AP Campaign Minute

Michelle Obama's Plan to Help Women and Families

From Women for Obama:

Yesterday in Chicago, at a Women for Obama luncheon, Michelle Obama joined us to introduce Barack's plan to support women and families.

At the luncheon, Michelle outlined Barack's Women and Families Blueprint and how it will empower women to reclaim their dreams for themselves and their families -- without having to worry about whether they can take time off to care for a sick child or afford to feed their families.

The campaign put together a short video of Michelle's talk. Watch the video now and read about the Women and Families Blueprint:

http://women.barackobama.com/blueprintvideo

The stakes in this election are higher than ever, especially for women who are struggling to make ends meet, with rising prices of gas and groceries and salaries falling farther behind.

Michelle understands the challenges women are facing all over America today because she spent years juggling motherhood with the demands of her career, just like working mothers across the country.

As Michelle explained today, Barack's plan will move our nation in a fundamentally different direction. The Women and Families Blueprint will help ensure that the American dream for our jobs and families is available to all.

Watch the video of Michelle's talk about the Blueprint and share it with your friends and family:

http://women.barackobama.com/blueprintvideo

Thank you,

Becky

Becky Carroll
National Director
Women for Obama

The Problem of Low-Information Voters

How informed is the American electorate? The Washington Post takes on the issue:

So a bunch of academics decides to revisit one of the defining books of modern American politics, a 1960 tome on the electorate. They spend years comparing interviews with voting-age Americans from 2000 and 2004 to what Americans said during elections in the 1950s. The academics' question: How much has the American voter changed over the past 50 years?

Their conclusion -- that the voter is pretty much the same dismally ill-informed creature he was back then -- continues a decades-long debate about whether Americans are as clueless as they sound.

Reader, before you send that outraged e-mail, consider that you may be an exception. You, of course, are endlessly fascinated by the debate over domestic wiretapping, but it's possible your neighbors think FISA is a hybrid vehicle. In fact, it's quite possible your neighbors are Republicans only because that's what their parents were, and ditto for the Democrats across the street. They couldn't even mumble a passable definition of "liberal" or "conservative."

Read more here

It is my belief that certain portions of the right-wing purposefully foster ignorance in the American voter. They want it, along with voter apathy and low-voter turnout.

I just spoke with a young man yesterday who was not going to vote for Barack Obama because he was told IN CHURCH that Barack was a Muslim. I asked him specifically whether people who attended the church (The Church on the Way in Van Nuys) told him (which would just be conversation), or whether it was something a pastor told him. He said it was something a pastor said, which, if this is true, would be against IRS regulations. (And from the looks of this comment I found on a New York Times story, it appears as though this may be a common occurrence at this particular church.)

But even more critical than the legal ramifications is the fact that churches like these are filling the heads of their parishioners with lies.

These same voters will pull the lever on election day. Sad, very sad.

I spoke with the gentleman and tried to give him some accurate information. I hope that he listened.

And please, people. Do your research. Don't base your vote on what somebody told you or some crazy email FILLED WITH CAPITAL LETTERS spewing garbage like "BARACK OBAMA IS THE ANTICHRIST!!!!!!!!"

Get the facts straight. Our country depends on it.

Latino Voters Prefer Obama

Latest polls show 66% of Latino voters prefer Obama versus 23% who are supporting McCain.

I guess Barack's "Latino Problem" has cleared up.

Obama in Berlin

The largest crowd ever for an Obama speech.

Click here to read the full transcript.

Don't Miss Barack Online

Now you don't have to miss one moment of Barack online.

Sign up to get alerts whenever there is a video stream at:


http://my.barackobama.com/videoalerts

Obama Visits Sderot, Israel

Obama toured a home that had been torn apart by a rocket blast.

Israelis for Obama

Israeli supporters of Obama waiting for him at the Kotel (Western Wall).

Click here to see more photos and here to read about Obama's Hebrew blog. Also, visit Jews for Obama for the latest updates.

Michelle Obama on BlogHer

Michelle's got her own blog on BlogHer.

Give her a warm welcome!

http://www.blogher.com/lets-talk

Olbermann on McCain's Secret Surge Before the Surge

Vanity Fair Spoofs New Yorker Cover

Vanity Fair takes on the New Yorker.

Surge or No Surge... It's Still the Same Damned War!

True confession... I avoid watching television news.

