The Number 0: Brought to You By the Letters G-O-P

Creating a working group to publish the 19-page-long "The Republican Road to Recovery" including House Minority leaders, Jim Boehner (R-OH), Eric Cantor (R-VA) & Mike Pence (R-IN)? $??,000,00. Hosting a press conference to announce an alternative budget to President Barack Obama's proposed budget? $?,000.00. Having [no] actual numbers in your alternative budget? Priceless.

The DNC's Hari Sevugan leaves us with this gem: "After 27 days, the best House Republicans could come up with is a 19-page pamphlet that does not include a single real budget proposal or estimate. There are more numbers in my last sentence than there are in the entire House GOP budget."

Voter Suppression, the GOP's Not-So-Secret Weapon (Part 2)

In a follow-up to my last blog post on Republican voter fraud leading up to the 2008 elections, I'm including in this post the following recent news briefs on the subject:

Purging the Poor

In what may be a new low, earlier this week a Republican Party county chairman in Michigan told The Michigan Messenger, our sister site, that the party plans to use lists of foreclosed homes to challenge the ballots of people registered at those addresses who try to vote on Election Day. Though he’s since denied he said it, reporter Eartha Jane Melzer stands by her story.

GOP Loses Challenge to Early Ohio Voting

Ohio voters went to the polls yesterday for the first day of early voting, exercising a right in Ohio that the state’s Republicans had fought hard to defeat.

Because of an overlap between the beginning of absentee voting 35 days before Election Day, which started yesterday, and the Oct. 6 end of voter registration, Ohio allows one week of same-day voting and registration.

Republicans had fought hard against that rule, designed to make voting easier, by bringing several lawsuits, charging that early votes and same-day registration lend themselves to attempts at voter fraud. These are just some of several GOP lawsuits to end related attempts to challenge Democratic votes in key swing states.

In general, Republican lawsuits around the country have been urging states to restrict voting rights — claiming the threat of massive voter fraud.

Democrats respond that Republicans are just trying to prevent voting by the poor, young, elderly and minorities. All these demographics are more likely to vote Democrat, and are the target of major Democratic Party get-out-the-vote efforts.

Dem Registration Surges in Nevada

Democratic voter registration is surging across Nevada — including swing counties where Republicans once held an edge.

Since 2006, Democrats have beat Republicans in new registrants by about 13,000 Nevadans. That’s a big shift for a swing state typically decided by narrow margins — for example, Nevada re-elected Bush by a slim 21,000 votes.

New Wiki Counters GOP Voter Suppresion

Can Wikipedia help vanquish voter suppression in America?

That’s the model some activists are betting on.

Democrats have been moving swiftly to fight Republican voter suppression tactics in Michigan. Since first reported by our sister site, The Michigan Messenger, a GOP effort to suppress voters based on home foreclosures has drawn a

lawsuit from the Obama campaign; calls for a Justice Dept. investigation, from Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and demands from grass-roots activists that Sen. John McCain condemn these practices.

(So far, McCain’s “honest and open election committee” did not even make a pretense of returning calls about the issue.)

Now bloggers and techies are developing a dedicated Voter Suppression Wiki — a centralized, open source online portal — to help track, expose and prevent voter suppression this cycle.

The wiki tracks incidents of voter suppression, and enables citizens to upload alleged examples of suppression. An “action center” links visitors to a range of local and national programs working to combat suppression. Jon Pincus, a social networking activist whom I met while working against warrantless spying, argues that Web activism is helpful here because most suppression turns on information gaps.

ACORN Office in Vegas Raided in Voter-Fraud Probe

Nevada authorities seized records Tuesday from a group they accused of submitting fraudulent voter-registration forms — including for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is being accused of voter registration fraud. The group is based in Las Vegas and aims to register low-income people to vote. Nevada officials say that ACORN used fake and duplicate names, including the names of Dallas Cowboy players in a fraudulent voter registration.

