't win" subscribe to the notion that voting our beliefs doesn't win elections. But as the 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and soon the 2008 elections have shown, this is nonsense. We lose when we compromise our principles, and win when we embrace them. The so-called experts have it all backwards, and deliberately so.
Former member of British Parliament Tony Benn said, in Michael Moore excellent documentary SiCKO, that if people in America and Great Britain were to turn out and vote in large numbers it would be a truly democratic revolution. And he's right. If voter turnout were anything like what it is in European states such as France, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian states, and so forth, can you imagine how the political landscape would be altered? Can you imagine what would happen in elections if, during the primary season, voters cast their ballots based on choosing the candidates of their preference instead of who we're told to vote for?
The powerful can, and do, which is why they work so tirelessly to suppress the vote, to discourage us from casting our ballots the way we want. The powerful would lose the only thing that really matters to them: power. It's why men and women of principle, such as Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Cynthia McKinney, Cindy Sheehan, and Ralph Nader are marginalized and excluded from presidential debates -- shoved aside in favor of corporate whores who beat the drums of war on the orders of their sponsors. It's why Diebold rigs its machines to favor certain political parties, state secretaries purge legally registered voters from the polls, and state legislatures pass laws designed to prevent certain types of people from voting.
All of it is set up to prevent true socioeconomic reform from ever again coming to pass. It wasn't enough for movement conservatives to dismantle the New Deal; they had to make sure it could never happen again. That's why your vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is such a waste. Neither of them is ever going to rock the boat, try to change the status quo. They're both from the DLC, the Trojan Horse whose sole purpose is to cripple the progressive movement from within the Democratic Party. No matter which of the major political party candidates you vote for this year, you're voting to keep things as they are. You're doing as you're told, which is exactly what the powerful want you to do. The message you send when you do that is that you are content with the status quo, even if you're not.
Your vote for Ralph Nader, or Mike Gravel, or the Green Party candidate, your ballot for Dennis Kucinich as a Democratic write-in, that is the only real power you have. The purpose of it is not to win in spite of a system rigged to favor the establishment every single time, though with hard work and unwavering dedication we may one day see that happen. The purpose of your protest vote and mine is to send a message of defiance: "You do not own our votes. We give them to those who do. If you want them, you'll have to earn them or just keep on taking them. But we shall never just give our votes to you."
How many of you, dear readers, have read Orwell's 1984? How many of you read the Party's lessons about power? Do you recognize what true power is? It's not in keeping a boot on the face of humanity, grinding us into the dirt forever; it's in Defiance. When you cast your ballot for the candidate of your genuine choice, you are choosing to defy a system that was set up to crush you, to keep you buried in the mud, groveling for what scraps the powerful deign to throw you.
Why do you think hatred of Ralph Nader runs so strong? It's not because he is perceived as having stolen votes that belonged to Al Gore in 2000, or John Kerry in 2004. We who are wise know that no political party owns our votes. The hatred burns so brightly because when we cast our ballots for him we are denying the powerful something they want but cannot steal. Oh, sure, they can prevent us from voting, or reduce our options so that we can only make the choices they want us to. But it's not the same as us giving them our votes of our own free will. They want, no, they need you to accept them, their way of thinking. The powerful cannot be powerful unless you hand your power to them willingly That's what motivates the Party described by George Orwell in 1984: the irrational need to be loved and accepted no matter what. When we vote for third party candidates, we reject everything the establishment represents. And rejection is the worst thing any of us can inflict upon the powerful.
This is Congressional Candidates Wife, I am Sherri and my husband is THE soon to be elected Congressman of Indiana's 6th Congressional District Democratic Candidate Barry Welsh.
Guess who's considering going to dinner with the Republicans? And as a possible keynoter at their National Convention no less:
"If Sen. McCain, who I support so strongly, asked me to do it, if he thinks it will help him, I will," Lieberman said in a brief interview.
It seems that we, the Democratic Party, have a problem. It's been around for awhile, and we bitch about it quite a bit, but I have a bad feeling that it's about to become a major problem. Let's call it the Lieberman Dilemma. Or maybe Joe's Jinx.
In an interview published in The Hill this past week, Senator Joe Lieberman stated that he was open to making a keynote address at the upcoming Republican National Convention later this summer. This could be a boon for John McCain and Republican chances of winning the White House in November.
Republicans close to the McCain campaign say Lieberman's appearance at the convention, possibly before a national primetime audience, could help make the case that the presumptive GOP nominee has a record of crossing the aisle. That could appeal to much-needed independent voters.
That is Cynthia McKinney; you will most likely remember her from her altercation with the Capitol Police. She supposedly attack a policeman, it got lost of play on CNN and probably cost her re-election. But beyond that, she is trying to win the nomination for the Green Party and if one is a true Progressive her record and evals by various groups is pretty impressive.
Rated 0% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-choice stance.
Rated 80% by the HRC, indicating a pro-gay-rights stance.
Rated 97% by the NAACP, indicating a pro-affirmative-action stance.
Rated 80% by CURE, indicating pro-rehabilitation crime votes.Rated +20 by NORML, indicating a pro-drug-reform stance.
Rated 100% by the CAF, indicating support for energy independence.
* Voted NO on 'Fast Track' authority for trade agreements.
* No MFN for China; condition trade on human rights.
She has a strong pro-environmental stand, pro-family stand, and pro-worker stand. Her stands are consistent with those of "real" progressives. She deserves a good hard look if you are looking for a candidate other than the Big 3.
If voters look past the 20 second sound bite and her confrontation from the past, she does have the stuff that some maybe looking for in a candidate.
