Video: Secretary of State Clinton... she really does have a great laugh

If you have bit heard John Bolton's remarks which elicited such hearty laughter from Secretary Clinton, you can view it here.

The Day in 100 Seconds

friday, banana republica, it's time to move on, put the toothpaste back in the tube, defuse the emotion, atomic boms, dresden, forward and not backward, reflection but not retribution, alarmist claims, bad information, greed, threatens the entire american economy, your ideas are not bold, scare tactics, i love and respect my daughter, future maverick in training, maybe

One Tennessean questions the motives of another Tennessean

Top 10 Things Overheard At The Bush Family Christmas from Brother Dave Letterman

What do you get for the guy who's wrecked everything?

President-elect Obama and Vice President Gore to meetup on Tuesday, 12/09

President-elect Obama: Hello Vice President Gore. It is so nice to see you. How's the weather.

Vice President Gore: Well you know Mr. President-elect, it could be a whole lot better.

CHICAGO, Dec 8 (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will meet Nobel Peace laureate and former presidential candidate Al Gore in Chicago on Tuesday to discuss energy and climate change, Obama's office said.

...Gore, the former Democratic vice president who lost the 2000 election to George W. Bush, has indicated he is not interested in a position of climate "czar." source: Reuters

Personally, I just do not like the 'Czar' thing. Didn't we have a 'Drug Czar' once. Somebody needs to come up with something different than that word. Head Honcho of the Weather?

Just trying to think outside the box. Oh gosh, that's another tired old expression that needs to be put out to pasture. I can't stop using tired old expressions I guess.

Anway.

Al Gore on Election of Barack Obama: All people are created equal - "It's electrifying to redeem that Declaration."

Clinton and Gore in Georgia: Democrat Jim Martin is getting lots of attention from the 'Big Dogs'

If you haven't heard, there's a runoff election in Georgia for the Senate race. Incumbent Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss is trying to hold onto his pants and his seat against Democratic challenger Jim Martin.

Phone calls are spilling into the state from the grassroots army of volunteers that was mobilized by the Obama campaign.

Now Jim Martin can expect to see former President Bill Clinton and Former Vice-President and Nobel Laurette Al Gore on the stump.

The Democratic party is not letting this one go without a fight.

There is also a strong underlying motivation. In 2002, Chambliss unseated Democratic Senator Max Cleland. Chambliss aired some ugly campaign ads that questioned the patriotism of the triple amputee and Vietnam Veteran which did not sit very well with many Democrats, and even with others in and round the beltway.

for TMP source - click here

Here's that nasty Chambliss Ad that 'Swiftboated"

Vietnam Veteran and Triple-Amputee, Max Cleland.

Extreme Weather: The U.S. must lead on changing behavior, and innovating 'Green'

President-Elect Obama must lead the U.S. and the world swiftly on going green.

U.N.: Pollution haze could lead to extreme weather, harm farming

In this Feb. 6, 2007, satellite image from NASA, a band of brown haze appears to narrow somewhat as it crosses over South Korea, center, then spreads out over the Sea of Japan toward Japan, center right. Opaque white clouds mix with the haze, especially over the Yellow Sea and Japan.

AP

updated 3:46 p.m. CT, Thurs., Nov. 13, 2008

BEIJING - Thick brown clouds of soot, particles and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia threaten health and food supplies in the world, the U.N. reported Thursday, citing what it called the newest threat to the global environment.

The regional haze, known as atmospheric brown clouds, contributes to glacial melting, reduces sunlight and helps create extreme weather conditions that impact agricultural production, according to the report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program.

The huge plumes have darkened 13 megacities in Asia — including Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Cairo, Mumbai and New Delhi — sharply "dimming" the amount of light by as much as 25 percent in some places. read more here

The Wind of Change: Election Night 1992 from CBS and more

DU source - click here

1992 - James Carville and George Stephanopolous

Getting Tough: Obama gets tough - 'aggressive' as he attacks McCain/Bush policies and McCain lobbyist/advisors. aka pointing out the obvious

Bare the Teeth

08.18.08 -- 1:38PM

By Josh Marshall

From NBC's FirstRead ...

Is Obama having a Jon Lovitz-as-Dukakis SNL moment: "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy"? Well, Obama isn't losing -- he still has a small single-digit lead in most national polls, and he's ahead narrowly in current electoral-vote projections. But his tone changed a bit campaigning in Reno yesterday, his first full day on the campaign trail since his vacation. To put it simply, he was much more aggressive on the attack. As the AP writes, "So much for hugging in church... [A]fter praising the Arizona senator as a 'genuine American patriot,' the Democratic presidential hopeful got back to business -- methodically tearing into McCain's health care, tax and energy policies and criticizing his advisers. More: "The Illinois senator also criticized McCain's advisers as 'the same old folks that brought you George W. Bush. The same team.' He noted many had been lobbyists in Washington before McCain asked them to sever all lobbying ties." We've been hearing for a few weeks that the Obama campaign believes it hasn't been tough enough on McCain. Might we have seen a preview of a rougher treatment of McCain from Obama at his Reno stop yesterday? And does this mean the convention week will be tougher on McCain than either Gore or Kerry were on Bush?

for source - click here

Peon Eye on 'The Palmetto State': South Carolina Democrats ready to aid Obama - Fired up! Ready to go!

South Carolina Democrats ready to aid Obama

Party thinks it has a chance to win

By Robert Morris, Saturday, August 09, 2008

Despite 28 years of Republican presidential wins in South Carolina, state Democrats are already eagerly participating in presumptive nominee Barack Obama's plans to compete in all 50 states this year, the state party's new executive director said Friday in Myrtle Beach.

