tagged w/ 2008 Presidental Candidates
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Three Facts About John McCain's Extreme Position on Choice:
John McCain is running on the Republican platform, which would ban all abortions - even in cases of rape and incest.
John McCain voted to criminalize doctors who support women in their reproductive choices, even when a woman's health is at risk.
Since 1983, John McCain has voted 125 times against women's reproductive health choices.
John McCain: Out of Touch with Women's Lives...
Check the Facts:ABC News, 8/20/08;
The Chicago Tribune, Eric Zorn, 8/28/08.
Senate vote 51, 3/13/03.
The New Republic, 8/27/08. Three Facts About John McCain's Extreme Position on Choice:
John McCain is... more
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US presidential contender Barack Obama's African half-brother says he is "ashamed" of his family ties because he lives as an impoverished recluse in a Kenyan shantytown.
The Italian edition of Vanity Fair says it tracked down George Hussein Onyango Obama living in poverty in a rundown shack in the violent town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi.
George Obama, 26, is the youngest of the presidential candidate's seven half-brothers and half-sisters.
He told the magazine: "No one knows who I am."
He said he was embarrassed that he lived "on less than a dollar a month" and never mentioned his world-famous half-brother.
"If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed," he told the magazine. "I live like a recluse. No one knows I exist."
The New York Post said the magazine had reported that George Obama's 2m by 3m shack was decorated with football posters, a calendar of exotic beaches and a front page newspaper photograph of the Democratic US presidential nominee.
Senator Obama, 47, and George Obama share the same Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama Senior.
Senator Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, was from Kansas and met Mr Obama Snr at university in Hawaii. She was his second wife.
George Obama said he had met his presidential candidate half-brother only twice, once when he was five years old and then in 2006 when Senator Obama was touring Africa.
In his autobiography, Senator Obama described his half-brother as a "beautiful boy with a rounded head".
"I took comfort in the fact that perhaps one day, when he was older, George might want to know who his father had been and who his brothers and sisters were. And if he ever came to me, I would be there for him, to tell him the story I knew," he wrote.
George Obama told Vanity Fair he had been homeless for 10 years, and his home now in Huruma was a "tough place".
"I've seen two of my friends killed," he said. "I have scars from defending myself with my fists. I am good with my fists."
The New York Post reported that other members of Senator Obama's extended family have remained close. He and half-brother Malik, a Kenyan accountant, were the best man at each other's weddings.
In his autobiography, Senator Obama said he was a young adult when he learned of George from his half-sister Auma.
His campaign did not comment on the Vanity Fair article.
US presidential contender Barack Obama's African half-brother says he is... more
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Sign the Petition: Sarah Palin Doesn't Speak For Me!
To Whom It May Concern:
During her speech in St. Paul on Wednesday night, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin purported to speak for women, small town residents, and everyone who is a member of the Washington elite.
Sarah Palin is an intelligent, well spoken woman, but it must be made clear:
We don't want a country in which women who are raped are refused the right to choose abortion.
We don't want a country in which religious dogma is taught in public school science class.
We don't want a country where gay and lesbian citizens are discriminated against.
We don't want a country where books are banned from public libraries.
America is strongest when we are united, not divided. When our Constitutional liberties are respected. When our politicians rely on ideas and opinions instead of distortions and attacks. The challenges we face are too big to be reduced to name-calling.
Sarah Palin doesn't speak for us.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
https://secure.pfaw.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=action_palin
Sign the Petition: Sarah Palin Doesn't Speak For Me!
To Whom It May Concern:... more
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Sarah Palin's small-town-girl-takes-on-Washington act is a brilliant success, for today anyway. But anytime political parties bring their aw-shucks, folksy Gomer Pyles out in front of the klieg lights, it's time to suspend disbelief. And that's especially true when the Republicans, party of corporate America and Big Oil, are casting the show.
Yes, Governor Palin was born and raised in a town called Wasilla, hunts caribou, married "her guy" from high school who races, in her words, "snow machines" (when did they graduate from being snow-mobiles?) and apparently knows how to load and shoot a gun. She also really is a mother, a mother of a hockey player too, and a member of the PTA.
However, one need only check out Jim Yardley's enlightening reportage from Wasilla in yesterday's New York Times to smell the rat. Sarah Palin is no average Jane, much as she looks and sounds like one. On the contrary, Sarah Palin's entry into politics and subsequent rise has all the hallmarks of having been engineered, coached and groomed by bigger outside forces with a bigger plan.
Her first election to mayor in 1996 was based on "wedge Issues" - abortion, gun control, and proof of hard-core religiosity - issues that had never been discussed before in the town of 7,000, where politicians had run on where they stood on bingo revenue and fixing muddy roads.
Listen to the shell-shocked fellow she beat in that first election, the three term incumbent Mayor of Wasilla, John C. Stein. "Sarah comes in with all this ideological stuff, and I was like, 'Whoa. But that got her elected: abortion, gun rights, term limits and the religious born-again thing. I'm not a churchgoing guy, and that was another issue: 'We will have our first Christian mayor.'"
There was a time when America's small town governments were about local civics and its churches really were mainly about spirituality. That quaint era vanished, within living memory, with the rise of the "Christian right" which literally infected mainstream American Christianity with hateful brochures about gays, guns, and abortion.
For the rest of this story & more on Palin, please visit:
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2008/09/will-palins-anti-environment-stance-be.htmlSarah Palin's small-town-girl-takes-on-Washington act is a brilliant success, for... more
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On Friday, under the radar, the Independent Green Party of Virginia successfully gathered enough signatures to put New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's name on the presidential ballot.On Friday, under the radar, the Independent Green Party of Virginia successfully... more
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The Green Party has their day in the upcoming 2008 elections.
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