You get the idea. But the photocopied text is not the heart of the letter.I live here in ____ county and I am writing my neighbors because I want you to know the truth about Barack Obama and tell you why I support him.
With the economy in a shambles, prices for everything going up, and people losing their jobs and their homes, I feel deeply that our country has to change direction. ...
First, you should know that Barack is a Christian, a patriot, and a loving husband and father. He believes that as Americans we are all connected -- that we are our brothers' keeper, our sisters' keeper. ...
So do I think this letter will win votes? Certainly it has its drawbacks. It is not flashy, eye-grabbing. Lots of the handwriting is pretty funky -- few of us have very good penmanship these days. Some of the P.S. phrases are a little inarticulate."I support Barack Obama because my brother is a soldier in Iraq and he'll take better care for veterans."
"I trust Barack Obama to get our economy moving again. Something has to change."
"As someone who graduated from high school this year, I think Barack Obama will put more money into education."
This observation reminded me of a story from an absorbing book I've recently discovered, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff tell the story of the Civil Rights era from the point of view of the reporters who covered it, first from the Black press, and later, ironically, in the white media whose white reporters had a better chance of surviving racist violence than their Black counterparts.Heavy early voting has been a regular local news story in Georgia for several weeks now, and the visuals, along with much of the commentary, has made the disproportionate turnout of African-Americans a centerpiece. And among conservative white folk I've talked to, a sense of genuine racial panic seems to be setting in, fed, of course, by the McCain-Palin campaign's incessant references to Obama's scary character and ideology.
While the brave attempts of Mississippi Blacks to register to vote in the summer of 1964 are sometimes remembered, Roberts and Klibanoff recount much earlier efforts to increase Black registration that ended in violent repression. In particular, the story of Lamar Smith's early work in Lincoln County presents a counterpoint to this season's campaign to encourage early and absentee voting. In this Black belt town, hardly any African Americans were registered in 1955. Smith, a farmer and a veteran of World War II, was able to encourage some local Black people to risk threats and humiliation to register. He also encouraged them to vote absentee, so they didn't have to show themselves at the courthouse and risk white violence on Election Day.
This seemed interesting enough so that while driving from San Francisco to Denver, I took my own survey: which bumperstickers were on which cars? Did my results agree with Kelley Blue Book's?...the car brand and segment owned by voters is related to their preference in presidential candidates. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) rates high among domestic and luxury owners. Among the domestic brands, owners of GMC (61 percent), Chevrolet (60 percent), Buick and Dodge (each at 58 percent), as well as Ford (57 percent) vehicles are the highest in favor of McCain. In the luxury vehicle segment, McCain leads among Lexus, BMW, and Lincoln owners at 52 percent each.
Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) leads McCain among owners of import vehicles with the highest ratings for MINI (70 percent), Subaru (61 percent), and Saab (59 percent). Fifty percent of Honda owners plan on voting for Obama, ten points higher than McCain. ...
"McCain's appeal among owners of domestics and large trucks/SUVs is right in line with where we see a majority of those vehicles selling - in the traditionally Republican 'red' states," said Rick Wainschel, senior vice president of marketing and analytics for Kelley Blue Book and kbb.com. "With import and hybrid owners typically favoring Obama, this also aligns with strong sales of these types of vehicles in predominately Democratic 'blue' states."
For the last two days, I've been driving across Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming, while listening to the entirety of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America by James Bamford.
Searching out what entities gave to who in legally mandated campaign finance reports is not unusual for campaigns -- but using the information to make threats is over the top. It's not as if the donors to No on Prop. 8 didn't know their actions would be public. Signers of the letter, which Yes on Prop. 8 campaign spokespeople confirm is authentic, include leaders of the California Catholic Council and the Mormon Church.Leaders of the campaign to outlaw same-sex marriage in California are warning businesses that have given money to the state's largest gay rights group they will be publicly identified as opponents of traditional unions unless they contribute to the gay marriage ban, too.
ProtectMarriage.com, the umbrella group behind a ballot initiative that would overturn the California Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage, sent a certified letter this week asking companies to withdraw their support of Equality California, a nonprofit organization that is helping lead the campaign against Proposition 8.