Once the Democratic Primary started, it opened my eyes to the fact that most of the commentators and news anchors DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT and instead focus headlines on ridiculous issues like flag pins, bittergate and the like.

I have gotten the most insight and learned the most from reading the comments of readers on places like Huffington Post, Digg and Reddit.

I'm not just talking about those who are Obama supporters, but people who bring a fresh, sorely needed voice to the discusssion based on their actually having thought about the issue and not a talking point printed out on a piece of paper in front of them.

Now, the media chatter is all about the surge.

I broke my TV-abstinence pledge this morning and tuned into Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough. Big mistake.

Joe was hammering the question over and over again to Gen. Wesley Clark "Is the surge working? Is the surge working?" Clark agreed that yes, more troops have helped quell some of the levels of violence that we've seen in Iraq. And Joe sits back all proud of himself like he's scored some major concession from the left.

Why is this important? Is the surge working?

Why isn't the larger issue being asked?

Why are we in Iraq?

Why have we spent three trillion dollars, lost thousands of American lives and possibly more than a million Iraqi lives? For what?

We were led into this war under false pretenses. Al Qaeda is still strong, Osama Bin Laden has not been captured. There were never any weapons of mass destruction.

What does make sense in terms of our objectives in the country is that American oil companies are being given no-bid contracts to resurrect the Iraqi oil industry. We needed to set up an oil colony, and Iraq was the most vulnerable of the oil nations that we could gain control over.

We're there because we have a government run at the highest level by oil men and have the shadowy interests of the oil companies in control of the White House.

The surge is a distraction created by the right-wing to keep us away from the real question that we need to keep asking over and over again until we get a straight answer, what were the motivations of our political leaders in choosing Iraq as the place for fighting against Al Qaeda?

Obama in Amman, Jordan

John McCain's Neverending War

From The Jed Report:

Bush Says "Wall Street Got Drunk"

President Bush is quoted at a Texas high-dollar fundraiser as saying that the reason for the mortgage crisis is that "Wall Street got drunk."

He'd asked for the cameras to be turned off before he made his statement, but someone in the audience was taping and the footage was aired on a local Texas ABC News station.

You can watch the footage here.

And here is the transcript of the conversation:

President Bush: Wall Street got drunk, it got drunk, (it’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off your TV cameras.) It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up, and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments.

And now we got a housing issue, not in Houston, and evidently, not in Dallas, because Laura was over there trying to buy a house today. (laugher.. Crawford!)

I like Crawford, unfortunately after eight years of asking her to sacrifice, I’m now no longer the decision maker. She’ll be deciding, thanks for the suggestion! I suggest you don’t yell it out when she’s here. Later, telling her “Hey honey, we’ve been on government pay now for 14 years... so go slow!"

It’s uh.. caused me to lose my train of thought. Anyway.

Daily Show: Bridging the Black/Jewish Gap

Humor break from the Daily Show. Can Barack win the elderly Jewish vote?

Excited GIs Greet Barack in Baghdad

South Carolina Senator's "Cute" Obama/Osama Photo

Well, here we go again with the Muslim terrorist associations...





South Carolina State Senator Kevin L. Bryant thought it was really hilarious to post the following picture on his blog:

He got a lot of flack and media attention from it and took it down from the blog, but still posted a link to the photo. Supposedly the intention was to "stimulate an examination of Sen. Barack Obama’s foreign policy."

Yeah, right.

Some Obama supporters who are tired of the fearmongering and the lies have taken action by calling Bryant's office and letting him know their feelings.

I suggest you do the same by calling his office at (803) 212-6024.

And South Carolinians, PLEASE vote this clown out of office.

Better yet, let's all put our money where our mouth is, and donate to Bryant's opponent Marshall Meadors to make sure this kind of gutter politics does not continue.

UPDATE: Here is MSNBC's segment "Kevin Bryant Posts and Runs":

John McCain: "I Graduated Fifth From the Bottom of My Class"

Sounds scarily familiar...

Obama's First Interview in Afghanistan

CBS News' Lara Logan interviews Obama in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama Addresses Netroots Nation

Barack discusses the campaign's 50-state strategy in a video address at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin, Texas.

George Bush Makes the Children Cry

This little girl just couldn't take it any more and ran away from President Bush in tears at a White House T-ball game.

Don't blame it on the chipmunk.

