Donuts And Politics

I am so geeked to vote tomorrow, I mean this is so exciting! Its been 12 years since my candidate won the Presidential election, and this time its a candidate I have supported from the get gonearly 18 months ago. So you can bet I am going to vote! This was a great video I found abotu the importance of voting:

Its been a long, LONG campaign. Every four years it seems to start earlier. I mean, Clinton announced her “listening tour” in January of 2007. Heck, remember all the pundits though the election wouldbe CLinton v. Giulini 911? Obama announced I believe in February 2007. But the outcome is looking mighty rosy. I’d rather be in Obama’s position right now than McCain’s, that’s for sure. I was playing around with the electoral map at http://www.270towin.com and found that even were Obama to lose PA,OH and FL, he could still win by taking VA, IA, NV, NM, and CO, all of which he seems poised to take. I think PA will be a little closer than 10 point gap some polls show, but I think Obama will win.

I did enjoy the 30 minute ad he put on tv Wednesday, very well done. Frankly, his whole campaign has been impeccably run, it really has been the “no drama” campaign. Same slogan focus and strategy he’s had from the day he announced, its really amazing. I’ll have to post later on the Palin choice that apparently has doomed McCain. (Just ask yourself: can I see this woman as President of the United States?)

This video was very touching, of Charles, a really old black guy talking about FDR and meeting Obama:

Deep apologies for my complete lack of blogging, but moving and new job and all this has kept me away. But with a mere 2 weeks to go before the election, I felt I had to get back here. To start off, I read this amazing and heartwarming story today from Politico.com and wanted to share it:

Anyway, here’s the story:

Upon arriving at the Hamilton County Board of Elections in Cincinnati to vote early today I happened upon some friends of my mother’s — three small, elderly Jewish women. They were quite upset as they were being refused admitance to the polling location due to their Obama T-Shirts, hats and buttons. Apparently you cannot wear Obama/McCain gear into polling locations here in Ohio…. They were practically on the verge of tears.

After a minute or two of this a huge man (6′5″, 300 lbs easy) wearing a Dale Earnhardt jacket and Bengal’s baseball cap left the voting line, came up to us and introduced himself as Mike. He told us he had overheard our conversation and asked if the ladies would like to borrow his jacket to put over their t-shirts so they could go in and vote. The ladies quickly agreed. As long as I live I will never forget the image of these 80-plus-year-old Jewish ladies walking into the polling location wearing a huge Dale Earnhardt racing jacket that came over their hands and down to their knees!

Mike patiently waited for each woman to cast their vote, accepted their many thanks and then got back in line (I saved him a place while he was helping out the ladies). When Mike got back in line I asked him if he was an Obama supporter. He said that he was not, but that he couldn’t stand to see those ladies so upset. I thanked him for being a gentleman in a time of bitter partisanship and wished him well.

After I voted I walked out to the street to find my mother’s friends surrouding our new friend Mike — they were laughing and having a great time. I joined them and soon learned that Mike had changed his mind in the polling booth and ended up voting for Obama. When I asked him why he changed his mind at the last minute, he explained that while he was waiting for his jacket he got into a conversation with one of the ladies who had explained how the Jewish community, and she, had worked side by side with the black community during the civil rights movements of the ’60s, and that this vote was the culmination of those personal and community efforts so many years ago. That this election for her was more than just a vote … but a chance at history.

Mike looked at me and said, “Obama’s going to win, and I didn’t want to tell my grandchildren some day that I had an opportunity to vote for the first black president, but I missed my chance at history and voted for the other guy.”

And so the day came that I never was quite sure would come, Barack Obama, the first African-American candidate of a major US party, was formally nominated and accepted, And WHAT AN INCREDIBLE SPEECH! He was amazing tonight and that stadium was huge and rocking and inspiring. Over 75,000 people there to see his nomonation speech and man were they happy with waht they heard. He really laid out why we need to change the dircetio of this country, the change he will bring, and just ripped into McCain and his failures. AWESOME.

Blog is back online baby!

Ah, now that primary season is over, there really hasn’t been much happening. Sure, you have the daily yapping between the campaigns, but in the dog days of summer, you can see my blogging has become a bit sparse. I am also facing deadlines with my current curriculum job and the distinct possibility of moving soon (still working that out). But, I had to post this today, from an article on Slate:

The stab from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki turned into a comedy routine. Maliki stated this week that he would not sign any treaty allowing U.S. armed forces to remain on his nation’s soil—the current accord, known as a Status of Forces Agreement, expires at the end of this month—unless it includes a timetable for their withdrawal.

 

Obama has called for just such a timetable. McCain has opposed one, famously saying that a substantial number of U.S. combat troops might need to stay in Iraq for another 100 years.

 

When asked about Maliki’s statement, McCain told reporters that it had been mistranslated—to which Maliki responded that, no, the English version was correct. At that point, some of McCain’s supporters said that the prime minister wasn’t serious, that he’d been forced by political constituencies to demand a timetable. Maliki again insisted that he meant what he’d said. (Even if he was caving to political pressures, one could infer that this suggests a majority of Iraqis and their major parties want us to commit to getting out in the not-too-distant future.)

 

It’s a rather awkward situation for McCain, who did publicly say four years ago at the Council on Foreign Relations that if an elected government of Iraq asked us to leave, “I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave,” adding, “I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.”

 

Obama also got a boost this week from reports in the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz that Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told top officials of the Israeli Defense Forces that the United States would not give them a “green light” to launch airstrikes on Iran.

 

Obama has said that the situation in Iran—the continued enrichment of uranium, the recent test-firing of missiles, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s persistently belligerent rhetoric—calls for a full-court diplomatic press. This means economic pressure but also direct talks. Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have said much the same thing in public, noting that an attack would merely delay, not halt, Iran’s nuclear program and that Iranian retaliation to an airstrike could do far greater damage—especially economic—to the United States and its allies.

…and what do you know, the court finds the government’s case incredibly unfulfilling and lacking for any real evidence. To deny these prisoners fair habeas corpus hearings for over 7 years in our country is simply obscene. Check out this article in which it says:

In the first case to review the government’s secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal appeals court found that accusations against a Muslim from western China held for more than six years were based on bare and unverifiable claims. With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents. The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the Lewis Carroll poem “The Hunting of the Snark”: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.” “This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The unanimous panel overturned as invalid a Pentagon determination that the detainee, Huzaifa Parhat, a member of the ethnic Uighur Muslim minority in western China, was properly held as an enemy combatant.

So on Friday, we saw the lovely sight of HIlalry endorsing Barack Obama, in person and sharing the stage together. It was a a nice speech, well done I thought. Now get her out of the way and let’s move forward. I was asked who I think Obama will choose as VP and I honestly do not know, but it won’t be her. Toshia and I went to an Obama House Party on Saturday, one of thousands across the nation that day, and met some pretty cool people. It was fun to hear why other people were there and exciting to see regular people want to be a part of the campaign.

I’ve got a few things to write about from the past week (been distracted with work and realizing I have a new job shock) and will do so tomorrow so tune back in. Apologies for the hiatus.

I’m back now. Been on a little vacation–ie wedding weekend in Plymouth. Will be back to updating daily now!