The DFA grassroots and netroots are first!

About the play "Farragut North" by Beau Willimon

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/111...
http://www.offoffoff.com/bulletinboard/b...


**Extras Needed**

Do we get to play ourselves in the silver screen version?

Eddie Lawrence "The Old Philosopher", "Never Give Up That Ship"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Lawre...

3. EXCELLENT!

Susan, yes, you all are kicking! Cali 4 Gore is awesome and has some great folks.

I was going to be working on ours, but they changed the release date of the forms to November 3, from October 8...as of now. They are having problems finding caucus locations, so that may be delayed even more. I hope not.

...auuhhhh...smooth (hiccup) Bourbon....:)

Kurt Hayes (Independent)970  1%

Patrick Murphy (Independent)

 Jim Ogonowski (Republican)

Kevin Thompson  (Constitution Party)

Nicola Tsongas (Democrat)

PRICE*CHANGE% CHANGETIME

PRICE* CHANGE % CHANGE TIME
Nymex Crude Future 87.46 -.15 -.17 20:52
Dated Brent Spot 84.78 -.03 -.03 20:26
WTI Cushing Spot 87.61 1.48 1.72 10/16

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff  |  May 28, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The office of Vice President Dick Cheney routinely reviews pieces of legislation before they reach the president's desk, searching for provisions that Cheney believes would infringe on presidential power, according to former White House and Justice Department officials.

The officials said Cheney's legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington , is the Bush administration's leading architect of the ``signing statements" the president has appended to more than 750 laws. The statements assert the president's right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.

[,,,]

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/05/28/cheney_aide_is_screening_legislation/

A SUN STAFF REPORT

LOWELL -- The campaign of Democrat Niki Tsongas declared victory over Republican Jim Ogonowski at about 9:10 tonight, and the Associated Press sent a bulletin five minutes later declaring Tsongas the victor.

With 86 percent of precincts reporting, she had 51 percent of the vote to 46 percent for Ogonowski.

Bourbon....:)

Add a little branch water, Linda.  I would have poured Irish myself.  Well, nothing less than CC. 

Joan* In*Florida
>

ThATis good news.  She on the team now!  Prolly makes her old man proud.

Wow Cleveland.  Really well done.  Great team. 

Governor Deval Patrick will travel to China in late November, making stops in Beijing and Shanghai, hoping to promote Massachusetts in a country that is a rising economic power.

"In today's global economy, competition is worldwide, and so are the opportunities. No state can afford to sit back and wait for the benefits of foreign trade and development. ... We have to take bold initiative to move Massachusetts forward and compete on the international stage," Patrick said today in a statement.

Patrick will travel with a team of business executives, academic leaders, and senior government officials. The delegation is tentatively slated to leave Boston on Nov. 30 and return Dec. 8.

"China will be an important partner in the years ahead, especially as it becomes one of the world's economic superpowers and thus provides a major market for Massachusetts goods and services," University of Massachusetts President Jack M. Wilson, who is going on the trip, said in the statement issued by the governor's office. “We need the Governor to lead the way in tapping this important market.”

Paine, I'm stopping. And now that my fav Mineral Water, Gerolsteiner, went up and is now in plastic, I won't be buying...and don't have any in the house. It aint helping, even staight stuff. My head got light, but not enough to ignore THE PAIN IN MY MOUTH.

linda, what's that saying...oh ya, lather, rinse, repeat (as many times as is necessary.)

Oh poor girl, Linda.  There's the medicine cabnet, then, eh? )

Our question: who's going to portray Jim Dean?

>

I'm for Jim filling the role himself.

19. ow! you made me laugh and that really hurt.

20. Paine...I might have to resort to it. I just try not to. but it looks like some, at least aspirin, will be in my future. OH, wait, I'll try some of my strong herbs (no) first...and THEN if that don't work.

Thanks for the informal write up, Julia Marden.

 This is from an email share with me by someone.  This county chairwoman would not allow a candidate to enter a fundraiser.  She also told him he had his chance, that he could not run again.  So wrong.  He was a good candidate, got 40% of the vote last time in a Republican leaning district. http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1578"As a firm believer in freedom of speech and our democracy, I feel I must make people aware of a recent action taken against a formerly nominated Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress, John Russell, by the Chair of the _____ Democratic Executive Committee. I had mailed a check in the amount of $150.00 to cover the costs for myself and two guests to attend the "United We Stand" fundraiser being held on October 12, 2007 at __________. I received a call from one of the organizers asking for the names of my guests and provided those names, one of whom was John Russell. Within 10 minutes, I received a call from the Chair of the _________. She informed me that John Russell would not be allowed to attend and that he would be "stopped at the door" if he showed up. Her reason was that he was "disruptive".Florida needs to get its act together.