(ABC News Photo Illustration)

"Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4," said Secretary of State Ross Miller, referring to star players on the pro football team.

State authorities raided the headquarters of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that works to register low-income people.

Miller said the raid was part of a monthslong investigation, and he contended the group had submitted registration forms that used false information or duplicated information on multiple forms. He did not estimate how many.

Bertha Lewis, interim chief organizer for ACORN, said the group has been working with election officials to weed out fraudulent forms from those submitted by the canvassers it hires.

"Today's raid by the secretary of state's office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than to discredit our work registering Nevadans," Lewis said.

"For the past 10 months, anytime ACORN has identified a potentially fraudulent application, we turn that application in to election officials separately and offer to provide election officials with the information they would need to pursue an investigation or prosecution of the individual," Lewis said.

She said ACORN had turned in 46 problem applications submitted by 33 former employees to election officials in the Las Vegas area, where it has registered 80,000 people.

According to its national Web site, the group has registered 1.3 million people nationwide for the Nov. 4 election. It has encountered complaints of fraud stemming from registration efforts in Wisconsin, North Carolina, New Mexico, Michigan, Ohio and Missouri.

Why the Debates Won't Matter (Hint: It's a Felony)

This election won't be won or lost at the debates. Nor will it be determined by the two campaigns' "ground games" -- their get-out-the-vote efforts. Nor, unfortunately, will its outcome even depend on how many Americans wake up on Election Day intending to vote for one candidate or the other.

Instead, my fear is that the Electoral College results will hang on the swing state voting systems' vulnerability to sabotage.

It's already happening.

In El Paso County, Colorado, the county clerk -- a delegate to the Republican National Convention -- told out-of-state undergraduates at Colorado College, falsely, that they couldn't vote in Colorado if their parents claim them as dependents on their taxes.

In Montgomery County, Virginia, the county registrar issued a press release warning out-of-state college students, falsely, that if they register to vote in Virginia, they won't be eligible for coverage under their parents' health and car insurance, and that "if you have a scholarship attached to your former residence, you could lose this funding."

In Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, Democratic voters received a mailing containing tear-out requests for absentee ballots addressed to the clerk in Caledonia -- the wrong location. In Middleton, Wisconsin, Democratic voters received absentee ballot requests addressed to the clerk in Madison -- the wrong address. Both mailers were sent by the McCain campaign.

Florida, Michigan and Ohio have some of the country's highest foreclosure rates. "Because many homeowners in foreclosure are black or poor," says the New York Times, "and are considered probable Democratic voters in many areas, the issue has begun to have political ramifications." If you're one of the million Americans who lost a home through foreclosure, and if you didn't file a change of address with your election board, you're a sitting duck for an Election Day challenge by a partisan poll watcher holding a public list of foreclosed homes. In states like New Mexico and Iowa, the number of foreclosures is greater than the number of votes by which George W. Bush carried the state in 2004.

Democrats cry foul over suspicious e-mail

An e-mail circulating throughout Texas and apparently targeting supporters of Democrat Barack Obama falsely warns voters that casting a straight-ticket Democratic ballot won't register a vote for Obama.

Democratic leaders are crying foul. First, it's not true, they say.

Second, they think it could cause people using the eSlate electronic voting machines to inadvertently cancel out their downballot straight-ticket voters, eliminating potentially millions of votes for Democratic candidates in state and county races.

"For those who normally vote 'Straight Democratic', please pay close attention!!!!!" states the e-mail, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

"I was informed this weekend by a group of Obama volunteers that when voting for the presidential candidate this November, you have to make sure you punch Barack's name first, then proceed to punch 'Straight Democratic' or else the vote for the president won't count," the e-mail says.

Quite the opposite, says Texas Democratic Party spokesman Hector Nieto said.

