The most vital news issue and the heart of our Democracy is our right to vote. Our responsibility is not only to vote, but to get the vote out.
That cause has been taken up by several kossacks in a tireless effort to put together a GOTV blogathon.
Please read, rec, and share these diaries.
GOTV Blogathon - October 23-26, 2012
Diary Schedule - All Times Pacific
Lawmakers, political activists, and union leaders have taken time from their round-the-clock, get-out-the-vote schedules to join us this week. Click this link for additional details, guest bios, and a complete lineup including among many others, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Van Jones, Secretary Robert Reich, and Governor Howard Dean.
Do you have any links for closely contested Congressional races in battleground states? If so, post them in the comments section of diaries written by our guests. More details here - Links for the DK GOTV Blogathon! Got Any Online Phonebanking Links for Close Races?
The blogathon is being organized by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, Onomastic, rb137, JekyllnHyde, boatsie, and adviser Meteor Blades.
1:00 pm: GOTV Blogathon: Your vote really DOES Matter (Just Ask the City of East Palo Alto, California) by shanikka.
3:00 pm: The Seduction of Cynicism by Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.
7:30 am: United Citizens vs Citizens United by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
11:00 am: GOTV Blogathon: A Vote for Our Nation’s Health by SEIU President Mary Kay Henry.
12:00 pm: Election 2012: The Great Vision Divide by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
1:00 pm: House Democrats Will Make You Proud by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
5:00 pm: Van Jones.
9:00 am: Senator Franken.
11:00 am: AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker.
1:00 pm: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
2:00 pm: SEIU International Secretary-Treasurer Eliseo Medina.
Eliseo Medina was confirmed as our guest after our announcement diary with pictures and bios was posted last Sunday. Medina is described by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the most successful labor organizers in the country" and "was named one of the "Top 50 Most Powerful Latino Leaders" in Poder Magazine. The International Secretary-Treasurer of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Medina also leads the union's efforts to achieve comprehensive immigration reform that rebuilds the nation's economy, secures equal labor- and civil-rights protections for workers to improve their wages and work conditions and provides legal channels and a path to citizenship."
3:00 pm: Rep. Barbara Lee.
4:30 pm: Governor Jennifer Granholm.
6:00 am: Senator Reid.
11:00 am: AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Shuler.
Noon: Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva.
1:00 pm: Tammy Duckworth.
3:00 pm: United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodríguez.
5:00 pm: [nameurl].
Please remember to republish these diaries to your Daily Kos Groups. You can also follow all postings by clicking this link for the DK Poli Group. Then, click 'Follow' and that will make all postings show up in 'My Stream' of your Daily Kos page.
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schedule template by JekyllnHyde
Down ticket races are just as important. Keep up with those diaries each day with Election Diary Rescue.
As U.S. election nears, efforts intensify to misinform, pressure voters
By Deborah Charles
In Florida, Virginia and Indiana, voters have received phone calls that wrongly told them there was no need to cast a ballot in person on Election Day because they could vote by phone.
In Ohio and Wisconsin, billboards in mostly low-income and minority neighborhoods showed prisoners behind bars and warned of criminal penalties for voter fraud - an effort that voting rights groups say was designed to intimidate minority voters.
And across the nation, some employers - notably David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who help fund the conservative group Americans for Prosperity - are pushing their workers to vote for Republican Mitt Romney for president.
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Jim Moran’s son resigns from campaign amid video furor
By Erinn Haines
The son of 11-term Rep. James P. Moran Jr. resigned from his father’s campaign Wednesday hours after an undercover video showed him discussing possible voter fraud with an activist posing as a campaign worker.
In the video, dated Oct. 8 and posted by conservative activist James O’Keefe, Patrick Moran does not explicitly advocate or condone the worker’s suggestion to cast ballots on behalf of 100 voters he says are unlikely to show up Nov. 6.
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Georgia store offers gun raffle tickets to voters
By Jeff Martin
Want a chance to win a rifle or handgun? Go vote. That’s the message from an Atlanta-area sporting goods store.
The promotion caught the attention of the secretary of state’s office last week and drew a complaint from a state senator who said it may break the law.
Georgia law prohibits anyone from giving or receiving money or gifts in exchange for voting, and felony charges could be brought if the law were broken, Secretary of State Brian Kemp said in a statement.
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Feds sue BofA for $1 billion over loans sold to Fannie, Freddie
By E. Scott Reckard
The federal government has filed another mortgage-fraud lawsuit against Bank of America, contending that defective loans generated by the bank's Countrywide Financial Corp. subsidiary caused mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lose more than $1 billion.
A statement Wednesday from the office of U.S. Atty. Preet Bharara in New York said that after the subprime mortgage market collapsed in 2007, Calabasas-based Countrywide devised a loan-processing system called "Hustle" to "process loans at high speed and without quality checkpoints."
