Commentary: Fired up and ready to get out the vote!
by Black Kos Managing Editor, dopper0189
This is the last Black Kos before election day. So now it's time to make the final push to mobilize and get out the vote on and BEFORE November 6th. The other side has made it clear that no form of voter disenfranchisement is to low, no form of race bating is off limits, not even the health and well being of this country's economy is sacred enough to prevent them stooping down far enough to prevent our President reelection.
We have a clear choice. On one side is a man of substance who took the reigns of government during one of the most difficult periods in generations. The President, rescued the auto industry, took the first major step towards extending universal health coverage since LBJ, started to unwind our involvement in seemingly endless war, brought the mastermind of September 11th to justice, nominate two excellent Supreme Court Justices, advance the rights of the LGBT community, halted the deportations of dream kids, and inspired millions of Americans to believe that MLK dream was a vision and not a fairy tale.
His opponent is the most mendacious politician since Nixon. A man whose personal wealth is clouded in mystery, who opposed saving Detroit, has flip flopped on allowing woman to decided for themselves what's best for their bodies. Mr. Romney has betrayed the ideas of extending health coverage, gun control, climate change, LGBT issues, and most importantly the truth. Never before in our lifetime have we witnessed a politician so willing to say anything in order to win the White House. A politician so unprincipled and spineless combined with a Tea Party fuel House would be a disaster of epic proportions for the country.
You yourself may be only one vote but there is so much more you can do to ensure victory.
Every political campaign will tell you that every volunteer is worth 5-12 votes. Phone banking, GOTV (get out the vote), baking a pie any bringing it to feed your local volunteers, dropping off campaign leaflets, holding signs, their really is a job for everyone on a campaign. If you have never volunteered before make this your first. If you only have 1 hour a week to give, all campaigns will take it.
If you live in a red state and your close to a purple state make the drive there this weekend and volunteer. North Carolina has had a great number of great activist driving there from Georgia and South Carolina. If you live in a deep blue state and your close to a purple state make the drive there this weekend and volunteer. Democrats from Illinois have helped to turn back the tide in Wisconsin and are working to keep Iowa blue.
The Republicans are working extra hard to obstruct the vote this election. Volunteer to become a poll watcher if you can. If you can't, at least get a good working knowledge of your local election laws to combat misinformation. Have the number of your local Democratic victory office on your cell phone, if you see any irregularities call them immediately. There is a massive need for people to man the phone to provide rides to the polls, it's a great chance to work the phones for those who want to help put are shy about speaking to people. Get involved and help mobilize.
Now is the time for us to unite and fight! The stakes are too high, a return to the past is too low, and the "alternative" is a frightening mix of a dystopian randian plutocracy with a no compromise dose of Leviticus thrown in, that is no real alternative. We've heard the other side's plans. They are NOT looking to get to Washington and work together to find the best solutions for our nation. They forced someone who used to appear to be a relatively moderate sane North Eastern Governor from Massachusetts to morph into a Goldwater, Pat Robertson, Ayn Rand water carrier, who will say anything to get elected. This is a party that wants one thing, the capitulation of all the progressive reforms of the 20th century. The New Deal, The Great Society, Roe v. Wade, victories many of us in our complacency thought were settled are only laws they are more than willing to tear up and burn in their hatred of a changing America.
We've only started to take the first momentous steps toward a future where universal healthcare is a right not a privilege, where our energy needs don't destroy our planet, where our courts are once more filled with judges who respect a woman's personal medical choices, where marriages are based on love and commitment not how you were born, and where a nation built by immigrants has a modern system that honors that legacy.
Make no mistake when they hear the word "CHANGE" their response if fear and resentment. The only way to fight this is with hope.
We have only a few days ahead until the final battle on Novemner 6th, this is the last leg of the campaign. I don't know about you but I relish the chance to fight for what I believe in! You'll see me this weekend walking every street from morning until night, knocking on every door I can to get out the vote. There is too much at stake not too.
See you at the victory party on November 6th!
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Sad but true. The Root: Hate Groups: Preparing for an Obama Win?
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In an interview with The Root, Mark Potok, one of the country's leading experts on hate groups, said that the day after President Obama was elected there were so many new people expressing interest in white supremacist groups that websites for some of those groups actually crashed. Among the groups mentioned by Potok, who serves as director of publications at the Southern Poverty Law Center, were Stormfront, a popular online message board for the white supremacist movement, and the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which has been called "the white-collar Klan."
