Robert Greenwald and the Brave New Team put together this video, "FOX Attacks Michelle Obama". I urge you to watch the video and sign their petition.

http://foxattacks.com/michelle

Personally, I believe that signing petitions is only a first step. The real action is to picket Fox offices and affiliates, and to boycott Fox advertisers.

 Register to vote, and send Voltage to play at the Democratic National Convention.  We have songs that are perfect for the event already written, and I am already the number one democrat at the DNC.

I read Bob Herbert's excellent columns in The New York Times on a regular basis. This outspoken progressive is one of my favorite writers. In today's Op-Ed piece, he really outdoes himself. I urge you to check it out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/opinion/01herbert.html

With the weather getting worse and worse every year, when is the government going to wake up and stop turning a blind eye to global warming. While we watch flash floods becoming common place due to record rains, and tornados ravishing the Midwest almost daily. Not to mention the fact that hurricanes are becoming stronger every year our government seems to just close their eyes like it is going to go away. Not to mention what they obviously will due when a disaster actually happens. Katrina and New Orleans is a perfect example of that.

The rest of the world is looking at solution, and we choose to ignore it. Are we that greedy we can’t see were killing ourselves in the long run. Mother Nature is saying it’s payback time for destroying her planet, and if we don’t start thinking this as a priority number one issue, she will wipe us off the face of this planet. Please I urge all of you to write your representative about this.

The first days of the 2008 general election campaign following Barack Obama's nomination victory this week appear thus far to strongly favor the young senator from Illinois. Streaking out of the gate Tuesday night as polls closed in South Dakota and Montana, Obama celebrated victory with a rousing speech that more than befit the historic occasion of his night as America's first African American presidential nominee. Republican nominee John McCain, meanwhile, gave an ungracious, pandering, and downright ugly speech in which he refused either to congratulate Obama himself or to recognize the significance of his victory for African Americans, choosing instead to begrudge Obama his "eloquence" and pander to angry Clinton supporters by suggesting that Obama owed his victory to "pundits and party elders." McCain's speech was widely panned by conservatives and liberals alike, who found fault with far more than the harsh, lime-green background against which we were treated to McCain's pasty visage and smarmy grin (see video). Conservative commentator Fred Barnes of FoxNews said that McCain's speech was "painful" to listen to, while on CNN Republican media consultant Alex Castellanos remarked: "Last I checked this was not a speech-making contest.... Thank God." CNN's Jeff Toobin said more bluntly of McCain's speech: "That was awful.... That was pathetic." Politico's Jonathan Martin asks, "Is there a way John McCain can win the presidency without giving another speech?" As McCain's lobbyist problem continues to haunt him, meanwhile, Obama has set a new course for the Democratic Party he now leads by declaring for the first time that, like his primary campaign, his Democratic National Committee will no longer accept campaign contributions from Washington lobbyists. As McCain fumbles, bumbles, and stumbles, Obama strides proud and strong toward the Oval Office. Offhand, I'd say this looks like a damn good way to start a general election campaign.

Barack Obama won a symbolic and powerful endorsement today from Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. In his youth a member of the Ku Klux Klan and an ardent segregationist, the 90-year old Byrd has spent the past forty years of his fifty-year Senate career working for racial reconciliation, an effort certain to echo in news of his endorsement today of the man who may be this country's first African American president. Byrd's endorsement comes as Obama's second superdelegate endorsement of the day, shortly following that of Washington state Democratic Party chairman Dwight Pelz.

"I believe that Barack Obama is a shining young statesman, who possesses the personal temperament and courage necessary to extricate our country from this costly misadventure in Iraq, and to lead our nation at this challenging time in history...." Byrd said in a statement today, "...Barack Obama is a noble-hearted patriot and humble Christian, and he has my full faith and support."

Coming a week after West Virginia's primary and just a day before the Democratic primary in neighboring Kentucky, Byrd's endorsement is certain to be a lead item in this evening's news; and could give Obama a last-minute boost in Kentucky as well as in Oregon, whose primary ballot deadline is the same day. In any event, the Byrd endorsement brings Obama one superdelegate vote closer to wrapping up the Democratic nomination. Much obliged, Senator!

UPDATE: Following endorsements for Obama by Washington state Democratic Party chairman Dwight Pelz and Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, new superdelegate endorsements for Obama were announced today by Kansas state Democratic Party chair Larry Gates and Alaska DNC members Cindy Spanyers and Blake Johnson. This brings Obama's daily total to five superdelegates today, while Hillary Clinton has received none.

I would like to take some time off the norm around here. (Obama / Clinton crap) and try a little fresh air for a change. After coming down off the ceiling, while watching Glen Beck on CNN Headline news today, (Obviously a republican idiot.) I calmed down and wrote this.. I am amazed at this guy and can only pray there are not too many people like him. Getting to the point this idiot is blaming the oil crisis on polar bears. Yep you heard me right, Polar Bears… Now I don’t claim to be a tree huger, but I am aware that global warming is an issue that we all need to pay attention to it and the bottom line is oil supplies are running out. But this guy is blaming the fact that oil prices are the way they are because of laws protecting the polar bear and the Alaskan wild life. With gas at $4.00 a gallon, and oil companies showing record profits I say bullshit.

If Hillary Clinton was expecting her West Virginia win to stem the tide of superdelegates to Barack Obama, she must be a little disappointed this morning. Obama has picked up four more superdelegates since West Virginia polls closed yesterday, beginning with Lauren Wolfe and Awais Khaleel of the College Democrats of America late last night, followed by US representative Pete Visclosky of Indiana and Democrats Abroad chairperson Christine Schon Marques this morning (see New York Times). While Clinton and her supporters play with the illusion of having changed the game in some way, Obama strides toward the nomination, his delegate lead over Clinton barely dented. Only on Planet Hillary have the West Virginia results made the least difference to anyone. Here on Earth, we all know that Clinton won in West Virginia by pandering to the racial and cultural fears of voters who still think that Obama is a Muslim who wants to be president so that he can take their guns away and force them to convert to Islam; and many of whom probably wouldn't vote for Clinton in November even if she were the nominee (see Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker). In the lead-up to the West Virginia primary both Clintons criss-crossed the state shamelessly playing to every fearful prejudice one cares to mention, painting their opponent as an outsider, a city-slicker, a college boy, someone who is "not like us" and who doesn't "share our values." Essentially in many respects, Clinton and her surrogates are now running a Republican campaign against Obama. Superdelegates will also note that while Democratic voter turnout has been massive in other states, yesterday's in West Virginia was relatively unimpressive, awarding Clinton considerably fewer popular votes than she was expecting, and reinforcing the perception that the nomination race has run its course and we have a winner (see MSNBC). No game-changer here, folks.

New poll numbers released today by the Portland Tribune show a commanding Oregon lead of 20 percentage points for Barack Obama among likely Democratic voters in advance of that state's primary election next week (Obama 55%, Clinton 35%). With 52 delegates in play, Oregon offers to place Obama significantly closer to locking up the Democratic presidential nomination, with some suggesting that following his expected Oregon win Obama will immediately be able to claim victory on the basis of having won the majority of pledged delegates (the latter suggestion does not include pledged delegates from Florida or Michigan, which remain in dispute while Democratic leaders insist that these two states will in no event be allowed to decide the nomination). Obama's standing in today's Oregon poll numbers from are up considerably from yesterday's by SurveyUSA, which gave the Illinois senator an 11-point lead over his opponent (Obama 54%, Clinton 43%). Given these new poll numbers in addition to announcements earlier today of four more superdelegate endorsements for Obama, tonight's results from West Virginia will not leave Obama supporters without something to celebrate.

Hillary Clinton's last-ditch effort to appeal to "hard-working white Americans" appears to be bearing ugly fruit even as West Virginia primary voters go to the polls today. As the Washington Post reports today, "racist incidents" experienced by Barack Obama volunteers in the recent primary states of Pennsylvania and Indiana include verbal attacks and vandalism. Meanwhile, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the New Yorker report a similar atmosphere of hostility toward Obama in the current and upcoming primary states of West Virginia and Kentucky, based not only on the Illinois senator's race but also on the false belief that he is a Muslim and the xenophobic perception that he is somehow not a "real American." The ignorance and hate revealed in these reports is nothing short of astonishing.

From Pennsylvania, one Obama volunteer interviewed by the Washington Post reported "dispiriting" responses from white voters, including one who said, "Hang that darky from a tree!" Another Pennsylvania volunteer was told in Pittsburgh that "white people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people." Yet another was told of Obama by a Clinton supporter: "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?" Likewise citing long-discredited claims that Obama is a Muslim, the mayor of Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, explained his support for Clinton this way:

"Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.... No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."

Reporting from West Virginia, the Financial Times likewise observed an atmosphere of hostility toward Obama tinged with racism and xenophobia. "I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife's an atheist," one voter told FT while another insisted, "I want someone who is a full-blooded American as president." Another West Virginia voter told the Los Angeles Times that the Illinois senator's surname alone was cause for disqualification: "Obama just doesn't sound right for an American president." The New Yorker reports a similar atmosphere in Kentucky, including the following statement from a Clinton voter:

"I really don’t want an African-American as President.... I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion."

One should never assume, of course, that all who vote for Hillary Clinton do so for the reasons given by the "hard-working white Americans" cited here; nor should one assume that all are as shockingly ignorant and hateful as these. It is a troubling realization, however, that such backward attitudes remain in 2008 as a major issue in a presidential campaign. As troubling is the Clinton campaign's very evident effort to exploit such attitudes for political gain. This alone, in my opinion, disqualifies Clinton as a candidate for president.