The Illinois senator has made highly-publicized claims about sending paid staff members to lead campaign efforts in each state. While some had speculated that Obama offices in rigidly Republican states might merely be a ploy to raise money or to support efforts in swing states, S.C. Democratic Party executive director Jay Parmley made no mention of working for North Carolina or any other state in a morning address to the Beach Dems.

"We are far more energized and far more excited than Republicans," Parmley said. "There's not any reason South Carolina can't turn blue."

In South Carolina, President George W. Bush beat Al Gore and John Kerry by wide margins in 2000 and 2004 - about 16 points and 250,000 votes. In the 1990s, however, Bill Clinton lost his two elections by much closer margins - five points and 69,000 votes in 1996, and nine points and 98,000 votes in 1992.

Those figures, Parmley said, can be overcome by registering new voters and making sure they vote. In the black community, Parmley said various estimates show between 50,000 and 250,000 voting-age adults who are not registered.

"Now that's enough to win, and that's just one demographic," said Parmley, who became director of the state party two months ago. "Many of the people who are not registered to vote are our voters."

Democrats have been making similar claims since their record turnouts in January's presidential primaries, but Republicans turned out in much higher numbers in June state and local primaries, said state Republican Party spokesman Rob Godfrey.

Godfrey said state Republicans' Victory campaign is one of the best in the country, organizing thousands of local leaders across the state.

"We have thousands of activists on the coast who are fired up about John McCain, Lindsey Graham and the entire Republican ticket," Godfrey said. "Democrats' and Obama's interest in South Carolina has proved to be fleeting, and that's got to be a letdown to local Democrats."

The Obama campaign has not yet placed its own staff offices in the Palmetto State, but Parmley said he expects South Carolina to be in the next wave of Obama offices opened. Parmley pointed out the Kerry campaign in 2004, by contrast, only had offices in about 19 states it considered winnable.

"You have to have somebody on the ground to have a fighting chance to win," Parmley said.

In the meantime, S.C. Democrats have opened their own Campaign for Change office and have begun hiring their coordinators for six regions that will work with the Obama campaign. Horry and seven other counties in the Pee Dee region will be headed up by Lance Jones, the state party's regional field director.

Obama's 50-state strategy has the added benefit, Parmley said, of lifting Democrats' chances for other offices. A presidential race invariably attracts campaign activity from people outside the party's normal mainstream, he said, and their energy can add to Democratic vote totals in more local races.

"I suspect we will win races that we haven't won before," Jones said. "Some of the strongholds in the Myrtle Beach area will be challenged."

If South Carolina does land in Obama's column, Parmley noted, one of his official Electoral College votes will be cast by a Beach Dem. Sally Howard, a longtime Horry County Democrat, was chosen this week as one of the state's eight Democratic Party electors.

for source - click here

Peon Reality Check: Democrats MUST remember and HELP OTHERS TO REMEMBER what got us into this mess.

The Democrats' electoral trap

Simply ignoring Republican attacks has never worked. Obama must make the campaign about

McCain's character flaws

Cliff Schecter
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday August 05 2008 14:30 BST

Barack Obama, please show us that you are no John Kerry. Or Al Gore. Or (fill in Democrat from the last 30 years). This is not to say I don't think Gore, Kerry et al are not good men. They are. But they entered the Democratic cocoon (not to be confused with the cast of the movie Cocoon - more age appropriate for John McCain) once nominated by their party for the presidency, and sadly Obama is currently falling into the same trap. What do I mean by this? I mean when Gore was branded a liar and when Kerry was branded a traitor, there was no real defence of the candidates, and more importantly no counterattack.

George Bush was a cheerleader in high school. He ran multiple businesses into the ground, was bailed out by daddy, was a drunk for years, probably used cocaine, was arrested for drunk driving, went Awol on military service in the Alabama Air National Guard and had only the political experience of being governor of Texas for one and a half terms, the weakest state chief executive in this country (Texas' state constitution gives most of its powers to the lieutenant governor).And yet Gore and Kerry could not find a way to portray this man as unworthy of the office he sought to inhabit, so he has gotten to inhabit it for eight long years, while the US has suffered through every disaster short of a plague of locusts descending upon the land.
Amazing.

Democrats were convinced then, and the Obama people seem to be convinced now, that if the people agree with you on most of the issues, you will win, so just ignore the attacks. Yet, as history has proven, as it did in 2000 and 2004, if the messenger is discredited, the message is no longer received by the public.Republicans understand this. Democrats somehow still don't.

Which brings me back to Obama. The past month has seen McCain and outside surrogates put a plan into action that the right has been slowly rolling out for at least a year now. To turn Obama into the "other", as Edward Said once put it in his celebrated work Orientalism. Obama as Muslim. Obama in an ad with promiscuous, white female celebrities (which made Paris Hilton's mom, Kathy, a McCain donor, none to pleased). Obama as "cocky" and "arrogant" (see uppity). Obama as the one who injected race into the contest. And suddenly, almost magically, McCain brings up the issue of affirmative action, reversing his previous position (I think that now brings him down to two consistent positions over the past decade) on a state ballot initiative in Arizona to now support ending this successful programme. read more here

Peon Update: News for UZE

Obama's trip: 1st high-profile step on world stage

American Hunters and Shooters Association Endorses Obama

USA Today: Bill Clinton says he's ready to campaign for Barack Obama

BBC News: U.S. seeks 'time horizon' on Iraq

McCain: The neighborhoods are safe - The Real McCain Part 2

Gore Issues a Challenge: wecansolveit.org

Activism: Siegelman calls on Pelosi to support subpoena of Alabama Republicans at Netroots Nation

McCain leaks details of Obama's trip overseas

PD's Blog recommendation of the day:

Texas Blog: Vertical Politics - on Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn's |"John Cornyn's Cowboy B*lls**t"