Sure you can. Just enjoy your temporary suspension.

This is one reason I stay out of these discussions. They get nasty, nobody listens to anyone else's opinions and hard feelings are created.

Suspending our Godmother?

Aw c'mon... TIS ain't the angel that she suckered everyone into thinking she is.

She was once ready to kick Vercetti's ass.

She knocked over three old ladies on a breakfast buffet line because they were taking too long to decide what they wanted and she was stuck behind them.

She once ran my shopping cart off the road.

She made three sailors blush (by her bad language) when they tried to take her cab in Las Vegas.

She once punched out a bartender because the blue in her little girly drink wasn't blue enough.

All in all, she's my kind of girl!

I can relate to that.

Next time that happens TIS, I'll help ya knock people out of the way.

I heard on one of the cable news channels that the Gov. of Ohio will not take the VP position. Doesn't want it.

He did "Sherman." "If nominated I will not campaign and if elected I will not serve." He is out of the running.

Kind of like the current administration.

Not at all, Beth. Strickland was talking about refusing to serve, not actively engaging in disservice.

I thought this was cute. It's the Governor and Maria (Shriver) Schwarzenegger's mansion. One way to handle both sides of the political aisle.

If the picture is not showing up for you, the link to the story is on the bottom.

TIS





http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/us/pol...amp;oref=slogin

Very nice, TIS. I'm sure that there are a lot of married couples in the same boat.

I see Maria won out as Obama got top billing.

Could Gore have waited any longer to endorse Obama?

His timing was very "inconvenient."

It was his way of getting out of a tough spot. Having been Clinton's VP, he would have had to endorse her. However, by waiting until she bowed out, he gets to endorse Obama. Rather chicken-like, but that's not unusual in a politician, is it??

Yes. I always considered his silence during the primary as a ringing endorsement for Obama.

His silence in the primaries spoke volumes, true, although in 2004 he endorsed Howard Dean before Iowa, probably as payback to Joe Lieberman who sold him out in the Florida recount ....that stronz.

Obama could win vote, lose election, by Harry Siegel
Wed Jun 18, 9:35 PM ET

Until 2000, it hadn’t happened in more than 100 years, but plugged-in observers from both parties see a distinct possibility of Barack Obama winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College — and with it the presidency — to John McCain.

Here’s the scenario: Obama racks up huge margins among the increasingly affluent, highly educated and liberal coastal states, while a significant increase in turnout among black voters allows him to compete — but not to win — in the South. Meanwhile, McCain wins solidly Republican states such as Texas and Georgia by significantly smaller margins than Bush’s in 2004 and ekes out narrow victories in places such as North Carolina, which Bush won by 12 points but Rasmussen presently shows as a tossup, and Indiana, which Bush won by 21 points but McCain presently leads by just 11.

One possible result: Even as the national mood moves left, the 2004 map largely holds. Obama’s 32 new electoral votes from Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Virginia are offset by 21 new electoral votes for McCain in Michigan and New Hampshire — and despite a 2- or 3-point popular vote victory for Obama, America wakes up on Jan. 20 to a President McCain.

According to Tad Devine, who served as the chief political consultant for Al Gore in 2000 and as a senior adviser to John F. Kerry in 2004, “it certainly is a possibility. Not a likelihood, but it is a real possibility.”

Some observers, such as Joseph Mercurio, a political consultant and pollster who worked on Sen. Joe Biden’s Democratic primary bid, see this as unlikely given the dramatic increase in Democratic Party enrollment and President Bush’s near record-low approval rating. Also skeptical is Nate Silver, a political cult-favorite blogger whose statistical model — which factors in population change since electoral votes were last allocated in the 2000 census — shows McCain as more likely than Obama to lose the Electoral College while winning the popular vote.

But others, pointing to the competitiveness of the past two elections, predict that this will be another such tight race. If they’re proven correct, this would be the fourth in the past five elections, making for the most closely contested run of presidential contests since those spanning the popular vote-Electoral College splits of 1876 and 1888.

Hank Sheinkopf, president of Sheinkopf Communications and an adviser to Bill Clinton in 1996, warns that such a split “is anything but impossible.” While he gives Obama a slight edge in the general election “because he doesn’t have George Bush riding with him,” he predicts that “Obama’s going to get big votes for a Democrat in the Southern states but not enough to win any new electoral votes. So it’s a distinct possibility that he could lose the entire South, split the Midwest” and end up not as president but rather as the second coming of Al Gore. When asked the odds of this playing out, he offers “50-50.”

Devine points out that Bush’s strategy in 2004 “was predicated on massive base turnout” that pushed up margins in safe states. He doesn’t “expect the McCain campaign to be directed the same way — using issues like gay marriage on the ballot to get the base to the polls — so McCain won’t have the same forces at play to drive out the popular vote.”

Recalling the impact of Ralph Nader’s third-party run in 2000, Devine also wonders if Bob Barr’s Libertarian run might play out differently, costing McCain popular — but not electoral — votes, while producing another popular-electoral split.

Lloyd M. Green, who served as research counsel to George Bush in 1988, also rates Obama a slight favorite and predicts that, if the Democrat does win, he’ll do so with “even larger margins in New York and California than in the last several elections [in 2004, Kerry won the two states by a combined margin of a little more than 2.5 million votes], and yet with all that margin run-up in safe states, this will end up a tight general election.”

In a sentiment also expressed by Sheinkopf and Green, Devine sees little chance of this happening if Obama wins the popular vote by more than 4 points. “But if he gets it by 2 or 3 points, it is plausible," he said. "Absolutely.”

Green, who sees “about a 20 percent chance” of Obama winning the popular vote while losing the Electoral College, doesn’t expect anything resembling a blowout: “Given that the only clear and clean majorities [since 1992] were in 1996 and 2004, ... this election will have the ferocity of all recent elections.” It’s a tough trend to buck, he argued, noting that “Americans traditionally change their religious affiliations more often than their party affiliations.”

No more than what John Edwards* did.

*=If Obama gets elected...Edwards as Attorney General?

Hate Groups' Newest Target
White Supremacists Report an Increase in Visits to Their Web Sites

Sen. Barack Obama's historic victory in the Democratic primaries, celebrated in America and across much of the world as a symbol of racial progress and cultural unity, has also sparked an increase in racist and white supremacist activity, mainly on the Internet, according to leaders of hate groups and the organizations that track them.

Neo-Nazi, skinhead and segregationist groups have reported gains in numbers of visitors to their Web sites and in membership since the senator from Illinois secured the Democratic nomination June 3. His success has aroused a community of racists, experts said, concerned by the possibility of the country's first black president.

"I haven't seen this much anger in a long, long time," said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. "Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president."

Such groups have historically inflated their influence for self-promotion and as an intimidation technique, and they refused to provide exact membership numbers or open their meetings to a reporter. Leaders acknowledged that their numbers remain very small -- "the flat-globe society still has more people than us," Roper said. But experts said their claims reveal more than hyperbole this time.

"The truth is, we're finding an explosion in these kinds of hateful sentiments on the Net, and it's a growing problem," said Deborah Lauter, civil rights director for the Anti-Defamation League, which monitors hate group activity. "There are probably thousands of Web sites that do this now. I couldn't even tell you how many are out there because it's growing so fast."

Neo-Nazi and white power groups acknowledge that they have little ability to derail Obama's candidacy, so instead some have decided to take advantage of its potential. White-power leaders who once feared Obama's campaign have come to regard it as a recruiting tool. The groups now portray his candidacy as a vehicle to disenfranchise whites and polarize America.

Obama has worked hard to minimize the issue of race in his presidential campaign. When asked about divisiveness and hate, he talks instead about ways in which unity between blacks and whites has inspired him. He chose to "reject and denounce" an endorsement from Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan. Obama quit his church after his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., spoke of racism and oppression in the "United States of white America."