Hi Folks,

Just a quick drop in.  As always, I enjoy reading and skimming the comments.

Just finished watching Borat.  I think Jonathan Swift would have loved it.  I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it.  Is there anything Sacha Baron  Cohen didn't decimate?  Lampoon is too gentle a word for it.  Let's see: the anonymity and hostility of subway riders in New York, gangs in Chicago, upper class hotels, a news cast in Wyoming, rodeo people in Wyoming... they cheered as Borat shouted that George Bush should drink the blood of every man, woman, and child in Iraq...then upper class whites in Atlanta, fundamentalist Christian Holy Rollers, realestate brokers at a convention, surely thre must be something he left out, oh, I forgot, fraternity creeps in an RV and their idiocy and misogyny.

Truly, this was a new level of satire, and he caught every despicable, prejudiced, insanity of Americans.  Worth seeing. 

24.

floridagal .
Tue, 10/16/07
10:22 pm


Did Mr. Russell buy a ticket to this event?

OK - Cheney's Law -- watch here -- why aren't these people behind bars?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/...

=====

I saw the most remarkable movie from http://www.filmconnection.org tonight. It was called GRASS. I was expecting the Woody Harelson movie about the history of marijuana laws lol but I got this silent film shot in 1925 about an Iranian tribe that makes this trek with 50K animals over a mountain, through 2 rivers, through the snow barefoot, so the animals can get to grass to eat. What they do?/did is a miraculous feat, but that these 2 men and a woman filmed it all in 1925 is almost as astounding. It's called GRASS.

http://www.thefilmconnection.org/filminf...
quote from blurb:
Cooper and Schoedsack almost froze when they filmed the breathtaking, almost unbelievable sight of an endless river of men, women and children-their feet bare or wrapped in rags-winding up the side of the sheer, snow covered rock face of the 15,000 foot-high Zardeh Kuh mountain.

=============

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/hous...

House panel targets Yahoo
By Klaus Marre
October 16, 2007
Charging that a top Yahoo! Inc. official provided incorrect information regarding a Chinese human rights case to Congress, the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday called on the company’s leadership to appear before the panel.

At issue is the case of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a much-publicized case. The Chinese government had asked for and received information from Yahoo about Shi, including his IP address and the contents of his e-mail. At a 2006 hearing on the case, the company had assured Congress that it did not know about “the nature of the investigation” when it handed over the information.

=========

Maybe there's a connection here btw pulling out a division and Turkey getting p*ssed and cutting off our supply routes? Maybe threatening to recognize the genocide is hastening to end the war? I mean just sayin'.....

Iraq drawdown to begin in volatile area
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer 44 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Commanders in Iraq have decided to begin the drawdown of U.S. forces in volatile Diyala province, marking a turning point in the U.S. military mission, The Associated Press has learned.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071017/ap_o...

=======

Thassit for me -- I know, new thread lol.

Linda SF, try acupuncture.  It truly is amazing.

The movie about Bohr and Heisenberg was excellent and now I have to go see if it was based on fact.  If so, Germany could have been the first to develop the atom bomb but Heisenberg didn't tell Bohr to make the calculation and Bohr hadn't thought of it.  Or had he....?  And then 8000 Jews magically fled in the night by sea on the eve of the Germans rounding them up, yet Bohr claims he had nothing to do with it....or did he?  He maintained the stance of a good German, but reviled for not having beat the Americans to the bomb, yet I came away with the feeling that he purposely did not help Germany, knowing what would happen.  Hitler would have bombed all the major cities of Europe and gone on, if possible.  So Bohr was faced with a moral dilemma, being a good German scientist.  The movie sub-topic was about uncertainy, Bohr's theory.

I didn't know that Heisenberg was at the test site in Nevada but it makes sense.

Fascinating movie. 

27. Guess they're pulling out a brigade not a division (I don't really know the diff but expect there is a large one lol).

28. Seashell do you remember the name of the movie? It sounds intriguing.

It would appear that investigating is the only thing congress can do.  It seems incapable of action that would save our country.

Democrats: Bush Ties May Have Led to Iraq Oil Contract
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101607R.shtml
Dave Michaels for The Dallas Morning News reports that "Democratic lawmakers moved Monday toward investigating Hunt Oil's exploration contract in Iraq, saying the company's ties to President Bush raised questions about whether it had insider information that helped it reach the deal."

