Gaia Community: Keith's Blog

Citizen's Briefing Book @ Change.gov

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:52:49 GMT

There's a brand-new feature on the Change.gov web site called Citizen's Briefing Book.

From the main page:

"Share your ideas on any issue facing the new administration, then rate or comment on other ideas. The best rated ideas will rise to the top -- and be gathered into a Citizen's Briefing Book to be delivered to President Obama after he is sworn in."

So, go to Citizen's Briefing Book, log in, and let the administration know if you have an idea to share, and vote on the ideas of others.

Isn't change wonderful?

Tags: Obama Administration, Change.gov

The Peoples' President

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:30:12 GMT

Hat tip to This Week With Barack Obama blog for posting this.

Appears some people find it extremely difficult just . . . to go out for a hot dog . . .

DC's Mayor Fenty took the President-Elect to Ben's Chili Bowl today because, well, he loves chili!

Per Yahoo News . . .

After Obama's motorcade wandered through the U street district, passing the African-American Civil War Memorial and a flee market selling shirts that bear his face, he and Fenty surprised the restaurant around lunchtime. Patrons shrieked with delight and surprise as they saw his face. A mother blushed as Obama held her baby in his arms. The president-elect and the mayor moved slowly through the restaurant's crowded rooms, shaking hands and getting pictures taken with patrons.
Still, they came there to eat. "Where the food at?" he finally asked the counter staff, drawing laughs from them and nearby patrons.
He and Fenty ordered a house specialty, a Chili Half-Smoke — a quarter-pound half pork and beef smoked sausage on a steamed bun with mustard, onions and chili sauce — along with a big helping of some cheese fries.
They found a small table. They had the popular food. They even chatted it up with nearby customers at their tables. But something was still missing: the shredded cheese. Obama yelled for some — "not the Velveeta" kind, he said — and it was quickly delivered.

I normally get annoyed when the most mundane events in the lives of the great and powerful become front-page news because there are certainly grave and more important issues that deserve attention. The national obsession regarding the Obama's obtaining a puppy, for example, is a bit much.

But I post this for two main reasons.

One, you and I (everyone reading this) can hop down to a Ben's Chili Bowl any time we want and enjoy our meal in relative peace. Try, for a moment, envisioning NOT having that freedom!! This, to the Obamas, will be something of a luxury for at least the next eight years.

And two, they ordered a hot dog. How American and ordinary is that? And what did he say when he wanted more cheese?

"Obama yelled for some — "not the Velveeta" kind, he said — and it was quickly delivered."

Not to disparage Velveeta, I'm sure. This type of cheese is better for dips and sauces, not necessarily shredded over a hot dogs. Cheddar would be my choice as well. Any ordinary person reading this should realize something fundamentally important about this. He knew the difference! He's obviously had Velveeta!

As the new administration comes together, with mere days remaining till the Inauguration, I've read some folks are beginning to feel there's a kind of "business as usual" atmosphere, some talk of being sold out, some afraid we've all been lied to, that nothing's ever going to change.

If the man will, first of all, pop in to a Ben's Chili Bowl for a good, true-blue American hot dog, and also knows his cheese . . . this is highly suggestive that . . . he's an "average" American with the knowledge and experience of most "average" Americans.

President-Elect Obama likes chili dogs . . . without Velveeta. Hope for a brighter future just went up a couple notches.

Here's some more photos from This Week . . .

I'll have . . .

Could you pass the mustard?

Yum! Yum!

Why is there always traffic, every where I go?

Tags: Obama

Economists appraise Bhutan's happiness model

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 03:47:43 GMT

Bhutan

Just had to share this . . .

Economists appraise Bhutan's happiness model

(12-04) 04:00 PST Thimphu, Bhutan -- In the thick of a global financial crisis, many economists have come to this Himalayan kingdom to study a unique economic policy called Gross National Happiness, based on Buddhist principles.

When considering economic development, policymakers here take into account respect for all living things, nature, community participation and the need for balance between work, sleep and reflection or meditation.

"Happiness is very serious business," Bhutan Prime Minister Jigme Thinley said. "The dogma of limitless productivity and growth in a finite world is unsustainable and unfair for future generations."

Read the remainder of the article . . . Here

The Royal Palace - Thimphu Bhutan

[Side Note: I just read that the newly crowned King of Bhutan, H. M. Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, who is a mere 28 years old, spent much of his life in Andover, Massachusetts. Aley and I lived only a few miles from Andover, which is northwest of Boston.]

Tags: Happiness, Buddhism

44 Presidents

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:11:08 GMT

This is really cool. A mashup of all 44 US Presidents, one morphing into the other, from George Washington to Barack Obama.

Have we come a long way in just over 200 Years, or what?

From 1797 to 2009 in Under 4 Minutes

Tags: 44 Presidents

Gaia.com Too Masculine?

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:08:02 GMT

Not sure if this is a joke or not. It appeared initially to be kinda fun! . . . which is what Gender Analyzer posted on their site . . .

"We created Genderanalyzer out of curiosity and fun. It uses Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman. Behind the scene, a text classifier hosted over at uClassify.com has been trained on blogs written by men and women. In our lab it seems to work pretty well, we want to see how it performs on the web! We hope you like it!"

So, to test this out I put in my own blog. Not surprisingly, the analysis came back that there was an 83% probability the writer of the blog was male.

I then moved on to Aley. The site didn't like her blog at all. Received an error message . . . "Sorry, we can only classify web pages written in english" . . .

Hmmm? Don't know what that's all about. Also get this message on Morningstar, Siona, Deb, Starseed, Gemstar and others.

You see, what began as something interesting and fun . . . soon turned into an obsession!!!   Here are some other results for a few of my friends:

     Samme 90% male

     Ricky 66% male

     Ariela 78% male

     Bluewater 97% male

     Martha 89% male

     Donny 64% male

     Meenakshi 83% male

     C.G. 63% male

     Matthew 94% male

     Peggy J 82% male

I had to stop. See the pattern? I would expect our good friends Ricky and Donny to be where they are because they're very balanced.

But Bluewater? And Samme, who really, really should take the title of Gentle Soul?

If, in fact, this site is not a joke, then an analysis of our individual blogs should lean female.

Could find not one.

Tags: Gender

Presidential Humor

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:29:16 GMT

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Aley received this as a forward in her e-mail and shared it with me. And I'm sharing it with you . . .

"One sunny day in January, 2009 an old man approached the White House from Across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, 'I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.'

The Marine looked at the man and said, 'Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.'

The old man said, 'Okay', and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, 'I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.'

The Marine again told the man, 'Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.'

The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying 'I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.'

The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, 'Sir, this is the third day in row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I've told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?'

The old man looked at the Marine and said, 'Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it.'

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, 'See you tomorrow, Sir.' "

Tags: Presidential Humor

No Red America, No Blue America, Just One America

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 20:41:56 GMT

I have other blog sites that I frequent. I stopped posting on liberal blog sites long, long ago because my positions seemed to either antagonize or not reach people. I have chosen instead to post here. That is . . . till yesterday . . .

I read this post on Crooks and Liars. The title says it all . . .

No Red America, No Blue America, Just One America

Crooks and Liars is a "liberal" blog. But they posted this letter . . .

"I am a conservative who spent one evening responding to posts on your blog. I mentioned then that I would support Obama if he won, even though I was supporting McCain's campaign. I feel it was my duty to send my congratulations to our next president through you and your community, since I used your forum to enter into a spirited debate. I will honor my pledge to respect Obama as our American president. I certainly intend to exercise my first amendment rights to try to persuade him and others away from policies that I oppose, but I will be respectful of him and his office. I will also reprimand others who fail to show such respect.

I do not plan to return to this site, as I got so engaged in the vigorous debate that I lost track of time, and I missed saying prayers with my kids and tucking them in that night. We have added our new president to our prayer list. I assure you, we are not praying from a sense of self-interest. We only pray that he be granted the wisdom that is necessary to successfully execute his duties in a way that leads our country to greater peace and prosperity.

I believe it is un-American to wish ill upon anyone in order to gain some advantage. I want America to reach her greatest potential; therefore, I want Obama's presidency to be the most successful in history -- until the next president is elected, whichever party that person might represent, then the next president, and so on.

Who knows -- perhaps I'll end up voting for Obama in 2012. I will remain open to that possibility.

Please share this message with your community."

Whoa! What's going on here?!?!? As of this writing there are already 201 comments and the conversation is still going. Yes, you read that right. Liberals and Conservatives are . . . {{{GASP!}}} . . . actually having a conversation!

Buried in the comments of this blog was this (very lengthy, but excellent), originally posted in 2005 just after the 2004 presidential election, where liberals were still scratching our collective heads wondering what went wrong.

I had already read something quite similar to this before, but this was an excellent overview and helped bring things into perspective. Liberals and Conservatives have two divergent perspectives which result in non-communication.

I'll only pull out a couple things, which are self-explanatory . . .

The Conservative Mind:

The Liberal Mind:

Is it any wonder, then, we have failed miserably at understanding one another? When Bush bombs a country back to the stone age, he's only doing his duty as Strict Father and authoritarian. When liberals cry "foul!" we're perceived as weak.

The article ends with this . . .

There is a lot to promote about liberalism and the Negotiated Commitment model behind it. We take people as they are, rather than demanding that they fit themselves into an increasingly outdated set of roles. We face problems directly, rather than making people jump through hoops that may or may not be relevant. And so, for example, we ask: “Who is going to feed the child, teach the child, protect the child, and love the child?” rather than “Who is going to be the father and who is going to be the mother?”
The Negotiated Commitment model is tolerant by its nature. It recognizes the freedom of other people to negotiate their own commitments differently than we negotiate ours. In a country whose citizens have so many different backgrounds, and a world with so many cultures - each with its own notion of inherited obligations - such tolerance is a necessity.
We are committed to maintaining and extending the social safety net. We are committed to giving everyone an opportunity to succeed. We are committed to finding common ground with other countries and building a global consensus that works.
And, in spite of the cultural values that currently divide us from the working-class families of Kansas and Shawmut River and thousands of other communities around the nation, we remain allied with their economic interests. For some people that will never be enough, and we will never get their votes.
But many, given an accurate view of liberals and the values that motivate us, may come to see that we are not so scary, and that their differences with us can be bridged. And as the plutocratic agenda of the Right lets jobs continue to be lost, wages continue to stagnate, and the gap between rich and poor stretch ever wider, they may recall that the New Deal was not such a bad idea after all.

I felt compelled to post this for one reason: Should we consider the possibility that this year's presidential campaign resulting in Tuesday's awe-inspiring and historic vote represent a paradigm shift not only between the two sexes and different races . . . but also between the two bitterly, bitterly divided philosophical camps in the US?

Can we actually have healing between the Right and the Left?

Has this decades-long, raging battle, per chance, reached its zenith?

Tags: Liberals, Conservatives

Tears

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:56:37 GMT

President-Elect Obama

This morning I was writing a comment on my wife's blog which kept growing and growing . . . into a blog post . . .

Okay . . . the truth . . .

I have not always been proud of "my people". "My people" being narrowly defined as white males. We have . . . um? . . . a lot of skeletons in our closet. Many of these skeletons, unfortunately, are quite embarrassing, to put it mildly.

This is why I could only shake my head in bewilderment over the furor Michelle Obama received when she evidently made a "gaffe" by stating she was proud of her country "for the first time".

Well, I won't go that far. Perhaps she should have left off that "for the first time" part.

We don't fully understand. "We" being whites and males. The best we can do is say we think we understand. Some will attempt to cling to that inbred delusional feeling of superiority, of course. I never went there in the first place, seeing discrimination for what it was and rejecting it.

Throughout this long campaign and yesterday's election, several glass ceilings were shattered. We can finally put the American Civil War to rest, which ended in 1864. We can move past that now.

The woman's suffrage movement begun in the late Eighteenth Century and which culminated with the right to vote granted in the early Twentieth Century can finally, at the dawn of the Twenty-First Century, be put behind us.

These are just the obvious. Digging deeper and pondering this miraculous and practically instantaneous transformation will, I guarantee, produce more shattered glass from other ceilings. The stranglehold of the white male is no more.

Good riddance.

I too watched as the Rev. Jesse Jackson openly wept for the whole world to see, unashamed and unapologetic. He was one of countless others, across the planet, whose emotions overtook them. I am a white male and I'm having something of a difficult time processing my feelings. As I write this . . . I shed tears in a flood of emotion for the first time, the enormity of this change seeping in and being processed.

To every person of color and to every female . . . I wrap my arms around you as we all rejoice and shed great tears of joy. I hold you tightly because try as hard as I may I cannot feel this change the way you do. That does not mean I don't want to. I do.

Today I am so proud to be an American. This isn't the first time and I know it won't be the last.

Tags: Election 08

A New Kind of Pride

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:20:15 GMT

Wow! This is an op-ed in the Washington Post penned by Eugene Robinson. Growing up in the south where I witnessed "the other side" of discrimination and seeing the injustice . . . I couldn't agree more . . .

A New Kind of Pride

By Eugene Robinson

Tuesday, November 4, 2008; Page A17

Whoever wins this election, I understand what Barack Obama meant when he said his faith in the American people had been "vindicated" by his campaign's success. I understand what Michelle Obama meant, months ago, when she said she was "proud of my country" for the first time in her adult life. Why should they be immune to the astonishment and vertigo that so many other African Americans are experiencing? Why shouldn't they have to pinch themselves to make sure they aren't dreaming, the way that I do?

I know there's a possibility that the polls are wrong. I know there's a possibility that white Americans, when push comes to shove, won't be able to bring themselves to elect a black man as president of the United States. But the spread in the polls is so great that the Bradley effect wouldn't be enough to make Obama lose; it would take a kind of "Dr. Strangelove effect" in which voters' hands developed a will of their own.

I'm being facetious but not unserious. In my gut, I know there's a chance that the first African American to make a serious run for the presidency will lose. But that is precisely what's new and, in a sense, unsettling: I'm talking about possibility, not inevitability.

For African Americans, at least those of us old enough to have lived through the civil rights movement, this is nothing short of mind-blowing. It's disorienting, and it makes me see this nation in a different light.

You see, I remember a time of separate and unequal schools, restrooms and water fountains -- a time when black people were officially second-class citizens. I remember moments when African Americans were hopeful and excited about the political process, and I remember other moments when most of us were depressed and disillusioned. But I can't think of a single moment, before this year, when I thought it was within the realm of remote possibility that a black man could be nominated for president by one of the major parties -- let alone that he would go into Election Day with a better-than-even chance of winning.

Let me clarify: It's not that I would have calculated the odds of an African American being elected president and concluded that this was unlikely; it's that I wouldn't even have thought about such a thing.

African Americans' love of country is deep, intense and abiding, but necessarily complicated. At the hour of its birth, the nation was already stained by the Original Sin of slavery. Only in the past several decades has legal racism been outlawed and casual racism been made unacceptable, at least in polite company. Millions of black Americans have managed to pull themselves up into mainstream, middle-class affluence, but millions of others remain mired in poverty and dysfunction.

A few black Americans broke through into the highest echelons of American society. Oprah Winfrey became the most powerful woman in the entertainment industry by appealing to an audience that is mostly white. Richard Parsons, Stanley O'Neal and others became alpha males in the lily-white world of Wall Street. Through superhuman skill and unbending will, Tiger Woods came to dominate a sport long seen as emblematic of white privilege.

Along came Barack Obama, a young man with an unassailable résumé and a message of post-racial transformation. Initially, a big majority of African Americans lined up behind his major opponent in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton. The reason was simple: In the final analysis, white Americans weren't going to vote for the black guy. Better to go with the safe alternative.

But an amazing thing happened. In the Iowa caucuses, white Americans voted for the black guy. That's the moment Obama was referring to when he said his faith in the American people was vindicated. For me, it was the moment when the utterly impossible became merely unlikely. That's a fundamental change, and it launched a sequence of events over the subsequent months that made me realize that some things I "knew" about America were apparently wrong.

Even if John McCain somehow prevails, that won't change the fact that Obama won all those primaries, or that he won the Democratic Party nomination, or that he raised more money than any candidate in history, or that he rewrote the book on how to run a presidential campaign. Nothing can change the fact that so many white Americans entrusted a black American with their hopes and dreams.

We can all have a new kind of pride in our country.

Source

Tags: Eugene Robinson, Pride

An Unfortunately Timed Death

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:10:49 GMT

If you have not yet heard, Senator and soon-to-be President-Elect Barack Obama's beloved grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, transitioned yesterday, the day before the US elections.

It would be an understatement to declare she will be sorely missed.

Let us remember that her life quite literally has and will continue to touch every single life on the planet. The love, care and devotion to her children, grand children and great-grand children has already changed our planet. Her energy and spirit lives on.

Please, take a few moments to sign a Guest Book at Legacy.com for the Dunham and Obama families. Sympathy and prayers of love and healing are pouring in from all over the world.

Tags: Death

FIRST OFFICIAL RESULTS IN!!!!

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:38:21 GMT

Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, has the distinction each election to vote first and give their official tally at 12 AM on election day.

This years official vote is already in. The results?

Obama 15 71.4%
McCain 6 28.6%

Of note, this is the first time in 40 years the tiny hamlet of Dixville Notch has backed a Democrat for President.

Tags: Election 08

A Look at Kenya

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:12:46 GMT

My! My! Who would of thought . . .

November 3, 2008, 11:02 am

Kenyans Overflowing With Excitement for Obama

Sarah Childress reports from Kisumu, Kenya.

One day before the U.S. presidential election, people in Sen. Barack Obama’s ancestral land took Monday to randomly shouting out his name in the street.

“Obama!” one man called out, pedaling by on his bicycle taxi. “OOOBAMA!” another said, to no one in particular. “BARACK Obama!” said one man, pausing to listen in to a conversation.

This is the capital of Luoland, the sleepy, western provinces of Kenya, which are home to the Luo tribe, to which Obama’s father belonged. All of Kenya has been cheering the senator on during the campaign, but the Luo community has a particularly strong case of Obama fever.

There is talk of him cruising into the little airport here one day on Air Force One. Songs about him blast from packed minibuses — “OBAMA! BARACK! OBAMA!” goes one — and his life story is available on DVD downtown.

It is certainly the first time this American reporter has won praise for her flat Midwestern accent.

“She speaks a lot like Obama,” one man said approvingly.

The authorities planned to set up a giant screen in the soccer stadium on election night, so that those without access to television — or just in search of a party — can crowd in to watch the returns Tuesday evening and early Wednesday morning.

City slickers in Nairobi worried that people here might erupt in violence should Obama be defeated. This town saw some of the worst violence after disputed presidential elections in Kenya last December.

Associated Press

An image of Barack Obama adorns the back of a minibus, in Kisumu, Kenya.

So, what if he loses? One man, overcome by emotion, ordered away a reporter for asking such an impertinent question.

Abel Marendi Obungu, a parking attendant who asked to be interviewed, put his hand over his heart at the words. “It would be a discouragement,” he said, “which will affect us mortally.” Disconcerted, he moved away down the street.

“From our point of view, he’s already in the White House,” said Milka Mbona, 40 years old, sitting before a pile of green peppers on sale at the main market in town. “We’re just praying that he’s able to confirm the victory.”

“Tomorrow we are going to dance till morning!” cried Prisca Owuondo, 55, as she stood before the squash and cucumbers she was selling at her stall. Owuondo, who put her nine children through college, flashed a broad smile.

“When I see him, I lose it completely. I don’t know how to explain it,” she said.

–Sammy Kagwanja contributed to this report.

Source

Tags: Kenya

Final Gallup: Not Even Close

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:35:15 GMT

This is Gallup's final poll for the 2008 Presidential election . . . [Emphasis mine] . . .

PRINCETON, NJ -- The final Gallup 2008 pre-election poll -- based on Oct. 31-Nov. 2 Gallup Poll Daily tracking -- shows Barack Obama with a 53% to 42% advantage over John McCain among likely voters. When undecided voters are allocated proportionately to the two candidates to better approximate the actual vote, the estimate becomes 55% for Obama to 44% for McCain.
The trend data clearly show Obama ending the campaign with an upward movement in support, with eight to 11 percentage point leads among likely voters in Gallup's last four reports of data extending back to Oct. 28. Obama's final leads among both registered voters and likely voters are the largest of the campaign.

