Standing Up Against Hatred: Continued Yard Sign Vandalism Finally Makes Local News

You all may remember I wrote a post a while back (here and on Kos) about June - our local Obama Organizer in Knoxville, TN., who had her large sign vandalized in her yard:

("Here's Your Ground Game.." http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251103893 )

Well, the vandals are at it again, and this time, the local media - astonishingly - came out and covered it. With her courage and perseverance, June is making a difference in ways other than the amazing ground game she is heading in East Tennessee.

IMHO, this woman deserves a personal phone call from someone in the Oval Office.

Ryan can't even handle questions in a Fox Interview. Biden will mop the floor with him. n/t

Mitt Romney Calls NYC Parent a Liar

"I don't believe that for a second.." In other words, you're not telling the truth, as Mitt looked at the parent of a NYC student with that disdainful, arrogant smirk. Just heard this on the Ed Show and watched the video. Could. Not. Believe. It.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/mitt-romney-i-know-something-about-polls-and-you-can-ask-questions-to-get-any-answer-you-want/

During the NBC Education Nation summit's question and answer session, today, a New York City parent and school board member cited a poll which he claimed showed that the teachers union in New York City enjoyed support from parents "three to one" (video below), reports Mediaite.com.

However, Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney completely disagreed: “I don’t believe it for a second. I know something about polls and I know you can ask questions to get any answer you want.”

Mr. Romney - On Behalf of ER Doctors and Nurses Everywhere...

I'd just like to tell you, stop now. Enough is enough. Of all the asinine, morally objectionable, ethically wrong-headed and just downright IGNORANT statements you have made (just in the past week!), this one takes the cake.

The ER is not designed for Universal Care. It is designed for life-threatening emergencies. And yes, I know you were speaking of a "heart attack", but good God man, don't you realize people already use the ER for primary care? Don't you realize that's why people die in ERs, why people die every day, why the doctors and nurses are so overworked they can barely take care of the hordes of UNINSURED sick people streaming through the door as it is?

Do you think ER care is free? Have you ever seen an ER bill? Do you know how many people have filed bankruptcy over an ER bill and/or uninsured hospital stay? How out-of-touch with reality are you, really?

Now you tell us, "this is how we take care of our uninsured"? Even when you were Governor, you realized what a burden this put on the health care system. How much it raised costs on EVERYBODY, on the state, on the facilities. In the name of all that is right and good, is there nothing you won't say to get elected? Is there no end to your utter stupidity?

If I sound angry, I am. Because I *am* an ER nurse. I know how wrong you are...and so do you.

Videos At Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/09/24/romney-calls-emergency-room-a-health-care-option-for-uninsured/

Romney Now: In his interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday night, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney pointed to emergency rooms as a form of health care for people without insurance.

“Well, we do provide care for people who don’t have insurance,” Romney told interviewer Scott Pelley. “If someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and — and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care.”

Romney Then: But Romney’s position is a shift from 2010, when he told MSNBC that part of the impetus for the Massachusetts health-care law was to keep people out of the ER.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility,” he said.

Here's Obama's Ground Game - Here's Your Jurassic Park

This post has been sparked by an act of vandalism that taught two young girls to fear our political process..to fear the "other side". It was something I’d thought of writing for awhile, but outrage over a senseless act has fueled our community, and so here I am to tell you about a small fraction of Obama’s Ground Game in 2012, and why we will win this election.

Around September 4th of this year, Jim Messina was quoted in Huffington Post as stating, “The Democratic ground game will make 2008 look like Jurassic Park.” Referencing the technological innovations that the campaign could bring to voter turnout efforts, Messina added: "This is light-years ahead of where we were in 2008.”*

I smiled to myself at the time, knowing what I know has been going on just in my small neighborhood, in my small southern town, in this solidly red state, since May of 2012.

Knoxville, Tennessee has been divided into quadrants, and those quadrants into neighborhoods. We have houses at which volunteers gather daily to make phone calls. On any given Saturday, one can walk into their local Panera Bread and find tables full of volunteers with laptops and fully-charged cell phones, calling into North Carolina. Last week, in West Knoxville alone, there were over ten phone banks.

In North Knoxville, the mailing list is hundreds strong, with new people volunteering daily. And believe me, this part of the south is Bible belt conservative. We may not have hope – this year – of turning Tennessee blue; but we can and will turn North Carolina blue and deliver that state to President Obama.

