Naomi Wolf: "We need more drastic action than e-mails to Congress."

History shows that when an army of citizens, supported by even a vestige of civil society, believes in liberty -- in the psychological space that is "America" -- no power on earth can ultimately suppress them.

We are not to wait for others to lead. You and I are meant to take back the founders' mandate, and you and I are meant to lead. You and I must protest, you and I must confront our representatives, you and I must run for office, you and I must write the opeds, you and I must take over the battle.

The founders -- the unknown as well as the well-known Americans who "conceived" the nation in liberty -- did not intend for us to delegate worrying about the Constitution to a cadre of constitutional scholars, or to leave debate to a class of professional pundits, or to leave the job of fighting for liberty to a caste of politicians. They meant for us to defend the Constitution, for us to debate the issues of the day, and for us to rise up against tyranny: the American who delivers the mail; the American who teaches our children; ordinary people.... We have to rise up in self-defense and legitimate rebellion.

No more lies.
No Palin.
No McCain.
No way.

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Lynn Forester de Rothschild Can Kiss My Elitist, Black Male Butt!

Lynn Forester de Rothschild just made herself my enemy and for a very good reason. The former Hillary Clinton fundraiser came out and basically made a totally racist comment regarding Senator Barack Obama when she said:

“This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don’t like him,” she said of Obama in an interview with CNN’s Joe Johns. “I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”

This is the biggest bunch of bullshit I've ever heard in my entire life. This matter of being elitist is a tag that I've gotten -- and frankly wear it -- as have other African Americans who are confident, well-educated, intelligent, and don't fall into deference because someone's White. There are those of us -- who are Black -- who still do this just to, as they say, "get along" but I personally decided a long time ago that I was going to be myself.

In fact, I made that decision at the age of 22 and simply went from there. The reason for that walk, that journey is because American society has sent so many messages to Black men that they're "less than" that one has to fight the messages every day of their lifes.

It's one reason why Black men have such high rates of heart disease and why self esteem is commonly -- even to this day -- sought via athletics and not education because the sport of the body the one area of life where a person can't deny your prowess. Sadly.

Getting good grades is awesome, but people at times have a tendency to pay no attention to transcripts. Scoring touchdowns is hard to ignore.

But I rejected that path at six years old. I decided then that I wanted to lead via the intellect and damn anyone who stood in my way. And yes, I was six. Six.

So I've met a lot of people like Lynn Forester de Rothschild and overcame all of them. See, some people like Lynn Forester de Rothschild are not happy unless they have the subconsious idea that if you're Black, she's better than you are.

Think about it.

Why then would she claim to reject Barack Obama for being elitist, and then run to John McCain, who's not only elitist and can't remember how many homes he owns, but is massively sexist on top of that.

Because McCain's White. That's why. Lynn Forester de Rothschild expected Barack to kiss her ring and when he treated her with respect and, well, like any normal person, that wasn't enough for her.

Well, my one request is for Lynn Forester de Rothschild to be kicked off the DNC Platform Committee. As soon as possible.

UPDATE: she's already off of it.

Gallup: Obama 47, McCain 45 / Daily Kos: Obama 48 Mccain 44 Dail- Convention "Tricks" Are Over

My blogger friend Oliver Willis reports that the post Republican Convention "bounce" is over, but I wonder if it's just that Gallup elected to stop playing games with numbers. So I walked over to the DailyKos, which has its own daily poll tracking system.

DailyKos has Obama ahead by 4 points and not 2 points, 48 to 44 points. But back to Gallup, I'm going to check on their method to see what's up, later.

Palin's Mistake: Idea Placing Federal Spending Online is Obama's 2006 Law

Last week I reported via video about Alaska Governor and GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin's lack of knoweldge of who owned Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae. I avoided making a video regarding Palin's lack of knoweldge of The Bush Doctrine, but you knew about that. Now, Palin's made another mistake -- three in the span of a week -- and this time it's a doozy because it could have been avoided.

At a rally in Ohio on Tuesday, Palin said this:

"I've got another idea that I think Senator McCain likes. In Alaska, we took the state checkbook and put it online, so everyone can see where their money goes. We're going to bring that kind of openness to Washington,"

There's one problem, the idea's been thought of and acted on and by none other than Senator Barack Obama in 2006. It was called The Colburn - Obama Act and had as it's other co-sponsors Senator John McCain, off all people. The law was signed by President Bush on September 26th, 2006 and called The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (S. 2590). It established this new website called USA Spending.gov, where you can see where Federal dollars are going.

Palin Does Not Know The Federal Government

But the problem once again is Governor Palin's lack of knoweldge of the Federal Goverment. She simply lacks the feel for the nuance of goverment at this level, let alone a sound understanding of the history of the Federal Govermment and its policies and programs.

The other problem is the aides to McCain are not properly briefed on the Senator's work themselves. Regardless of where you look, it's a tragic story of the blind leading the blind.

Sarah Palin Goes From Most Popular To Least Popular Canidate

This didn't take long: Palin now has the lowest favorability rating of the four presidential / VP contenders.

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Bill Maher on the Rachel Maddow Show - Against Sarah Palin

USA Today Gallup Poll Numbers Rigged Again -- To Favor McCain

Last year, I created a video and blog post reporting how Gallup's Frank Newport rigged a poll created for the USA Today to reflect a Clinton lead over Barack Obama in June and because Newport admitted that he could not believe that Obama was tied with Clinton.

This is what I wrote last year:

OK. Get this. Just get this. Two weeks ago, Senator Barack Obama was tied -- that's right, tied -- with Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic Presidential race in the then latest USA Today / Gallup Poll. Now, USA Today / Gallup didn't do a poll in May, and certainly not two weeks apart, but this new one says that Senator Clinton has a large lead.

What?

The critical eye would have a question. I've got several. But the bottom line is the second round of polling was rigged. Why? Because someone didn't like the outcome and doesn't want Senator Barack Obama to win, so they immediately ordered another poll and worked to obtain results they wanted to see.

The poll effort was rigged. That's right, rigged.

You can't even find the poll on the Gallup website. How in the hell can you explain the supposed "double-digit lead" Senator Clinton has, but then she's behind in South Carolina? That observation about the black vote being the reason is pure bull shit.

Don't believe it because there's no proof for it.

This is what the USA Today's "Gallup Guru" , Frank Newport, reported in his blog - the smoking gun, in part, is here:

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Clinton, Obama, immigration and Russian attitudes

New polling data from several survey organizations – including pending data from Gallup -- make it clear that Sen. Hillary Clinton is maintaining or strengthening her lead for the presidential nomination over Sen. Barack Obama among Democrats. Our early June USA Today/Gallup poll showed the two tied, as discussed here and here. But that finding apparently did not signify a significant change in the structure of the race. The latest polls from the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal/NBC show Clinton in her accustomed role as leader when Democrats are asked whom they want to be their party’s nominee. It looks as if the June 1-3 USA Today/Gallup poll either picked up a short term change, or as noted here, was a function of unusual sampling which happened to pick up Democrats who were more pro-Obama than the underlying population.

We have a Gallup poll now in the field, with results to be reported early next week. Preliminary indications are that this poll will find Clinton back in her typical leadership position as she has been for the most part this year.

What? In other words, Whoops! We can't believe the outcome, so we've got to talk to a new set of people and get the outcome we want. We can't -- just can't -- be forced to report that Senator Obama is tied with Senator Clinton.

What the Gallup Guru does not explain is why they did a new poll so close after the first one, and without having done a poll two weeks before?

I'll tell you why. Because USA Today and CNN are reporting these polls and don't want Senator Barack Obama to win the Democratic race for the White House.

They don't want a president who happens to be Black, and so they're trying to engineer a win for Senator Clinton. First, CNN consistently focuses on the race issue, then reports any small seemingly negative information about Senator Obama. Any positive information is either downplayed or avoided altogether, or rigged, as in the case of this polling process.

I think the USA Today, CNN, and Gallup all should appologize to Senator Barack Obama. I seriously doubt Frank Newport just decided to do a new poll -- the USA Today paid him to do a new poll because they didn't like the outcome of the first one.

That's crass. Noam Chomsky was right in his classic work "Manufacturing Consent" -- the old media (USA Today) is trying to manipulate the public.

They have to explain the South Carolina poll as well as why the Mason-Dixon pollsters shared their error data, where the USA Today / Gallup Poll people did not. One can argue that the latest USA Today Gallup Poll has a huge margin of error considering the games they play with these polls. This is totally irresponsible on the part of USA Today and Gallup.

Now it appears that Newport and Gallup are at it again, and once again with the USA Today. The credit for this discovery goes to DailyKos blogger Dick Driver, who explained that normally Gallup uses "registered voters" as the basis for its poll surveys but for a USA Today poll after the Republican National Convention, Gallup created a poll using the less accurate "likely voter" method.

How did Driver know this? Because he found Gallup's own notes explaining the problem. Here's what Driver wrote:

From Gallup:

Second, we are at this point reporting likely voter estimates on only an occasional basis. We feel that the trends among registered voters give us the best way to track election preferences in our daily poll, in part because many voters are not yet in a position to accurately estimate their chances of voting on Election Day. But from time to time, we do estimate (and report) likely voter results to give us a feel for the potential difference turnout could make in November. So far this summer, there have been occasions when -- as was the case this past weekend after the GOP convention -- likely voters were decidedly more Republican. But there have also been occasions when there was little difference between the vote patterns of likely voters and those of registered voters.

In other words, Gallup is admitting the following:

At the time it released the September 8th poll (showing McCain up by 10), it believed institutionally that likely voter results were less accurate than registered voter results.
Likely voter results have only occasionally diverged from the registered voter results.
Despite these facts, Gallup deliberately chose to release, to the widest fanfare possible, a poll using an admittedly less accurate method (the likely voter method) at the time of McCain's maximum convention bounce, knowing that it would show a large divergence (+10 for McCain vs. only +4 with registered voters) based on the likely voter method, even though such a divergence is not often present.
In short, they combined all possible factors in McCain's favor to make his lead seem as big as possible -- and the media went wild with it.

But the problem does not end there.

The Democratic Party has an advantage of 11 million more registered voters than the Republican Party and the margin keeps growing. But that difference is not reflected in the polls. The reason, according to Seth Coulter Walls in the Huffington Post, is that "Party ID" -- who's Democrat, Republican, etc -- is estimated as either 50 / 50 or in some cases with Republicans ahead. That's not what reality tells us, but the poll results reflect a closer race that the true totals of registered Democrats and Republicans show. And that shows a possible landslide victory for Senator's Barack Obama and Joe Biden if the Obama camp's get out the vote strategy works as well as it seems that it will come election day.

HP to cut nearly 25,000 jobs by 2011

Computer maker Hewlett-Packard said it will lay off 24,600 employees, or 7.5% of its workforce, over the next three years in a plan to integrate tech outsourcer Electronic Data Systems, which HP bought late last month. HP said the workforce reduction will result in annual cost savings of about $1.8 billion. Of the nearly 25,000 layoffs, HP said a

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Linwood Holton - Virginia Republican ex-Governor to Campaign for Obama

Former GOP governor Linwood Holton today endorsed a Democrat for president for the first time and is going to stump critical areas of the state for him. Linwood Holton is the hero of moderate Republicans in Virginia. Holton is widely regarded as the father of the Republican party in Virginia.

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McCain Furiously Backpedals On 'Strong Economy'

Just now in Florida McCain offered the most contorted retraction ever of his oft-repeated "strong economy" line -- he changed it to be a reference about workers (!). Another interesting thing to note: McCain stole Obama's "Enough is enough line." There's something hilarious about seeing that guy say "enough is enough" without any apparent sense of

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Matt Cassel Leads Patriots to Victory on First Start

NFL Football Box Score: Final statistics from the New England vs. New York game played on September 14, 2008

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Lehman Brothers File for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Lehman Brothers, burdened by $60 billion in soured real-estate holdings, said it is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after attempts to rescue the 158-year-old firm failed.

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