The gap in voter support for Obama versus McCain is slightly wider (53% to 40%) when the vote preferences of all registered voters are taken into account. The likely voter model typically shows a reduction in the Democratic candidate's advantage, as has been the case with Obama this year. Nevertheless, Obama has been able to maintain a significant lead over McCain in recent days, ending in the 11-point lead in the final poll. It would take an improbable last minute shift in voter preferences or a huge Republican advantage in Election Day turnout for McCain to improve enough upon his predicted share of the vote in Gallup's traditional likely voter model to overcome his deficit to Obama.

Source

Tags: Election, Obama, Gallup

Campaigns in Contrast

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:48:30 GMT

It's no secret I read FiveThirtyEight.com to keep tabs on the "odds" of this election. Polls are fine. I love them, truth be told. But mathematical odds are much more precise and interesting.

Anyway, there were two posts yesterday that I found more interesting than a 96.2 percent mathematical probability of Obama winning the election.

Check these out . . .

72-Hour Program?

Taken exactly 72 hours before the polls close in Florida's Panhandle, the McCain-Palin Victory Center in Santa Rosa Beach:

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

And the second one . . .

Tallahassee, Florida, Moments Ago

How Obama organizers spent the extra hour:

Taken at tonight's first 1:40 AM eastern. "Speed Limit 186,000 Miles/Sec" indeed.

In the last pic's comments, a Republican organizer suggested that if the office isn't making phone calls during the 72 hours, it has no reason to be open. Kind of says it all.

Ummm?

Folks . . . all the pundits, soothsayers, naysayers, or whomever can say any damn thing they want. Of course the Republicans are going to say they can win!!! Of course they're going to deny that they could lose the election!!! Of course the MSM is going to highlight any and all controversy or statements that hint this election is "neck-n-neck"!!

It is not "neck-n-neck" . . . not even close . . . and hasn't been for weeks now.

But you don't have to listen to me. I urge you not to. Please don't.

Just look at the pictures above . . .

Tags: Campaign

Daughter of slave votes for Obama

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:11:26 GMT

Larry Kolvoord
AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Daughter of slave votes for Obama

109-year-old Bastrop woman casts her vote by mail.

By Joshunda Sanders
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, October 27, 2008

Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee.

The middle child of 13, Jones, who is African American, is part of a family that has lived in Bastrop County for five generations. The family has remained a fixture in Cedar Creek and other parts of the county, even when its members had to eat at segregated barbecue dives and walk through the back door while white customers walked through the front, said Amanda Jones' 68-year-old daughter, Joyce Jones.

For at least a decade, Amanda Jones worked as a maid for $20 a month, Joyce Jones said. She was a housewife for 72 years and helped her now-deceased husband, C.L. Jones, manage a store.

Amanda Jones, a delicate, thin woman wearing golden-rimmed glasses, giggled as the family discussed this year's presidential election. She is too weak to go the polls, so two of her 10 children — Eloise Baker, 75, and Joyce Jones — helped her fill out a mail-in ballot for Barack Obama, Baker said. "I feel good about voting for him," Amanda Jones said.

Jones' father herded sheep as a slave until he was 12, according to the family, and once he was freed, he was a farmer who raised cows, hogs and turkeys on land he owned. Her mother was born right after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Joyce Jones said. The family owned more than 100 acres of land in Cedar Creek at one point, she said.

Amanda Jones' father urged her to exercise her right to vote, despite discriminatory practices at the polls and poll taxes meant to keep black and poor people from voting. Those practices were outlawed for federal elections with the 24th Amendment in 1964, but not for state and local races in Texas until 1966.

Amanda Jones says she cast her first presidential vote for Franklin Roosevelt, but she doesn't recall which of his four terms that was. When she did vote, she paid a poll tax, her daughters said. That she is able, for the first time, to vote for a black presidential nominee for free fills her with joy, Jones said.

One of Amanda Jones' 33 grandchildren, Brenda Baker, 44, said the family is moved by the election's significance to the matriarch.

"It's awesome to me that we have such a pillar of our family still with us," Baker said. "It's awesome to see what she's done, and all her hard work, and to see that she may be able to see the results of all that hard work" if Obama is elected, she said.

Jones lives in a small gray house with white trim just off Texas 21. These days, a curious white kitten and a sleepy old black dog guard the house. Inside are photographs and relics of a long, full life, including a letter from then-Gov. George Bush in 1998 commemorating her 100th birthday. A black-and-white picture of her in a long flapper-style dress was taken between 1912 and 1918 — no one can remember the exact year, Baker said with a chuckle.

Jones is part of a small percentage of active voters above the age of 100 in the state — and the country.

Sister Cecilia Gaudette, a 106-year-old nun born in New Hampshire but living in Rome, made recent national headlines as the nation's oldest voter. But if Texas records are any indication, that's hard to validate.

Secretary of State spokeswoman Ashley Burton said Texas can't confirm whether Jones is the state's oldest active voter because there is too much voter information to sort through. At the county level, there are other challenges. An election official in Hays County said its records are not searchable by age, and Bastrop County elections administrator Nora Cano said that some counties automatically list voters who were born before the turn of the 20th century with birth dates of January 1900.

The oldest active voter in Travis County is 105, officials said, and in Williamson County the oldest is 106 — making Jones the oldest-known active voter in Central Texas.

Making it to see the election results on Nov. 5 is important, but Jones is resting up for another milestone: her 110th birthday in December. "God has been good to me," she said.

joshundasanders@statesman.com;445-3630

Source

You can enlarge the picture and see the blog here.

Tags: Voting

North Charleston Woman Uses Last Moments In Life to Vote

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 02:09:07 GMT

This news article speaks for itself . . . There's a link at the bottom to see the video . . .

North Charleston Woman Uses Last Moments In Life to Vote

posted 12:17 am Wed October 15, 2008

North Charleston, S.C. - For a 93-year old North Charleston woman, casting her vote was a matter of life and death.

Very little was missing in Dora Fitzgerald's 93 years of life, she had a marriage of 65 years and family that spreads generations, but politics was never a passion until the final year of her life.

“She was very moved for Barack Obama's (web|news|bio) passion for fixing things, and his articulate way of delivering his message and she just decided she was going to vote for him,” said her daughter, M. Fitzgerald.

But as her health declined M Fitzgerald took care of her mother, watching her slowly slip away.

“It was beautiful, it was sad, tragic, you prepare for it, you know it's coming, and still when it happens, you’re completely crushed,” said M. Fitzgerald.

But Mrs. Fitzgerald didn’t leave quietly, there was unfinished business.