Voter Suppression, the GOP's Not-So-Secret Weapon

More disturbing news that should make all lovers of freedom and equal voting rights sick has been reported by several news sources. The Washington Independent published an eye-opening article on the recent spate of voter registration laws being challenged by the Republican party on a state-by-state basis. It is entirely possible that we could be seeing a national replay of Florida 2000 all over again, unless either these challenges are stopped in the courts or the newly registered Democratic voters, independents, and youth voters come out and vote in record numbers for the Democratic Presidential ticket on November 4, 2008. These three groups of voters tend not to vote in numbers comparable to long-time voters because they are not in the habit of voting and may forget to vote or think that their "one" vote won't make much difference in the outcome of an election.

As my Pastor, Bishop Matthew Williams says about people's character, "A man will do what he has always done," meaning a person's character will cause him to do those things that he is accustomed to doing or in the habit of doing. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the GOP--after successfully rigging the vote nationally by manipulating Diebold voting machines whose owner publicly committed to delivering Ohio to Bush in 2000 and conducting successful voter's challenges in 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections--would seek to gain advantage by doing the same thing again! It doesn't help that recently ACORN offices in Las Vegas were raided in a supposed voter registration fraud sting. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a popular national community organizing group was targeted because of allegations of submitting nearly 300 inaccurate voter registration cards in their voter registration effort. I believe this organization was purposely targeted because in this election cycle, the Obama campaign is said to have collaborated with ACORN to assist in it's Get Out the Vote efforts due to ACORN's reputation for helping register and turn out new voters. Also, new Democratic voter registration in Nevada has risen by record numbers this year, threatening to turn the state blue in November. See the connection? Republicans conveniently forget that John McCain was a 2006 keynote speaker at an immigration reform rally sponsored by ACORN, and that the organization enjoys bi-partisan support around the country. McCain has turned on the organization now that it is politically expedient.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) seated with Congressman Kendrick Meeks (D-FL) at February 2006 ACORN Rally

One thing worth noting... voter fraud is only voter fraud if a person actually votes fraudulently! Since it is difficult to physically vote if one's name and address are not on the voter rolls of their local supervisor of elections office, such a charge would generally be baseless, though that fact hasn't stopped Republican operatives from targeting alleged fraudulent voters who voted legally. If one does not vote, there is no fraud whether intentional or actual. Think for a minute about what happened the last time you voted (at least in the Sunshine State, Florida, where most of my readers live). Like me, you probably received a letter from your county Supervisor of Elections possibly with a sample ballot and informing you of the address of your voter precinct along with voting rules (bring legal photo ID, etc.). When you walked into your precinct, you most likely walked over to a check-in or sign-in point, where you were asked to produce your ID. Your ID was then checked against the voter database either on a laptop or a voter printout. If your information matched the rolls AND you were at the correct precinct, you were then allowed to vote. Otherwise, you would be directed to the correct precinct (I had this happen earlier this year in the 2008 Florida primary elections because I had moved to a new neighborhood and forgot to inform the local SOE office) OR handed a provisional ballot which is not processed until the days following the election, and counted only if you are confirmed as a registered voter. Of course, the process may differ due to voting laws which vary by state.

Now down to the brass tacks as they say. There are several ways that the Republican Party under the guidance of Karl Rove, architect of the George W. Bush elections, have themselves been engaging in voter fraud & suppression leading up to the crucial 2008 elections. Caging which involves compiling lists of registered voters whose registration is challenged after an election, purging state voter rolls either randomly or by targeting groups of people more likely to vote Democratic such as former felons who have had their voting rights restored just before elections, etc. The good folks over at Inteldaily.com have posted an article detailing various voter suppression tactics:

Voter suppression also includes tactics like false notices announcing changes of election dates; police cruisers at intersections near voting places; threats that voters will be challenged; poorly trained poll workers who send registered voters away; special identification requirements proven to reduce the vote (e.g., photo identification); and much, much more. The newest rage is "cleansing" centralized registration databases. The Florida pre-2000 voter registration purge of tens of thousands of minority voters cost Al Gore the election and inspired federal policies supporting registration cleansing around the country.

