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Obama in 30 Seconds Favorites I

Obama in 30 Seconds Favorites II

Obama in 30 Seconds Favorites III

The Empire Strikes Barack

New MoveOn Ad

Response to Mayhill Fowler II:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ma...tml#postComment

This is the second column of yours that I've read. First of all, I'm glad Hillary almost always knows where she is. I know she's not where I am as a voter almost always. She's closer to Joe Lieberman, James Carville, and the DLC than she is to Howard Dean and the DNC. Barack, on the other hand, is running his campaign by Dean's playbook page for page.

Frankly, I'd take Obama's association with Wright and Ayers over Clinton's association with Carville and Lieberman in a heartbeat. I really liked Hillary when she ran for the Senate here in NY. I just can't stand the people she surrounds herself with and I sure as hell don't want them influencing White House policy.

Obama/Dean
Accept no prostitutes!

Subway's Obama Campaign Limericks

The laughter, I just can't contain!
Never thought such a dame could campaign,
And bolster her fight,
With 'points' from the right,
Each day she sounds more like McCain!

And what the hell happened to Bill?
To his dear wife, again he's a pill!
If you want to bring your spouse,
Back into the White House,
You should try not to be such a shill.

When the Gopers anointed McCain,
They knew they'd be missing the train.
They'll soon be in trauma,
When Barack Obama,
Flushes their dreams down the drain!

Our candidate's name is Barack.
He'll come under right wing attack.
But he'll win the day,
Standing far from the fray,
If Howard Dean's watching his back!

Iraq: Six Months at a time

(h/t Crooks and Liars)

Response to Mayhill Fowler @HuffPo

I saw this at the Huffington Post this afternoon in a thread by Clinton supporter Mayhill Fowler:

Last night at a fundraiser in San Francisco, Barack Obama took a question on what he's looking for in a running mate. "I would like somebody who knows about a bunch of stuff that I'm not as expert on," he said, and then he was off and running. "I think a lot of people assume that might be some sort of military thing to make me look more Commander-in-Chief-like. Ironically, this is an area--foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain."

"It's ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags 'I've met leaders from eighty countries'--I know what those trips are like! I've been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There's a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then--you go.

"You do that in eighty countries--you don't know those eighty countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa--knowing the leaders is not important--what I know is the people. . . .

"I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college--I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . . .

"Nobody is entirely prepared for being Commander-in-Chief. The question is when the 3 AM phone call comes do you have somebody who has the judgment, the temperament to ask the right questions, to weigh the costs and benefits of military action, who insists on good intelligence, who is not going to be swayed by the short-term politics. By most criteria, I've passed those tests and my two opponents have not."

My response to this article didn't make it into the comment section of this thread, so I'm posting it here:

I've been saying it for several months now. McCain is such a weak candidate that Obama doesn't need to flow with the conventional wisdom. What Obama needs is someone who is ready to be President from day one. He needs someone who can help solidify the base of the Party as he reaches across the aisle. He needs a pit bull who can help him remain above the fray as he goes up against the right wing noise machine this fall, someone who's itching for the fight.

He needs to be able to take that fight to all 50 states. He needs someone who isn't beholden to the DLC, and who is a rock solid member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. It's sad to say it in the 21st Century, but if he's going to be the first black President of the United States he needs a Vice President whom the right wing fears more than anyone else, just for that extra measure of safety that the Secret Service can't provide That man was endorsed by Al Gore and Jimmy Carter in 2004. His name is Howard Dean.

"Great American Hypocrites" A New Book

I just got finished reading an excerpt from Glen Greenwald's "Great American Hypocrites" which is currently threaded at the Huffington Post. Here's a taste of that thread:

It examines the deceitful, personality-based election tactics the Right uses to build absurd cults of personality around their leaders while demonizing liberal and Democratic candidates. Accompanying that, as always, is the vital role the establishment press plays in disseminating those vapid though powerful themes. This excerpt is from the chapter concerning John McCain's candidacy and how those themes will be deployed by the right-wing/media monster to transform him into a principled, honor-bound American icon.

Folks should read the article and buy the book, or at least order it in your local library so that the Department of Homeland Security can have a record of it. My comment made it into the thread.

First of all Thanks to Mr. Greenwald for another home run.

My concern is that there is compelling evidence that indicates that the Bush/Cheney cabal was never legally elected in the first place, and the mendacity that Glen relates to makes me wonder what most folks consider unthinkable. If in fact these high offices were stolen, what makes anyone think they just intend to hand those offices back to the people when they're times up? As Andrew Sullivan rightly put it, these guys will be tried for war crimes if they leave the country. In fact, the only thing standing between these people and serious prosecution here at home is their current address. These folks have already made it clear that they have no problem with losing a major city. They laugh about it when they think the cameras aren't looking, and they do it in front of high ranking journalists at Gridiron Dinners to boot. The very people who should be telling us about the laughter, so that we can show our outrage. I believe that between now and January, this Nation is on perilous ground. Who's to stop them if they decide not to leave, Gen. Petreus? Michael Mukasey?

The Heart Tuner Spectrum

I've been away from the internets for a few weeks and while I was gone I had the chance to log some quality time with Gizmo. In my further experiments I discovered how to operate what is called the "Spectrum" screen. You see, the butterfly game is really meant for two people, so that they can learn to link their hearts in a phase lock, which is what I refer to as the "Full Snuggle Position." As great as this is, it isn't as exciting when played alone, even though you can learn a lot when your butterfly is flying solo.



So Dan Winter added a wonderful game of Solitaire called "Spectrum."



Whereas the Butterfly game shows the harmonic frequency and amplitude that your heart is "singing" at in real time, the Spectrum shows how that charge is distributed across the heart's harmonic range. The graph at the bottom indicates the bandwidth. Between 1 and 3 is the Delta band, between 3 and 7 is Theta. From 7 to 13 is the Alpha and above 13 is Beta. As you can see, the peaks tend to be lower in the Alpha and Beta ranges. The object of Spectrum is to increase the Alpha and Beta peaks. This process is identical to the goal of meditation. Only here you get to chart your progress in real time.

As 13 is the start of the Beta band, I decided to concentrate there, as the graph didn't seem to rise much above .15 on the verticle scale. After taking a little time to get intuitive with the game, the graph was looking like this:


The key to Heart Coherence, therefore is to learn to increase the peaks in the Spectrum across the harmonic range (left/right motion) of the Butterfly. Increasing the Spectrum peaks is, as a Jedi would say "stretching out with your feelings."

Kinda Says It All II

Heart Radio

Imagine that you're driving in your car listening to your favorite music from your favorite radio station. If you live in a major city, thousands of people are listening to the same song you are and all of your hearts are beating to the rhythm of the music. Your brainwaves are also keeping time. As the songs change, so do your internal rhythms. I demonstrated this principle at the mini DeanFest in Vermont earlier this year.

Now, if you didn't have a radio, you wouldn't be able to hear the music. Songs of all sorts, from every station would be passing through you unnoticed, and your internal rhythms would be going their own merry way.

However, those who hear the music share a bond, a focal point that has all of the hearts dancing to the same tune, even though they don't realize it. I have found in practical terms that not only do the internal systems receive waves and react to them, but we also broadcast waves of our own to which others react. We are in fact, exchanging waves of various sorts all the time. Not only that, but we and everything around us are just a series of complex, but simply ordered waveforms.

Today I was thinking of how so much of the world seems to be listening to some radio station that plays nothing but Rush Limbaugh droning on and on. Yet we don't realize that a really beautiful music station is just a few stations up the dial. What if Peace on Earth were made possible simply by having enough connected hearts reaching up and changing the channel?

Thanksgiving food for thought.

Many people across the country today will be having their Thanksgiving dinner at thousands of locations that serve meals to the poor and homeless. But this would be largely unnecessary if our priorities were a little different.

From the Washington Post:

Food banks are a dominant institution in this country, and they assert their power at the local and state levels by commanding the attention of people of good will who want to address hunger. Their ability to attract volunteers and to raise money approaches that of major hospitals and universities. While none of this is inherently wrong, it does distract the public and policymakers from the task of harnessing the political will needed to end hunger in the United States.

The risk is that the multibillion-dollar system of food banking has become such a pervasive force in the anti-hunger world, and so tied to its donors and its volunteers, that it cannot step back and ask if this is the best way to end hunger, food insecurity and their root cause, poverty.

During my tenure in Hartford, I often wondered what would happen if the collective energy that went into soliciting and distributing food were put into ending hunger and poverty instead. Surely it would have a sizable impact if 3,000 Hartford-area volunteers, led by some of Connecticut's most privileged and respected citizens, showed up one day at the state legislature, demanding enough resources to end hunger and poverty. Multiply those volunteers by three or four -- the number of volunteers in the state's other food banks and hundreds of emergency food sites -- and you would have enough people to dismantle the Connecticut state capitol brick by brick. Put all the emergency food volunteers and staff and board members from across the country on buses to Washington, to tell Congress to mandate a living wage, health care for all and adequate employment and child-care programs, and you would have a convoy that might stretch from New York City to our nation's capital.

But what we have done instead is to continue down a road that never comes to an end. Like transportation planners who add more lanes to already clogged highways, we add more space to our food banks in the futile hope of relieving the congestion.

We know hunger's cause -- poverty. We know its solution -- end poverty. Let this Thanksgiving remind us of that task.

Something to think about as we give thanks for the harvest.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

SAVE THE HOs!

Recently, we lost the designation of Pluto as a planet in our solar system. We have also seen the loss of thousands of hyphens from our dictionaries. Today, I see that the War on Christmas has claimed yet another casualty to political correctness and the Liberal Media.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Santas in Australia's largest city have been told not to use Father Christmas's traditional "ho ho ho" greeting because it may be offensive to women, it was reported Thursday.

Sydney's Santa Clauses have instead been instructed to say "ha ha ha" instead, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Please don't allow this world say "HA!" to Christmas!

Click my "Donation Button" today, while there's still time, and help me to "Save the HOs!"

Thank You.

Howard Dean: Right again.

When Howard Dean spoke at DemocracyFest one of the things he spoke of at length about was how the Democratic National Committee was reaching out to find common ground among evangelical and other Christian groups. He made the point that these folks are moving away from the hard right positions of "God, Guns and Gays," and moving toward issues of the occupation of Iraq, poverty, social justice and environmental stewardship. Dean said that there is much common ground that can be explored in the next election cycle.

Last night I found this in the New York Times:

The extraordinary evangelical love affair with Bush has ended, for many, in heartbreak over the Iraq war and what they see as his meager domestic accomplishments. That disappointment, in turn, has sharpened latent divisions within the evangelical world — over the evangelical alliance with the Republican Party, among approaches to ministry and theology, and between the generations.

(Snip)

Meanwhile, a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty — problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers.

The backlash on the right against Bush and the war has emboldened some previously circumspect evangelical leaders to criticize the leadership of the Christian conservative political movement. “The quickness to arms, the quickness to invade, I think that caused a kind of desertion of what has been known as the Christian right,” Hybels, whose Willow Creek Association now includes 12,000 churches, told me over the summer. “People who might be called progressive evangelicals or centrist evangelicals are one stirring away from a real awakening.”

This ten page article in the Sunday Magazine offers much to consider as progressives try to find common ground with a constituency that was led astray by wolves in sheep's clothing (Fallwell, Dobson et al) that for far too long has held sway over the public presentation and perception of American Christianity.

“There was a time when evangelical churches were becoming largely and almost exclusively the Republican Party at prayer,” said Marvin Olasky, the editor of the evangelical magazine World and an informal adviser to George W. Bush when he was governor. “To some extent — we have to see how much — the Republicans have blown it. That opportunity to lock up that constituency has vanished. The ball now really is in the Democrats’ court.”

Amen.

Dem Leaders: Stand up or step down!

Help Oppose Telecom Amnesty

The first step is to make sure retroactive immunity doesn't make it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- where it will be considered shortly.

If we can get it stripped there, it will have to be offered as an amendment to the overall bill where it will be a lot easier to get 41 votes against retroactive immunity than 41 to sustain my filibuster if necessary.

Take a moment and call up members of the Judiciary Committee and ask them whether they will oppose any legislation that includes retroactive immunity. Let us know what they said, and join others in tracking our progress in stopping the provision in the Committee.

A Howardly Award to Chris Dodd

Thank you for standing up for the Constiution by putting a hold on the FISA bill that would grant immunity to Telecommunication companies for illegal wiretapping.

Sex Addiction in Christian Women on the...um...Rise

(via Pam's House Blend:)

There is a crisis brewing in the Church: a growing epidemic of sexual addiction among women. A new book from Pure Life Ministries by authors Steve and Kathy Gallagher, Create in Me a Pure Heart, explores the scope of the problem and provides biblical answers for the church and the struggling woman.

For twenty-two years, Kathy Gallagher has been helping women cope with their husbands' addiction to pornography, strip clubs and prostitutes. Now she is responding to a growing number of women addicted to porn, chat rooms and online sex. "Thirty years ago," remarks Gallagher, "you never would have thought that the woman sitting next to you in Sunday school might be viewing porn. But with the growth of the Internet, the gap between what men and women do in secret has been drastically reduced."

According to Nielsen NetRatings, nearly one-third of the visitors to adult websites are female. Today's Christian Woman reported that 34 percent of their online newsletter readers admitted to intentionally accessing Internet porn. Women are also twice as likely as men to visit online chat rooms, according to Internet Filter Review.

My first instinct, empath that I am, was "What can I do to help these poor sex addicted Christian women?" The answer was simple:

I will develop a "Twelve Shtup Program." If any of you good women need my help, please don't hesitate to ask. My better two thirds has often praised the way I "Drill the Fear of God" into her, so I will do my best to relieve your overwhelming burdens.

Frankly, she's been looking for a way to put me out to stud. This could solve a multitude of problems...