"She said I don’t know if I’m going to live that long, but I plan on sticking around to vote for him,” said M. Fitzgerald.

Fearful that November was too long to wait, her daughter sent for an absentee ballot. It arrived last week.

“She made her mark, and we put it in the envelope, my brother and I walked to the mailbox, it was 11 o’clock Wednesday morning and I said ‘Mom its in the mail, you’ve done your thing, Barack’s going to win,’ and she kind of smiled and it was kind of a deep sigh, a sigh of relief, and in less than an hour later, she died,” said M. Fitzgerald.

She traveled the world, raised a family, lived a full life, and on her death bed exercised her right to vote.

“The only thing left on her list was to make sure she got her voice heard, and she did,” said M. Fitzgerald.

Mrs. Fitzgerald was born in 1915 and according to her family, she voted in 19 presidential elections.

She is survived by her nine children; William of Garmisch, Germany; Michael of New Sweden, ME; Joseph of Seattle, WA; Kathleen of Murrieta, CA; Shelagh of Caribou, ME; Timothy of Portland, ME; Terence (Terry) of Foxborough, MA; Patrick of Charleston, SC; and Mary T. of North Charleston, SC. She’s also survived by 18 grandchildren and more than a dozen great-grand kids.

Source

Video Link

Tags: Vote

Oops! I'm in the Doghouse . . . .

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 18:12:24 GMT

Oh my! Oh no! I tried to download the video, but couldn't do it. You'll have to click here.

I'm in real, real trouble . . .

Tags: Vote

Killing the Goose, Pulverizing the Egg

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:38:32 GMT

Last week was a wild ride, to say the least. There's so much going on on the planet it's impossible to keep up. So what I do is choose a handful of sources that I feel I can trust and read what they have to say.

Which leads me to Nouriel Roubini. affectionately called "Dr Doom" by some because he told anyone who would listen that last week was coming.

Today I accidentally ran across this article published in the Globe & Mail entitled "Yes, Chicken Little, the sky really is falling" . . .

The rich world's financial system is headed toward meltdown. Stock markets have been falling most days, money markets and credit markets have shut down as their interest-rate spreads skyrocket, and it is still too early to tell whether the raft of measures adopted by the U.S. and Europe will stem the bleeding on a sustained basis.

Hmmm? So much for the opening paragraph. Dr. Roubini doesn't mince words. There's lots more . . .

Would you be surprised to learn we're actually already in a recession . . .

On the real economic side, all the advanced economies – representing 55 per cent of global GDP – entered a recession even before the massive financial shocks that started in late summer. So we now have recession, a severe financial crisis and a severe banking crisis in the advanced economies.

He mentions bubbles . . . lots and lots and lots of bubbles . . . all bursting at the same time . . .

The crisis was caused by the largest leveraged asset bubble and credit bubble in history. Leveraging and bubbles were not limited to the U.S. housing market, but also characterized housing markets in other countries. Moreover, excessive borrowing by financial institutions and some segments of the corporate and public sectors occurred in many economies. As a result, a housing bubble, a mortgage bubble, an equity bubble, a bond bubble, a credit bubble, a commodity bubble, a private equity bubble and a hedge funds bubble are bursting simultaneously.

Oops!!

He feels we're in for a rough time . . .

The delusion that economic contraction in the U.S. and other advanced economies would be short and shallow – a V-shaped, six-month recession – has been replaced by certainty that this will be a long and protracted U-shaped recession, possibly lasting at least two years in the U.S. and close to two years in most of the rest of the world. And given the rising risk of a global systemic financial meltdown, the prospect of a decade-long L-shaped recession – such as the one experienced by Japan after the collapse of its real-estate and equity bubble – cannot be ruled out.

Dr Roubini is nervous. He doesn't feel the government solutions as presented will work.

Do the measures go far enough? When policy actions don't provide real relief to market participants, you know you are one step away from a systemic collapse of the financial and corporate sectors. A vicious circle of deleveraging, plummeting asset prices and margin calls is under way. [Emphasis mine]

Please read the entire article, as it's not very long.

I don't have to write that the economy is distressed. We all feel it. I would like to highlight Dr Roubini's recommendations, pulling then out of his paragraph form and seperating them. I want to know what others think . . . [Again, Emphasis mine]

So we cannot rule out a systemic failure and global depression. As we have seen in recent days, it will take a big change in economic policy and very radical, co-ordinated action among all economies to avoid disaster. This includes:

Another rapid round of interest-rate cuts of at least 150 basis points on average globally;

A temporary blanket guarantee of all deposits while insolvent financial institutions that must be shut are distinguished from distressed but solvent institutions that must be partially nationalized and given injections of public capital;

A rapid reduction of insolvent households' debt burden, preceded by a temporary freeze on all foreclosures;

Massive and unlimited provision of liquidity to solvent financial institutions;

Public provision of credit to the solvent parts of the corporate sector in order to avoid a short-term debt refinancing crisis for solvent but illiquid corporations and small businesses;

A massive direct government fiscal stimulus that includes public works, infrastructure spending, unemployment benefits, tax rebates to lower-income households, and provision of grants to cash- strapped local governments;

An agreement between creditor countries running current-account surpluses and debtor countries running current-account deficits to maintain an orderly financing of deficits and a recycling of creditors' surpluses to avoid disorderly adjustment of such imbalances.

I think he may have hit the nail on the head. What do you think?

UPDATE: I just found this post, Public Losses for Private Gain, that's also worth reading.

Tags: Financial Crisis

What's Really Behind Obama's Ground Game

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:53:10 GMT

This is excellent . . .

The New Organizers, Part 1: What's really behind Obama's ground game

Inside the Obama campaign, almost without anyone noticing, an insurgent generation of organizers has built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people's organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.

The "New Organizers" have succeeded in building what many netroots-oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade. Other recent attempts have failed because they were either so "top-down" and/or poorly-managed that they choked volunteer leadership and enthusiasm; or because they were so dogmatically fixated on pure peer-to-peer or "bottom-up" organizing that they rejected basic management, accountability and planning. The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign, on the other hand, have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and self-organization.

Win or lose, "The New Organizers" have already transformed thousands of communities—and revolutionized the way organizing itself will be understood and practiced for at least the next generation. Obama must continue to feed and lead the organization they have built—either as president or in opposition. If he doesn't, then the broader progressive movement needs to figure out how to pick this up, keep it going and spread it to all 50 states. For any of that to happen, the incredible organizing that has taken place this year inside Obama's campaign—and also here and there in Clinton's—needs to be thoroughly understood and celebrated. Toward that end, here are glimpses from several days of observations and interviews in Central and Southwest Ohio. This article focuses on the field program's innovative "neighborhood team" structure and the philosophy of volunteer management underlying it that is best summarized by the field campaign's ubiquitous motto: "Respect. Empower. Include."