Iraq Prime Minister Agrees With Obama's Timeline

Rack another one up for Barack on the foreign policy scoreboard. This adds to chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff's Adm. Michael Mullen's statement showing that he is in agreement with Barack's stance regarding Iran.

Obama's sound foreign policy judgment shines through.

From an interview with Der Spiegel:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports US presidential candidate Barack Obama's plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months. When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned." He then continued: "US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

Maliki was careful to back away from outright support for Obama. "Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business," he said. But then, apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain's more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: "Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems."

Read more here

UPDATE: Obama campaign adviser Dr. Susan Rice made this statement about the Maliki remark:

Senator Obama welcomes Prime Minister Maliki's support for a 16 month timeline for the redeployment of U.S combat brigades. This presents an important opportunity to transition to Iraqi responsibility, while restoring our military and increasing our commitment to finish the fight in Afghanistan.

Nevada Republicans Cancel State Convention

Enthusiasm gap, anyone?

From Wall Street Journal:

Citing a lack of interest, the Nevada Republican Party has called off its state convention and will instead pick its delegates to the national convention by private conference call.

The state party broke up its original convention in April when supporters of Ron Paul hijacked the proceedings and tried to elect delegates for their candidate to the national GOP convention in September. Party officials tried to reconvene on July 26, but they needed a quorum of 675 and received only 300 RSVPs, according to local reports.

Read more here

Barack Greets the Soldiers in Kuwait

Barack shot a few hoops with our soldiers in Kuwait.

Fight the Smears about Obama and Taxes

As many of you know, there has been a deliberate email smear campaign started by Obama's opponents that is intent on manipulating the American people through false rumors, innuendos and flat-out lies.

The Republicans can't beat Obama on his record, so they just make up stuff. And unfortunately, a good number of Americans are "low information" voters and might believe an email sent to them from someone they know.

It's our job as Obama supporters to stick with the truth and let Obama's record speak for itself. It's also our job to try to raise the discourse among the American electorate and help educate those who might not have the time or inclination to really follow the issues.

The Obama campaign has a new site, Fight the Smears.

Here's the latest smear on Obama and taxes, which states that Obama will raise taxes, when the reality is the Wall Street Journal compared the two tax plans and concluded that McCain's tax plan would benefit the rich, while Obama's would help the rest of us:

Through the powerful Action Wire network, we plan to push back against the smears and attacks that are on the rise in email inboxes and websites across the internet.

Just organizing this group has brought a lot of attention to the challenge we're up against -- Time Magazine and many TV networks have featured this group and its potential.

And it's already starting to work. Making the truth public is the most powerful weapon we have against these shadowy lies and whisper campaigns.

Now it's time to get to work. Have you heard the latest smear about Barack and taxes?

Check out the lies these faceless new emails are pushing about Barack and help fight back:

http://my.barackobama.com/obamaandtaxes

A viciously misleading smear email just started circulating around the internet. The email spreads lies like, "Under Obama your taxes will more than double," and tries to convince readers that his policies will "crash the stock market."

It even tries to claim that Barack will tax water!

That might make you laugh -- but it shouldn't. Right now thousands -- perhaps millions -- of Americans are taking these words for fact and forwarding it to their networks, all because they don't have the truth. Too many of them will never know that the nonpartisan, nonprofit voter advocate group has proven that this smear is "a pack of lies."

We don't know who started these rumors, and we probably never will. But we do know what we can do about them.

We've got to fight back. Check out the full smear email, get the facts, and help spread the word now:

http://my.barackobama.com/obamaandtaxes

Thanks for your help,

Fight the Smears

P.S. -- Thanks for being a part of our rapid response network. Remember, our strength is in numbers, so make sure you and the Obama supporters in your area are part of the Obama Action Wire.

To join the Action Wire, just log onto your My.BarackObama account and sign up for the Action Wire group. (If you don't have a My.BarackObama account yet, creating one is simple and quick.)

http://my.barackobama.com/joinactionwire

June Fundraising Numbers

Keep it coming! Great work, guys!

We have some big news we want to share with you.

Because of your generosity and commitment, we're reporting to the press today that this campaign is in a very strong financial position.

In the month of June, supporters like you helped raise $52 million.

But more impressive than the number is how you did it. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people contributed to building our campaign for change. Many were first-time donors, giving only what they could afford -- and the average donation was just $68.

