True

I like these guys alot better this time around:

Rachel Maddow is da hotness!

Her interview with Obama. This is how you do an interview....Main Stream Media, take some damn notes!

I love me some Ellen!

George Clooney as official ambassador to the Ellen Show? I'm on board, that's change I can believe in!

Oui, on peut! = Yes we can, zydeco style!

Makes me proud to be a coonass!

This is what elections should be all about:

I want my kid to hang with these girls.

Colin Powell endorses Obama, not the bigger story of the interview!

Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama this morning on Meet the Press. I could almost forgive him for helping to sell us Iraq just for that. Yet, the statement that he made about Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan during his endorsement was much more poignant for me.

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That's not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel particularly strong about this because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother at Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone, and it gave his awards - Purple Heart, Bronze Star - showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the head stone, it didn't have a Christian cross. It didn't have a Star of David. It has a crescent and star of the Islamic faith.

And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could serve his country and he gave his life."

Awesome quote General. Here's a bit more information about the young soldier he was speaking of:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/more-on-the-soldier-kareem-r-khan/#comment-495458

http://blog.nj.com/njwardead/2007/08/army_spc_kareem_r_khan_august.html

I've never wanted to live in a Battleground state until now!

Beastie Boys draft stars for "Vote" tour

NEW YORK (Billboard) - The Beastie Boys have drafted Sheryl Crow, Norah Jones, Jack Johnson and Ben Harper to join them on the Get Out and Vote tour, which will begin October 28 in Richmond, Va. Shows are also set for November 1 in St. Paul, Minn., and November 2 in Milwaukee.

"This election is too important to stay at home," the rap trio said Friday, adding that they are endorsing Democratic candidate Barack Obama for president.

Crow, Jones, Johnson and Santogold are on the bill for the Richmond show, while Harper and Tenacious D will support in St. Paul. Harper, Tenacious D and David Crosby and Graham Nash will join the Beasties in Milwaukee.

Reuters/Billboard

This show sounds awesome! Damn our liberal majority in Illinois!!!!

Good article with actual FACTS about Obama/Ayers relationship

With due courtesy to the St. Petersburg Times:

Not a radical group, and Ayers didn't run it

For most of the election, Sen. John McCain's campaign has been somewhat subtle about trying to tie Sen. Barack Obama to the former '60s radical William Ayers.

No longer. A 90-second Web ad released Oct. 8, 2008, features sinister music, side-by-side photographs of Obama and Ayers, and a series of dubious allegations about their past connections, including this one:

"Ayers and Obama ran a radical education foundation together."

Ayers was a founding member of the militant Vietnam-era anti-war group the Weathermen. He was investigated for his role in a series of domestic bombings, but the charges were dropped in 1974 due to prosecutorial misconduct. He is now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and actively engaged in the city's civic life.

The McCain campaign said the "radical education foundation" to which they were referring is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a charity endowed by publishing magnate Walter Annenberg that funded public-school programs in Chicago from 1995 to 2001.

We'll look at whether the foundation was radical. But first we have to grapple with whether Obama and Ayers ran it.

Obama served on the foundation's volunteer board from its inception in 1995 through its dissolution in 2001, and was chair for the first four years. So an argument can be made that he ran it, though an executive director handled day-to-day operations.

Ayers, who received his doctorate in education from Columbia University in 1987 and is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was active in getting the foundation up and running. He and two other activists led the effort to secure the grant from Annenberg, and he worked without pay in the early months of 1995, prior to the board's hiring of an executive director, to help the foundation get incorporated and formulate its bylaws, said Ken Rolling, who was the foundation's only executive director. Ayers went on to become a member of the "collaborative," an advisory group that advised the board of directors and the staff.

However, Ayers "was never on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge," and he "never made a decision programmatically or had a vote," Rolling said.

"He (Ayers) was at board meetings — which, by the way, were open — as a guest," Rolling said. "That is not anything near Bill Ayers and Barack Obama running the Chicago Annenberg Challenge."

Now, was the foundation radical?

The McCain campaign cited several pieces of evidence for that allegation, including a 1995 invitation from the foundation for applications from schools "that want to make radical changes in the way teachers teach and students learn." The campaign appears to have confused two different definitions of the word "radical." Clearly the invitation referred to "a considerable departure from the usual or traditional," rather than "advocating extreme measures to retain or restore a political state of affairs."

The campaign also cited two projects the foundation funded, one having to do with a United Nations-themed Peace School and another that focused on African-American studies.

"That is radical in the eye of this campaign and we imagine in the eyes of most Americans," said Michael Goldfarb, a spokesman for McCain. "It is a subjective thing, and there are going to be people in Berkeley and Chicago who think that is totally legitimate."

