Senator Barack Obama has now, in my opinion, clinched the presidency of the United States with a win in Ohio. Our world has now changed for the better.
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Let's be clear, though. This is not a victory for me. This is not a victory for the Democratic Party. This is not a victory for a liberal or progressive ideology. This is a victory for America. This is a victory for the middle class. This is a victory for every man, woman and child who ever saw a rough spot in life. A victory for those who have been less fortunate that most. A victory for all Americans who have trouble getting proper health care. A victory for the entire planet. A new world order can now begin.
The people of the world will wake up tomorrow smiling, proud of what America has accomplished. The people of the world will know that the horrific history of slavery that has eaten away at the hearts of the American people for many, many years may now finally be put to rest. This does not mean racism is gone...but it certainly means the path of healing may now finally begin.
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With this victory I begin to cry
With this victory I am able to sing
With this victory I start to laugh
With this victory LET FREEDOM RING!
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Congratulations, President Elect Barack Obama! The world is proud of you, proud of America and proud of you and me.
Well folks, here we go! It's one day before the election and all final polling data has been released. I have eliminated all states with a 5% or less margin for Obama and below are the results.
Dare I be smiling at this point? I don't know...but I do know that everyone needs to be getting out the vote tomorrow. USE YOUR PHONES. Call everyone in your address book. Have everyone you call to call everyone in their address books. We are oh so close, so let's win one for the middle class and the future of our children.
The history of fake outrage by the Republican campaign has been ridiculous. We've all seen the outrage over mini happenstance. The latest was the outrage over the girl with a B carved in her face. Of course, once it was found out to be true where was the outrage towards her? It was non existant.
Morning Joe:
I'm an avid watcher of Morning Joe and have been a fan since they started. It's part of my morning routine and I enjoy the dose of right wing banter that it gives me. I've always liked Joe, despite his possible murder of an aide in his office, Lori Klausutis. His spirit is in the right place even though his politics are in the wrong direction.
This morning Joe Scarborough's sidekick Willie Geist headed out to a neighborhood in Manhattan wearing a McCain/Palin T-shirt. He had an obvious video crew and was attempting to give out McCain/Palin T-Shirts. Nobody wanted one.
He got answers ranging from "Is this your Halloween outfit?" to "I don't like McCain, he stands for everything I'm against."
The video was light hearted and fun to watch if you're an Obama supporter. Willie did manage to get 2 McCain supporters to stop after hours of waiting. Unfortunately for him, they were the only two. It wasn't the video that got my blood boiling...it was the response from Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnacle.
After the video finished Joe Scarborough was outraged saying, "Aren't liberals supposed to be open minded?!?!" Mike Barnacle got his own jab by saying that we are "humorless" and to "LIGHTEN UP!" He's kidding right? They send Willie Geist to the most liberal part of New York City and expect people, 5 days before an election, to laugh and joke about something as serious as a possible McCain/Palin administration? Yeah, right.
Fake Outrage:
I grow weary of the fake outrage from the right wing talking heads. I grow weary of them constantly trashing Obama and then being "outraged" at every little thing they can. There is one simple word to describe it. PETTY.
Pettiness may lose them this election. I, for one, hope it does.
If this sounds like a 12-step program introduction, there is a reason for it. But for now, Redwing has graciously invited me to post to this blog and I am glad to do so.
I read the entry entitled “What made you a liberal or conservative?” and it made me think. Not many things really do that these days: I either get fed Anti-Obama news from Fox News or a Pro-Obama diet from CNN. You can read my response to the column under that entry.
McCain has been out of this race since Hillary conceded the Democratic nomination: he’s not really a factor. For the most part, you are either voting for Obama, or you are voting against him. And as much as I wanted to believe otherwise, I have concluded that I am among that group. Which means I don’t really give a damn about John McCain. Substitute in Donald Duck, and I’d vote for him. Because like millions of progressives, I’m voting against Barack Obama, not for John McCain.
Why? Because it comes down to a simple concept: character. I don’t think Senator Obama has it. I don’t think he can define it, and he may not even be able to spell it. Does he have the intelligence and vision to lead the country? Probably. But without character, it doesn’t matter. I don’t trust him, don’t believe what he says, and I believe that he’s a charismatic opportunist that has bamboozled an otherwise smart and well-read electorate. I can overlook an outlier, but Obama has too many of them: his associations with the likes of Ayers and Wright indicate a man willing to align himself with whoever can give him credibility. Ayers fit the bill for the ultra-liberal crowd, and Wright gave him that same credibility with the Black community. And now that he’s being called on it, he’s retreating like a coward from both of them. He’s less than truthful, and he’s gullible and malleable. And that, with his lack of character, makes him unfit to lead this great country.