You continue to prove what ordinary Americans committed to change can accomplish, despite the Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs funding so much of our opponents' campaign.

But we can't stop now.

It's going to take everything we've got to defeat John McCain and the Republican National Committee in November. And we can't do it without your continued support.

Can you make a donation of $25 now to strengthen our movement for change?

https://donate.barackobama.com/junenumbers

I also wanted to share with you another promising piece of news.

The Obama campaign and the DNC ended June with a combined total of nearly $72 million in the bank. It's a healthy number. But McCain and the RNC together still have a huge cash advantage, and we need your help to close the gap.

As I mentioned in my video message to you earlier in the week, we're facing a Republican machine with unprecedented resources at its disposal. The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee finished June with nearly $100 million in the bank.

Our campaign does not accept donations from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs, and neither does the Democratic National Committee. But John McCain and the RNC have no such standards.

Along with the vast amounts of unregulated money being raised by shadowy outside groups, there's no telling how much they'll spend running attack ads.

We must work together and fight back against their efforts.

Please make a donation of $25 now:

https://donate.barackobama.com/junenumbers

I know this isn't the first time we've asked you for money, and it won't be the last.

We have developed a strategy -- a very aggressive strategy -- that will only work if our millions of supporters continue to contribute their time and their money.

We are now on the air with TV ads in 18 states -- including 14 that George W. Bush carried in the 2004 election. And in each one we're also building extensive grassroots field organizations.

It's all part of our strategy to spread Barack's positive message and compete in all 50 states.

That strategy will work, and it has to. The stakes are too high and the need for change too great. We are thrilled to be on this journey with you and thank you for all you have done so far. But victory is only possible with your continued help.

Please give $25 now:

https://donate.barackobama.com/junenumbers

We can't do this without you.

Thanks,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Barack Obama on National Security

Barack gave a speech on national security and the war in Iraq. He laid out his strategy to keep America safe.

Click here to read the full transcript of the speech.

Courting the Latino Vote

From PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer. Denver mayor Federico Pena is the Obama surrogate. Ana Navarro defends McCain's record.

Click here to watch the segment and here to read the transcript.

Some R&R for the Oblogger

The Oblogger is headed out for a road trip for a little vacay, so I won't be posting as much in the upcoming week.

But where there's a will... there's WiFi, so I will post occasionally.

Keep checking in.

McCain Whitewashes His Veterans Voting Record

A Vietnam vet grilled McCain about his lack of support for veterans.



Click here to read McCain's abysmal voting record on veterans' issues.

Olbermann "Special Comment" on FISA Bill

The FISA bill does not give immunity to criminal charges to the telecom companies, just civil ones.

Preview: Obama Family on Access Hollywood

The Obama family teases Barack about his fashion sense.

McCain's Latest Joke about Killing Iranians

First it was "Bomb Bomb Iran," now McCain is joking about cigarette imports killing Iranians.

Note to McCain: The goal of foreign policy is not to kill civilians.

From Washington Post:

Sen. John McCain hasn't had good luck joking about Iran. But he tried it again Tuesday.

Responding to a question about a survey that shows increased exports to
Iran, mainly from cigarettes, McCain said, "Maybe that's a way of killing them."

Read more here

Barack's Speech at the League of United Latin American Citizens

Barack spoke yesterday at the LULAC convention in Washington, D.C.




Click here to join Latinos for Obama.

Obama Compares His Economic Plan to McCain's

Barack spoke in St. Louis, Missouri, on economic security. Click here to read a comparison between Obama's and McCain's plans. McCain's plan benefits the rich, while Obama's helps the rest of us.

Good Morning America on Michelle Obama

Good Morning America interviews friends and family of Michelle Obama.

Obama's Statement on Jobs Numbers

Senator Obama released the following statement on jobs numbers:

"As we head into the 4th of July weekend, today's report that our economy has lost another 62,000 jobs is a stark reminder that far too many Americans will spend this holiday out of work and struggling to provide for their families because of the failed policies of the last eight years.

"Our economy has now shed 438,000 jobs over the past six months, while workers' wages fail to keep pace with the skyrocketing cost of gas, groceries and healthcare. The American people are paying the price for the failed economic policies of the past eight years, and we can't afford four more years of more of the same. That is the essential issue of this campaign because Senator McCain has fully embraced the Bush economic agenda. I believe it has to change.

"But, as these numbers demonstrate, the American people can't wait another six months. We need action now.