Teaching about the United Nations and African-American studies may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's hardly "radical" in the same way Ayers' Vietnam-era activities were. Moreover, most of the projects the foundation funded (more on that below) were not remotely controversial.

The McCain campaign also cited an opinion piece by conservative commentator Stanley Kurtz in the Sept. 23, 2008, Wall Street Journal as evidence of the foundation's radicalism. Kurtz wrote that Ayers was the "guiding spirit" of the foundation, and it "translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice."

But Ayers' views on education, though certainly reform-oriented and left-of-center, are not considered anywhere near as radical as his Vietnam-era views on war. And even if they were, there was a long list of individuals involved with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge whose positions provided them far more authority over its direction than Ayers' advisory role gave him.

Let's look at a few, starting with the funder. Annenberg was a lifelong Republican and former ambassador to the United Kingdom under President Richard Nixon. His widow, Leonore, has endorsed McCain. Kurtz might just as plausibly have accused Obama and the foundation of "translating Annenberg's conservatism into practice."

Among the other board members who served with Obama were: Stanley Ikenberry, former president of the University of Illinois; Arnold Weber, former president of Northwestern University and assistant secretary of labor in the Nixon administration; Scott Smith, then publisher of the Chicago Tribune; venture capitalist Edward Bottum; John McCarter, president of the Field Museum; Patricia Albjerg Graham, former dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Journalism, and a host of other mainstream folks.

"The whole idea of it being radical when it was this tie of blue-chip, white-collar, CEOs and civic leaders is just ridiculous," said the foundation's former development director, Marianne Philbin.

The foundation gave money to groups of public schools – usually three to 10 – who partnered with some sort of outside organization to improve their students' achievement.

In his opinion piece, Kurtz puts a sinister spin on this: "Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with 'external partners,' which actually got the money...CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or ACORN)."

Rollings said the foundation tried to fund the schools directly, but doing so proved to be a "bureaucratic nightmare." But any external group that received money had to have created a program in partnership with a network of public schools.

And though ACORN is considered a liberal organization, the vast majority of the foundation's external partners were not remotely controversial. Here are a few examples: the Chicago Symphony, the University of Chicago, Loyola University, Northwestern University, the Chicago Children's Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum, the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance and the Logan Square Neighborhood Association.

Had Kurtz chosen to accuse Obama of carrying water for the conservative Annenberg, he might have written: "CAC disbursed money to various business-friendly entities, such as the Museum of Science and Industry and the Commercial Club of Chicago."

See how easy it is?

The programs the foundation funded were designed to allow individuals from the "external partners" – whether the musicians in the symphony or the business leaders in the commercial club – to help improve student achievement. They were along the lines of mentoring by artists, literacy instruction, professional development for teachers and administrators, and training for parents in everything from computer skills to helping their children with homework to advocating for their children at school.

This last activity – something suburban parents practice with zeal – is also suspect in Kurtz's view: "CAC records show that board member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents 'organized' by community groups might be viewed by school principals 'as a political threat.'" That is typical of Kurtz's essay – relatively innocuous facts cast in the worst possible light. That's appropriate for an opinion piece, perhaps, but hardly grounds for a purportedly factual political ad accusing the group of radicalism.

We could go on and on with evidence that the Chicago Annenberg Challenger was a rather vanilla charitable group. For example, under the deal with Annenberg every dollar from him had to be matched by two from elsewhere. The co-funders were a host of respected, mainstream institutions, such as the National Science Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Chicago Public Schools.

In short, this was a mainstream foundation funded by a mainstream, Republican business leader and led by an overwhelmingly mainstream, civic-minded group of individuals. Ayers' involvement in its inception and on an advisory committee do not make it radical – nor does the funding of programs involving the United Nations and African-American studies.

This attack is false, but it's more than that – it's malicious. It unfairly tars not just Obama, but all the other prominent, well-respected Chicagoans who also volunteered their time to the foundation. They came from all walks of life and all political backgrounds, and there's ample evidence their mission was nothing more than improving ailing public schools in Chicago. Yet in the heat of a political campaign they have been accused of financing radicalism. That's Pants on Fire wrong.

I hope that clears some of this mess up, it probably won't since no Republicans read my blog.

OMG!!!! McCain's a terrorist!!!!

"It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier ... It's ridiculous," Republican Rep. Diana Nelson said. "There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It's nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It's so silly."

This is a quote from former Illinois State Representative Diana Nelson during an interview with NPR. Who is it referring to? Why, William Ayers, the much maligned passing acquantance of Senator Obama! They served together on an education board for the city of Chicago. They were in the same room a grand total of six times. Six times? Not a lot of elbow rubbing to be quantified as "pallin' around with terrorists".

Well, surely this Chicago cabal of terrorists was funded by Al-Queda or something right? Not quite, funding and sponsorship came from the Annenberg Foundation. Yes, THE Annenberg Foundation, who's President and Chairman, Leonore Annenberg, was Chief of Protocol in the Reagan Presidency. Coincedentally, the McCain campaign released a list with her at the lofty position of second out of 100 former ambassadors to endorse the GOP candidate. Perhaps we should talk about McCain and his ties to a terrorist organization? Perhaps not. I suggest we use this information to cease the seemingly never ending attempts to assasinate the character of the Democratic Candidate, then move on to fixing this country.

I couldn't help it at all!

Image via The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan

A break from my Metaphysics homework:

An interesting "what if?" scenario (well, interesting to me):

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if Obama were the candidate who was unfaithful and left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Obama were a member of the Keating-5?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe Obama would be where he is now?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

Which team would you hire?
With America facing historic debt, 2 wars, stumbling health care, a weakened dollar, all-time high prison population, mortgage crises, bank foreclosures, etc.

Educational Background:
Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude
vs.
McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

Happy Birthday to me!!!

I'm in love with a wonderful woman, LSU won, the Cubs are in the playoffs, the Saints won, and Obama is ahead in the polls. Please let this be the year I get all my wishes.

Ok, just watched the debate...

I've gotta give it to Obama, despite the fact that neither was overly impressive. Barack looked confident, collected, and unflappable. John McCain looked angry and bitter most of the night, and please tell me I'm not the only one who noticed that McCain never seemed to look Obama in the eye all night.

When Obama said "Can we move on Jim?" while McCain was raving about offshore drilling and Lehrer actually moved to the next question is when I realized Obama had won this debate.

"John, you act like the war started in 2007."


Ah, following McCain's prudence lecture:


Overall, a draw is still a win for Obama.

Beautiful

If either Gore or Kerry could've come across so naturally and fun, would I even have a blog? I don't think I would...

I do so hope my Republican friends actually read this...

Here's a crude graphic of the tax plans side by side. I don't understand where everyone says Obama is going to raise my taxes like McCain keeps telling me? Am I stupid? Can I not read a simple bar chart? If so, I should get my money back from that damn math professor at school!

Great Commercial

Bravo Planned Parenthood!

Hey, what's the difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom?

Pitbulls don't lie.

Obama '08.

Wow!

I've been waiting for years to have something like this to observe. This is the best speech since the 60's and I'm proud to say I'm voting for this dynamic a candidate. I've heard he wrote the whole thing, if so, bravo sir, bravo!

Holy Hell, maybe Obama reads my blog!

Chicago Tribune: Obama Satisfied All Doubts About Rezko - Politics on The Huffington Post

In politics, for all you newcomers, this never happens, just so you know. I'm shocked, color me speechless.

Wow, this election thing is the gift that keeps on giving

So apparently Geraldine Ferraro is not only unrepentant about claiming that Obama only does so well because he is black, then went on the back on the attack claiming Obama's campaign is attacking her because she is white, but to top it all off, she has made similar claims/smears against opponents in the past. Finally, she steps down from Hillary campaign this afternoon.

In additional news, there is a new phenomenon known as the "Limbaugh Effect". Apparently, his rotundness, in his oxycontin induced wisdom, has instructed his sheep to drop their Republican registration in remaining Primaries, and vote for Hillary. Apparently, Hillary is a preferable opponent for McCain over Obama.

You may ask yourself how these two items could be related? Somewhat significantly actually, anyone who is a fan of the NFL remembers Limbaugh's (unfortunate?) tryst into the sports world. It, of course, ended in Limbaugh resigning for racist comments he made about Donovan McNabb, quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles. Ferraro is basically saying the same things about Obama. Let's compare the statements side by side:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." --Geraldine Ferraro, 3/10/08

"I don't think he's been that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there's a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn't deserve. The defense carried this team." --Rush Limbaugh, 9/28/03

Now, barring any ignorance to American Football, these are virtually the same statement. They're only special because they're black, I disagree on both counts. Obama is an exceptional candidate and McNabb is an exceptional quarterback. To try and discount their contributions by trivializing them due to race is racism, pure and simple. Although I felt as though I have made my point adequately, to reinforce my argument, I fall back upon one of the inspirations behind my political activism; Countdown with Keith Olbermann.