- The opening gavel is only 7 days away. Convention related events start as early as Thursday with the Stonewall Democrats National Convention. You can find info on this and a lot more in the DemConWatch Convention Calendar
- Jon Meacham from Newsweek and Chris Cillizza from the Washington Post will be streaming live coverage 7 hours a day from the convention.
- Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic will also be streaming.
- Senator Norm "Teeth" Coleman wouldn't go to the Republican convention if it was held in Minneapolis.
- Pay Equity Pioneer Lilly Ledbetter has been added to Tuesday's speaking schedule.
“We are honored that Lilly Ledbetter will address the Democratic Convention,” said Senator Barack Obama. “The fact that women are paid less than their male coworkers for doing the same job is unacceptable in the 21st century and counter to both the progress we've made and our shared values as Americans. Lilly Ledbetter's case before the Supreme Court has once again awakened the nation to this discrimination, and it's time we join together to right this wrong and pay women equal pay for equal work." - DNCC Press
This is the first video kicking off our coverage of the Democratic National Convention and events leading up to it. This one was a $2,300 a plate fundraiser for Barack Obama at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, CA, Sunday August 17th, 2008.
As part of the event, an Obama Rally was held outside of the hotel. Two, perhaps three people with bullhorns were leading the crowd in "Obama" cheers, and one I recognized.
Christine Pelosi, daughter of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the author of the well-received book "Campaign Boot Camp" a guide to successful campaigning, as well as a California Superdelegate supporting Senator Barack Obama.
I asked Christine about having Hillary's name placed in nomination and she skillfully ducked the question as only she can do. Instead, she said she was looking forward to the voting process, and reminds us that she's been a delegate since 1996.
Then Christine informed me that the California Delegation will have its party Wednesday Night at the Denver Museum of Natural History. So, if you're coming to Denver and are a Californian with political connections, that's the place to be.
McCain did talking points at the Saddleback forum, and he's been a known name since before becoming a household word during the Keating 5 scandal. Talking points worked for the Bush-Cheney campaign, so perhaps McCain did "win" the contest at Saddleback, as some pundits are espousing. And McCain has decades of name recognition going for him, clearly.
Obama relied on candid answers during his Saddleback appearance, which may impress people more now that we've seen the result of 8 years with a talking point president that put the economy in a tailspin (not just for today but for whoever ends up paying for Bush's war,) but obviously many find it easier to be comfortable with the talking points style of politics.
When Bush ran against Kerry, the talking point approach was reinforced by unabashed attack politics, albeit largely handled by surrogates. It worked. The term "swiftboated" as a way to describe the effect of the lies on Kerry's outcome on election day is as recognizable in the lexicon as the overuse of a "-gate" suffix for something that brings down a major figure.
So the question becomes:
Will those who prefer talking point prepared and vetted by a politician's handlers turn out to vote in larger numbers in November, or will those who prefer a President they can believe, and trust?
People knew, back when Bill Clinton ran, that they couldn't actually trust what he said, based on "didn't inhale." They understood it to be a socially acceptable answer, but not the unvarnished truth. In fact, we expect our leaders to conceal certain things from us in the name of national security, so it was curiously reassuring. That "didn't inhale" response may have been the pivotal point in electing a man with only state-level experience to the Oval Office. Then, late in his term, President Clinton began quibbling over what terms such as "sexual relations" and "is" meant... and we got George W. Bush as the country reacted to Clinton's disingenuous, political responses when the subject was personal.
So, will celebrity, attack politics and talking points win? Despite my own preferences, and hopes, it will take a lot of people showing up on election day and expressing their true desire for a candid, honest form of politics to make that happen - and like it or not, history favors McCain. Still, I'll advocate on behalf of the outsider, Obama, and vote for him in November.
I don't blame all Republicans for the state of the economy and the debt we're facing. I might've been suckered by the doctored intelligence reports, myself, when it came time to vote on various Iraq issues, and I surely believed Colin Powell, who soldiered on dutifully for his Commander In Chief in front of the United Nations and the world. We goofed, frankly -- yet this remains the one place I want to live and raise my family.
I just think under the leadership we've had since 2000 that we've gone down bad paths, and I'm ready for a pragmatic, candid, visionary leader to take the U.S.A. in a new direction.
It appears that Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren admits that he would not vote for an adulter. The question came up before the Saddleback Forum, where U.S. Senator and GOP Nominee for President John McCain did say that he regretted how he treated his first wife.