Buthaina Al-Sasiri is a well-known and prolific Iraqi writer and journalist
living in Cairo. In response to my last article (on American killings in
Iraq), she offers these thoughts on the wholesale slaughter of Iraqis by
American forces, and on the routine and deceptive mis-identification of
those killed (males) as "members of Al Qaeda":

You may remember that the Iraqi resistance has called by the US spinners by
different names at different stages of invasion and occupation:

1. First they were "dead enders" and "Saddam's hunchmen," etc. That was
before arresting Saddam Hussein.

2. Next they were called insurgents, after the puppet government was
installed . Insurgency means revolting against a legal, recognized
government.

Susan Rowe, don't think so.  I think those 3 did not attend.  But he is filing to run again, and he is very outspoken 

I have lots of stuff shared with me on this issue.   And Russell is aware of the post.    He beat the DCCC's chosen candidate last time, but this time they are shoving him out.  Sounds so familiar.  They did that in FL  13 to Jan Schneider as well.  

I have good sources on this, and I very much think a whole lot of Florida chairs need to straighten their butts out.

— from the Niagara Falls Reporter

DETROIT -- The Democrats make me sick. They weasel and twist, ignoring the truth and political wisdom as their feeble leadership dodges and ducks critical issues. They typically fail to define what they are or stand for anything that includes political risks.

The congressional leaders and the presidential candidates in general cling to safe positions, relying on expensive consultants and media advisers to hinge their support to a nebulous centrist coalition and fuzzy platitudes. Their aversion to principle and clear purpose defines a party so intent on regaining power by avoiding risk that they are risking failure.

More de Nile:

This BH is insane and the whole world knows it, including the critters.  They are risking another war, or more, the possibility of nukes being used, and losing the election becuz of wanting to protect their political arses.  The Clinton machine doesn't care as long as she gets to be president.

It's time for us to start a ABC furor - a petition to send to her with hundreds of thousands of names on it.  I'll be the first to sign it.

Thanks Linda SF for the info about how IA has so many undecideds.  Where can we get updates on those reports?

Take some pain pills, Honey.  No need to suffer.

In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Amsterdam-based military historian Gabriel Kolko talks about the prospect of war with Iran and argues that many in the US military now view the White House as being 'out of control.'

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad watches a military parade in Tehran, Iran, in September 2007. Tension between Tehran and Washington has been rising.

Gabriel Kolko: The American military is stretched to the limit. They are losing both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everything is being sacrificed for these wars: money, equipment in Asia, American military power globally, etc. Where and how can they fight yet another? The Pentagon is short of money for procurement, and that is what so many people in the military bureaucracy live for. The situation will be far worse in the event of a war with Iran.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,511492,00.html 

More acupuncture for me tomorrow, so I'll say goodnite.

Prayers and Healing for all of us. 

sea...many times depending on who pays for the poll, it doesn't get released....THEY have it.

the latest was just reported yesterday with a link on Kos. Sorry, I don't have the strength to search.

thanks about acupuncture. Friends that I was with today, were talking about acupuncture being used for allergies as well. When they lived in Ft. Wayne, IN, they drove to Michigan to get treatments. I'm hoping this little situation is very temporary and that it will be gone before I would have found one. ... all this before...more next Monday. I was saving that painful gem.

Good news, my "skullcap" herb seems to be the one thing that is lessening the pain.....I'll do another treatment before bed.


I'm off for the night.

B well.

Every little bit of good news about successful campaigns, and healthy grassroots, is progress.
Here's some fun. I don't know who AlGoreGal is, but I love the
stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmGYYqJ6N...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARoNENPSI...

Jane

And I meant to include this...
the times, they are a-changin'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARoNENPSI...

Accupuncture works wonders.  I had a huge case of shingles in an arm, and the pain pills did not touch it.  I  went for accupuncture, and the pain stopped almost at once.   They gave all kinds of medicine, but the doctor said my terrible case cleared up much more quickly than others.  The emergency room doctors even gathered around to view it...said it was terrible.

Doctor said I would be on pain pills about a month, but I was off with a week and a half.

