Driving through the countryside here in the 18th district of Ohio today was so nice. The cornfields are just turning golden against the hills and the bright colors peeking out through the trees, but what I really enjoyed was the signs on so many lawns. In the last eight years I have always seen so many more Republican signs up, but this year it is looking more even and in some places one will see a long stretch of homes through a town with all the local Dems signs, our 18th district congressman, ZACK SPACE is everywhere because he has done such a good job since replacing Bob Ney and everyone likes him, and we have some big OBAMA/BIDEN signs as well as the regular ones popping up here and there more and more this week!

In calls to locals, I am getting the question about the recent association between Obama and Ayers or on what Acorn is...if they have a computer at home I give them these sites:

 http://www.factcheck.org/

http://www.fightthesmears.com

 I hope that Obama/Biden visit Zack's headquarters in New Philadelphia and the 18th district. One of the big problems out here is the talk radio shows and a lack of affordable access for many to a wider choice of media on local television and radio. Many simply cannot afford cable or broadband so listen to the am or fm on the radio or read the local papers which are slightly favoring a republican perspective.

However, with this lack of jobs and all the foreclosures, hard times are here for many and the facts are - right there as real as can be in their own yards now. With Palin's betrayal of trust problems in Alaska and her Alaska Independent Party associations being revealed - as well as her hypocritical attacks and false accusations on Obama lately being disproven, she is being spoken of openly as a liability to McCain's campaign and causing voters to question his judgement and he is the one having to tone down his own falsely informed constituents.

McCain's plan for homeowners was already rebutted eloquently by Obama on the spot at the last debate which was a surprise to McCain, especially when he shot down the notion by explaining the taxation on homeowners to bail out the loan sharks. Perhaps most embarrasing is the true red herring with the Ayers acquaintance and the community education project - just what they were doing and who it was, a board of many Republicans.

Check out this great article by Andrew Romano for Newsweek: Assessing Ayers:Innuendo vs. Information.

More from NEWSWEEK partner Factcheck.org:

"In a TV ad, McCain says Obama "lied" about his association with William Ayers, a former bomb-setting, anti-war radical from the 1960s and '70s. We find McCain's claim to be groundless. New details have recently come to light, but nothing Obama said previously has been shown to be false... McCain says in an Internet ad that the two "ran a radical 'education' foundation" in Chicago. But the supposedly "radical" group was supported by a Republican governor and included on its board prominent local civic leaders, including one former Nixon administration official who has given $1,500 to McCain's campaign this year. Education Week says the group's work "reflected mainstream thinking" among school reformers. The group was the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, started by a $49 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation, which was established by the publisher Walter Annenberg, a prominent Republican whose widow, Leonore, is a contributor to the McCain campaign. (FactCheck.org, which is nonpartisan, also receives funding from the Annenberg Foundation. But we are in no way connected to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which finished its work long before we came into being in late 2003.)...

Voters may differ in how they see Ayers, or how they see Obama's interactions with him. We're making no judgment calls on those matters. What we object to are the McCain-Palin campaign's attempts to sway voters--in ads and on the stump--with false and misleading statements about the relationship, which was never very close. Obama never "lied" about this, just as he never bragged about it. The foundation they both worked with was hardly "radical." And Ayers is more than a former "terrorist," he's also a well-known figure in the field of education."

Full article at:

 http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/10/10/assessing-ayers-innuendo-vs-information.aspx

There is something pathetic and embarrassing about seeing so many misinformed people seriously believing the lies and rumors saying that "This guy's a terrorist" and it being shown on the news all across the country, and these folks really get angry when they realize they have been lied to by one of their own. They are finding out and figuring out what to do about it. Just put them in front of the pc if you can, and get them to the above sites. It will save any exasperating longwinded family debates! One wonders just how many more of these backfires the great old party of below the belt defamers can take?

Hmmmm... If the old modus operendi habit continues, even the staunchest and most stubborn Repugs will turn red with embarrassment to be associated with such a bunch of weedy seedy cons that are not even so neo anymore.

OBAMA/BIDEN   CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!

DON'T LET THIS "BLAME GAME CARD" FOOL YOU OR SILENCE YOU - I was concerned after watching this run up to the debate video - the typical blame game accusation against DEMS in Congress for regulating the free market and allowing too many the opportunity to become home owners and carelessly permit and encourage less stable loans. Obviously, this was a problem and behavior of abuse was present with opportunists on both sides of the isle as we can see with the earmarks and lobbyist gifts, etc..

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27071342#27068175

There is one factor that they do not mention in how and why so many homeowners have foreclosed. JOBS. The massive closure of factories, stores, businesses of all kinds across this country, the run away shops to cheap foreign labor and higher profits and offshore tax shelters, the slow down and closure of our car companies, steel mills and other export resources due to trade rules, and the high cost of gasoline,  is BY FAR the biggest reason. If the jobs were there and we were all working, no one would be in trouble, no one would NOT be able to pay their bills. The core of the problem is that we do not have a way of paying for our necessary expenses. We cannot meet our everyday cost of living which is why we started borrowing more and more.

This completely debunks the argument on Morning Joe and I am sure there are other reasons why Congress voted in the legislation they did, including advice from other places in the market, (example, what did Greenspan have to say about this at the time? The market needs consumers to continue smooth operation). As it is in the here and now, crying over spilt milk will not help. What is done is done. NOW We The People can use all the Obama/Biden and Congressional regulation (regular) to return to a normal healthy growing economy and to check the drain of our hard earned securities, credits and values as soon as possible.

REGULATION? MCCAIN JUST VOTED FOR IT AS A REMEDY, DIDN'T HE? IT SURE WASN'T HARD FOR HIM TO COME TO THE PEOPLE'S MONEY FOR BACK UP WHEN HE NEEDED IT, WAS IT.

His vote is a statement that he agrees with regulation to check runaway Capitalism from a freefall here while the few take all the money and runaway and yet we are hearing complaints from the few about a capital gains tax on the top ten percent loud and clear.

Hmmmm....this "card" is not convincing. Just look at where we are at TODAY after eight years of being skinned by the runaways and vote for...

OBAMA/BIDEN 2008  THE CHANGE THAT WE NEED

"Joe Vogler makes Ayers look like a pot smoking underachieving hippie."
Posted by StewartT on October 7, 2008 at 12:05 AM

(I know this is long but it is fill to bury the troll doo doo. Dear fellow Dems, now what would we rather have and it is fun to rant sometimes when we feel so strongly. Olberman's and Kucinich's story about our ninety year old grandma pisses me off big time too!!! They used to drive people to suicide in oppressive times and places quite artfully, a good read on this is a book I read years ago called "My Testimony", by Anatoli Marchenko...The book made a huge impact on me, as it has to do with torture in a Soviet prison camp, (both mental and physical), and how the combined techniques made political prisoners become so mentally degraded over time that they no longer valued their own lives and tried in any way they could to kill themselves which was a convenience to the oppressors. I'm not sure if I got the spelling correct on the author's name after about 38 years off the top of my head? Please forgive.)

So Stewartt, That is so true! Like thousands and thousands of other "under-achieving protesting Ph.D Scientists, graduate students with 3 to 4.0 grade point averages and other enlightened caring seekers of light and truth, called dirty hippies by their rightwing parents in our country too ignorant to know that the ancient Greek meaning of the word Hippi was indeed seekers of light and truth, that marched to Washington D.C. one year because thousands and thousands of their brothers and sons and friends that were young American Citizens were suddenly violated, forced against their will - conscripted, stripped and sacrificed of being a citizen at all of anything and were coming home DEAD in body bags for all average Joe Six Packs and their wives to bury day after day after day. We would sit there at dinner time and watch it on the news as if it were a fiction movie comfortably oblivious, conditioned and numb.
You had to have been there - it was a crazy time, hard to describe to those who have come later, but we did capture it in movies like "Hearts and Minds". The mass psychological effect this had on the generation of the Viet Nam war was profound and traumatic. We were cannon fodder and we knew it when our friends in our high school year books were not at our ten year or twenty year reunions because a percentage of our senior class was eliminated.
So maybe, just maybe those who cared were not so extreme about the stubborn refusal to become reasonable and work toward a peaceful solution? No, it had to be forced and forced through two presidents, Johnson and Nixon, before the People finally came to their senses and banded together for social change in the seventies. Oh yes, there were a lot of MIA's too, I would say those Missing In Action were sacrificed completely and their families suffered the most with the punishing and haunting grief, and the unfinished business of not having a body to even bury and it took, what, ten years or more years before they finally treated this military of American Sons with any respect to erect a memorial wall! My good God, it makes one weep to remember the feelings of being beaten up and degraded to that extent. So I am sick and tired of these LIES by the rich to the rest of the seemingly young and naive ninety percent of We The People.
We are not wage slaves. We are equal citizens of this country supposedly...oh, shaking your heads in skepticism and doubt? Well then, perhaps now that history has shown us that we mistakenly switched successful horses midsteam in our spoiled state of being in 1991, we had better get Obama and Biden in so we can repeal these insane wounds to our Constitutional rights, to our whole county's functioning and working economy, and get back to building some real equality back up too!

Obama/Biden WE CAN and WILL TAKE BACK OUR WHITEHOUSE and OUR CONGRESS from these cloistered and spoiled people behaving like little misbehaving children in what is supposedly or what used to be or where did the real Republican Party even disappear to???

Yes, newsjunkie, Keith Olberman really kicked their butts today, and they needed a good whopping and it will continue as justice is done in Alaska to clear up the mess the Governor is in.
No, she will not pass the test of the vote of The People or The Electorate while not obeying the laws of Alaska, a state of the United States of America.
This also brings into glaring focus the question of John McCain's judgement. Who or what put him up to choosing Palin? Whoever or whatever did, it assured a loss for the Republicans this time...they have hung themselves by going too far off the rightwing extremist end while accusing the very moderate left majority of association with something from a past world in different but admittedly similar circumstances because it was a game played by the same fat cats or fat cat's parents, much more severe in casualties,(I do grant, however, that every fatality is a murder and War is indeed the sin of mass murder and these characters on all extremist sides do not seem to connect those dots with a concience which to our world's best peacekeepers is a big problem.)The point here is that none of this has anything to do with speaking softly and having a real sensible defense for our country that is strong and our real pros know that.
Therefore, the loyal do gooders on the red side of the isle who were raised to faith and not to be so disrespectful as to ever question authority if they see a discrepancy or to refer to anything outside of the front and back flap of the King James version of the Holy Bible, we must now inform you that it it was decided from the inside old boy's club to the horror of the your faithful foolish ears, You, who - until the Titanic sinks will go down with the ship - tragic believers who have been betrayed but were too embarrased and afraid to admit or show it or to reach out for help as you watched your fortunes and retirements vanish. Can you crawl out from under that collapsed house with our help and get real now or do you only know the pain of persecution and hellfire fear and continue to suicidally jump lemminglike off the cliff?
Now, The next question to be asked is why. There seems to be a rift between Bush and McCain lately with some muffled barbs, and time is ticking toward the day when this current renter who seems to have forgotten that he works for The People finally leaves the Whitehouse.
I hope and pray the next tenant is more ethical, honest and less abusive of the property of The People than the last resident or we may not be able to repair the property again. but guess what. We the People also have to take some responsibility for this, afterall, we allowed it to happen by not creating a landslide DEM victory for congress and the presidency in 2001 and again in 2004 although many of us do suspect that the votes were close enough to be wangled as we have investigated and discovered to be true since. So Let's get to work making that landslide real, repairing our country and putting our families, including our ninety year old grandmothers in Akron, Ohio, back into their own homes where they will lovingly keep them up safely and securely as soon as possible.
This is truly a Marchenko-type disgrace and an attack on our own American families! This economy is supposed to provide a fair "living" for our citizens. It is the right of the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness which was given to us. It is the first amendment to the Constitution and our primary right. Every single one of us and our pennies and dollars are certificates of value that we have earned in trade for products, services, and goods and we should be able to afford our cost of living. One must look above to those in power to find out where all of that credit for work done is going. Is the offshore haven for profits or international profiteers loyal to this country and it's citizens? Are these people ex-patriots, pirates, or citizens? We need to look more closely atthese issues now and provide more safety to our citizens than we have had provided to us from behind closed doors in the last eight years.
This is also undermining and ruining our reputation as a country in front of the international community which is not secure for We the People(take our pick, people or peons)- and while these silly fools play blame game pointing fingers at each other on the stage like some soap opera star, they and their fans are not being watchful or knowledgeable, looking inward or upward at blind faith and not looking outward beyond their own egotistical self-centered happy drugged-out moronic brainwashed bubble world.However, they always have one goal,make more money no matter what you have to cheat on or do, they have been duped by pretenders into bowing down to the golden calf!
Like fish in a fish bowl, they fail to see that there are issues out there where others have nothing in common, no understanding whatsoever of their culture, their history, their language and no reason for any loyalty or mercy at all and they are NOT the center of the universe, but boy oh boy, they are wasting our nation's hard built wealth and life blood trying to take care or is that control of a world already able to take care of itself just fine.
They are practically (read that, actually impractically) alone in continuing to believe they are the world's big shot because they are control freaks who are terrified of not being invincible and having the totalitarian upper hand. They are that way because they have never known how to live any other way having been raised inside the bubble of their local culture. So as Olberman says - they are in circumstances beyond their ability to comprehend due to the lack of experience of life to know anything other than what they have been taught or have seen and known.
But we must be careful here not to allow the wrong people to stand the wrong posts, and mindful of circumstances and consequences. What was that old saying... "the bigger they come the harder they fall"? Of concern is that they have all the rest of us to shield them as they jet over to visit for the day, eating cake at birthday parties and for this reason, we must send them back home in order to save our country in a realistic moderately cautious and respectful way, respectful of the enormousness and seriousness of this post and our lives in the balance of favorable or unfavorable consequences. We see this in the difference of a private personal domain error and one that results in the loss of thousands and thousands of lives. Being negligent or inaccurate or following one's private ideology or mythology may may be fun but what do you do when one of those from outside your bubble knocks on the door with a big bangbang machine looking for their payback some day and why oh why are we so apathetic as to not get up and do something to prevent the nightmare we have been fearing for so long.
We can stop it because we have successfully done it before many times down the historical line since humankind arrived - for us a good example would be in pre-medieval times with the great Magna Carta. We have seen this dark age thing before, do we have to repeat it in post-mutually assured destructive times? What would Dwight D. Eisenhower have to say to the POW who is not a General or a War Hero but yes, like Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors, can claim the title of Son of an Admiral, today??? Now I will bet you that John McCain would be the first to call Jim Morrison an extremist, maybe even see a Palin take it further to calling it a terrorist who puts out criminal witchy lyrics! This is a tragic blessing, yet an example to show us what hypocracy really is. Two admiral's sons, and We can thank our former lead singer of the Doors with that long hippi hair with that amazing set of albums back in the sixties for that.
But back to the point about now, this is all the more reason why we need an experienced legal and foreign relations expert like Joe Biden and not someone who cannot list a legal prescedent setting case or a newspaper, my good God!!! If she has atleast a bachelors in Journalism, why did she not just name a major newspaper in her answer to Couric? Any one daily rag could have done.
All Americans, of all perspectives Are We The People, "the government" is made up of, yep, people and We the People must help us to help ourselves in waking up now to seriously make the right choice for our own futures and our children's and children's children's future.... as said by our forefathers, to ourselves and to our posterity...and finally, we need a peaceful situation for a society to function to rebuild itself with a new technology that is green and clean as we want and hope for and dream of and visualize for the future.

If one can imagine it, one can create it. Can you imagine a safe peaceful green healthy environment, being liked as a friendly country among other peace loving countries in this world? Can you imagine having enough to sustain your life comfortably as an equal to all others in your community free of envy or oppression, or not having to worry about having enough money to make ends meet? What ever it is that we can imagine that we want or need to end this self destructive path we are on to create a safe and healthy future. Let us coalesce to bring about the change that we need on the central issues for our survival now with the power of our votes in order to make it truly happen here in our own country, on our own planet, in our own lifetime.

OBAMA/BIDEN TRUTH TO POWER FOR OUR FAMILIES, OUR COMMUNITIES, OUR COUNTRY NOW!

NY Times Editorial
By Adam Cohen

No One Should Have to Stand in Line for 10 Hours to Vote

Everyone complains that young people don't vote, but consider the experience of students at Kenyon College in Ohio in the 2004 election. Officials in Knox County, Ohio, provided just two voting machines for the school's 1,300 voters. Some students waited in line for 10 hours, and the last bleary-eyed voter did not cast a ballot until nearly 4 a.m.

That same day in Columbus, voters in black neighborhoods waited as long as four hours, often in the rain. Many voters there and in other urban areas -- including Toledo and Youngstown -- left their overcrowded polling places in disgust, or because they could not wait any longer, without casting a ballot. In many of Ohio's white-majority suburbs, the lines were far shorter.

Troubles in Ohio drew the greatest attention in 2004, but that state was hardly alone. There were complaints of long lines in other states, including Colorado, Michigan and Florida, where elderly voters endured waits in blistering heat.

I was in Ohio on Election Day 2004. The night before the voting, rumors spread that there would be a major effort by Republican operatives to challenge the registrations of voters in majority-black precincts. Those large-scale challenges did not materialize. But tens of thousands of votes were suppressed by something so mundane that no one thought to focus on it: long lines.

In Columbus, as many as 15,000 people left the polls without voting, many because of long lines. At a postelection hearing, a Youngstown pastor estimated that 8,000 black voters there did not cast ballots because of a machine shortage.

(President Bush carried Ohio by fewer than 120,000 votes.)

Most of the logistical questions about voting are generally left up to local officials. Too often they don't want to spend the money to provide enough machines, and fail to hire or properly train enough poll workers for a smooth process.

There is also a lot of poor planning. In 2004, Ohio officials used old registration numbers to estimate their need for voting machines -- failing to anticipate the large number of new voters added by registration drives that blanketed the state. It is hard, however, to rule out various forms of bias.

There have long been reports of elections administrators in college towns trying to suppress the "out of town" student vote. There is a long, painful history of obstacles to black voting. In Ohio in 2004, it seems clear that the majority of people trapped on long lines were trying to vote Democratic.

The Washington Post reported that six of the seven wards with the fewest voting machines per registered voter backed John Kerry, while 27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter went for President Bush.

Long lines are likely to be an even bigger problem this year, with the Obama campaign and various nonpartisan groups working all over the country to register millions of new voters. Without proper planning, these new voters may overwhelm polling sites.

For the sake of the legitimacy of our elections, more voting disasters -- long lines, confusing ballots or unreliable electronic voting machines -- must be avoided. Congress should take the lead, but it has failed even to set standards for numbers of voting machines. This year, it failed to pass a good bill that would have made funds available to states to buy backup paper ballots.

That puts more of a burden on state election officials, usually the secretaries of state, to promote fair elections.

Ohio's dynamic new secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner -- who says she is "hyperfocused on long lines" -- is taking laudable steps to avoid a rerun of 2004. She has been pushing reluctant local election officials to have at least one voting machine for every 175 voters -- nearly four times as many as there were at Kenyon College in 2004. She is also directing counties that use electronic voting machines to have backup paper ballots on hand equal to 25 percent of the 2004 turnout -- which can also be used if lines get out of control.

In Missouri, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan has also been pushing local election officials to have backup paper ballots available, and she is providing funds for the hiring of more, and better trained, poll workers.

In the majority of states, however, too little is being done to make sure that polling places can accommodate all of the voters who show up. That is a mistake. An election in which people have to wait 10 hours to vote, or in which black voters wait in the rain for hours, while white voters zip through polling places, is unworthy of the world's leading democracy.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Jennifer Brunner Ohio Secretary of State  http://www.sos.state.oh.us

What a Gal! Makes me proud to be a DEM!!! LET'S ALL BACK HER UP! :D

OBAMA/BIDEN 2008    Yes We Can!!!

The US Jobs lost video is so good. It is visually effective in realistically demonstrating the scale of the increase of unemployment in contrast to the lies being spoken by Bush and McCain. The amount of unfactual misinformation they are spewing out to their audience is beginning to look as extreme as something out of what one sees in a communications/film or history class on Pre Nazi Germany.

 Give them enough rope and they will go farther and farther, an inch then a foot then a yard and on and on like Pinnochio's nose or the Fisherman's tale. What a show they are putting on now, just watch how they reveal themselves with their old modus operendi of below the belt persecution of the individual to distract (divide and conquer) from the enormously important issues about the whole nation, and we want inquisitors like this in the White House?

The whole world is watching and waiting to tear their lies and mean-hearted, hateful propaganda apart, not only on one mainstream media station but many moderate or neutral stations now. I can't wait to see how Olberman and Maddow among many others will respond to the latest outrageous smear speeches and ads attempting to whip their base into some hysterical reactionist frenzy against some old hippy when we had thousands of them at Woodstock and the March on Washington to protest the thousands of brothers sacrificed by the same elite for way too long in Viet Nam.

How long will this insanity go on? Let's stop the madness now and slam them back hard with a strong ad in rapid response, especially this latest stunt by Palin falling back on that already debunked myth of guilt by distant association. Let's get  on many channels where she has been spreading her lies just recently, because from the looks of it, there were many people there who either have biased news coverage locally or are ignorant enough to cheer as if they believe her and this is what is so alarming. We had freedom of speech last I checked? Sheeeee! This was a pathetic attempt at scapegoating, really ugly, amateurish and embarrassing because it is an insult to our intelligence.

Meanwhile, back in Alaska, one legal official states that the refusal to honor officially standing subpoenas this way is an unprescedented first in our history of candidates. Palin, simply put, is not obeying the law, the real official law of the land of her state in this United States, and perhaps this is - IS - a real impeachable offence. Perhaps she is spewing out this extremist BS because she knows she has nothing to lose??? Hmmmm....this is going to be interesting.

I think good old middle of the road mainstream America has had quite enough. Let's get Obama and Biden in so we can get to mending our country and putting our families back in their homes NOW!!!

OBAMA/BIDEN 2008 Truth to Power 

I'm so glad we had Joe Biden standing at that podium tonight!

It occurred to me after watching a replay of the debate that he had everything he needed already and everything that Palin attempted in her sneaky way of attacking him crashed against what appeared to be an invisible shield, the shield of earning credibility over many years. She had nothing over him although she tried.

There's no comparason and no way that Sarah Palin will ever match Joe Biden's experience and expertise and we all know it. I certainly know who I would rather have in the White House carefully watching over our country in these times. There is no doubt that Obama and Biden have the answers and it seems more and more that Palin/McCain are watching what Obama/Biden do first before doing or saying anything!

Sarah Palin rudely manipulating the debate with her self-glory and bragatto, and skirting around important issues became more obvious on the second viewing. It stood out and was dissonant. She was not paying attention to anything other than the coached agenda that she was spewing out to fit into the time she had in her responses. She was self-centered and nearly oblivious to Gwen Ifill. She did not obey the rules of the debate! She may be great as a sportscaster and a soccer mom but as governor is now in trouble in her own state!

There is no real fairness in tip toeing around her low bar. As a woman who has worked hard for many years to comprehend the world and to work, I do not look so much at the gender of the person as much as what is in this person's head, what their skill is for the job objectively. Anyone with any sensibility or caution or seriousness in choosing even a reliable attorney would go for Biden over Palin, really. Even Hilary would tell you that it is Biden who would be ready to take over on the first day.

We do not have time to let someone learn this post as Bush did so disasterously the hard way (and so stubbornly his way) with all of the consequences for this entire country "on the job". We already are suffering from making that mistake and to make it again, to be charmed and fooled now in such a way, would be too big a risk to our future. This is not a time for illusions or popularity contests! We need our country back, we need our treaties, our constitution, our respect and we need to get to mending now.

We cannot afford to take the Republican path any longer. As Kucinich has said, we need to cure the homeowners on Main Street and face the simple fact that there is something wrong when working Americans cannot make ends meet on the wages they receive in relation to the standard of daily living and the expense of items of need - not luxury, but basic need. This is what the Democrats have always fought for, dignity and equality, and it is the Dems that have worked closely with the working people and the unions that protect worker's rights in the rust belt and the mines.