Then there are the seemingly endless examples of electronic voting machines improperly recording and counting votes plus security problems. There are no real methods of checking electronic voting. Even if you could and proved fraud, state recount laws are very difficult to invoke and highly restrictive. In Virginia and Florida, for example, it is illegal to recount the paper forms for optical scan voting machines as part of a recount.

What a total mess and a complete mockery of the democracy that we deserve. But when you add up all of these strategies, based on past performance, they work at the margins - maybe a 3-4% shift in votes to the Republican candidate.

A telling NY Times article from April 2007, "In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud" discusses the alleged voter fraud problem and provides a useful graphic showing statistics of US government trials from 2002-2007 and the resulting convictions, acquittals, and dismissals of cases involving alleged voter fraud. The statistics clearly speak for themselves, and out of 95 total persons prosecuted for voter fraud in those 5 years, 25 people/cases were acquitted or dismissed. Of the convictions 26 cases involved individual voters, some of whom were simply people who forgot a minor detail on their application, 31 cases involved party or campaign workers, 10 involved government officials, and 3 involved election workers. Though to hear the GOP talk about it, one would think that the problem is so wide-spread that millions of people must be voting illegally, but NO that is not actually the case.

The final analysis is that we as individual voters must be vigilant when it comes to protecting our voting rights and immediately report any voting discrepancies to voter watchdog agencies, the ACLU, voting rights attorneys, etc. Thankfully the Democratic Party and Obama for America will have attorneys and certified poll watchers blanketing precincts throughout the entire state of Florida on Tuesday, November 4 to ensure that shenanigans don't occur. It will be one of the largest legal efforts in the history of US Presidential elections. Let's hope it helps. One of my current focuses in my blogging and voter awareness efforts is educating Tampa Bay voters about their rights as well as voting rules passed by the State of Florida. Later this week I will post information from the Obama campaign debunking several viral voting myths that have circulated online and on several radio stations in Florida.

Darren Hauck for The New York Times
Nashawna Prude, 9, with a family photo that includes her grandmother, Kimberly, second from left, jailed for more than a year for voter fraud.

Vote for US, We'll Protect You from the Immigrants

Have you ever wondered why non-whites, non-Christians, and immigrants tend to vote for Democrats by a 3:1 ratio? I always thought it was because as far as political platforms go, the DNC tends to better articulate the role of government in assisting the have nots, i.e., the poor, immigrants, etc. whereas the RNC articulates the welfare of the haves and is more susceptible to rule by lobbyists. Liberal blog Open Left penned a revealing article explaining in socio-cultural terms exactly why the GOP's message of cultural, Eurocentric superiority permeates their political platform and campaign messages and has been so successful for them.

All throughout the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, the media made hay of the Democratic candidates using identity politics to win primaries, i.e., Black voters vs Latino voters, feminist voters, and "bitter" rural and poor, working class white voters, etc. However, it seems that Republican politicians have effectively used identity politics to great effect for some time with the message of protecting their constituents from "THEM". That is, Blacks, non-white immigrants, and other undesirables.

Several prominent examples that come to mind. In 2000, George W. Bush gained the Republican nomination for President in large part because of his racist attack against John McCain when Karl Rove and former SC Attorney General Charlie Condon released whisper polling in South Carolina claiming McCain had fathered a Black child out of wedlock.

The so-called Bradley Effect was coined because of a California gubernatorial race in which Tom Bradley, the popular Black Mayor of Los Angeles was widely expected to win due to favorable polling but ended up losing the race. Polling later showed white voters falsely told pollsters they would vote for a Black candidate to avoid criticism, and then did not, thereby benefitting his white GOP opponent. According to this theory, a Black political candidate must generally have a double digit lead over his opponent in order to overcome the hidden bias.