Earlier this month, Obama's campaign launched a Web site to defuse the false rumors that hate-mongers spread on the Internet. The site lists a series of untruths about Obama -- that he is Muslim; that his books contain racist passages; that his wife, Michelle, used the word "whitey" -- and discredits them.

"The Obama campaign isn't going to let dishonest smears spread across the Internet unanswered," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement. "We have to be proactive and fight back."

But on a Web site run out of a house in West Palm Beach, Fla., the other side is also fighting.

Don Black spends 16 hours each day on his laptop computer reading hundreds of derogatory Obama comments posted on Stormfront.org, a Web site with the motto "white pride world wide." Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, launched the site in 1995 to create a central meeting place for the white power movement. In the wake of Obama's securing enough delegates for the nomination, Stormfront, he says, has begun to fulfill his vision.

A site that drew a few thousand visitors per day in 2002 has expanded into Black's full-time job, attracting more than 40,000 unique users each day who can post on 54 different message boards, he said. Black has enlisted 40 moderators and his 19-year-old son to help run Stormfront.

Posters on Stormfront complain that Obama represents the end of "white rule" and the beginning of "multiculturalism." They fear that he will promote affirmative action, support illegal immigration and help render whites, who make up two-thirds of the U.S. population, "the new minority."

"I get nonstop e-mails and private message from new people who are mad as hell about the possibility of Obama being elected," said Black, a white power activist since the 1970s. "White people, for a long time, have thought of our government as being for us, and Obama is the best possible evidence that we've lost that. This is scaring a lot of people who maybe never considered themselves racists, and it's bringing them over to our side."

Almost all white power leaders said they are benefiting from the rise in recruits. David Duke, a former Louisiana state representative and a longtime advocate of racial segregation, said hits to his Web site have doubled and that more organizations now request him as a guest speaker. Dan Hill, who runs an extremist group in northern Michigan, says his cohorts are more willing to "take serious action" and plan rallies to protest politicians and immigration. Roper says White Revolution receives about 10 new applicants each week, more than double the norm.

The past few months reflect a recent trend of hate group growth, watch organizations said. Fueled primarily by anti-immigration sentiment, white supremacy groups have increased by nearly half since 2000, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups. The KKK has diversified regionally and now has about 150 chapters spread through 34 states.

"Our side does better when the public is being pressured, when gas prices are high, when housing is bad, when a black man might be president," said Ron Doggett, who runs a white power group called EURO in Richmond. "People start looking for solutions and changes, and we offer radical changes to what's going on."

The new interest has led to a debate among white supremacists about how to harness it. So far, groups have executed a few small efforts to disrupt Obama's campaign. A bar in Georgia sells T-shirts depicting Obama's campaign slogan under the image of a monkey. A New York group distributed bumper stickers that read: "Wake up white people." Hill, who trains in militia and survival techniques with his group in northern Michigan, drove to an Obama rally and tried to "fire people up, maybe get a riot started or something."

The groups also despise Republican Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for his moderate views on immigration and his willingness to stick with the Iraq war. Better for Obama to win, leaders said, because his presidency could fuel a recruitment drive big enough to launch events that the white power movement has spent decades anticipating.

"One person put it this way: Obama for president paves the way for David Duke as president," said Duke, who ran for president in 1988, received less than 1 percent of the vote and has since spent much of his time in Europe. "This is finally going to make whites begin to realize it's a necessity to stick up for their own heritage, and that's going to make them turn to people like me. We're the next logical step."

There is also another possibility, of course, one that makes white power leaders despise Obama even more.

"What you try not to think about is that maybe if Obama wins, it will create a very demoralizing effect," Doggett said. "Maybe people see him in office, and it's like: 'That's it. It's just too late. Look at what's happened now. We've endured all these defeats, and we've still got a multicultural society.' And then there's just no future for our viewpoint."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101471_pf.html

I think for these racists groups, the fact that Obama has done the unexpected and gotten this far with more than a good chance to become President, brings out their sheer racist hatred. It's pretty damn sad, yet true, that to think in today's world there are people so full of hate because of one's race. Of course it's hard to tell how much the media is fueling the flames too.

