Obama campaign sends out Red Cross donation email

I assume this went out to the entire mailing list:

Today, the thoughts and prayers of all Americans are with those in the path of Hurricane Gustav -- and many of you are asking what you can do to help.

We do not yet know what the impact of Hurricane Gustav will be, and we hope with all our hearts that the damage will not be as great as it was three years ago.

But we know there will be damage, and there is something you can do right now.

Your financial support will strengthen organizations like the American Red Cross that are evacuating Gulf Coast residents and planning to help communities get back on their feet.

Make a donation to support the American Red Cross today.

At times like this, it is our compassion and resilience that define who we are as a nation.

Please give whatever you can afford, even $10, to make sure the American Red Cross has the resources to help those in the path of this storm:

https://donate.barackobama.com/redcross

Thank you for your generosity, and I hope you will join Michelle and me in praying for the safety of those in the path of the storm and the first responders who are doing all they can to ensure the safety of their communities.

Barack

Read The Full Article:
http://www.demconwatchblog.com/2008/09/obama-campaign-sends-out-red-cross.html

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Big Oil Gets Behind McCain's VP on Polar Bear
Lawsuit

The Washington Post reports a Big Oil front group is joining John McCain's running mate in trying to strip polar bears of Endangered Species Act protection:

The American Petroleum Institute and four other business groups filed suit Thursday against Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, joining Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's administration in trying to reverse the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species.

The other groups involved in the latest lawsuit are the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Mining Association and the American Iron and Steel Institute. Just despicable.

As a leading advocate of polar bear protection points out, Gov. Palin's stance puts her to the far right of even President Bush:

Kassie Siegel, climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which originally petitioned to list the polar bear as an endangered species in 2005, decried the assertion in the Alaska suit that science does not prove polar bear populations are declining. The center is also suing the federal government, seeking to change the polar bear's official status from "threatened" to "endangered."

"The amazing thing about this litigation is that the governor of Alaska is so anti-environmental that she is suing the Bush administration over a claimed overabundance of protections for the polar bear," Siegel said. "It's just amazing."

If you liked the Bush administration's war on science, you'll love Sarah Palin!




Read The Full Article:
http://thegreenmiles.blogspot.com/2008/09/big-oil-gets-behind-mccains-vp-on-polar
.html

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Let Them Cake

Needless to say, the gloom and doom pervading the Republican HateFest in St. Paul-- and their opportunistic hand-wringing over Gustav-- means they get out of having to tie themselves to Bush and Cheney and to too much of their own awful congressional representatives. I mean, how much of Mitch McConnell does anyone want to see lisping away about how he was able to obstruct reforms for the last two years but might not be able to with the re-election for all the Republican Senate candidates who are hiding under their beds this week-- from Susan Collins in Maine to Pat Roberts in Kansas to Gordon Smith in Oregon? But as far as the corporate parties... hey, the hell with New Orleans when it comes to where the lobbyists make the deals and pass out the goodies! As ABC-TV pointed out today, "As residents of New Orleans were fleeing Hurricane Gustav, top Republican party officials donned pink boas and swigged vodka shots at a wild whirl of corporate and lobbyist-paid parties this weekend in Minneapolis-St. Paul."

Many corporate sponsors and their lobbyists carried through with plans for lavish entertainment of GOP lawmakers and others despite calls from the campaign of Sen. John McCain that Republicans should tone down the convention festivities. [...]

Yet last night lobbyists for the National Rifle Association, Lockheed Martin and the American Trucking Association put on a raucus six-hour party at a downtown bar featuring music by the band "Hookers and Blow." There was no evidence of any actual prostitutes or cocaine.

Maybe the reporter should have looked a little harder. A non-sexual prostitute, McCain lobbyist-in-chief asked the corporate whores to tone it down a little and not ruin McCain's whole strategy of concern trolling.

Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly sees right through the ploy and realizes the right wing attitude first ascribed to Marie Antoinette-- "qu'ils mangent de la brioche" (in English "Let them eat cake")-- is very much on display in St. Paul. "House Deputy Whip Bill Shuster (R-Penn.) said he was praying for the people of the Gulf coast, but saw no need to curtail corporate parties. Wisconsin delegate Jeff Larson agreed, telling ABC News, 'Everyone goes through hard times.'

ABC also described another gathering "where waiters wore pink wigs and guests danced through the night as they wrapped themselves and their partners with pink boas." Asked about the appropriateness of the gathering, one Republican guest "hid his face from cameras, wrapping a pink boa around his eyes and nose."

You think it was Patrick McHenry (R-NC) who was handing out the pink boas?


video details and more



Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2008/09/let-them-cake.html

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Docudharma Times Monday September 1

Questioning Qualifications Is One ThingActing Like The National Enquirer Is Something Else Monday's Headlines: The Beer That Takes You Back . . . Millions of Years Woman who wore a suicide bomb takes up fight for Middle East peace  Iraq army[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Docudharma/~3/380400662/showDiary.do

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Superhero McCain!

I woke up this morning to the news that Gustav has been downgraded to a Category 2, and my husband has sent a donation to the American Red Cross (encouraged by the Obama campaign online). So far the levees are holding and it looks like this one won't do the devastating damage of Katrina. YAY!