The Republicans are the bosses trying to get the profits whichever way they can. They take things, they cheat, they betray and go off shore or have run away shops and they steal - like Tricky Dicky taking the peace sign and using it to try to appeal to people that he was caring and cool toward the end of his corrupt and ill fated presidency. We all laughed at him doing the peace sign with both hands in a vee, also the old sign of victory as he boarded that plane forever away from the White House, he was the epitomy of hypocracy.

There is another man who Nixon knew then. John McCain resembles his mentor in his ambition. Lately it has seemed the same in his campaign with all the accusations and claims in his ads that have been quickly disproven. One of the commentators said that Sarah Palin has a fresh new style, yes, the old guard of Republicans are drooling over their pretty Sarah, banking on your social amnesia!

Biden was correct on more of the facts tonight than Palin and more cool, calm and collected. When he showed emotion it was genuine and we all felt it with him, but Sarah did not seem to register the moment or feel it. She was already pouncing to take advantage of the silence to get in her plug.

How revealing it all was like the reality of Main Street's latest unemployment figures, each a real feeling human being needing help as Joe and Obama have said, and wanting answers that were not there for them from Sarah in a real way in tonight's debate. She may have put on a good show for her base, but that's about it. With McCain flip flopping on the bail out it seems like this is a pretty shaky pair to bet one's country on at this time. They seem cold, unresponsive, and...out of touch.

Obama/Biden 2008  Change that We the People Can Believe In.

What I find interesting is that no one has carefully taken Obama's words in the two or three sentences leading up to his expression about "putting lipstick on a pig". Let us look at this again. What was Obama talking about?

Obama was referring to George Bush's policies for the last eight years! He was saying how McCain will put lipstick on (Bush's) pig, but it will still be the same pig! So, here we have what Obama was calling a pig, Bush's policies, period. It had nothing to do with Sarah Palin at all. This is the literal proof of the fact that the ad put forward by the Republicans was false, misleading and unfair, and they also took things out of context, they used Ms. Couric (did they even get her permission for this?), and it also proves that they were just waiting to jump on this - problem was, they jumped too fast, did not listen closely enough, thought we were stupid and made a very big and obvious mistake.

And mostly, it just goes to show how mean and persecutory they are. This ad is a false accusation and character defamation. I really think we have a solid case here and it is about time this kind of mean personal jabbing by the Republicans stopped, it has gone on way too long. We should demand an official apology for such carelessness and lack of control by McCain over his ad committee.

Let's get back to the issues, these are serious times.

Obama/Biden 2008 For families, women and children.

Thanks to everyone for posting so much good info out on the main blog.

There is so much to think about and do! We must look into where all this wasted money has gone and hold those responsible who have stolen The People's money and pocketed it both here and internationally. This country has been ripped off, where has the money gone? How did it happen over the years, who was holding the majority, changing what laws, etc. Where is the money now? Then we must get this information out simple and plain.

I figure DEMS have had a real majority and green light to get bills passed by a 2/3rd majority for only about TWO YEARS since the beginning of Clinton's Presidency. The majority of Presidents, as Hillary correctly mentions in her speeches, has been overwhelmingly Republican since 1950. In the mere two years we had a majority of Democrats, Clinton managed to get just enough through to alter our economy and save us from jumping off the cliff like a bunch of lemmings. But this time, if we do not detour the mad stampede of idol worshipers fooled by the same magic show, it is not going to be a good future for any Americans. There may be war on our turf by the end of this episode too, by a country who pushes back when pushed too far by these meddlers who are not very good at getting the world to like us. When the pendulum swings too far, it will be swinging back...and this lot certainly does not speak softly.

I have heard it over and over since Nixon - the arrogant braggatto, the overly optimistic focus on big dreams and promises, all the swagger of the movies, bigger than life, and then the fall. Well, folks...we are in a free for all fall now, a big mess like the times before so how many times will it take for the silly repug fools to fall for this again before they wake up and see who the culprits really are???

Woman to woman, I have some concerns. We feminists get down to taking personal responsibility over our lives and our bodies. We are considerate of others. We tend to be realistic and are aware of overextending ourselves when contemplating or planning for the demands of a career. I think it is silly to say that life does not begin at conception because quite simply, there is life before conception as all molecules and cells are living entities with a life of their own. If all cells are living, how many do you want to be responsible for terminating - a few hundred or a few million? A child murdered in a war or dying of hunger is a few million. But ofcourse, the rationalization I have heard from some of these great Christians is "Let us just leave this in the hands of God". Well, isn't that a great way to get out of your responsibility for anything as a human. This is scary.

A question for Mrs Palin. We know she has now given birth to one baby with Down's syndrome and it is a high probability that from now on, any child that she has will also have the same genetic problem because of her age. Mrs Palin: Did you do what a responsible woman would do and get a tubal ligation the day or two after giving birth to this baby? I just had a rather nightmarish vision of you in the White House giving birth to another Downs baby...you obviously cannot keep yourself abstinent. Not that this is bad. Sex feels great and orgasmic bliss is great for your circulation, but pregnancy is another experience alltogether. Are you taking any precaution to avoid another pregnancy at all?