Good morning, everybody

former asked yesterday how I would define "equality" and while I lay sleeping the brain came up with an answer that I like. Think of a tea cup. Better yet, think of hundreds of tea cups, arrayed on the shelves around the walls of a china shop. And each tea cup is different. Some have a handle or two; others have none. Some are tall and others are small. Some are painted with flowers and others are a dull uniform cream, or even a shiny black. But, they're all tea cups, or, more basically, cups, regardless of whether there's anything in them or not. They're defined by their purpose, their common purpose. But, not necessarily. They may have been made to hold tea, or not (some are just works of art and never intended to be used). When you strip all the superficialities away, you're left with a solid which has the potential to contain a liquid. Just as a human is a solid body that's infused with a personality or spirit. The only difference between a tea cup and a person is that when the spirit departs, the human body begins to disintegrate while the tea cup just sits there, regardless of whether there's anything in it.
But, to get back to equality. All tea cups are essentially equal in their actual and potential function; but they're all different in their appearance and construction. Ditto for humans. Humans are vessels capable of thought, communication, and interaction with their environment. Each one, even an identical twin, is different and, indeed, in the class of organic beings, it's these individual differences that make humans both unique and equal. We are equal in our difference from each other.
Of course, when you get beyond the atom, there's probably nothing that's exactly like anything else on the planet. No snowflake and no grain of sand. Even in a machine-made set of tea cups each is almost certainly different from the others, if only because the space and time in which each was made was different. So, the whole universe is united in its differences and its separateness.
Which actually gives us a new perspective on the principle of "separate but equal" with which African Americans were initially content. They understood that "equal" is not a synonym for "same." What they misunderstood or didn't anticipate was the application of rank, the creation of a hierachy, based on an arbitrary assemblage of those differences, to justify their exclusion or segregation from other people.
Of course, if people were tea cups they wouldn't mind being categorized and sorted and set up on higher or lower shelves or even behind glass doors in a cupboard. That's because tea cups don't have a mind. Tea cups don't think, communicate or interact with their environment. So these peculiar human behaviors don't affect them. Indeed, a tea cup can be smashed and, mended or not, the essence of the tea cup remains and not just in the minds of men. Other creatures, some with much smaller brains, are able to recognize a solid containing a liquid. Perhaps it's just because of the obvious difference. It's really hard to miss. One you bump into; the other flows around.

Tsongas is indeed a netroots candidate (MA-4).

 Hope she wins today.

+++

Well, as Paine and Joan have indicated, she has.

Strangely, though, I thought Tsongas would have won by a bigger margin than 51% to that of 46%.

Well, as Shakespeare once penned "ah, there's the rub" -- the largest registered (and fastest growing) voting block in MA are independents, followed by dems and repubs.  Often how the indys vote can make or break a dem or repub candidacy:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20071017/pl_cq_politics/tsongasholdsmassachusettshouseseatfordemocratsbutitwasnteasy_1

Tsongas Holds Massachusetts House Seat for Democrats, But It Wasn’t Easy

By Jessica Benton Cooney

Tue Oct 16, 11:57 PM ET

Niki Tsongas, a community college dean and the widow of former Sen. Paul Tsongas, kept Massachusetts’ 5th Congressional District seat in Democratic Party hands by winning a special House election Tuesday. Tsongas will succeed former eight-term Rep. Martin T. Meehan, who resigned in July to become a college chancellor. Tsongas will be sworn in as soon as Wednesday — an achievement that will make her the first woman in the Massachusetts congressional delegation since Republican Margaret Heckler lost a 1982 election after eight House terms.

But recent indications that the favored Tsongas would not win in a walk were borne out. With 86 percent of precincts reporting, Tsongas had a lead of 51 percent to 46 percent over her Republican opponent, Jim Ogonowski, who drew attention for his family’s connection to the 9/11 tragedy: His brother was the pilot of the first airplane hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001 by Islamic extremists and crashed into one of the towers of New York’s World Trade Center.

...

National Republican officials were quick to declare the relatively close outcome in the Democratic-leaning district west and north of Boston as something of a victory, or at least a warning shot to the Democratic Party as it prepares in the 2008 election to defend the House majority it won in 2006.

...

But Ogonowski’s appeal to independent and swing voters was based in part on his efforts to distance himself from President Bush and the conservative wing that dominates the national Republican Party. Though Ogonowski stated during the campaign that he joined most Republicans in opposing deadlines for withdrawing troops from Iraq, he criticized the president’s handling of the war. He also said he would be beholden to neither the Republican or Democratic parties if elected.

Tsongas and her Democratic allies labored during the campaign to undermine Ogonowski’s independent posture, particularly by associating him with Bush on Iraq and accusing him of hedging on whether he would vote to override Bush’s veto of a bill to extend a federal children’s health insurance program, which the president declared fiscally unsound.

These issues were echoed Tuesday night in a statement by Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in which he said, “Niki will be a tremendous asset to the Democratic Caucus. Massachusetts voters sent a clear message, they support candidates who fight for their values to provide children’s health care and work to end the war in Iraq.”

...

The race proved to be expensive for Tsongas, who ran through close to $2 million. Ogonowski raised substantially less, but “surged,” according to his campaign, in the last weeks, bringing his total cash spent on the campaign to more than $434,000.

...