"That's why I'm calling on Congress and the President to enact real, immediate relief with energy rebates for working families this summer, a fund to help families avoid foreclosure, extended benefits for the long-term jobless, and assistance to states that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn.

"As President, I'll move us in a new direction with policies to restore broad-based, bottom up growth that benefits all Americans. I will provide working families with a middle-class tax cut; fight for affordable health care and college tuition; work to help raise workers' wages, and invest in infrastructure, education and a clean energy future to create millions of new jobs. That's the change the American people need."

Top U.S. Military Official Agrees with Obama on Iran

From MSNBC:

It could turn out to be one of the most significant comments of the 2008 campaign — but coming just ahead of a holiday weekend, it isn’t getting much notice.

Upon his return from a visit to Israel and Europe, the nation’s highest ranking military officer warned Wednesday that a military strike on Iran would be a very bad idea.

“This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don't need it to be more unstable,” said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen.

He added pointedly, “we haven't had much of a dialogue with the Iranians for a long time,” seeming to imply that the Bush administration should be talking to the Iranian government.

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama has said that if elected, he would begin talks with Iran, without any precondition.

...Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain has said that his rival's willingness to hold direct talks, without preconditions, reveals "the depth of Sen. Obama's inexperience and reckless judgment.”

Adm. Mullen, much like Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, is one of those powerful unelected officials whose words could, at times, have as much effect on the campaign as Obama and McCain themselves.

It’s unusual for a military officer, especially the nation’s highest ranking one, to warn in such explicit terms of potential military action and to so emphatically call for diplomacy.

Read more here

Convention News from the Campaign

At the Democratic National Convention next month, we're going to kick off the general election with an event that opens up the political process the same way we've opened it up throughout this campaign.

Barack has made it clear that this is your convention, not his.

On Thursday, August 28th, he's scheduled to formally accept the Democratic nomination in a speech at the convention hall in front of the assembled delegates.

Instead, Barack will leave the convention hall and join more than 75,000 people for a huge, free, open-air event where he will deliver his acceptance speech to the American people.

It's going to be an amazing event, and Barack would like you to join him. Free tickets will become available as the date approaches, but we've reserved a special place for a few of the people who brought us this far and who continue to drive this campaign.

If you make a donation of $5 or more between now and midnight on July 31st, you could be one of 10 supporters chosen to fly to Denver and spend two days and nights at the convention, meet Barack backstage, and watch his acceptance speech in person. Each of the ten supporters who are selected will be able to bring one guest to join them.

Make a donation now and you could have a front row seat to history:

https://donate.barackobama.com/convention

We'll follow up with more details on this and other convention activities as we get closer, but please take a moment and pass this note to someone you know who might like to be there.

It will be an event you'll never forget.

Thank you,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Obama Helps Us Track $17,550,300,000,000 in Federal Spending

From Daily Kos

Americans had a hard time finding out where their hard-earned tax dollars went. Until December 2007.

Now we can track contracts, grants, earmarks, and loans, thanks to USAspending.gov, a site created by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 of Tom Coburn and Barack Obama.

What's at the site? Read on for 13 examples (contracts with KBR/Halliburton, VECO, and General Atomics, Tom Delay's pork and Duke Cunningham's backers, no bid contracts with defense contractors, contracts with shadowy Blackwater subsidiaries, declining support for homeless veterans with increasing support for abstinence programs, spending on guided missiles, maintenance of dams, and stranger things including flags, perfumes, hand tools, and boll weevil eradication).

I also talk about how this fits into Sen. Obama's broader plans to make government transparent.

Read more here

Obama King of Web Social Networking

From New York Times:

The campaign's new-media strategy, inspired by popular social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, has revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool, helping the candidate raise more than 2 million donations of less than $200 each and swiftly mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters before various primaries.

The centerpiece of it all is My.BarackObama.com, where supporters can join local groups, create events, sign up for updates and set up personal fundraising pages.

...Obama, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, credits the Internet's social-networking tools with a "big part" of his primary season success.

"One of my fundamental beliefs from my days as a community organizer is that real change comes from the bottom up," Obama said in a statement. "And there's no more powerful tool for grass-roots organizing than the Internet."

Read more here

AP Campaign Minute

Our Founding Illegals

Fark TV takes on the hot-button issue of illlegal immigration.