A White Supremacist Weighs In
Founded by Gordon Baum in 1985, the CCC is considered by many to be the ideological heir apparent to the White Citizens Council, a group that became notorious at the height of the civil rights movement for being the upper-class alternative to the Ku Klux Klan. Instead of burning crosses on lawns, the White Citizens Council employed tactics such as printing the names of NAACP members in newspapers, as well as paying the legal bills for Byron De La Beckwith, who assassinated NAACP worker Medgar Evers.
Baum, a former organizer for the White Citizens Council, launched the CCC by relying on old White Citizens Council membership lists. Among the Council's core principles as of 2012: opposition to illegal immigration, homosexuality and opposing "all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote nonwhite races over the European-American people through so-called 'affirmative action' and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races."
Speaking to The Root, Baum said that the Council of Conservative Citizens does not consider itself a political group. "Normally we just try to get our people out to vote. We don't try to dictate to them who to vote for." The Council has a highly publicized and controversial political history. In 1998 the Washington Post revealed that Republican Sen. Trent Lott and other conservative Southern politicians had spoken at CCC events. One of Lott's relatives claimed Lott had even been a member. Current Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker is alleged to have attended a group event in 2000. After public scrutiny most politicians renounced the organization's openly racist ideology. But according to Baum, while publicly politicians no longer embrace the group, privately plenty maintain ties to it.
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Fears are growing of food shortages in Haiti, after the strong winds and heavy rain of Hurricane Sandy caused extensive crop damage. BBC: Sandy: Haiti fears food shortages after hurricane.
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Aid workers and officials are also warning that flooding could lead to a sharp rise in cholera cases. Sandy is blamed for some 70 deaths in the Caribbean. Of these more than 50 were in Haiti.
In Jamaica and Cuba, which took direct hits from the hurricane, the clean-up is also continuing.
Sandy, which was a category one hurricane when it clipped Haiti last week, brought heavy rain and flooding.
At least 54 people died in what Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe called a "disaster of major proportions". Haiti was hit when it was already down. At least 20,000 people have been made homeless by the storm.
But the astonishing truth is that a casual visitor to Haiti probably wouldn't even notice this new wave of misery; that's because hundreds of thousands of people were already living in flimsy shelters after their homes collapsed in an earthquake two years ago.
Heavy rains rushed down mountainsides denuded of most of their forest cover by generations of over-farming. Most rivers in the south of the country burst their banks, according to latest UN reports, causing extensive damage to agriculture.
There is also concern about a new upsurge in the current cholera epidemic. The disease is spread by dirty water. Every time there is heavy rain, Haiti's decrepit sewers overflow. More than 7,500 people have died from the current epidemic. More will die now. There is concern that floods and unsanitary conditions could led to an increase in cholera cases.
Farmlands in southern Haiti were extensively damaged
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In rural Ghana there are prejudices against wives or newborns leaving the house. New York Times: A Grant Meant to Curb Infant Mortality Focuses on Getting Mothers to the Hospital.
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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given a $5 million grant to a Massachusetts nonprofit group to work on a very specific problem: how to get new mothers in Ghana to hospitals.
Child mortality is very high in Ghana, but many newborns can be saved if the mother gives birth with someone trained, even rudimentarily, in Western medicine and if the baby is seen within two days by a doctor or nurse.
But in rural Ghana, explained Dr. Pierre M. Barker, vice president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, which received the Gates grant, there are many obstacles. Besides the obvious, like rutted roads, there are prejudices against wives or newborns leaving the house.
Sending expert committees to visit village chiefs, he said, has turned many into advocates for getting women to clinics instead of giving birth with untrained local midwives who may be unable to diagnose pneumonia or who have habits that cause tetanus, like cutting umbilical cords with dirty blades.
Dr. Barker described how his agency helped set up a village meeting that produced a way to get women in labor to hospitals when they had no money.
Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters
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Rwanda’s high court on Tuesday sentenced a leading opposition politician to eight years in prison, in a case widely viewed as a test of the nation’s democratic limits and the independence of the judiciary. New York Times: Rwanda Opposition Leader Sentenced to 8 Years
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The opposition leader, Victoire Ingabire, had faced six charges and was found guilty of two: conspiring to harm the country through war and terror, and minimizing the 1994 genocide that tore apart the nation.