Every weekend, cars full of volunteers drive over the beautiful Smoky Mountains of Tennessee into our neighboring state. Last weekend, over 70 went. Obama supporters in North Carolina gladly open their hearts and their homes. The volunteers start walking, door-to-door, talking to people about our President – gathering more volunteers, registering people to vote. The net widens exponentially every single day. And remember, this has been going on, quietly, since last summer.

You think the North Carolina numbers are just because of the opposition’s “rolling calamity”? I would beg to differ. Slowly, but surely, the troops on the ground are going door-to-door. We are standing by our North Carolina neighbors and saying, “We can do this. You have our support. We are here for you, we support you and we love you. We will help you. VOTE!” Every single person in North Carolina who expresses an interest in the campaign gets a personal phone call and an email and is welcomed into the effort.

"According to Messina, the campaign will knock on 150 percent more doors than it did in 2008, in addition to registering roughly that many more voters than four years ago. They are also planning a multiplatform digital operation to engage voters during the convention, as well as a "dashboard" that would allow people to organize unregistered voters or those not yet supporting a candidate by using the campaign's own voter lists.”
In North Carolina, he added, the campaign had 50 field offices, while the Romney campaign has yet to open its 20th. They are doing more than the McCain campaign, so I want to give them credit for that. But they are nowhere near where we are on the ground," he said. "We are going to be the only campaign that can both persuade voters and turn out our voters because of what we are building on the ground. They just don't have what we have."

“If they think I am going to back down, baby it's on!! They might have cut up and destroyed my property but they only strengthened my fight!! Bring it on!!! If you have not been in this movement with Obama for America, this should awaken you to what we are facing. We need you! It’s time to be in it to win it. “

Obama Tosses Football Back to Romney: "That's a Losing Season."

Before heading to Louisiana tonight, President Obama stopped in Toledo, Ohio and gave his own response to Romney's sport's analogy of 'needing another coach'.

“I’ve got one piece of advice for you about the Romney-Ryan game plan: Punt it away. It won’t work. It won’t win the game,” Obama said in Toledo. “You don’t need that coach. That’s a losing season.”

Turning to Romney’s weekend football metaphor, Obama offered a lengthy sports-infused rebuttal, telling the union workers that on first down, Romney would hike taxes by nearly $2,000 on an average family with children. “Sounds like unnecessary roughness to me,” Obama said.

On second down, Obama said Romney “calls an audible” and gets rid of regulations. “And then on third down, he calls for a ‘Hail Mary,’” Obama said, by proposing turning Medicare into a voucher-like system for future retirees. “But there’s a flag on the play: Loss of up to an additional $6,400 a year for the same benefits you get now.”

“That’s their playbook. That’s their economic plan,” Obama said.

http://www.freep.com/article/20120903/NEWS15/120903016/On-Labor-Day-jobs-debate-a-DNC-warm-up?odyssey=nav%7Chead

Obama is Absolutely Tearing It Up..

Live on MSNBC right now - in Boca Raton, Florida - speaking about the effects of the new proposed Ryan Budget, taxes, education.. giving concrete examples and really explaining things in a way I've never heard from him before. I do believe he's given up on bipartisanship, finally. The audience is going wild.

This Obama is unbeatable. Wow.

"Stand Up Miss Jean Louise" - A DU Redux - Barack Obama and "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Some of you 'old timers' who were around here during the 2008 Primary Season might remember the uproar over the first Presidential Debate - the one where McCain refused to make eye contact with Barack Obama. You might remember, also, a thread I started comparing that to Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird". To this day, it has been my most rec'd post. (300 back then was a good day!)

Yesterday, I heard that our President is going to be introducing "To Kill a Mockingbird" on USA Network this Saturday. So I'm inspired to do a redux. Substitute Jan Brewer or any right-wing hatemonger for McCain, and you have a post just as relevant today as it was then. The hatred and bigotry is coming again, and will be in full force until November.

In honor of my President and the courage he has shown in the face of continued disrespect; in honor of Harper Lee and her work exemplifying courageous honor amidst racial injustice and bigotry; to the memory of Trayvon Martin and all who went before him, with a fervent hope for justice, and an America of civility and equality, I'm re-posting "Stand Up Miss Jean Louise, Your Father's Passin". There are so many parallels we can draw to today's world; so many lessons we can learn, if we'll only take the time to open our hearts and listen.

********************************************************************************

(Sept 27, 2008) It takes awhile, they say, for the result of a debate to settle in. A bit of time for the words and images to weave their way into our souls and deposit there a lasting image – the impression we then take away for all time. I guess that is why the pundits get it so terribly wrong so very often. They’ve allowed no time for the settling. And anyway, they see what they want to see, what they’re told to see; and from there, try to influence and mold what we see.

I’ve been mostly sad today. I left the TV off. And I didn’t know why until I watched a re-run of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and was dumbstruck by this line, this scene:

“ Miss Jean Louise, stand up, your father’s passin’.”



The people relegated to the balcony stood in unison as Atticus Finch passed. A silent gesture of respect, of honor, to a man who struggled to do what was right, no matter what the personal cost. A man who fought for principles greater and far beyond himself.



I cried, realizing then that I was thinking about Barack Obama and how hard it must have been for him to stand on that stage and talk to a man who refused to even acknowledge his presence. Who refused, out of a meanness of spirit unfathomable to me, to look him in the eyes, man-to-man; human being to human being, Senator to Senator.



And I realized then why the picture of him hugging Michelle afterward touched me so. She alone would understand how that hurt him. A hurt he would likely never voice to anyone. Yet he stood there, for ninety minutes, without acknowledgement from his opponent. Stood there brave and calm and unflinching, fighting for us and for the principles he believes in.



I turned, as I so often do, to “Dreams from my Father”, to Barack Obama’s own words to try to find some meaning, some salvation; perhaps to assuage my own guilt over the affront I felt was afforded to Barack Obama. And I found, in pages 156-158, words he wrote about people on the South Side – how they felt about accomplishment and the obstacles they had to overcome to be accepted; and how often they were not accepted.

"So, despite the deserved sense of accomplishment these men and women felt, despite the irrefutable evidence of their own progress, our conversations were marked by another, more ominous strain. The boarded-up homes, the decaying storefronts, the aging church rolls, kids from unknown families who swaggered down the streets – loud congregations of teenaged boys, teenage girls feeding potato chips to crying toddlers, the discarded wrappers tumbling down the block – all of it whispered painful truths, told them the progress they’d found was ephemeral, rooted in thin soil; that it might not even last their lifetimes”.



“As it had for the men in Smitty’s barbershop, the election had given these people a new idea of themselves. Or maybe it was an old idea, born of a simpler time. Harold was something they still held in common: Like my idea of organizing, he held out an offer of collective redemption.”



Even after this, when the man who refused eye contact stumbled painfully upon the name of Ahmadinejad, this remarkable American said to him with a soul full of humility and compassion, "It's OK, John, that's a hard one."

That is the mark of greatness. The man who stood there without being acknowledged, unflinching and without a spark of bitterness in his heart, is the next President of the United States.

It’s about Respect. It’s about Hope and the Future of a nation. It’s about the struggle for Human Dignity throughout the ages.

It is, most of all, about Equality.

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up, your father’s passin’.”


originally posted on Democratic Underground September 27, 2008
Published at Daily Kos 4/5/2012
Kay W. Gardner

Hal Uhrig - Zimmerman's New Defense Counsel - "I Don't Need to Look Him in the Eye"

Uhrig appeared on local Florida Fox TV tonight and explained that GZ "passed his voice stress test, so I see no need to look him in the eye." That's how he explained that neither of GZs two lawyers have ever met him and don't need to. Huh?

Michael Isikoff Says Zimmerman Calls Show No Profiling - WTH?

Michael Isikoff is an award-winning journalist and author, formerly with Newsweek, who is now an investigative journalist with NBC News. This week, he is reporting from Twin Lakes, where Trayvon Martin was killed.

Isikoff broke some exciting news today on Hardball, which he says will be crucial to the defense of George Zimmerman against any "racial profiling" charges.

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/hardball/46945486

He says he went back today and "listened to ALL the Zimmerman tapes" - or calls to police, that are still in existence from the past year or so. Mr. Isikoff says at NO TIME did Zimmerman initially identify the people he was calling about as "black".

Mr. Isikoff stated this would be "critical to the FBI profiling case "and it is worth pointing out that in every instance that he called about suspicious activity from a black male he "DOES NOT VOLUNTEER THE INFORMATION". He says this shows there was no racial profiling. WTH??

Joy Ann Reid, from The Grio.com, and Michael Schmerkonish, both had to ask Isikoff if he Zimmerman ever called about "suscpicious-looking white people." The brilliant journalist had to begrudgingly admit, well, no - "but he never volunteered the information about them being black until he was asked."

Could he get it more wrong if he tried? Did anyone else see this?

He also states that they have the Power Point Presentation given to Twin Lakes neighborhood watch meeting, arranged by Zimmerman, that clearly instructs no weapons and no pursuit. Well, at least Isikoff got that much right.