New Posts on Hannah

http://hannah.smith-family.com

and

http://bluehampshire.com/showDiary.do?di...

Have a cousin you're embarrassed to be related too ?

Obama does:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/17/wobama117.xml

By Our Foreign Staff

The wife of US Vice-President Dick Cheney has revealed that her husband is closely related enough to the Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama to call him “cousin”.

Lynne Cheney said that she had made the unlikely discovery of kinship between President George W Bush’s hawkish deputy and the charismatic black Illinois senator while researching ancestry for her new memoir, Blue Skies, No Fences.

The men are apparently eighth cousins, but Mrs Cheney said she did not include this in her memoir.

...

According to Mrs Cheney's spokesman, Senator Obama is a descendant of Mareen Duvall.

The French Huguenot’s son married the granddaughter of a Richard Cheney, who arrived in Maryland in the late 1650s from England.

...

A spokesman for Senator Obama, who wants to be the first black US president, offered a tongue-in-cheek response.

“Every family has a black sheep,” said Bill Burton.

44.

Actually, given our discussion yesterday, I would say that Massachusetts voters endorsed the value of equality--i.e. all children should be provided with health care, regardless of whether their parents are rich or poor. Special preferences for the poor have never been attractive to Republicans. Democrats make a mistake when they tailor government programs according to the characteristics of the recipients.

If health care is a public good, everybody should have it.

Don't divide us by gender or color and don't divide us by wealth or poverty either.

America's Mayor speaks:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071017/ap_po/giuliani_obama_9

Giuliani tells Obama 'You're no Reagan'

By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 17, 1:19 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday ridiculed Democratic rival Barack Obama for saying he would meet, without precondition, with leaders of renegade nations.

...

Addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition, Giuliani described Obama's offer, during a presidential debate in July, to meet as president with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

"Then he went on to explain that Ronald Reagan negotiated with the communists," Giuliani said, pausing and sighing. "I say this most respectfully: You're not Ronald Reagan, you know?"

The audience in a downtown Washington hotel laughed and clapped.

"Here's what Ronald Reagan did before he negotiated with communists," the former New York mayor continued. "First he called them the evil empire. Then he took missiles, intermediate-range missiles ... and he put them in European cities, and he pointed the missiles at Russian cities with names on them.

"Then he said, in a very nice way, 'Let's negotiate.'"

Obama's campaign had a ready response, citing the links between Giuliani's law firm and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

"While Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton do not think we should engage in the type of strong diplomacy practiced by Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy, Obama does," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said. "And given the hefty fee that Hugo Chavez's oil company paid Rudy Giuliani's firm, he apparently thinks we shouldn't talk to Chavez, but it's fine to take his money."

Giuliani's law firm, Houston-based Bracewell & Giuliani, represents an American subsidiary of an oil company controlled by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Petroleos de Venezuela, the country's national oil company controlled by Chavez, purchased U.S.-based Citgo Petroleum Corp. in 1990, and Giuliani's firm represents Citgo before the Texas legislature.

To date, Giuliani has directed most of his criticism at Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton.

47.

Indeed.

But my main point about posting the CQ Politics piece on the Tsongas win, is that outsiders think that MA is some dem bastion.  It isn't IMO, it's a indy bastion.  Unfortunately, no indys get elected here because they usually are weak candidates and there's no party for them to canvass, fund, etc. for them.

I see NH becoming something similar too.

As I lifelong dem, I have to admit, I kind of like the idea that the indys are the largest voting block in MA.  It's like a check and balance on either party (dem or repub) getting extreme.

If there's to be a movie about Howard's campaign, I would hope Clooney and Soderbergh would put out the call for Deaniac extras! That is, as long as the movie doesn't make Howard look stupid.

I hope it shows the incident the way it really was and then shows the way the media played it. That would do us quite a service!

Leo DiCaprio as Joe Trippi? I wouldn't have thought of him but I think he can do a good job with the part.

Meantime, a friend just sent me this NPR candidate selector quiz:

http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=25...

Richardson was my near-perfect match. Try it.

-- volney

46.

The fact that so many of the powerful are related to so many of the powerful is the best argument i know for campaign finance reform.

Michael Apted pointed out on PBS a few nights ago that the US has its own very pronounced class system based on money, but it's a short jump for that to be a class system based on bloodline as well, leading eventually to just the type of royal government we never wanted.

That we seem to be becoming addicted to electing people from the same families over and over should give us pause. There should probably be an anti-nepotism law on the presidency, but then we wouldn't have been able to have both TR and FDR. John Quincy Adams we probably wouldn't have missed.

-- volney

Obama ain't no Cheney and he ain't no Reagan.