Btw, and on an UP note for me anyway....I read that Obama will be in Las Vegas on Tuesday. So will I. I checked the Las Vegas Sun Times who said it had "no further details" and Obama's campaign site and didn't get any info. If anyone hears of exactly where he'll be (and when), please post. I'd just love to be able to go see him. It could be anywhere in LV, but hopefully in the strip area and if so, I'm there.

TIS

If white supremacist groups become more vocal, Obama's popularity will rise. Mainstream America is more turned off by bigots than ever before. Their message will be met with contempt, and sympathy for Obama.

I hope you're correct, Klydon. But I take it you haven't been to the South recently. Racism and bigotry is alive and well, believe me.

Is it compulsory for Americans to vote once they're over 18?

It is down here. If you don't vote you get hit with a fine.

I thought USA was a free country.

No. You don't have to register to vote here.

Huh??

You don't have to register to vote unless you intend to vote. Voting is elective.

And you can register, and then not vote, too.

olivant cleared it up for me.
I should have said that there were no penalties for failing to register. But if you vote, of course, you need to register.

Compulsory voting would probably work out better as far as electing a president people actually want.

OBAMA SMART AS A PISTOL WITH NEW TOUGH-GUY ACT

by Charles Hurt - Inside Washington

June 27, 2008

THE Democratic Party has long been mocked as the Mommy Party for its soft, nurturing governing style and its paralyzing patience for listening to dissent from every quarter, no matter how small or irrelevant.

The Republican Party is the Daddy Party - always tough, determined and willing to do whatever dirty work is necessary to get the job done.

Democrats want Oprah Winfrey. Republicans want Jack Bauer.

But now that Barack Obama has taken over the Democratic Party, he's bending these "genderizations."

He's taking Mommy out of the Mommy Party. Now, it's the party that strides past a female reporter and calls her "sweetie" to dismiss her silly little question.

And if you're wondering who's in charge, don't.

Within days of winning the nomination, Obama moved party headquarters to his home town of Chicago and started pushing party heads around, telling them they can't raise money from PACs and Washington lobbyists.

Yet when it comes to raising his own money, he tossed overboard his campaign promises to participate in the public financing system so he can maintain his massive cash advantage over the Republicans.

And in the ultimate display of testosterone, Obama unsheathed a new campaign emblem that looked emarkably like the presidential seal. (He has since dropped it.)

All-inclusive to the point of absurdity? Not anymore.

Obama operatives last week rooted out a couple of Muslim women and ordered them to keep away from the bleachers behind the candidate unless they removed their head scarves.

Coddler of criminals? Not anymore.

Obama - rated the most liberal member of the US Senate- now sides with the most conservative members of the Supreme Court in supporting a state's right to execute someone who rapes a child.

The candidate of anti-gun sissies? Nope.

Obama may as well have strapped on his John Wayne chaps and holster yesterday to announce his support of the Supreme Court's decision that the Second Amendment guaranteeing gun rights actually means what it says.

Are the Democrats now the party of states' rights, gun rights and the death penalty?

This wild election just keeps getting wilder.

As Obama moves rightward and gets tougher, Republicans are desperately trying to portray him as some sort of arrogant flip-flopper.

But these audacious moves by him are not signs of weakness; they're signs of a man who will win at any cost.

Isn't that what they used to say about the Clintons?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06272008/new...gh_g_117495.htm

Obama deserves a lot of credit for the way he's handled his campaign. This is a "first" of sorts with his remarkable ability to make so much campaign money from the internet. Who would have ever thought such a thing?

He also is replying immediately to any attack on him and his family. And, how smart that he starts a special internet site (stopthesmears.com) to put some of the lies about him to rest (many still think he is Muslim for one thing. They believe every e-mail or report they hear).

I never would have thought that being a Community Adviser, as he was, would have proven a real asset to Obama in planning out a practically perfect campaign. I am impressed with the guy without a doubt.

TIS