In her job at a Middletown, Ohio, steel factory, Glenna Fisher managed the preparation and shipping of millions of pounds of steel per year until her retirement six years ago. But when she has volunteered for democratic campaigns in the past, no one ever asked her to do anything more complicated than calling voters with a script.

This year, the field organizer (FO) assigned to her town, Ryan Clay, had much bigger plans for her.

"He'd gotten my name from info I'd entered on the Obama website listing ways in which I'd be willing to volunteer," Glenna explained in the Hamilton office before a regular report-in with Ryan. "He called and we set up a time to meet at a local coffee shop."

One of the ways Ryan asked Glenna to help was recruiting other volunteers.

"And that Sunday, my church had a joint service with our sister church, a local African-American congregation. There I talked with a friend who gave me several names of people who also might be interested in volunteering with the campaign. I called Ryan and passed on those names and phone numbers," Glenna said.

Ryan was impressed, and continued to ask Glenna to try increasingly difficult tasks. She didn't know it, but she was being "tested" to see if she had what it took to be a neighborhood team leader (NTL).

After Glenna had proven her reliability and effectiveness, Ryan asked her for another special one-on-one meeting where he invited her to formally agree to become an NTL. He spelled out all of an NTL's responsibilities before allowing her to accept it and even gave her a binder spelling it all out in writing: She would work with him to recruit other team members such as coordinators for canvassing, phone banking and data management. Her team would be responsible for connecting with all of the Democratic and undecided voters within their "turf." Other volunteers who stepped forward in her area would not be managed by campaign staff, but by Glenna's team. As team leader, Glenna would report results to Ryan a couple times per week and would be held accountable for meeting specific goals by certain deadlines.

In 2004, it was unusual for volunteers to have persistent roles and responsibilities—both at the Kerry campaign and the independent field operation Americans Coming Together. That is the norm for electoral organizing campaigns, and perhaps organizing in general these days. In contrast, the Obama neighborhood team members are organizers themselves, sometimes working more or less as staff alongside the young FOs.

Patrick Frank, 21, joined the campaign as a volunteer, won an unpaid "Organizer Fellowship" and finally was hired as an FO in July. Having served as a volunteer on more than 10 political campaigns, Patrick contrasts his experience at Obama with the traditional organizing model he was used to:

"It's about empowering. When I was 16 I worked on a big governor's campaign. And we were reliable volunteers and we were putting in serious hours. I felt like we should have been leaders, but that never happened. They said, 'Do your call lists, knock on doors—let us do the thinking.' Now, on the Obama campaign, when I see people like me and my friends used to be, we turn them around and say, 'Well hey, here's how to be a community organizer. Let me help you be a community organizer.' And then they go out and they get people to be their coordinators. And then we tell those new coordinators, 'Build yourself a team and be organizers too.' There's no end to it."

And that's exactly what Patrick did with long-time Democratic activist Don Daiker, who told me at the Oxford campaign office, "I've succeeded in recruiting 4 organizers: one in charge of canvassing, one in charge of phone banking, one in charge of volunteer recruitment, and one in charge of data transcription and recording. So that's my team. And we're responsible for roughly a quarter of Oxford, excluding the campus. And on top of that, I've taken charge of organizing house parties in the area."

While it was Patrick's job to make sure that all of those coordinators had been sufficiently tested for reliability before they got their official position, Don was the one making the ask. Describing how he made the ask to his canvass coordinator, Anne Bailey: "I said, if you're really interested in doing more, meet me at the coffee house and we'll talk about it. So I met her there and I said, 'How would you like to be canvass coordinator?' And she said, 'What does that mean?' I described it and I said, 'I'll print it out for you—because the Obama people have a little manual and there's a section in it about how you do canvasing.' "

Team leaders like Don have some latitude to shape roles around individual personalities. While not everyone has a volunteer coordinator, Don created that role for retired high school English teacher Marilyn Elsley, one of his recruits who wanted to lead but wasn't comfortable with the canvassing coordinator position.

"Up here there's a sign up sheet for phone banking," Don said, pointing to a giant chart on the wall of the office, "And it's filling up. Marilyn calls the people, and then we fill them in here, and then the phone bank coordinator, Cynthia Durgan, sets up the phone bank and trains the callers. We'll be phone banking just about every day between now and November 4."

After visiting my fourth or fifth team, it was painfully clear that an enormous amount of power is unlocked by this incredibly simple act of distributing different roles to people who actually feel comfortable taking them on. And I say "painfully" because I couldn't stop thinking about all the union and electoral campaigns I've worked on where we did not do this.

I thought about Patrick's story from high school when I met Jacob Manser, a 16 year-old who is serving as the canvass coordinator for his neighborhood team in the heart of Columbus. The team's FO, Steph Lake, took me by the beginning of an afternoon phone bank that the team was coordinating. All the team members were playing their different roles: The team's volunteer coordinator, a semi-retired software developer named Robert Hughes had prepared the call lists in conjunction with the team's phone bank coordinator, Leslie Krivo-Kaufman, another high school student. Team leader Janeen Sands oversaw the whole event. And another volunteer, who was not even a team coordinator (yet) had donated her house for the event. Jacob helped out that day by collecting the data from the event. The team was still looking for a data coordinator and other members were sharing that role. Later that night, Steph and I stopped by his house to get the tallies (though volunteers organized by the team would do the actual data entry). They made the exchange in the street in front of Jacob's house, talking softly so as not to disturb any neighbors. It was about 10:00 PM—on a school night!

"Should I be worried about your grades?" I asked.

"I have a 4.2," he said.

"OK—I didn't even know that was possible," I admitted.

While the team structure dramatically increases volunteer productivity, it does so even more for the staff FOs.

Ryan, for example, has six teams covering a wide swath of rural and exurban Southwest Ohio. He said, "It's great—it's like having six offices around town."

He elaborated: "So many people lose elections because of the places you can't get to. This program allows Glenna's team, with just two or three weeks of VAN training to know how to cut turf, to know how to pull lists and put canvass packets together. So all that type of work that eats up so much time for organizers can be handled at the local level—at her place. That allows me to bounce around and find other team leaders. Since she's become a team leader and started taking care of her neighborhood, I've been able to go out and find four other team leaders—because I can rest assured that she's made the volunteer recruitment calls for her canvasses, and that she's made the confirmation calls. I might make a few calls at night—and if I find a new good volunteer I'll shoot Glenna an email saying, 'Call this person when you can.' But for the most part, it allows me to jump out of that neighborhood and spend time with another neighborhood that needs the help."

"So being able to play in every single street is really important and the teams are what let us do that," Ryan continued.