She was accused of transferring money to Hutu rebels and of questioning why no Hutu victims were mentioned alongside Tutsi victims in a genocide memorial. More than 800,000 people were killed in the country when a Hutu-led government and ethnic militias went on a 100-day killing rampage in April 1994, indiscriminately killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Ms. Ingabire, a Hutu, returned to Rwanda in January 2010 from exile in the Netherlands to take part in presidential elections but was barred after being accused of crimes linked to genocide denial. The vote was won overwhelmingly by President Paul Kagame.
Iain Edwards, Ms. Ingabire’s British lawyer, argued that the evidence against her was fabricated and that some of the charges were against Rwanda’s Constitution.
Mr. Kagame’s final presidential term expires in 2017. He has led his country’s recovery from the 1994 genocide, receiving praise for his efforts to transform Rwanda into a middle-income country by 2020.
Victoire Ingabire, Shant Fabricatorian/Associated Press
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Included just for fun... The Grio: Poll: Denzel Washington leads list of actors fans want to play Jesus Christ.
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In a new online poll, Vanity Fair and 60 minutes posed the question “if you were directing a new film version of the New Testament, which actor would you cast to play Jesus?” Denzel Washington was the winner with 21 percent of people preferring him to take on the role of Jesus Christ on the big screen.
Daniel Day-Lewis, Al Pacino, Ryan Gosling, Woody Allen and Phillip Seymour Hoffman were also amongst the list of actors included in the survey. Actor Jim Cavizel starred as Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ in 2004, which was the last major box office film to depict the lift of Jesus Christ.
If Washington were to take on the role of Jesus, it would not be the first time he has starred as a character with religious or spiritual undertones.
In 1996 Washington appeared as an angel alongside Whitney Houston in The Preacher’s Wife. And in 2010 the Academy Award winning actor starred in the post-apocalyptic sci-fi hit The Book of Eli, where he fought to protect a King James Version of the Bible, which was portrayed as a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind.
Denzel Washington arrives at the premiere of Paramount Pictures' 'Flight' held at the ArcLight Cinemas on October 23, 2012 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
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Welcome to the Front Porch
Rest your feet and then get ready to phone bank and get the vote out this weekend!
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Promoted from JekyllnHyde
GOTV, GOTV, and then... GOTV!!! Feel free to share the below information with family members, friends and acquaintances. Right click on the date down below (next to my ID) on this comment, then 'Open Link in New Tab,' and copy comment link from up top to embed in your emails.
More details in this diary - - Phone Banking Out-of-State Close Races From Your Home When No Online Phone Banking Available! by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse.
Thanks.
Online/Remote/Virtual Phone Banking Links for Election 2012
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Start Making Calls for the Obama-Biden Presidential Campaign
Phone Banking Guidelines - Please read this.
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Our list is targeted at available resources that allow, for example, Californians to phone bank for close races in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and other battleground states even when online phone banking is not provided by the campaigns. The new tool is remote/virtual phone banking.
Many campaigns don't have online phone banking like you might have experienced in the past for the Obama-Biden Campaign, which is one click away to a script and list of voters. Please contact the following Democratic campaigns that use a variety of alternative resources including Facebook applications and dedicated software. Volunteers can log on from inside or outside the state or Congressional District. Some campaigns will email PDFs of names and numbers to interested political activists from all over the country. Read the directions carefully for each campaign.
Let's work hard for the next few days and on to victory on November 6th!
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Progressive Change Campaign Committee
Call out the vote! Sign up to call voters from home for bold progressives like Alan Grayson and Elizabeth Warren between now and election day.
Click here to sign up!
Democracy For America
DFA's Dialer is set up for supporting progressive candidates from your home.
Workers' Voice (AFL-CIO PAC)
Click onto tab "MAKE CALLS" on the top of page. If registered at site, it will take you to phone banking page that has the script and list of names to call.
If not registered, it asks you to register.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
Sign up at the DCCC volunteer page to make calls from home. Complete a short form with your email, first name, and other optional information (last name, city, zip, state, and phone) and then choose the checkbox by "Call voters from home."
A DCCC staffer will make contact via email to explain the process and to register you. Click this link for more details.
United States Senate
- Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) - Register at her website with name, email address, and password. After you register, you can make phone calls for her from out-of-state, similar to President Obama's phone banking set up.