So like I did in 2000 and 2004, I’ll hold my nose and pull the Republican lever. And in my heart, I know that the Democrats deserve to lose this election. While I am supporting John McCain for President and am proud that conservatives have finally nominated a moderate, I am not as excited about his candidacy as I am fearful of Obama’s. Another pompous, out of touch ultra-liberal that is less than truthful but full of empty bravado. It failed twice before, and is likely to fail again. And when it does, all of the crying and moaning about the “stolen” election won’t change the fact that they will have once again nominated the wrong man.
Another man lacking in substance. But most of all, lacking in character.
A special commision was put in charge of the "Abuse of Power" allegations against Sarah Palin. Now that we have the findings of a bipartisan report to pave the way on Sarah Palin's abuse of power, let's get serious.
"The Palin family had a feud with Wooten prior to her becoming governor. They put together a list of 14 accusations which they took to the state police to investigate -- a list that ranged from the quite serious to the truly absurd. The state police did an investigation, decided that 5 of the charges had some merit and suspended Wooten for ten days -- a suspension later reduced to five days. The Palin's weren't satisfied but there wasn't much they could do.
When Palin became governor they went for another bite at the apple. Palin, her husband and several members of her staff began pressuring Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan -- a respected former Chief of the Anchorage police department -- to can Wooten. Monegan resisted, arguing that the official process regarding Wooten was closed. And there was nothing more that could be done. In fact, during one of the conversations in which Palin's husband Todd was putting on the squeeze, Monegan told Todd Palin, "You can't head hunt like this. What you need to do is back off, because if the trooper does make a mistake, and it is a terminable offense, it can look like political interference."
Eventually, Palin got fed up and fired Monegan from his job. (Palin claims, not credibly, that she fired Monegan over general differences in law enforcement priorities.) This is an important point. Wooten never got fired. To the best of my knowledge, he's is still on the job. The central bad act was firing the state's top police official because he refused to bend to political pressure from the governor and her family to fire a public employee against whom the governor was pursuing a vendetta -- whether the vendetta was justified or not. After Monegan made his accusations, Palin insisted there was no truth whatsoever to his claims. Nonetheless, a bipartisan committee of the state legislature approved an investigation. In response, Palin asked the Attorney General to start his own investigation which many in the state interpreted as an effort to either keep tabs on or tamper with the legislature's investigation. Again, very questionable judgment in someone who aspires to be first in line to the presidency."
Now, after all that being said, Sarah Palin had to change her story because of the Attorney General turning up evidence that Palin's initial claims were false. Apparently quite a few staff members had raised concerns over Wooten's employment by Monegan. The real kicker is that the state actually has a recording. If you don't care to read about it, click HERE to listen to the actual MP3 audio.
The bottom line on "TrooperGate" is that we expect our elected officials to not take advantage of their power as a governing official. We expect them to uphold a code of Ethics and a general Morality that the majority of people share in this great country of ours. Sarah Palin did not. The currently available evidence now suggests that she 1) tried to have an ex-relative fired from his job for personal reasons, something that was clearly inappropriate, and perhaps illegal, though possibly understandable in human terms, 2) fired a state official for not himself acting inappropriately by firing the relative, 3) lied to the public about what happened and 4) continues to lie about what happened.
Why is it that all politicians won't come clean until the evidence forces them to do so? Bill Clinton did it, Nixon did it, Reagan never had to (Iran-Contra) because Ollie North took the fall for him. Yet Sarah Palin continues to lie about her involvement? Can we ever get the truth from these people? Do we really want someone with this obvious "lie to your face" mentality to be a heartbeat away from running our federal government?
Yes there is more to Sarah's abuse of her status as Governor of Alaska. The Palin's two-story, four bedroom, four bath home on Lake Lucille is worth $552,000.
"Todd Palin built the house with friends who were contractors, he said in a recent television interview."
Why is this important? It's important because at the same time Todd was building the new Palin house, just down the street the Wasilla Sports Complex was under construction.
The real question now becomes "Who were those contractors that did a favor for the Palin's by building their house? Was it done because of sports complex contracts they provided? Wayne Barnett of the Village Voice asks the question.
Wayne Barrett reports that after the $12.5 million Wasilla Sports Complex was approved, the design contract went to architect Blase Burkhart, "son of Roy Burkhart, who is described as a "mentor" of Sarah Palin and was head of the Republican Party in Wasilla." Roy Burkhart was also a Palin campaign contributor. Then Palin appointed Blase Burkhart to the builder-selection committee, which gave the construction contract to "Howdie Inc., a residential contractor owned at the time by Howard Nugent." Nugent was a Palin campaign contributor, also. Suprised? I'm not.