The Ohio campaign is attempting to build teams in 1,231 campaign-defined "neighborhoods," each covering eight to ten precincts. They are targeting virtually every inhabited square mile of the state. The campaign claimed to have teams in 65% of neighborhoods when I visited in early September. That's risen to 85% coverage at press time—and they are shooting for 100%. In contrast, the Kerry campaign effectively wrote off rural counties, and completely abandoned them in the final few weeks of the campaign in a last minute all-in shift to the cities.

It was a huge risk for the national field program to have paid staff take the time to methodically build volunteer teams instead of rushing directly to spend all their time running voter contact activities themselves. From the point of view of the conventional wisdom of much of the pre-Obama field organizing world, the campaign is actually taking two big risks: first they are risking everything on the effectiveness of masses of volunteers, then they are risking everything again by relying on volunteer teams to lead those masses. What if teams was just a bunch of hippy nonsense? What if it turned out there just weren't that many unpaid activists capable of running high-quality canvasses?

Jeremy Bird, the Ohio general election director and one of the driving forces behind making teams a national strategy, said, "We decided in terms of timeline that [our organizers] would not be measured by the amount of voter contacts they made in the summer—but instead by the number of volunteers that they were recruiting, training and testing. It was much more an infrastructure focus. So there would be no calls from Chicago saying, 'Why haven't you made more calls?!' Instead there would be calls saying, 'Where are your neighborhood team volunteers?' Or, if the numbers seemed high, 'Are they real?' It was a whole shift in mentality that was really, really good."

It is impossible to overstate how counter intuitive this slow-build approach was for Democrats. Even Regional Field Director for Southwest Ohio, Christen Linke Young—who I witnessed in 2004 pushing independently for just this strategy as an Ohio FO in Franklin County—said it was scary to take this patient approach:

"We had a whole month where, on our nightly calls with headquarters, we did not report our voter contact numbers. We only reported our leadership building. I definitely stayed on top of what our voter contact numbers looked like. But headquarters wasn't paying attention to how many voters we registered or how many doors we knocked that day—they were paying attention to how many one-on-one meetings we had, house meetings, neighborhood team leaders recruited, how many people we had convinced to come to this wonderful training in Columbus that we had. Yes, it was definitely scary to see how big our persuasion universe was and know that our first priority was not to just be tearing through that."

But Christen said the meticulous building has paid off: "And then last weekend we [teams in Christen's area] had 100 volunteers on Saturday canvassing—which is not something I ever would have thought was possible. And they knocked on 2,500 doors. And so you go: 'OK, it paid off, it worked.' We spent a month focusing on getting the pieces in place and now we can knock on 2,500 doors on the first Saturday in September. I'd love to count up how many canvasses we actually staged that day but I think most organizers had at least two canvasses—they were able to be in two places at once because they had recruited and trained leaders who could run their own canvasses and who could train other volunteers in persuasion."

When this story was finally ready to go to press, I called to get an update on Christen's numbers. Last weekend (October 4-5), the teams in her region knocked on 10,300 doors—and another 1,906 in the weekdays leading up to that. She mentioned a team that is canvassing now three times per week. They have dinner together every Tuesday night and breakfast every Saturday morning.

Christen said, "I feel like people are committing more time this election because there's a community thing going on, and they're part of something that's local and social. But we're also more effective at harnessing volunteers because the teams do a lot of the training and debriefing themselves—it scales well. Everyone who goes out canvassing comes back with at least one story of someone they impacted. The team leaders are trained to give people time to tell those stories, and so everyone gets a sense of progress and they learn from each other how to be more effective next time."

That's a totally different picture than what I saw in scores of Kerry offices in 2004: crowds of canvassers receiving minimal instruction before being sent to an unfamiliar neighborhood and rarely getting the chance to debrief with others as a group.

The long term planning and relationships that emerged in the process were the keys: "These are tested and trained leaders—we knew we could trust them, and they knew they could trust us. They knew that if we said we'd give them everything they needed to run their event, that we'd have it for them. So that when we said, 'recruit 15 people to be at your house on Sunday, but I'm not going to be there'—that they knew we'd adequately prepare them for that day."

Compared to 2004, the productivity of the field is on a whole different level, said Christen, "There wasn't even a special push last weekend to get those volunteers there. I remember in 2004 there was a huge push to knock on this many doors one weekend in Franklin county as part of a nationwide thing. We dropped everything for that. But here, it was just a normal Saturday. And it's just going to keep getting bigger each weekend."

Training for organizers—and for volunteers—was critical to the success of this unorthodox model. In Ohio, Jeremy insisted on getting the whole staff together for an intensive full-weekend training early in the program.

"When I got here, yeah, I was nervous," said Jeremy, "because most of these organizers had never done this [team building] before. We did two days—we got everyone together, we went to Oberlin."

That training was expensive, but Jeremy said, "We spent more money than they ever wanted us to. But training is the most important thing. So [in our field budget] I'll cut whatever you want—but having all of our organizers together and training them for a full weekend. A lot of campaigns say they do training but it's often like a two hour orientation. We wanted to make sure that ours was a real, interactive, in-depth training."

A similar training was held for the first wave of team leaders that had been recruited by late August—and two different volunteers who I spoke to about it literally choked up as they tried to describe how powerful an experience it was. Training for staff and teams continues every week. Just the day before I first met Don and Patrick, they had spent an afternoon with the whole team gathered, going over the big-picture campaign strategy right up through Election Day. Of course they took some time to beef up on voter contact basics too. While I was in Ohio, the whole paid staff came together regionally for a full-day session of sharing successes and trouble shooting problems. The campaign is fanatical about constant quality checking and continuous feedback.

Both staff and volunteers are unusually reflective and analytical regarding the team model and the organizing philosophy of "Respect. Empower. Include." Those words were plastered in hugh letters around almost every office I visited, and organizers will get carried away talking about those principles and how they are supported by various details of the organizing model they're practicing.

I think this is partly because the model is working, and so people are excited about it, and excited to think about it. But it's also because the leadership—models this methodological introspection in all the trainings they do in in their daily management of organizers.

Jeremy and other national leaders actually produced a 280 page manual spelling out the model after conducting hundreds of interviews with primary and caucus organizers as well as ploughing through thousands of survey responses from volunteers.

The field director Jackie Bray was driving around the state doing spot checks on the quality of local team structures when I was in Ohio. So I asked her to describe the field model in an email. I'm struck by two things about her response: first, how detailed and self-analytical it is; second, that it represents exactly the model I saw actually being practiced in the field—because I'm sorry to say it, but I'm just used to anyone with the title "director" being hopelessly out of touch with the reality of the ground. (Including myself in more than a couple past jobs!)