In 1996, Tennessee politician Harold Ford, Jr. had a great chance of becoming the first Black to win a US Senate seat since Reconstruction until his Republican challenger, Bob Corker, released an ad that played on the fact that Ford attended a Playboy Super Bowl party for 4,000 attendees and featured a naked blonde telling Ford to "call me" with the insinuation that this Black man will take your white women. Those of us in the Black community are well aware of the stereotype of Black men dating blonde women. Needless to say, the ad did enough damage to derail the candidacy of Ford, considered nationally to be the inevitable candidate.

In the past two years, the Democratic and Republican congressmen wrestled with passing so-called "immigration reform." A number of Republicans lined up against the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 and helped to defeat passage by arguing against supposed "amnesty for illegals" when a number of the parts of the legislation to reform the immigration system was actually good. I want to know, since when did white Americans gain the right to bar "those other people" from entering their country? Every single person currently living in the United States either emigrated here from another country or have as ancestors people who called other countries and continents home, whether English, Dutch, German, Italian, Irish, Jewish, Spanish, certainly Africans, Asians, etc. That's why for many years this country has been called the "melting pot" of the world. So there really is no such thing as a "Real" American as many Republican ads would like us to believe because everyone here other than the Native Americans are from somewhere else!

Appalling Palin & the RNC Mocks Community Organizers

I waited until this weekend to write this blog because I, like many others, was expecting more than what we heard from John McCain on Thursday night during his RNC Presidential nomination speech at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, MN. I'm not in the habit of breaking down VP nomination speeches simply because we don't actually vote for VP candidates whose political campaign impact is negligble. We vote for the guy at the top of the ticket. As you will see from my previous posts such as "Obama & The American Promise", I didn't blog on Biden's DNC VP nomination speech, just Obama's because I expected his speech would be more substantive with details on HOW he would do what we HOPED he would do once elected. I was not dissapointed, and neither were the 38 million viewers watching the speech at Mile High in Denver. So I thought I might do the same for the RNC, but alas John McCain succeeded in boring us to death with no new ideas, no discussion of any real solutions on home foreclosures, energy alternatives, the definition of "winning the war on terror", immigration reform, regaining trust in a bloated federal government with growing national debt, or how to pull out of a recession which saw 84,000 jobs lost in August. Because Wednesday night's Sarah Palin VP nomination speech was so full of lies and "terminological inexactitudes" about Democrats and Obama's community organizing, I am compelled to respond to her heartless speechmaking.

It shows the true heart of "compassionate" conservatism when the RNC convention audience repeatedly booed and laughed as political lightweights like former NY mayor, Rudolph "A Noun, A Verb, 9-11" Giuliani and VP nominee Sarah "As-former-mayor-of-town-of-9,000-I-ran-up-a-$20-millon-debt" Palin mocked Barack Obama for his work as a community organizer. When the Republican mouth pieces mocked community organizing as if it was nothing, they mocked millions of community organizers and activists including myself. The disdain they showed for regular people who make hard sacrifices daily in order to pull up their brother and sister goes a long way to showing the state of the Republican party and demonstrates why the RNC is bracing for another election cycle in which they are expected to lose more congressional and Senate seats than they did in 2006. Apparently, in Republican lore, politics and soldiering (especially if you became a POW in a forgotten war of 40 years ago) are the only ways one can really serve our country. Nothing else really matters, not even those less fortunate who by no fault of their own have slipped through the cracks. By the way, in regular people's talk, community organizing is:

a process by which disempowered people—most often low- and moderate income people—are brought together to act in their common self-interest. Community organizers act as area-wide coordinators of programs for different agencies in an attempt to meet community needs for health and welfare services. They also facilitate self-help programs initiated by local common-interest groups, for example, by training local leaders to analyze and solve the problems of a community. Community organizers work actively, as do other types of social workers, in community councils of social agencies and in community-action groups. At times the role of community organizers overlaps that of the social planners.

Now these are the things that Obama did on the South Side of Chicago where after graduating with his law degree at Harvard, he volunteered in helping churches and community organizations identify and assist workers who were recently unemployed when their steel mills closed down, taking their jobs, their pensions, benefits, and livelihood away without so much as a, "Thank you." Sen. Obama and others helped these men regain their self worth through vocational training so that they could in turn provide for their families.

It would take the most cynical of people to somehow deduce then that community organizing is not something to to be taken serious. I may not have the charitable pedigree of Mother Teresa, but having come from a low-income, single-parent family, I know exactly what it means to be a community organizer. After emigrating from Haiti for medical reasons, I grew up in Little Rock, AR and moved to Tampa, FL at age 10 with my adoptive mother who has been a Christian missionary to Haiti since 1969. By age 14, Ma signed me up to tutor elementary through high-school students free of charge through my neighborhood's community affairs office, the hub of community organizing in our area. (I am humbled that one of my former students is now a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England and will graduate later this month.) Our community affairs office was recognized in Tampa Bay for doing many things to lift up and provide a helping hand to inner city, low-income residents of Tampa by hosting Boy Scout and 4-H meetings, providing computer literacy tutoring, English literacy classes, GED preparation, job readiness programs, crime prevention through education, family planning and HIV/AIDS testing, scholarships for high-achieving, low-income students, government food assistance for the elderly and single-parent homes, food and clothing drives for nearby homeless shelters, among many other community projects.

My mother and I did not participate in these efforts to gain the public glory of men, but because of our efforts we did receive recognition in the local media and among community organizations such as Tampa/Hillsborough Human Rights Council, Bay Area Brotherhood, Metropolitan Ministries, Ybor City Rotary Club, and others. In the meantime, I learned the power of giving selflessly to others who could never give back in kind, how to be a leader, and the power of correct application of knowledge, and in turn my experiences assisting local leaders in community organizing granted me opportunities to meet mayors, community leaders, and movers and shakers whom I still keep in touch with. In addition I was blessed to receive Community Service awards from the Kiwanis Club during my high-school career, and induction in Omicron Delta Kappa (OΔK®) Leadership Honor Society among other groups during my college career. To those living within a few miles of the community affairs office, we were an invaluable, irreplaceable lifeline. I witnessed on a number of occasions my mother translating legal or medical documents so local Haitian and other French/Creole speakers could understand the decisions being made for and about them by various private and public agencies and the government. I saw the pride in the eyes of a single mother as she learned how to use a computer to apply for jobs--and the realization that I had helped someone was rewarding in and of itself.

Be honest, when is the last time you heard Republicans talk about helping others instead of focusing non-stop on how they could lower the tax burdens of their richest contributors? Go ahead...I'm waiting...

All of this is quite ironic, considering that during John McCain's Presidential nomination speech, he asked people to help in their communities:

If you're disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier. Because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.

Oh but wait, isn't that what Obama did? Oh I get it, if a Democrat shows he cares about the poor instead of waiting on the rich masters of oil, media, and military, he can't possibly be trusted or hailed as "one of us" right? "...you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Obama & The American Promise

Thursday night, August 28th, 2008, 45 years to the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech at the foot of the Lincoln Monument in Wash., DC, Sen. Barack Obama gave his DNC Convention nomination speech to nearly 85,000 at the former Mile High Stadium in Denver, CO. I will always consider Mile High as the rightful name of the now Invesco Field (if you're a long-time NFL fan you know what I'm talking about).

The significance of this day cannot be understated whether you're Black, White, man or woman in this country, Dr. King was more than just a great orator; he sacrificed his life so that ALL Americans could live The Dream that he spent his whole life fighting for. And what really is the American Dream? Barack Obama's biography recounted tonight reminded us that the American dream is really simple, but worth fighting for, and that the last 8 years has robbed the little guy of his will to dream. In simplest terms, the American Dream is for fathers and mothers, husbands and wives to be able to go to work and bring enough money home to care for their family. The American Dream is for each man to be successful while caring enough to make sure that his neighbor has a helping hand in hard times. The American Dream is not, however, for 90% of the nation's wealth to be held captive in the hands of a 10% who can't relate to $4/gallon at the gas pump and frankly "don't get it".

Yes, truly this was a historic occasion in so many ways. The obvious story line is that 45 years after Dr. King's greatest speech at age 34, the first Black man was nominated as Presidential candidate of a major political party. Though of course, the 47-year-old Obama is part White also, the Eurocentric culture has assigned the Black race to anyone who has at least one drop of Black blood. It is not, however, the fact that Obama is part Black that has the nation excited. I mean, Alan Keyes didn't excite us in two elections when he received less than 1% of the Republican primary vote--did he? Rather the country loves Obama because he embodies the best of us, represents truly equal opportunity, and captures the spirit of hope, hard work, and courage that we aspire to.

Here are some of my favorite highlights of the speech--there were quite a few:

We meet at one of those defining moments - a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.

These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.

We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.

Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a ten percent chance on change.

Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year?

It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy - give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.

Well it's time for them to own their failure.

It's time for us to change America. Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last thirty years, and John McCain has been there for twenty-six of them.

And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons.

And Democrats, we must also admit that fulfilling America's promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover what John F. Kennedy called our "intellectual and moral strength."

Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility - that's the essence of America's promise.

We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party.

So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise - that American promise - and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

Thank you, God Bless you, and God Bless the United States of America.

Hillary & the Speech That Was More Than Just a Speech

Well, now we know that Hillary Clinton doesn't wear PUMA's as of her roof-blowing, DNC Wednesday night speech in Denver. Political pundits as well as the blogosphere were buzzing over the positively charged atmosphere and the impact of Sen. Clinton's DNC unity talk.

Hillary Clinton's speech last night was amazing, passionate & most of all REAL! She talked to Democrats and the American people, not as a politician, but as someone who had finally found a purpose, not just a career opportunity. Had she talked more like this during the primaries, she may have fared better.

Notable highlights of Hillary Clinton's DNC 2008 speech (of which there were many):

"We are on the same team, and none of us can sit on the sidelines."

"No way. No how. No McCain. Barack Obama is my candidate. And he must be our President."

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for ...all the people in this country who feel invisible?" This really is the most important question that Hillary could ever ask her supporters. The ball is now in their court. Their actions will tell the world whether they are more committed only to electing a specific woman than they are to throwing out one of the most incompetent criminal administrations in US history who they don't even share the same political platform with in the first place.

"...[Barack Obama] he'll revitalize our economy, defend the working people of America, and meet the global challenges of our time. Democrats know how to do this. As I recall, President Clinton and the Democrats did it before. And President Obama and the Democrats will do it again." This is the part that so clearly ties the successes of the recent past when the US was at relative peace with the rest of the world, we had a record budget surplus, and the economy was very healthy with the hope for a successful future with Obama at the helm of the country.

"Barack Obama will end the war in Iraq responsibly and bring our troops home - a first step to repairing our alliances around the world."

"But we don't need four more years . . . of the last eight years."

"With an [ineffective] agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities. Because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart." Tongue in cheek, tongue in cheek.

"My mother was born before women could vote. But in this election my daughter got to vote for her mother for President."

Then she closed with the words of Harriet Tubman which she told slaves that she was conducting on the Underground Railroad..."Don't ever stop. Keep going."

"If you hear the dogs, keep going.
If you see the torches in the woods, keep going.
If they're shouting after you, keep going.
Don't ever stop. Keep going.
If you want a taste of freedom, keep going."

"But remember, before we can keep going, we have to get going by electing Barack Obama president."

"Nothing less than the fate of our nation and the future of our children hang in the balance."