- Tim Kaine (D-VA) - Click this link to make phone calls.
- Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) - Contact Lauren Peters at 202-997-6642 or laurenp@wisdems.org and she will set you up for their online phone bank.
United States House of Representatives
The Speaker's gavel belongs in Nancy Pelosi's hand. Work hard to make it happen!
- Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09) - Only option for virtual phone banking is via the DCCC (if Sinema is targeted for their support).
- Ami Bera (CA-07) - Call 916-670-1864 or sign up at this link.
- Jose Hernandez (CA-10) - Email Nick at namattes@gmail.com to learn how to register and login to the system.
- Raul Ruiz (CA-36) - Only option for virtual phone banking is via the DCCC. (if Ruiz is targeted for their support)
- Scott Peters (CA-52) - Contact Kate Lyon at k.lyon@cadem.org or 858-715-1369.
- Elizabeth Esty (CT-05) - Call or email Matt at 203-716-1669/mjaniszewski@ctdems.org to be registered for phone banking Sat 11/3 through Tues 11/6.
- Al Lawson (FL-02) - Email alex@lawson4congress.com and request a PDF with the names and phone numbers of people to call.
- Alan Grayson (FL-09) - Click this link to do phone banking for the campaign. It is called "Call for Grayson."
- Val Demings (FL-10) - Email Brian at blacey@fladems.com and request phone lists.
- Patrick Murphy (FL-18) - Go to this link for immediate registration and login to do virtual phone banking.
- Lois Frankel (FL-22) - Click this link to create account.
- Joe Garcia (FL-26) - Email Franco at fcaliz@democracyforamerica.com to sign up to make calls starting now through the election and/or for a major DFA call session on Th. Nov. 1. (Spanish speakers are especially welcome)
- Tammy Duckworth (IL-08) - Only option for virtual phone banking is via the DCCC. (if Duckworth is targeted for their support)
- David Gill (IL-13) - Email Meagan at Meagan@gill2012.com.
- Wanda Rohl (IL-16) - Click on this link - http://rohlforcongress.com/.... - and choose a county. In the "name" field type in "Daily Kos" and then supply your email as instructed, and someone will get in touch with you.
- David Crooks (IN-08) - Call Matt at 574-807-2576 or email him at mattlafortune@gmail.com.
-Gary McDowell (MI-01) - Call Matt at 203-710-9454.
- Mike Obermueller (MN-02) - Call Nathan at 952-239-0531 or email him at coulter.nathan@gmail.com.
- Jim Graves (MN-06) - Call 320-252-4446 or email ray@jimgraves.com.
- Kim Gillan (MT-AL) - Call 406-694-4100 or email team@gillanforcongress.com for a list of names and numbers to contact.
- Ann McLane Kuster (NH-02) - Email John at jgreene@nhdp.org or call 603-225-3327.
- Shelley Adler (NJ-03) - Email shelley@shellyadlerforcongress.com or call 856-574-4178.
- Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM-01) - Call 505-554-1623.
- Mark Murphy (NY-11) - Email CorinneRoller@gmail.com or call 718-273-0424.
- Sean Patrick Maloney (NY-18) - Follow this link to sign up for calling from home.
- Julian Schreibman (NY-19) - Call Erica at 845-765-9494.
- Pam Gulleson (ND-AL) - Call Luke Quandt at 701-566-7343.
- John Oceguera (NV-03) - Email Jonathan at jpattillo@nvdems.com.
- Betty Sue Sutton (OH-16) - Contact Cayti at 440-842-4227 or cjohnson@ohiodems.org.
- Manan Trivedi (PA-06) - Email info@trivediforcongress.com or call 610-621-2366.
- George Badey (PA-07) - Call Tim Brown at 484-432-6438 or email him at tim@badey.com.
- Kathy Boockvar (PA-08) - Call Brian at 267-544-9224; there is a coordinated GOTV dry run with OFA this weekend.
- Eric Stewart (TN-04) - Call 931-548-6831; email volunteer@votestewart.com; or go to this link.
-Suzan DelBene (WA-01) - Email info@delbeneforcongress.com for joining the GOTV phone banking, with set days and times.
- Rob Zerban (WI-01) - Go to this link and help defeat Paul Ryan twice!
- Jamie Wall (WI-08) - Call Ben Gardner at 920-737-2971 or email him at beng@wisdems.org.