Jackie wrote: "When we identify a volunteer or a potential volunteer we always hold a one on one meeting. Movements aren't built on individual people—they are built on relationships. Then we ask our volunteers to make deeper commitments. We coach new volunteers and facilitate the process for folks who are old hat at this stuff through an organizing activity. Usually the organizing activity is hosting a house meeting but it can be hosting a community meeting or a faith forum or recruiting seven plus new volunteers to take the first step and come to our office. Once someone has succeeded at an organizing activity we ask them to try their hand at leading a voter contact activity. Mostly we are interested in how well they train fellow volunteers to make phone calls or knock on doors. Training is a huge part of quality control and we need our leaders to be good trainers. If a potential leader is a successful trainer then we meet with them again to ask them to take that next step and become a Team Coordinator or Team Leader. If at any moment in this process a volunteer isn't successful our organizers are trained to spend time coaching them through getting better. We are an inclusive team here and our goal is always to make people better."

All the organizers and team leaders I met were similarly reflective and highly aware that they were enacting a special model of electoral organizing. They actually sound like they're in a continuous state of shock at their own results and the power being unleashed by teams. A chill went down my spine one night—the good kind—when I was listening in on a nightly report-in conference call with 20 FOs at the Hamilton, Ohio, office. It was about 10:00 PM, and a new organizer was reporting in her daily voter contact numbers to Jackie.

Jackie asked her why that week they had been so much higher than the previous week. The young woman on the other end of the line—who I imagined calling from a car pulled over on the side of some far flung rural route—spoke with genuine amazement when she said, "It's the teams! It's these awesome team leaders! It's working! It's actually working!"

This high level of self-awareness regarding the organizing method seems to allow organizers to better adapt it to their own unique turf and personalities.

For example, field organizer Patrick Morrell has created a three-ring bound instruction manual all on his own that he gives to every member of his team. One of his team members, who is Ryan's housing provider (most field organizers are living in supporters' spare rooms), left her binder on Ryan's bed one night with a note saying, "Maybe you should take some notes."

Ryan's mainly working-class turf—or his own more flexible style—has led to a looser structure for his teams than Patrick's. Patrick's turf is a relatively well-off set of suburbs. Maybe because of that—or maybe because of his own detail-oriented personal style—his teams work in a highly-structured manner. Both organizers' teams are achieving their benchmarks on time.

Organizers like Patrick and Ryan who had very little campaign experience before Obama are already talking like experts, with insights worthy of a long career. Somehow in just a handful of short months, they have already distilled practice into theory that in turn feeds and improves their practice.

Patrick said, "I start by finding the team leader and then I work with them to find the coordinator folks—people who from my experience in working with people in volunteer activities and also people who they know in the neighborhood who are custom fit for different roles. Once that team is established then we have a sit-down meeting where we get everyone a binder, we go through it step by step, and make sure everyone is on the same page. And then it's very much me passing the torch—and I'm here for questions but the team is running the campaign at that point."

Ryan had his own wisdom on team building to contribute: "Don't pass the baton to someone until you get someone else running at your speed. It's important for organizers and team leaders to find that point where a new leader is running at the same speed—mentally, physically, time-wise, interest level, desire to win—all those things. You find that point, and then all of a sudden it hits you: they're running neck and neck with you and that's the time that you pass it off and move on to building the next new team."

Patrick Frank was a junior at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, when he started volunteering for the campaign. Now, as an FO, his turf now covers the university, and he has encouraged innovation. Sitting on the outskirts of a large campus rally that his teams had organized, he explained to me some of the modifications they were making to the teams model, "Rather than say we have X leadership roles to fill, we're creating leadership roles for as many leaders as we have. So we have people in charge of whatever they ARE. We are saying, 'What's your social network?' We say, 'OK, you're The Balcony Coordinator—your job is to go party at Balcony [a local bar] every weekend—like you do anyways—but now wear a Barack Obama button—and bring voter reg forms.' Or, 'Hey, you work at Brunos—when you go out on deliveries—as long as it's OK with your boss—ask people if they're registered. You're going to be our, um, pizza coordinator.' "

When Patrick was talking to me, a handful of team members were buzzing around the rally asking every student to sign in. The sign in sheet gave every person the option of indicating interest in becoming a leader. Free food would be served at the end of the rally, but you needed a little green sticker to get some. Of course, you got a sticker by signing in.

"There's no end to what you can do when you have the power to empower people as leaders on campus. It's beautiful. It's awe-inspiring," Patrick continued, pointing to the big event that was running itself without him having to worry about it or check on anything, "I mean look at this!"

We saw glimpses of the potential for this kind of organizing campaign in MoveOn's 2004 and 2006 volunteer operations, the Dean Campaign and even the Bush and Kerry campaigns. And there are great examples of this kind of organizing if you go back to the social movements of several decades ago. But the Obama campaign is the first in the Internet era to realize the dream of a disciplined, volunteer-driven, bottom-up-AND-top-down, distributed and massively scaleable organizing campaign. For anyone who knows how many times this has failed to happen, this is practically an apocryphal event. Marashal Ganz, who is an advisor to the national field campaign, and one of the main architects of the team model, said he's been waiting 40 years for it.

A well-run organizing campaign is the most beautiful thing in the world: people know what they're working for; they have little successes everyday; they prepare for problems ahead of time and have great fun attacking them when they happen. Everyone is in a state of constant euphoria. In the end, win or lose, you have built something that gives you hope for the future—hope that humanity can, as it turns out, work cooperatively towards a better future and succeed.

In the middle of a good organizing campaign, volunteers will stop and tell you that they are becoming better people. That's sounds cheesy, doesn't it? But I'll tell you, I wrote that line in a first draft of this article while waiting for my own neighborhood team meeting to start in Westport, Kansas City, Missouri. I looked at it and thought, "People won't buy that." I figured I'd delete it.

Then, at the end of our meeting, my neighborhood team leader, Jennifer Robinson, totally unprompted, told me: "I'm a different person than I was six weeks ago." I asked her to elaborate later. She said, "Now, I'm really asking: how can I be most effective in my community? I've realized that these things I've been doing as a volunteer organizer—well, I'm really good at them, I have a passion for this. I want to continue to find ways to actively make this place, my community, a better place. There's so much more than a regular job in this—and once you've had this, it's hard to go back to a regular job. I'm asking now: Can I look for permanent work as an organizer in service of my community? And that's a question I had not asked myself before the campaign. It never occurred to me that I could even ask that question."

Through the meeting, Jennifer had inspired and commanded the room of 50 new volunteers on top of her five team members who already had roles. Her seven year old daughter had been staring up at her with calm awe the whole time. Good organizing changes the world. In fact, it's what humanity is made out of. Every one of us is the product of centuries upon centuries of the struggle between good organizing and bad organizing. Barack Obama—through the most incredible, random, beautiful, twists of history—has brought good organizing back. God bless him and the army of volunteer and paid organizers who are making it real.

Source

Tags: Organizing

John McCain said what???

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 06:18:33 GMT

Turn the volume up way, way high, close your eyes and really, really listen.

Uh Oh!!!!

John McCain Says HORSESH*T During the 9/26 Debate

Tags: McCain