Reasons Why I Would Not Vote for Hillary (EVER) by Kéto

This week, I was conversing online with one of my friends, we'll call him Bro. H. We were discussing the current political scene, and he posed this question to me, "How do you feel about the possibility of Hilary R Clinton getting the nomination over Obama in the DNC?" Well that really got me into some deep thinking as this really IS a possibilty considering that Sen. Clinton has already stated publicly that the popular vote does not matter as much as how the delegates vote (even though the delegates are appropriated based on the popular vote except of course for uncommitted "super" delegates). As of the Pennsylvania primaries, Obama leads Clinton by over 500,000 votes. Clinton has further stated that delegates may change their vote, meaning that even though Obama has a lead of over 100+ delegates over her, giving him the path to the nomination, she would not object if a sufficient number defected to her, giving her the final lead in delegates--it's as simple as that. Well, I decided to enumerate for H, my feelings on his question, and why I felt that way, so check out my post below! Let me know what you think too. KH

Bro. H, I feel...Uneasy. I feel that if Clinton gets the nomination with fewer earned delegates, fewer superdelegates, and fewer states (half) than Obama has won, then the Democratic party will lose quite of few of it's constituents--like me. (If the party nomination rules don't count then what's the point of running? Candidates might as well just pay off key party figures and call it a day.) And that is not in their best interest when trying to take back the White House and Congress, and future Supreme Court nominations in an election that they have a good possibility of winning. I was a supporter of Bill Clinton in his Presidency and up until this election cycle when I feel he and his wife started acting like Black voters owe them something. I certainly don't plan on voting for her due to several major factors among others:

1) claiming experience that she doesn't have (as if going to meetings during her husband's presidency automatically qualifies her for anything other than first lady status.) Given this logic, Laura Bush should be the President,

2) her inability to tell the truth about simple things (Bosnia sniper fire, named for Edmund Hillary, health care stories, implying that Obama is Muslim as a scare tactic, she fought AGAINST NAFTA etc),

3) trying to pit Black voters against female/feminist voters & white male voters,

4) agreeing to rules then trying to change them after she sees they (dis)advantage her (MI, FL delegates, caucuses...),

5) her record on supporting an insane war that she now supposedly opposes,

6) Clinton is supposedly the best candidate to lead on "Day 1". However, if she does win, her financial management style will doom the nation to a continued recession and higher national debt to to her inability to plan for the long run. All you have to do is look at her own campaign for proof. Clinton has known since 1999 that she would run for President in 2008, that's why she started making plans to run for the Senate in New York. She and her husband had built a vast political and financial network over the last 15 years since he was first elected President in 1992. She began raising money long before Obama, did yet she has little to show for it financially. After raising over $100 million prior to Super Tuesday (Feb. 4), Clinton has to take out a $5M loan shortly after b/c her campaign had squandered all that money, expecting to have the DNC nomination wrapped up on that day. This "plan" was admitted by her staff, so it clearly demonstrates that she has little ability to plan wisely for the long-term with other people's money, no matter that the over $100 million she had raised was one of the highest fundraising totals in the history of modern US elections, behind Sen. Obama. In the meantime, paper trails indicated that Clinton left behinds dozens of vendors across numerous states owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid campaign bills. Her staff only paid some of those bills when the vendors came forward on TV or in the media--some of these guys are small businesses who can't afford to go 1 or 2 months without collecting say $10,000 in debt. "Ready on Day 1?" Hardly.

7) finally Clinton is what the Republicans have been looking for. They are still not that excited about McCain (big money Republicans are still not embracing him--and their money is critical to winning). But... if she hoodwinks the nomination, Republicans will unite even more than they were ever able to in Bush' election-stealing escapades due to their hate of anything "Clinton". So from that standpoint, she is is unelectable, the most important argument of all.

All these reasons go to show me that Sen. Clinton practices "do anything/say anything" political opportunism--after Bush we need someone who stands for what is good and right when convenient and inconvenient, not just when the polls tell them. For me that person is Sen. Barack Obama. In a future post, I may detail the reasons WHY I Would (Will) Vote for Sen. Obama. I already voted for him in the Florida Democratic Primaries.