It's widely known in political circles that McCain cheated on his first wife with the woman we now know as Cindy McCain. CNN's Mary Snow asked her about the question, without success:
In 1965 John McCain, a member of the US Navy, married an attractive model named Carol Shepp. In 1967 McCain was sent to Vietnam. It didn't take long before McCain was shot down and taken prisoner. Carol waited faithfully for McCain during his imprisonment. In 1969, Carol was in a terrible car crash. She was thrown through the windshield and suffered serious injuries. But Carol would not allow her POW husband to be notified of what had happened to her because she didn't want him to feel any additional stress. She stood by her man, alone, for the 5 years he was in prison.
McCain was released in 1973 and returned home to find that Carol's accident had "left her 4 inches shorter and on crutches, and she had gained a good deal of weight." [4] McCain no longer had a trophy wife he could feel proud of.
By the late 70's McCain had engaged in adulterous behaviors, as chronicled in the book "The Nightingale's Song" by Robert Timberg. Timberg wrote:
"Off duty, usually on routine cross-country flights to Yuma and El Centro, John started carousing and running around with women. To make matters worse, some of the women with whom he was linked by rumor were subordinates. At the time the rumors were so widespread that, true or not, they became part of McCain's persona, impossible not to take note of."
In 1979 John McCain met Cindy Lou Hensley at a military reception in Hawaii. [1] Cindy was a millionaire and very attractive. McCain was eighteen years older than the wealthy Hensley, but that didn't stop him from developing an adulterous relationship with her. [2]
McCain says of their first meeting, "She was lovely, intelligent and charming, 18 years my junior but poised and confident. I monopolized her attention the entire time, taking care to prevent anyone else from intruding on our conversation. When it came time to leave the party, I persuaded her to join me for drinks at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. By the evening's end, I was in love."
That's what happened. How the public will handle this as the campaign wears on is the unknown story.
At an event U.S. Rep John Murtha said that he believed long-time political pundit MSNBC and former San Francisco Examiner Columnist Chris Matthews would make a great Senator
To me, that would mean the loss of a great political pundit.
Say, what's Pastor Rick Warren up to, charging $500 and up for a ticket to the Saddleback Forum and not telling people on the website according to this YouTuber. Look, the errors regarding this debate are starting to add up. I have no objection to the Forum and I enjoyed it.
But I do have serious problems with the way Warren guided Senator McCain to address a Darfur issue McCain would not have mentioned on his own, and I don't like that Pastor Warren essentially let McCain give the kind of stump speeches that Senator Obama was told not to give.
That's not right and Pastor Warren owes the country an explaination for it.
My take on tonight's Saddleback Forum. I felt that Pastor Rick Warren set Obama up by first having him go before McCain, then telling him not to give stump speeches while having or allowing McCain to give stump speeches and not challenging him on it.
When I hear Senator McCain all I get is "war. war. war." When I hear Senator Obama, I get "talk. think. decide." That's a huge difference, indeed. For someone like CNN Contributor David Gergen to be massaged to sleep by the words of Senator McCain is totally criminal. And it really is, because we're not electing a story teller, we're electing a president.
U.S. Olympic Swimmer Michael Phelps just won his record-breaking eighth Gold Medal tonight with his participation in the 4 x 100 relay. Congratulations, Michael for being a great Olympian and a "cool muthafukca."
Some of you have asked me why I used that term "cool muthafukca". I got it from the movie "Pulp Fiction" , where Samuel L. Jackson -- in a classic performance -- ask for his wallet, the one called "Bad Mother Fucker". Well, I didn't want to use that exact term so I altered it.
The point is that Phelps is a cool person in and out of the water. In the water, he cooly destroys the competition. Out of the water, he's a cool person to meet.
I've seen a lot of crappy people in this election cycle, but this video shows a lot of them. It was made just before the West Virginia Primary and has whites just saying that they will not vote for Senator Obama as president because he's Black.
It's the kind of racism Hillary Clinton played on to gain votes. Will it reveal itself during the DNC Convention?
If you want to see how sick America -- or at least West Virginia -- can be, watch this video:
West Virginians should be ashamed of themselves for being racist. For just wanting to basically hurt themselves just to avoid voting for someone because they're Black. That's the ultimate in mental illness, which is what Racism is.
Sandy Allen, the World's Tallest Woman at 7'7 inches, passed away Thursday at 53 years of age and after a decline in her health that started in January and due to kidney and blood infections. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif I always wonder what people like Sandy go through, and also having been a bit of an outcast myself in my youth, everytime I read or hear about a story like this, I am saddened and because of the way we treat people who may not be like whatever the "norm" is.
There's really no such thing as a norm; there are only individuals.
Anyway, here's a collection of videos about Sandy that I found on YouTube. I didn't include the ones that were insulting or sensational -- sorry.
Michael Phelps, who I met earlier this year and is in this video:
..scored his seventh Gold Medal last night in the 100 M Fly to tie Mark Spitz' three-decade-old record. He can beat it with one more win in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Hillary Clinton Should Not Be In Nomination: Ignore P.U.M.A
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's name should not be put in nomination for the Democratic Presidential Nominee at the DNC Convention for several reasons. But before I state them, let me explain that I have supported the idea of an Obama / Clinton ticket for some time. But these reasons have caused me to be less enthusiastic about that, and to reject the idea of her name in the nomination process.
1) Senator Clinton lost the primary. For reasons that have been explored in depth, Senator Clinton lost the primary delegate race to Senator Barack Obama, and Senator Obama gained more popular votes than Senator Clinton.
2) I did not like the way Senator Clinton conducted herself after the end of the primary. At first, she was working for party unity, but did not rein in some of her supporters and did not have her husband former President Clinton fall in line and support Senator Obama 100 percent.
It's as if they were really cool as long as they though they had a chance for Hillary to be Vice President, but fell off the wagon when it seemed that was not going to be the case.
3) Senator Clinton did not rein in her former campaign spokesperson Howard Wolfson, who incorrectly stated that she would have won the Iowa Primary if Senator John Edwards had revealed his affair with Rielle Hunter then, instead of last week. But the fact is that after Edwards dropped about 80 percent of his delegates went to Obama and his staff was pressuring him to back Obama, which he did.
There's an idea that the number of anti-Obama Hillary people out there is equal in number to the pro-Obama Hillary people. That's really not true at all. We not only saw that was the case during the votes at the DNC Rules Committee meeting, but in a deep look at organizations like "Party Unity My Ass" or "P.U.M.A".
First, P.U.M.A's founder Darragh Murphy (pictured) has been a supporter of Senator John McCain, giving him $500. It's clear that when she has the money, she will back a Republican candidate. Her claim of posting a lawn sign for Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick aside, because it's a lawn sign and not cash, Murphy only contributed $250 more for a Democratic Candidate, Hillary Clinton, than for McCain.
The other person who's aligned with the P.U.M.A people is Will Brewer, who has a tendency of aligning himself with questionable people who are also in P.U.M.A.
For ezample there's Andy Martin and Webster Tarpley. Martin is the person who started the "Obama is Muslim" smear campaign. Tarpley is not a Democrat at all, but a Lyndon LaRouche supporter.
(A charge Martin says is false and defaming in the same blog account.)
Brewer is also aligned with Harriet Christian, who showed her racism for the World to see in the now famous video clip included in my video commentary.
P.U.M.A is painted to be larger than it is. It only has a $50,000 budget as Murphy has reported on Hardball, not several million, and there's no evidence to claim over 2 million supporters. A P.U.M.A conference held on August 8th, 9th, and 10th, showed that only about 40 people came (count the number of name tags on the table then consider the size of the table an the people standing who have name-tags), even though they planned to draw over 250 people. When they did not meet that mark, the conference was booted from the original Marriot hotel and had to be moved to the Country Inn near Dulles Airport. (P.U.M.A. conference photo below from Rumproast)
Why -- as small as they are -- do we hear from groups like P.U.M.A? Because the mainstream media: the newspapers and the big three tv news networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC), and CNN, Fox, and MSNBC, have a vested interest in making the political race look like it's not a "done deal" and thus get you to watch more often.
So, they give people from P.U.M.A a platform, but the reality is that they're a divisive group that's not even part of the Democratic Party and has no business at the DNC Convention. They are to be ignored so we can get on with the business of growing the Democratic Party to victory in November.
- The opening gavel is only 7 days away. Convention related events start as early as Thursday with the Stonewall Democrats National Convention. You can find info on this and a lot more in the DemConWatch Convention Calendar
And McCain has decades of name recognition going for him, clearly.