"Make a donation of a like amount to ProtectMarriage.com which will help us correct this error," reads the letter. "Were you to elect not to donate comparably, it would be a clear indication that you are in opposition to traditional marriage. ... The names of any companies and organizations that choose not to donate in like manner to ProtectMarriage.com but have given to Equality California will be published."from an Associated Press story,
San Francisco Chronicle,
October 23, 2008
Personally I like what the Rev. Susan Russell (disclosure -- I have the privilege of working with her) has said repeatedly: Prop. 8 "takes us down a slippery slope from democracy to theocracy.""I think it's really important for the community at large to see that there is a large and strong Christian voice that stands in opposition to this," said Pastor Scott Landis of the Mission Hills United Church of Christ. "And it’s standing on the side of fairness."
My governor demonstrated his readiness to serve when installed in 2003 by instantly repealing the Vehicle License Tax and setting the state on the road to insolvency. Then he put us through a fourth statewide general election in four years when he tried to bypass the legislature and rule by initiative -- and got hammered by the voters. Last summer, he let Republican legislators who hold barely one third of the seats in Sacramento stall the state budget for months.He should know about this.CAMPBELL BROWN: Do you think she's qualified to be president?
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: I think that she will get to be qualified.
BROWN: She will get there? What do you mean? She's not ready yet?
SCHWARZENEGGER: By the time that she is sworn in I think she will be ready.''
Twenty-six years later, Burge was arrested on federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice yesterday. He couldn't be charged directly for the torture (there are believed to have been over 100 victims of this treatment) because the statute of limitations has run out. But federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (yes, the same one who led the Scooter Libby prosecution) brought the charges. He'll be tried in Chicago.In 1982, Melvin Jones was picked up on suspicion of murder. He was taken to Area 2 police headquarters on the South Side. That's where he met the infamous Jon Burge.
In a 1999 interview for CBS' 60 Minutes II, Jones quoted Burge as saying, "You only have two rights when you come in here, and that's to confess or get your ass kicked."
Jones said he refused to confess to a crime he didn't commit. That's when, he told me, Jon Burge and two other officers brought out a small hand-cranked electrical device with alligator clips. He saw it spark, then felt a shock as they touched his foot with the clip, and then his inner thigh. And then, Jones said Burge told him, "I'm going to put it on your testicles." Jones said he was in tears, "Trying to holler as loud as I can. . . . I was begging them to stop."
They didn't until Jones confessed. Convicted by one court, Jones was ultimately freed by another.
John Conroy took the case of the Chicago police torturers as one of his three subjects in Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture; An Examination of the Practice of Torture in Three Democracies. The other two were what the British did in Northern Ireland to Irish nationalists and what Israel does to Palestinians. His conclusions are not hopeful. All the more reason to applaud the tiny minority of cases in which persistent accusers finally get some recourse to justice.Only a tiny fraction of working torturers will ever be punished, and those who are can expect their punishment to be slight compared to their crime. It seems a very small leap to argue that torture is the perfect crime. There are exceptions, yes, but in the vast majority of cases, only the victim pays.
This wasn’t the scariest protest I've ever seen. The Obama supporter who talked with the reporter didn't seem to feel that threatened. But he is a big guy.An organizer at the rally rattled off the addresses of early vote sites nearby that would be open after the event.
Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally. Nearly all the voters were black.
Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.
As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama's acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word "terrorist." They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.
Sitting with a group of women friends last night, we talked about voting. I've already done it. I became a permanent vote-by-mail voter as soon it became legally possible because I'm always working on some campaign on Election Day. Several others had received their ballots, were working as volunteers on various facets of the Obama campaign, and intended to send them in soon. And the inevitable person said, "I know it is easier to vote by mail, but I want to go to a polling place on November 4. I want to feel like I'm doing it with everyone else."This week, the New York Times reported how the campaign is getting it done in Colorado. Obviously campaigns love early voting. The Colorado campaign is hoping to get 50 percent of voters "banked" before November 4. This guarantees that no late news can sway weak supporters. Further it will mean only half as many people have to be found and pushed to the polls in the last twelve hours. And voters get to avoid inconvenience and long lines. But the campaign also knows it has to give voters something back -- the feeling of collectively practicing democracy!Obama for America [West Virginia] State Director Tom Vogel told us that during the GOTV phase, all 55 counties in the state will have early voting and weekend GOTV rallies. In Charleston on the 25th, for example, the campaign is holding a live music street fair just two blocks from an early voting location.
Awesome organizing this -- what a campaign can do when it has 3.1 million donors and vast sums to spend on facilitating people to people contact, in addition to making its essential advertising buys. Bravo!FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- The presidential debate had barely ended Wednesday night when Kristin Marshall had her ballot on her lap, pen in hand, ready to vote. Three friends, all supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, had their ballots, too.
"Obama's the second one down -- don’t accidentally pick the first" said Ms. Marshall, 27, a reference to the ballot placement of Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama's Republican opponent, as her living room of Obama supporters erupted in laughter.
The traditional American vote -- a solitary moment behind a black curtain in a booth, civics in secret -- was never thus. ...
In coming up with strategies to get out the mail-in vote in Colorado, both campaigns have focused on making the mail-in voters feel part of a bigger movement. The Obama campaign's debate-and-vote parties, for example, were intended to create a feel of civic participation.
Obama bet he could fund his campaign from eager, anxious citizens; he has won his bet. So when John McCain tries to relax by watching the Arizona Cardinals, he is confronted by Obama on national television. (Odd way to relax ... but who's a 49er fan to talk?)Mr. Obama’s advertisements come as Republicans have begun a blitz of automated telephone calls attacking him.
What do you want to bet that some fairly significant fraction of these "single" people are actually gay? That's been the reality of many gays for decades. For most legal purposes, that's how the world has classified me for the last 28 years I've been with my partner.Democrats have run somewhat better among single white men. Clinton, with an assist from Perot, carried them both times. Kerry's 46 percent among that group in 2004 was the highest share for Democrats over the past 20 years, and Kerry actually ran even among white, single college-educated men. ...
Democrats carried white single women by double-digit margins in each of the past four elections; Republicans, meanwhile, carried white married women every time. ...
Single white women without a college education lean Democratic ...
On average, Republicans have run 13 percentage points better among married independents than among single ones since 1988.
Kind of puts the gyrating Dow in some perspective to think about the people who are at the true bottom of the U.S. pyramid. They pick our food, work in meat processing plants, clean hotels, build subdivisions -- and we enjoy the product of their labor. If we indeed get a Democratic administration, those of us with a little more need to keep the pressure on the new regime to make sure those with even less have a chance to work their way into the mainstream of U.S. life.
- 24.5 percent of all Americans earn poverty wages ($9.60 or less);
- 10 percent of all Americans --15 million Americans -- earn $6.79 or less;
- 33.3 percent of African American workers and 39.3 of Hispanic workers earn poverty wages;
- At the recent new minimum wage of $6.55 an hour, if you worked every single day, 40 hours a week, with no vacations, no holidays, no health care and no pension, you would earn the grand sum of $13.624. The POVERTY LEVEL for a family of three is $17,600;
- 47 million Americans have no health care and tens of millions more have inadequate or costly health care that can bankrupt them;
- Since 1978, the number of defined-benefit plans -- that means, pensions that give retirees a promised monthly amount -- plummeted from 128,041 plans covering some 41 percent of private-sector workers to only 26,000 today. It’s a Dog Food Retirement future for millions of people.
McCain hasn't got a message for the majority of us who aren't looking for a grandfatherly alternative to the upstart Black man. He's not speaking to us at all. And he doesn't even know it.What Obama's good at doing is redirecting conversations to things people care about. He's good at conveying both with words and body language that when the subject shifts to something people don't care about, that he'd rather be addressing the things people care about. He'd rather be talking about something else, but unlike McCain he's not personally affronted that the other side criticizes him.
It's not about how he feels or what he wants but about what normal people want to hear about. By contrast, McCain's key campaign theme is that McCain is awesome and that the government should spend less money, neither of which have anything to do with real problems in real people's lives.
The study did find some unease, but nothing approaching the massive distress with the process that would be required to change our electoral customs.Seven in 10 residents think it is a good thing that a majority of voters can make laws and change public policies by passing initiatives, while less than one in four see it as a bad thing. Most Californians (56 percent) also think it is a good thing that a majority of voters can permanently change the state constitution by passing initiatives, while one in three believe this is a bad thing. A majority of Republicans and Democrats have positive impressions of the citizen initiative process, while voters outside of the major parties hold the most favorable views. There are no differences across regions, and both Latinos and non-Hispanic whites hold the initiative process in high regard.
The way those people who have guns behave makes me like many Iraqi civilians feel that Iraq became a wild jungle where survival is only for the strongest. This kind of feeling kills the soul of patriotism in the hearts of people.
I never thought that freedom means mess and I never thought that liberators care only about themselves. It's too hard to believe that but this is the real situation of Iraq.