Now the only real danger to New Orleans is the Self-Serving Republican Candidate who has flown there seeking a redemptive photo opportunity with a disaster-relief backdrop. John McCain thinks he can look presidential if he stands in front of a city in strife, so he's dragged his butt down to the Gulf Coast instead of appearing at his party's national convention.

It's a move that is so cynical it really needs no further comment. I wrote a post about it at Daily Kos yesterday. And this morning Paul Krugman wrote the same sentiment in the New York Times. In fact, a lot of people thought to ask the same question at the same moment: What the hell can a presidential candidate accomplish in a crisis, other than making himself look bigger and more important than he is?

Read The Full Article:
http://hickwithmasters.blogspot.com/2008/09/news-superhero-mccain-preggo-palin.ht
ml

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News: Superhero McCain & Preggo Palin

I woke up this morning to the news that Gustav has been downgraded to a Category 2, and my husband has sent a donation to the American Red Cross (encouraged by the Obama campaign online). So far the levees are holding and it looks like this one won't do the devastating damage of Katrina. YAY!

Now the only real danger to New Orleans is the Self-Serving Republican Candidate who has flown there seeking a redemptive photo opportunity with a disaster-relief backdrop. John McCain thinks he can look presidential if he stands in front of a city in strife, so he's dragged his butt down to the Gulf Coast instead of appearing at his party's national convention.

It's a move that is so cynical it really needs no further comment. I wrote a post about it at Daily Kos yesterday. And this morning Paul Krugman wrote the same sentiment in the New York Times. In fact, a lot of people thought to ask the same question at the same moment: What the hell can a presidential candidate accomplish in a crisis, other than making himself look bigger and more important than he is?

But now, with Gustav starting to lose momentum, and millions of Americans responding to the hurricane by offering donations to the American Red Cross, forgive the Hick for turning to another news item that Sarah Palin and her husband released today, probably expecting it to disappear in the headlines about Gustav.

This morning Governor Sarah Palin and her husband announced that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant. The vice presidential candidate who likes to emphasize the word "vice" in that presumptive title says she and her husband are happily supporting their daughter, who does not appear to have a choice in the matter.

Now this just knocks the debate about choice and birth control right off the table. These folks have got some mighty good values working in their household, and why shouldn't we all follow their example? Don't you want your daughter to stay free of those nasty old condoms and devote herself to abstinence and prayer? Because, apparently, that's the preference of our dynamic American brand of Christianity: keep your daughter barefoot and pregnant.

Why should the girl you've raised from a seed grow up to go to college and make her way in the world and find out who she is? Keep those condoms out of her ever-loving hands! Keep her home where she belongs, snuggled up on the couch between her constantly pregnant mother and her blue collar dad. Keep her under your thumb and off the streets. It's easy, really. Just don't tell her anything about sex, tell her every life is a gift, make her pray for guidance from heaven, and see what happens.

What? You don't want your teenage daughter to have a baby? Why not? Aren't you American?

The best thing about Sarah Palin's home life is that, in addition to rejecting birth control, they have plenty of guns and rifles. Do I hear the cow bells and party horns of a shotgun wedding on the way? You know it. Why ruin one young life when you can ruin two? Find that varmint what porked yer li'l girl and haul him to the preacher. Got wedding day music? I suggest "Dueling Banjos."

"Twanggity-twang-twang! Yer daughter's preggers!"

Read The Full Article:
http://hickwithmasters.blogspot.com/2008/09/news-superhero-mccain-preggo-palin.ht
ml

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David Broder's contortions: Yes, McCain gambled
with the country's future, but it's okay

The king of the conventional wisdom does contortions today to convince himself that McCain made a good decision picking Palin. David Broder writes that the Palin pick is "a typical McCain gamble, unpredictable in its consequences." Okay, McCain's biggest decision to date is a typical, unpredictable gamble. But, that's actually okay, thinks Broder.

Keep in mind, just a couple months ago, Broder said intense scrutiny of Obama was mandatory while criticism of McCain was off-limits:

McCain benefits from a long-established reputation as a man who says what he believes. His shifts in position that have occurred in this campaign seem not to have damaged that aura.

Even Palin, a gamble with unpredictable consequences -- and a potential vice president with absolutely no foreign policy or national security experience -- doesn't damage McCain's aura for Broder.

Traditional media types, like Broder, believe their own press about John McCain. The GOP nominee is actually impulsive, reckless and a gambler. But, Broder (and all the other sycophantic pundits who want to be the next Broder) like McCain and that's all that matters.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Americablog/~3/380557749/david-broders-contortions
-yes-mccain.html

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Tracking Gustav

- Live Video: Watch the destruction of New Orleans live. :(

- Track Hurricane Gustav

- NOAA Satellite Imagery

Read The Full Article:
http://malcontends.blogspot.com/2008/09/tracking-gustav_01.html

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Work is sacred in my book

Work is sacred in my book. All kinds of work.The spiritual quality of work, the substance of human[...]

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http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2008/09/work_is_sacred_in_my_book.html

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Hurricane Gustav hitting Louisiana coast

Looks like Gustav’s bands are striking New Orleans, now. It is only a tiny bit smaller than Hurricane Katrina and fortunately, hasn’t reached Category 4 status. But Katrina was Category 3 when it reached land, too.. A storm surge of 10′ to 14′ is anticipated and there’s uncertainty whether the levees will be breached again.It [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2008/09/01/hurricane-gustav-hitting-louis
iana-coast/

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