Rolling Stone's Interview with Barack Obama

Barack is on the cover of this month's issue of Rolling Stone.

Click here to read the interview.

Happy 4th of July!

Stay safe. Wear your Obama T-shirts and pins to show your pride.

Barack Obama on Public Service

Barack Obama spoke in Colorado Springs about the need for all of us to get involved in our community and in the direction our country is headed by engaging in public community service.

There has been a lot of talk about patriotism, flag pins, and whether Barack and Michelle truly love their country, and to me what really constitutes love for country is the desire to help make it better, to put time and energy into creating postive changes in your community.

"This is the divide that separates you from the ability to shape your own destiny. So I am asking you – on this 4th of July – to reject that divide, to step into the strong currents of history, and to shape your country’s future. Because your own story and the American story are not separate, they are shared."

"...We need your service, right now, at this moment – our moment – in history. I’m not going to tell you what your role should be; that’s for you to discover. But I am going to ask you to play your part; ask you to stand up; ask you to put your foot firmly into the current of history. I am asking you to change history’s course."

Waterboarding Is Torture

Vanity Fair reporter Christopher Hitchens found out what it was like to be "aggessively interrogated." The headline says it all, "Believe Me, It's Torture."

How sad that John McCain, a man who was tortured as a POW in Vietnam, chose to cave to George Bush by not wanting to appear to be soft on terror, and instead flipflopped against his previous anti-torture statements and voted against making torture, waterboarding, and sexual humiliation of prisoners illegal.

From Vanity Fair:

Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, “waterboarding” was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.

Exploring this narrow but deep distinction, on a gorgeous day last May I found myself deep in the hill country of western North Carolina, preparing to be surprised by a team of extremely hardened veterans who had confronted their country’s enemies in highly arduous terrain all over the world. They knew about everything from unarmed combat to enhanced interrogation and, in exchange for anonymity, were going to show me as nearly as possible what real waterboarding might be like.

Read more here

Here is the video of Hitchens being waterboarded.

Back in February, Navy veteran Richard Mezo wrote in the Washington Post about his own experience being waterboarded:

Last week, much to my dismay, government officials testified before Congress that the United States has used the interrogation technique known as waterboarding and would like to hold out the option of using it in the future. As someone who has experienced waterboarding, albeit in a controlled setting, I know that the act is indeed torture. I was waterboarded during my training to become a Navy flight crew member. As has been noted in The Post and other media outlets, waterboarding is "real drowning that simulates death." It's an experience our country should not subject people to.

Read more here

Military Giving More Donations to Obama

Makes sense. Give your money to the guy who wants to bring you home, rather than the one who wants to keep you there 100 years.

From Huffington Post:

[D]isatisfaction with the course of the war under President Bush and with the treatment of veterans returning home has given Obama, who did not serve in the armed forces, an opening with military voters and veterans. So does his appeal to younger people.

That Obama attracts support from some in the military is evident in dollars and cents: Among people who have donated at least $200 to a presidential campaign this election cycle, Obama has collected more than $327,000 from those identifying themselves as military personnel, while McCain has collected $224,000, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data by The Associated Press.

Read more here.

Guantanamo Interrogations Inspired by Chinese Techniques

From the International Herald Tribune:

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure."

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Read more here.

Obama Has No "Hispanic Problem"

What with all the demonization of illegal immigrants, I don't see how the GOP can expect to court the Latino vote in any real way in this election.



From The Politico:

There's still zero evidence that Obama has a problem, or that McCain has an edge, among Hispanics. Indeed, Galllup finds the Democrat strong, and steady, across demographics.

Read more here:

Obama Would Collect on Idle Oil Leases

From Wall Street Journal:

Sen. Barack Obama said rather than opening more federal land to drilling, he would dun oil companies for the leased lands they aren't using and would use the money for sustainable-energy projects. In a town-hall event outside Las Vegas Tuesday, the Democratic presidential candidate aimed twin arrows at Big Oil and his rival, Sen. John McCain, blasting the Arizona Republican for saying he would support more U.S. offshore drilling

Read more here.

AP Campaign Minute

From the Associated Press:

"Dignity" TV Ad

This ad is airing in 18 states. It highlights Barack's record of working hard to move people from welfare to work, passing tax cuts to workers and providing healthcare for children.

Barack Obama's Speech on Patriotism

Given on June 30, 2008, from Independence, Missouri: