Elections

This has made my friggin' day :

NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC Endorses Senator Barack Obama for President

Washington, D.C. – NARAL Pro-Choice America, the political leader of the pro-choice movement with more than one million member activists in all 50 states, today announced that its political action committee is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president.

"There are few more tireless defenders of women's rights in this country than NARAL Pro-Choice America and I'm proud to accept their support," Sen. Obama said. "For decades, they have worked in the courthouse, in the legislature, and in the streets to make sure that women have the right to choose. This is a fundamental civil right that I've fought to protect in Illinois and in Washington, that's being threatened by Senator McCain, and that I'll be fighting in the months ahead to make secure today, tomorrow, and always."

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, praised both Sen. Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton for their leadership in standing up for women's reproductive rights throughout this campaign, but only one of these dynamic candidates can advance to the general election.

Photo Credit : Lost Albatross @ Flickr.com

Obama may have won Mississippi but I have a feeling the junior senator from New York may have enjoyed seeing most of her supporters wouldn't vote for the Senator of Illinois. CNN has the 411 on exit polls :

Of those who voted for Obama, 42 percent said they would be satisfied if Clinton was the nominee, according to the exit polls.

Among Clinton voters, only 16 percent said they would be satisfied if Obama wins the party's top spot.

The exit polls are based on surveys of 925 voters in Mississippi's Democratic primary.

What's interesting to me is that even with a third of the white vote, Obama beat her. Let's look at the actual exit poll numbers to see how it happened.

73% of white voters went to Clinton whereas 90% of African Americans went to Obama. When asked about the candidates' race, Obama's blackness was important to 62% of respondents. Of course, that number could be interpreted as important to vote for Obama or important to vote against him. Either way, race was a big decider in this state.

This last weekend, Democrats picked up another seat in Congress. It wasn't just any seat, it was Dennis Hastert's formerly "safe Republican" seat. The win was solid, with Democrat Bill Foster winning 53% of the vote. This was a major blow to the Republican Party.

Salon.com reports that "National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Karen Hanretty [said] in a statement that 'one election in one state does not prove a trend.'"

This is typical Republican blindness, pretending that data points are isolated incidents without looking at the broad picture. Republicans do this with global warming as well, ignoring decades of solid scientific data and pretending that a single cold season somehow is more important than those decades of data showing a clear trend.

I have news for Hanretty: this IS a trend.

Indicted Tom DeLay's old, "safe Republican" seat in Texas has been taken by a Democrat. Pedophile Mark Foley's old, "safe Republican" seat has been taken by a Democrat. The governorship of Kentucky, once "safe Republican" has been taken by a Democrat. The governorships of Montana and Virginia have been taken by Democrats. State legislatures around the nation have been flipping to Democrat like crazy starting in 2005. And, of course, Democrats overwhelmingly took the House and marginally took the Senate in 2006. Fundraising by Democrats is at record highs. Fundraising by Republicans is at record lows. Almost each and every special election that has been held for a Congressional seat since 2005 has flipped from Repub to Dem. Republicans are retiring or flipping parties at record numbers. It started in 2005, and this trend started when Americans saw the true cost of greedy Republican mismanagement when hurricane Katrina hit.

Yes, he does say that it looks like it was crucial in Clinton's win. He take the MSNBC exit polls and looks at the question "In deciding your vote for president today, was the race of the candidate". This is what he finds :

I'm not even going to go there describing the intentions behind the votes, but Matt should have included the data right above that question because it was asked twice but with 2 difference sets of answer choices :

Yet there are more exit poll numbers that just popped right out at me from the web page. For one, the numbers of minorities is minuscule.

Elections - Ethics and Voting

Type of Event: Training
Hosted By: J. Dalton Institute
Event Dates: 6/23/2008 - 6/24/2008
Event Location: Las Vegas, NV
Contact: J. Dalton Institute
Email: jdalton98@aol.com
Contact Phone:1-888-886-0664
Contact Fax:920-338-8683
Website: http://www.jdaltoninstitute.com

Course Description:DAY ONE: Seminar Overview, Professional Networking Exercise, Ethics and Professional Responsibility - Core Values Role Play, Roles and Responsibilities of Board Members and Staff, Role of the Tribal Council, Fundamental Fairness in Tribal Elections, How to Prepare SOP's for Election Staff and Boards. DAY TWO: Electronic Voting vs Manual Voting, Ballots, Evaluations, Presentation of Certificates, Closing.

How to Register: http://www.jdaltoninstitute.com/registration.html

Por el amor al país,

Por el amor a nuestra gente,

Por el amor a la patria,

Por el amor al presente,

Por el amor al futuro,

Por el amor a la esperanza,

Ésta es una carta urgente

que te pide,

te llama,

te reclama

Por el amor de tu madre,

Dále tu endoso y respaldo

A BARACK OBAMA.

Siempre,
Liza Sabater

Just got pinged through the grapevine : Barack Obama is on his way to Nuevo México. Could this mean an endorsement by Bill Richardson is next?

Stay tuned!

Through the microfinance organization Kiva, I have made several loans to small businesses around the world, including in Kenya. These loans link me to these businesses, through good and bad times. And Kenya is definitely seeing bad times. Now I really have not been paying as much attention to the contested election and the riots in Kenya as I would have liked to, but they affect me through these loans.

The Ebony Foundation is a partner of Kiva that works in Kenya. Here is a report from the Ebony Foundation on what is happening in Kenya:

I wish to thank you for your continued concern and support during this very difficult moment in Kenya・s history. We have been a peaceful Country in a generally troubled region and people sort of took the peace for granted.

The country is now battered almost to a pulp and blood spilt with
vengeance, senseless killings and wanton destruction. Markets, food
stores and shops have been looted. Hospitals are dysfunctional and
health centers incapacitated by riots and barricades. The violence,
death and destruction witnessed in the Country for the last couple
weeks has jolted the Nation into conscience and every body is now
craving normalcy.

While peace is slowly returning to all affected parts of the Country,
the impact of the riots has been devastating. Hundreds of people have
been killed turning thousands of innocent children into helpless

It's 2004 all over again, 'yall! Political manwhore and principal funder of the infamous "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" is at it again. GOPers are the party of crazy-makers and T. Boone Pickens is the guy who paid for the 2004 crazy-making anti-John Kerry smear campaign that claims to have given Bush the 2004 elections.

Unhappy with not being in the news during this election cycle, the oilman seems to have been drunk at a dinner sponsored by the American Spectator magazine. In a room full of Washington movers and shakers he claimed to be willing to pay 1 Million Dollars to anybody who could prove his "Swifties" lied about John Kerry's record.

Kerry issued a statement accepting the challenge and vowing to give the money to Paralyzed Veterans of America. So what does the GOP douchebag say to that? In what a colleague described as "a game of GOP Calvinball", the guy completely changes the rules of the wager by demanding that Kerry "provide his Vietnam journal, his military records, and copies of movies and tapes made during his service".

First off, I was upset that my colleague used the Calvinball reference to describe anything to do with the crazy-making slimeballs working for the Republican party. Bill Waterson is one of my heroes and Calvin and Hobbes is a masterpiece for how he captured the anarchic innocence and creative exhuberance of childhood.