BofA used the Hustle system after acquiring Countrywide in 2008, according to the lawsuit, described as the Justice Department's first civil fraud suit over loans sold to Fannie and Freddie. The companies were seized by the government during the financial crisis in a bailout that has cost taxpayers $137 billion.
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Experts: Killer shark was probably great white
By Robert Jablon
Experts say the shark that bit and killed a surfer off California's central coast probably was a great white and may have been 15 feet long.
Thirty-nine-year-old Francisco Javier Solorio Jr. of Orcutt was bitten in the upper torso in the waters off Surf Beach in Santa Barbara County on Tuesday. He died at the scene.
Authorities have closed the beach about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, where another shark attack two years ago killed a 19-year-old surfer.
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Are Energy Drinks Fatally Caffeinated?
By Alexandra Sifferlin
One family is suing an energy drink maker after a 14-year old died soon after consuming the caffeinated beverages.
In the last three years, five people died after downing highly caffeinated Monster Energy drinks, according to information released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The agency has not confirmed that the energy drinks were directly responsible for the deaths, but the voluntary reports to the FDA are part of 37 adverse events sent in by the public involving Monster drinks. The agency says it is investigating any potential health risks associated with the caffeine content of these beverages.
Parents of 14-year-old Anais Fournier filed a lawsuit against Monster Energy claiming the caffeine in the company’s drinks killed their daughter. Fournier reportedly consumed two 24-oz. Monster Energy drinks in 24 hours and her autopsy attributed her death to “cardiac arrhythmia due to caffeine toxicity.”
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We Know About Caffeine in Energy Drinks Like Monster, But What About the Other Ingredients?
David DiSalvo
Drug Administration’s Monster Energy Drink investigation, there’s been a lot of follow-on news about the amount of caffeine in energy drinks. But as a comment on my recent piece about energy drinks pointed out, there’s much more in these beverages than just caffeine and water.
So, I thought it would be interesting to dissect the ingredient labels of typical energy drinks and see what else we’re ingesting with every swig. |
Google's Street View Goes Into The Wild
By Steve Henn
Google's Street View maps are headed into the backcountry. Earlier this week, two teams from Google strapped on sophisticated backpacks jammed with cameras, gyroscopes and other gadgets, and descended to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But this is just the first step in the search giant's plan to digitally map and photograph the world's wild places.
Luc Vincent — who runs Google's Street View — met up with a small group of reporters on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon this week.
Strapped to a backpack towering over his head was a set of cameras, arranged in what he called "a soccer ball configuration." This contraption is the Google Trekker.
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Arizonans to vote on taking Grand Canyon, other lands from federal control
By Tim Gaynor
When voters in Arizona go to the polls next month, they will be asked to decide a landownership tug of war: Should the Grand Canyon belong to all Americans, or just the residents of Arizona?A controversial ballot measure backed by Republicans in the state legislature is seeking sovereign control over millions of acres of federal land in the state, including the Grand Canyon.
Proposition 120 would amend the state's constitution to declare Arizona's sovereignty and jurisdiction over the "air, water, public lands, minerals, wildlife and other natural resources within the state's boundaries."
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Tough Times For Girls In Juvenile Justice System
By Carrie Johnson
The number of boys locked up for crimes has dropped over the past decade, but the number of young women detained in jails and residential centers has moved in the other direction.
Experts say girls make up the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice system, with more than 300,000 arrests and criminal charges every year. A new report by the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy says the system isn't doing enough to help those young girls.
Most girls who wind up tangled in the justice system have family problems, trauma or a history of abuse, says Georgetown University professor Peter Edelman, who co-authored the report, "Improving the Juvenile Justice System for Girls."
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Clinton: Facebook post about Benghazi attack not hard "evidence"
By Mark Hosenball
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday a Facebook post in which an Islamic militant group claimed credit for a recent attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya did not constitute hard evidence of who was responsible.
"Posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence. I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be," Clinton said during an appearance with the Brazilian foreign minister at the State Department.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that an official email showed officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit. |
UN Security Council endorses Syrian holiday truce
Beirut AP
The U.N. Security Council gave unanimous backing Wednesday to a four-day truce proposed by the international mediator for Syria to mark a major Muslim holiday after he warned that the failure of yet another cease-fire plan would only worsen the fighting.
Yet even this modest effort — the international community's only plan for scaling back the violence — appears doomed.
Previous cease-fire missions have failed, in part because neither Syrian President Bashar Assad nor rebels trying to topple him had an incentive to end their bloody war of attrition. Both sides believe they can still make gains on the battlefield even as they are locked in a stalemate, and neither has faith in negotiations on a political transition.
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