If not. I would not support such a careless woman in any professional post and it also seems that Mrs. Palin is a bit manic and displaying some signs of pre-menopausal PMS. Overall, I do not think she is being realistic and I do not think she is able to cover all the bases caring for her children, and I mean really being there for them when they need her as a parent both psychologically and physically. I know they are yelling back about this but experience has shown me that most caring mothers want to share quality time as their children are growing up and when older we realize that there is no going back once the children are grown and have left for their adult lives.

Furthermore, how will she be caring for this new baby? We all know that this career is a very demanding one. It is not just any job. It is the office of Vice President of an entire country. Women who are career women in governing and all professional posts have handled it with planing, the gradual gaining of work experience and advancement up to their posts and have made the decisions to enter their professions in the majority of cases after their children were in high school or college. They were simply being realistic about the demands required to do a good job in such a career position, highly educated women such as Pelosi for example made such decisions carefully. (I am not counting first ladies here for the reason that this is obviously a whole different situation.)

I think it is fair to ask such questions as a woman who is older and has worked with women's issues and health for many years, who has struggled through college as a single mom and has held the responsibility of a professional job and put in the time to be there covering the story, doing the research for the thesis, being on time, not getting sick, etc.. There is only so much stress we can take and then we can break. How is she handling all of the stress? What is this woman all about? Does she keep her cool? Is she able to take the ups and downs. Is she able to weather the storms around her without getting over emotional? This is a first for the Republicans and the second time a woman has been on the ticket for the White House. We watched Hillary learn how to balance on the tightrope during the primaries and she was in the position of having the experience, intelligence, and maturity to get it right by the last third of her run...and boy did she glow! But Really. What kind of a Vice President would this woman, this very different individual, be?

Back on the job, Joe Biden knows his stuff. He had solid answers about Iraq. He is ready. He has already been involved in the strategy for Iraq that works. Obama has just explained that clearly himself on today's interviews. Things started to improve after their strategies were finally implemented seriously by Bush. It was not just this thing called "The Surge". It seems the Republicans like soundbites and slogans and labels - do they have attention deficit problems? Do they lack logic or analytical skills? They do not seem to be good at connecting the dots of what will lead to what.

As Obama said, We are in a serious complex situation that requires some understanding of the cultural differences and motives on all sides. Bush did not listen to the experts, had no cultural understanding..(he bombed the Museum for crying out loud!!!), and lost us lives, resources and money, while privateers pocketed huge profits free of any checks at all. We had the wild west, well this was the wild east and unfortunately, it has not been the experience many expected at all. It has lost us a lot, we have had to shoulder the burden of this venture for longer than most expected and it has turned in to what many feared having witnessed the course of The Viet Nam War and it's aftermath.

I enjoyed seeing Obama today getting down to business - it was a comfort to hear sensible talk after the big fan show by the "no issues/cult of personality" folks. Do so many Americans out there not know the difference between fact and fiction? This is not a Disney movie and there will be very real consequences felt by every family due to the wrong decisions by those who continue to follow the same wrong policies, (ie., those who do not know what they are doing), in the future. Obama is correct. These are serious times and we must GO BLUE FOR THE PEOPLE NOW MORE THAN EVER in order to survive or we may lose our country to AN EXTREMIST RIGHT WING GOVERNMENT THAT RESULTS IN A real invasion ON OUR OWN LAND BECAUSE OF angry leaders unpopular and disliked BY THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY in the next eight years.

From the information on their backgrounds that I have seen in the news and on reports appearing now, as a voter I can say that this is true on their infractions, lies, and beliefs. We just cannot afford to allow our country to crash so badly BECAUSE OF SOMEONE'S FANTASY, ILLUSIONS OR PERSONAL IDEOLOGY. This perspective will certainly determine both the motives and actions of our leaders. Precisely, in this case, at this time, do you seriously want religious fanatics with an out of touch world view, speaking in tongues and shaking their hands like praying zombies IN THE WHITE HOUSE???

I am simply voicing my concerns as a voter like so many across this country. I like the green future that I could COMPREHEND DEMONSTRATED SINCERELY AND SENSIBLY at the DEM convention. I know we will have to change our ways and our definitions and our values. WE WILL HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER TO CLEAN UP OUR YARDS WITHOUT ALL THE GLAM AND GOODIES THAT MASSAGE OUR EGOS. We will have to live within our means and waste less and we will have to level out with our social definitions and distinctions, our prejudices and other negative characteristics that continue to alienate everyday people from each other. We will have to manage and check a population explosion and make sure our children and children's children do not end up with a situation of dwindling natural resources like healthy food and water, or air to breathe.