Tough stuff. We still have to redeem the label "radical" because we do need some going-to-the-root radicalism of imagination if we're to enhance democracy and keep the planet from frying. But Campbell Brown is doing good work here.So what if Obama was Arab or Muslim? So what if John McCain was Arab or Muslim? Would it matter? When did that become a disqualifier for higher office in our country? When did Arab and Muslim being dirty words, the equivalent of dishonorable or radical?
Whenever this gets raised, the implication is that there's something wrong with being an Arab-American or a Muslim. And the media is complicit here, too. We have been all way too quick to accept the idea that calling someone Muslim is a slur.
I feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but, apparently, it needs to be said. There is a difference between radical Muslims who support jihad against America and Muslims who want to practice their religion freely and have normal lives, like everybody else.
There are more than 1.2 million Arab-Americans and about 7 million Muslim Americans, former Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, successful business people, normal, average Americans from all walks of life. These are the people that are being maligned here every time this happens. And we can only imagine how this conversation plays out in the Muslim world.
We can't tolerate this ignorance, not in the media, not on the campaign trail. Of course he's not an Arab. Of course he's not a Muslim, but, honestly, it shouldn't matter.
For more on this Georgia case, see Amnesty International. Davis was convicted of killing a police officer at a Burger King based entirely on witness testimonies. There was no physical evidence and no weapon found. All but two of the non-police witnesses have recanted or changed their "recollections" since the trial.The Supreme Court has denied the appeal of Troy Davis, clearing the way for a new execution date to be set.
The Supreme Court announced today that they will not hear Troy Davis' case to determine whether it is constitutional to execute someone with a strong claim of innocence. The Supreme Court has essentially said that innocence doesn't matter - Troy Davis can be executed despite the fact that case against him consisted entirely of inconsistent eyewitness testimony and that seven witnesses have recanted their testimony.
If this is all the protection we can expect against executing the innocent, we must stop executions now.
Now there's a guy with an incentive to stick to his story.One of the two witnesses who has not recanted his testimony is Sylvester "Red" Coles -- the principle alternative suspect, according to the defense, against whom there is new evidence implicating him as the gunman. Nine individuals have signed affidavits implicating Sylvester Coles.
As a wise politico wrote today, with three weeks to go, " ... winning teams don't relax when they are up 10 points with halfway to go in the fourth quarter. Instead, the goal should be to run up the score."I've heard people say they don't plan on voting, which surprises me because of the naivete and lack of responsibility this shows. Yeah, the system sucks. We all know it. But the notion that you can change this system by being hip and anti-establishment and refusing to vote is a terrible argument with no legs to stand on. I see this as being complicit [in] the system.
First of all, this isn't just about the Presidency. There are other things to vote on, and sometimes we forget this. Proposition 8 has been going different ways in different polls. If you care that a proposition backed largely by out-of-state interests could pass to keep certain people getting married in California, then go vote.You don't have to vote for the presidency. And if you aren't sure, fine, don't make a choice. It is perfectly valid to not make a line on that question at all. In fact, if you showed up and turned in a blank vote, it would be better than not voting at all.
So vote on those things you are educated about, and don't think you have to just choose randomly or not vote because you don't know all the issues.And by the powers of greyskull, vote even if you don't want to choose between McCain and Obama. Though I have no idea why you wouldn't have a choice.
This is California, go ahead and vote for a third party presidential candidate. You won't be spoiling the electoral votes for Obama.But, if you vote in Ohio or other battleground state, please do not vote for a third party. There is a responsible way to work within the flawed system to minimize harm. I don't think that is a hard concept to understand, since it's how American life is on a large scale.
And the whole "my vote doesn't matter" idea is just... arrrgghhh that's stupid. That's like saying "it doesn't matter that all the products I buy are made in sweatshops, because even if I didn't, they still would be." It's too convenient to forget that groups are made up of individuals. If everyone who said their vote didn't count voted, they would count! Just like if everyone stopped buying unfairly produced products, the market would change.
...Go vote, instead of standing by while a disproportionate number of elderly conservative white people decide who I can marry...
Awhile back I wrote several posts on how the rest of the world sees the U.S. election. These rather trivial comments continually get hits through Google. The rest of the world is stuck watching us and, mostly, holding its breath in the hope that the dangerous, wealthy adolescent in North America might at last get a semi-adult government. 