What happened next is what gets the juices flowing. Barnett:
"A list of subcontractors on the [sports complex] job, obtained by the Voice, includes many with Palin ties. One was Spenard Builders Supply, the state's leading supplier of wood, floor, roof, and other "pre-engineered components." In addition to being a sponsor of Todd Palin's snow-machine team that has earned tens of thousands for the Palin family, Spenard hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004. When the Palins began building a new family home off Lake Lucille in 2002—at the same time that Palin was running for lieutenant governor and in her final months as mayor—Spenard supplied the materials, according to Antoine Bricks, who works in its Wasilla office. Spenard actually filed a notice "of its right to assert a lien" on the deed for the Palin property after contracting for labor and materials for the site. Spenard's name has popped up in the trial of Senator Stevens—it worked on the house that is at the center of the VECO scandal as well.
Todd Palin told Fox News that he built the two-story, 3,450-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath, wood house himself, with the help of contractors he described as "buddies."As mayor, Sarah Palin blocked an effort to require the filing of building permits in the wide-open city, and there is no public record of who the "buddies" were. The house was built very near the complex, on a site whose city purchase led to years of unsuccessful litigation and, now, $1.3 million in additional costs, with a law firm that's also donated to Palin collecting costly fees from the city. Dorwin and Joanne Smith, the principals of complex subcontractor DJ Excavation & Development, have donated $7,100 to Palin and her allied candidate Charlie Fannon (Joanne is a Palin appointee on the state Board of Nursing). Sheldon Ewing, who owns another complex subcontractor, Weld Air, has donated $1,300, and PN&D, an engineering firm on the complex, has contributed $699.
Ewing was one of the few sports-complex contractors, aside from Spenard, willing to address the question of whether he worked on the house as well, but he had little to say: "I doubt that it occurred, but if it did indirectly, how would I know anyhow?" The odd timing of Palin's house construction—it was completed two months before she left City Hall and while she and Todd Palin were campaigning statewide for the first time—raises questions, especially considering its synergy with the complex."
Does any of this seem a little off to you? Large construction contracts are being handed out to campaign contributers at the same time Todd's "buddies," who just happen to be contractors, are helping Todd build the new Palin house. At the same time Sarah is making sure there will be no public record of building permits. To me, this is a very similar situation that Ted Stevens is currently in. The main difference is that Sarah, as Governor of Alaska, can hide things a bit easier.
Here is the interview with Todd Palin on Fox News (of course).
Conclusion:
To me all of this seems to point to a family with ethics issues. Do we really want someone who so easily takes handouts and abuses power as our next Vice President? I want someone with who is a positive thinker, tells the truth and speaks to me with honesty. Sarah Palin is not that person. I will leave you with 2 women from Alaska speaking about Gov. Palin.
After reading this article, I have become extremely worried for the experiment known as "Democracy." Electronic voting machines are counting a majority of votes this election cycle and we cannot trust a single count they output. The name of this article should be enough to scare the pants off anyone using electronic voting machines this Election. Isn't it bad enough that there are those among us who want to scare voters into not voting?
First, I need to make everyone aware that I am a network administrator for a retirement benefits firm. I fix/repair PCs on a daily basis, I setup printers, fix program installations and do firewall maintenance. Being a techie I know that these voting machines are not all that difficult to get right in a controlled test environment. With proper field testing, there is absolutely no reason we should still be having trouble with these machines. Yet they still aren't working properly.
Hacking Democracy:
Having watched the excellent documentary, Hacking Democracy (Video can be seen => HERE <= and is well worth the time), I also know Voting Machines can be hacked and results manipulated without a proper paper trail. So this leaves us with "dirty tricks" and "voting machine malfunction" as the two major woes of Election Day '08. I live in North Carolina and we still use paper ballots. For this I am grateful. I wonder, if they had known we were going to be a swing state this time around, do you think electronic voting machine legislation would have been brought up sooner?
Solution?:
What are we to do to ensure proper voting results?
Simple...eliminate all electronic voting machines and do regulated hand counts where a representative from each involved party certify counts of 1000 ballots. In this day of "must have it now" human thinking we need to re-think how quickly the results must be delivered. I know this may kill the ratings for CNN, Fox News & MSNBC to not get the results election night...but at least our peace of mind will be intact. Knowing who won the presidential election RIGHT NOW should not overshadow knowing who REALLY won. Yet, somehow, in this crazy technology age we live in, this is lost on many people. It's frustrating and should make everyone as angry as I am. Voting machines that have proof in the field that they do not function properly should be eliminated from the system, PERIOD.
Conclusion:
It appears that with less than one month to go, we are still having random voting issues across this great country of ours. This should sadden everyone that we are prisoners to an election process that has been hijacked by technology that DOES NOT WORK. Technology that has not been tested properly, not been battle readied in a live, working test environment and not been certified by an independent auditor, should NOT BE USED. We are prisoners to those that use money to wield power. We are prisoners to electronic voting that could shape an election not based on fact, but based on error. We are prisoners in an invisible cell of silence that will only be realized when it's too late. If you still don't believe me, then you haven't seen Hacking Democracy.
John McCain may have one right: My fellow prisoners...
"If the campaign has nothing to hide....why are they hiding so much?"
The lack of original thought process by Sarah Palin is mind boggling and very worrisome to me. The repeating of talking points over and over when asked the same question is an interview style that seems full of ignorance and disdain for the interviewer. Katie was as nice as she could be but it's still apparent she lacks confidence in the Gov. from Alaska. This is likely due to the fact that she hasn't had a real interview (including her own) where she answered any REAL questions with original answers that could show the ability to formulate her own opinion.
The Karl Rove Plan:
While Palin is doing the best she can to learned the canned answers from the McCain campaign, Karl Rove has a different plan. Karl Rove is a genius. He may be an EVIL genius, but an evil genius is still a genius.
Karl Rove has plans and then backup plans. His plan to keep Palin giving softball interviews and still coming up with ignorant responses is just that, a plan. He is lowering the American public's expectations of Sarah Palin. He is doing so in hopes that she comes out in the debates and does a really fine job. Karl Rove's plan may work. This would lead to the thinking, "Wow, she's not as stupid as she appears to be" to take hold of the American public.
Karl Rove's backup plan is being seen this week. He is preempting the possibility of postponing the debate with Mr. Obama on Sept. 26th, 2008. He did this in hopes that Obama would give in and they could use the VP debate slot and give Palin extra time to do her homework. While this backup plan appears to be backfiring, the main plan is still in effect.
The debates:
The debates are upon us and soon we will learn what kind of men & woman Obama, Biden, Palin & McCain really are. I am satisfied with the moderators and feel we can learn a lot. Jim Lehrer, Tom Brokaw, Bob Schieffer and Gwen Ifill (VP debate) are all excellent and fair moderators. I do not believe this will be an issue this year. The lack of follow-up may still be.
It will be interesting to see how each moderator handles the follow up issue. We all know that the lack of follow up has taken us down a dark road in the past with Iraq and even the Sarah Palin pick itself. Will these moderators make the tough choice of being TOUGH? I doubt it. We will likely see the same old cherry picking of questions and lingering responses that plagued the last 3 election cycle debates. Sure there's a timer...but it won't be used.
I certainly hope that each moderator makes appropriate follow up questions and calls each candidate out if they don't answer the question. Don't let them get away with talking points! This goes for Obama/Biden as well! I want real answers from real people about real issues.
The "I get to meet Obama" Update:
My wife, my mother and myself will be volunteering at the Obama/Biden rally in Greensboro, NC this weekend. I will have the greatest honor of meeting Mr. Obama and shaking his hand. I look forward to this and hope to see any of you NC readers there!
The event is free to the public on a first come/first serve basis so BE THERE EARLY!
236 E. Washington Street - In front of the J. Douglas Gaylon Depot Greensboro, NC Saturday, September 27th Gates Open: 10:00 a.m. Program Begins: 12:15 p.m.
Parking Information: Attendees are recommended to park in City of Greensboro parking garages which are free on Saturdays and are located at:
Greene Street at Washington Street Davie Street at Market Street Bellmeade Street at Greene Street N. Church Street between Friendly and East Lindsay
Street Closures: Event participants should enter through gates off of Elm Street. Streets will be closed surrounding the Depot starting Friday, September 27th, at 6:00 p.m. Additional street closures will begin Saturday morning, September 27th, at 6:00 a.m. through 6:00 p.m., and will affect the blocks of:
Davie and McGee Davie and Washington Davie Street to Market Washington Street from Davie to Lyndell Street Church Street from Washington to Market Lyndell Street to Market Hughes from Church to Lyndell
Closures should affect traffic patterns from 6:00 am Saturday September 27th, through 3:00 p.m. Traffic may be congested in the area through 6:00 p.m.
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