Any sensible person knows that the new green world will be better than a poisonous polluted planet that cannot revive to support the chain of fragile life upon it. We do not want to ostracise or leave anyone out, we are the inclusive party that knows that proper planning, caring, sharing and working together for a decent quality of life can work for All of the People, not just a priveledged few and we know we have the new technologies to actualize this goal now.

It is clearly the DEMS who have the true answers. They walk their talk and make sense on behalf of the American People, they are loyal to the People here, they are not those who have either gone off shore, lied to the people and taken their money or polluted and ruined the health of whole communities to make a profit off the backs of the workers who are the broad backbone of the vast moderate middle class that has been our safety and strength as a nation since after the last depression.

As for the Republicans, these two; McCain and Palin, ARE NOT MAVERICKS, they will not clean out the White House or the Congress or the Supreme Court! This is just another all too familiar Republican lie put there to fool the masses again this year! As for how this will affect you and your personal life and health IT IS APPARENT. In my opinion, I can only say, VOTE RED AT YOUR OWN RISK!

These are just some of the many questions we are asking out here in America. I simply add my thoughts, questions and conclusions to the forum knowing that information is always coming in and changes happen as we get the facts, and I am happy to read the ideas of so many other caring folks in my country. We all have the basic right to do this and should not worry ever about sharing our thoughts, words, and questions to learn about the world we are in. I am upset about the number of paranoid people I am seeing these days. It is up to us to break through that mentality of class distinction and intimidation...part of the disease of tyrany, oppression, authoritarianism and inequality.

Let's go! We MUST make sure to turn a few more states BLUE!!! GO DEMS GO!!!

Obama/Biden 2008:  A crystal clear platform for real change.

Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones. She was so alive, so right there on the issues, speaking in Congress, that big smile, those knowing eyes, and that strong clear voice always watching out for us, here is the best site for information on her.

http://www.newsnet5.com/politics/17240409/detail.html

Here you will find videos and articles. On one interview, when asked how she did it all, she mentioned that part of her strength was from her abiding faith, a faith in others, in herself, and in the higher good. This is for Stephanie, who will never walk alone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9W04GiHcSY

Important News from the 18th district in Ohio...

and a reminder to all why we are working so hard to make sure we get Zack Space re-elected! Please do not let others forget about Ney!!! Snap those silly old Repugs out of their wishful rationalizations, myopic closed mindedness, overly obsessive hoarding instincts and social alzheimers by sending them this link at:

http://www.coshoctontribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080812/UPDATES01/80812013

Zack's Ethics Pledge to The People....

"I pledge to you, as your congressman, I will accept: No gifts from lobbyists: No trips from lobbyists: No meals from lobbyists: I will never put corporate interests above the people I represent."

Visit http://www.zackspace.org

To see how busy he has been: check out: http://space.house.gov/ 

And if you're here in Ohio's 18th, spread the word and VOTE for Zack Space!!!

Another true blue speil for you from <}:) M DNC

Again, just a feeling of exhasperation after watching this McOldie fan debate like this on msnbc...what kind of fools do they think we Americans are? Not a mention that the solution is already here, is real, is being driven! These guys are not even with it at all. After watching this:

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/26165298#26165298

Watch this...

http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=bF1uHHA53PA&feature=related 

and get with it! I want a Pink one with a Solar on top! To get one go to the shopping cart at: (with solar only 12 thou!!!)

http://www.zapworld.com

Just Imagine! Great for around town. Travel putting your money toward your lodging instead of at the pump, pull out your cord, plug in for a few hours and on down the road you putt putt enjoying the scenery cross country! Expensive Energy gasguzzler problem solved. More jobs, great for business and travel, visiting family and vacationing. Nice ride to work. Everybody happy and saving money! Monopolists muzzled. Gas stations replaced by Solar Plug-in ports, quiet running - less noise. Clean air, healthy environment, healthy humans and animals and plants, better lifestyle all the way around.

Get one of these ZAP ZERO Xebras or similar, and exercise your consumer vote! From a distance it is easy to see that the green choices we make today are the ways to heal our precious blue Earth for our continued good health tomorrow.

This has been a FREE little BLUE and TRUE speil just for all of my fellow Dems tonight with lots of luv and smiles across the miles.... <}:) M DNC

The clash between "BushPush" and the reality of higher gasoline prices and the offshore drilling hoax reveals why we should be outraged, not just dismissive...thanks to Countdown on MSNBC and Keith Olberman... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25989827#25959348

And this one is even more amazing. Solar Electric cars are being driven for free on the streets of Southern California while all this "BushPush" is running amok. The old antiquated non-renewable polluting profit-making goop has got to go away now if we want to get to Century 21. Do not back down, the facts are in. We must do this and put the genii back in the old lamp and light the way with our new solar lamps, and cars. If we boycott and buy electric smartcars, the wicked witch of the west will melt down as we wisely remove the monsters from our shining metal boxes, really! Just watch this, then share it with all you know!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcYgtd1Yw8

Go Dems, thanks, MarieDNC