talking points memo

Here’s a two minute trip through an Obama phone bank in Chicago where people are sitting on the floor using cell phones to call places across the USA, like Indiana, Pennsylvania, you-name-it. Pretty exciting stuff. For further details see this Talking Points Memo report.

I’ve just been reading in Mudflats and Talking Points Memo about the latest Republican voter suppression efforts, this time in Michigan. The GOP plan there is to deny voters with foreclosed homes the right to vote, or in other words, lose your home, lose your vote!

The Obama campaign is filing suit against this and seeking an injunction to prevent the GOP in Michigan from carrying out this suppression technique. The suit is worded in such a way as to invite the court to recognize that this is just a local instance of a state and national campaign of voter suppression on the part of the GOP. Here is the link to the Obama campaign’s filing.

Mudflats also references a 501-type organization called Black Box Voting funded by citizen donations. This a nation-wide elections watchdog group which has been growing fast. Here’s a key paragraph from Mudflats:

The election watchdog group Black Box Voting, has sent out the following request. If you are not familiar with this group, you should be. The website is extensive, and there’s also a great documentary Hacking Democracy (available on Netflix) which tells the story of this organization and the amazing woman who started it all. This is possibly the single most important issue facing our country, because without preserving the integrity of the vote, we have nothing.

One of my morning reads to capture the news and find out what’s going on in the world has always been Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. He’s got a great post this morning on the hysteria of the neocons over the Russian response to Georgian troops invading Ossetia. Here’s the closing paragraph of this short four paragraph read:

Watching the Bennetts and the Krauthammers get all jazzed up about Georgia as the new Afghanistan, with all the painfully awkward nostalgia and excitement of an 80s era Gilligan’s Island reunion flick is entertaining. But much less so when you realize these jokers might be running the government in six months.

Of course McCain is right in there with the rest of them, championing them in fact and sending his surrogates to Georgia. Well, we’ll see whether the whole thing doesn’t blow over in a couple weeks. I’ll come back here then with an update!

Racism is still rampant in America. The latest Rasmussen polls say 53% of Americans think Obama’s “dollar bill” remarks were racist while 22% think McCain’s Paris Hilton ad is racist. What a travesty! This disgusts me! It really should be the other way around. Clearly McCain’s ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears has the subtext message, “Watch out! This uppity Negro is gonna steal our white women.” Good old middle of the road David Gergen really hit the nail on the head today with this statement: ““When McCain’s camp calls Obama “The Messiah” and “The One”, he’s really calling him “upitty.” I’m from the South, and we understand what that means. That’s code.” Here’s the video, thanks to Talking Points Memo:

So, is McCain going to become our next president by playing the race card? That’s what he’s doing and it may work.

UPDATE: Bob Herbert in the NYT on Saturday explains why the Paris Hilton and Britney Spears ad is racist: Running While Black.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo again. This time he finds some pretty good raunch in Chris Matthews’ leg, Roger Clemens’ seedy lawyers, and Mike Huckabee’s squirrels. Pretty funny in a disgusting sort of way.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has a nice analysis of the super delegates legitimacy problem followed by a couple recent polls from Texas and Ohio here: