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My Sarah Palin Prayer

Ok, I'm not a pray-er. Some might say I don't have a prayer. But I just saw the Greta Van Susteren interview with Palin and it made me pray the most fervent prayer I have ever prayed in my life. Palin says, in essence, God will open the door for her to the White House (see end of video, Part 3, below and here). We've got to ask God please not to do that. Please pray with me.

Jesus, Lord God Almighty, I beseech thee in the name of all that is holy, please close that door to this imbecilic, unqualified woman. Please don't leave a crack in the door for her. Seal that door shut Lord. Guard that door, O Lord, with your mighty army of angels. Roll the heaviest stone, a stone that cannot be moved by mere mortals Lord, in front of that door to protect this great nation of ours from the showy pretentious religiousity of this woman who would lead our nation down a path of ruin. I humble ask this in the name of your son, our one and only savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Greta Van Susteren Interview of Sarah Palin - Part 3

This from a blogger in my PJs in my parent's basement. And while I'm praying, will somebody tell Keith Olbermann he needs to vote. I'm a big Keith fan, but not voting makes him look like a hypocrite. Other parts of the interview below.

Greta Van Susteren Interview of Sarah Palin - Part 1

Greta Van Susteren Interview of Sarah Palin - Part 2

Happy Veteran's Day.

GOP Stalwart Caught In Prostitution Sting

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

New Media Turns Old School Politics Upside Down

A Revolution of One is host of Carnival of the Liberals #62, posted yesterday, without my contribution, which is a little late, but better late than never. For readers unfamiliar with it, CotL is a by-weekly carnival of liberal bloggers. Every issue the host blog selects and features the ten best posts from all posts submitted. Their badge is in the lower part of the right-hand column of this blog. There's info on who is hosting future carnivals and the designated theme, if the host decides to have a one.

The theme for CotL #62 is New Media. We asked all participants to post on the topic of, or to include, some type of new media. The video above is of a presentation by Lawrence Lessig, Sanford Law professor and CEO of the Creative Commons given at the University of Pennsylvania. Lessig, through Creative Commons is the champion of changes in copyright law that make it easier for new media to be created without breaking the law, topic of the video below. In the first video Lessig gives his reasons for supporting Barack Obama, beyond the fact that they were colleagues at the University of Chicago.

Beyond being an example of how new media is a major factor in this Presidential primary, and the future general election race, it is about the candidate that is entirely, IMAO, a phenomenon of new media. Without it I doubt that this most unlikely candidate for president would be the almost certain nominee of the party. All of the candidates understand and use new media in their campaigns. They all have web sites and blogs and Youtube videos of their speeches, campaign ads, and the ability to contribute to their campaigns online.

But for the Obama campaign a new media political strategy has been key. Before the existence of new media it would have been nearly impossible for someone like Obama to overcome the war chest and old guard party organization of a candidate like Hillary Clinton. But for the other campaigns, their use of new media seems more an adjunct, or add on to the old strategies, more than the essence of their strategy. An article in Rolling Stone in late March describes how the Obama campaign combined techniques of new media, social networking using technology from sites like Facebook, with old school community organizing to outflank the traditional top-down approach of the Clinton campaign.

"They have taken the bottom-up campaign and absolutely perfected it," says Joe Trippi, who masterminded Dean's Internet campaign in 2004. "It's light-years ahead of where we were four years ago. They'll have 100,000 people in a state who have signed up on their Web site and put in their zip code. Now, paid organizers can get in touch with people at the precinct level and help them build the organization bottom up. That's never happened before. It never was possible before...."

"....We're seeing the last time a top-down campaign has a chance to win it," says Trippi. "There won't be another campaign that makes the same mistake the Clintons made of being dependent on big donors and insiders. It's not going to work ever again."

A regular part of Obama's stump speech is to say that change happens from the bottom up and not the top down. New media, created and controlled by the average citizen is inherently grass roots. What the Obama campaign has built is unprecedented. An entirely new type of campaign which will shape every political campaign for the foreseeable future.

Carnival of the Liberals at A Revolution of One

Welcome to A Revolution of One and the April 11, 2008 edition of Carnival of the Liberals. First I'd like to thank everyone for great submissions. Thanks for making it difficult to pick 10 out of a group of great posts, and for participating in our theme which is New Media. If you haven't hosted yet, eliminating posts is harder than you may think. In some cases it just came down to being on topic, because it was the only way to judge. I'm posting the submissions now, but I haven't quite finished my own post, which will follow shortly.

Also I'm going to submit this post on Digg.com and I'd like to ask you all to digg it to help bring more readers and bloggers to CotL. I apologize to those of you who I didn't get back to about your submission. For some reason I didn't get all the submissions in email. I replied to every one I received, but when I picked them up from the CotL site I found I had twice as many as I got in email. Which was a pleasant surprise.

One quick plug for this site, I am in the middle of an extreme makeover the blog, so please come back in a few days and check it out. Something I probably should not have tried to roll out at the same time as the carnival. But enough of the preliminaries, the posts chosen for this edition are:

In Current Events:
Allen in Fort Worth presents Hillary Clinton, Bosnia, Serbia, Sniper Fire, My Friend Igor, Taking Your Daughter To War Zones, and other stuff like that posted at The Whited Sepulchre, saying, "Youtube videos and blogs are making Hillary Clinton's claims of combat zone experience look ridiculous."Shan Siddiqi presents Perceptions, misconceptions posted at The Optimist's World, saying, "Misconceptions cause wars. To fight war, we must fight these misconceptions and the false perceptions that they create."

Annie presents Oh Bless Us, Everyone! posted at Home of the Brave, saying, "Journalism, campaign reporting and campaign messaging trainwreck. Meanwhile the gist - preventable deaths continue unabated, under-resourced health facilities struggle, and everyone loses."

On Liberalism:
Ebonmuse presents The Keyhole posted at Daylight Atheism, saying, "The explosion of new media has given us access to a vast wealth of information, but sorting through it has for the reliable sources has become ever more difficult."

greensmile presents Re-electing war 2008: tragedy vs pathos posted at The Executioners Thong, saying, "Are you really liberal? That would, I believe, mean you could put aside your ire at obtuse war supporters to understand where they are coming from...and thereby start to rescue them."

In Opinion:
Carole G. McKay presents Hilary, Bill and Noah Webster posted at McKay Today, saying, "Can we take a candid look at how lying to ourselves and others costs us a price we cannot afford?"

omyma presents Blaming Muslims for Terrorism: Blood Sport for the Cheesecake Crowd posted at thinkbridge.

Mike Haubrich presents Early Morning April 4 posted at Tangled Up in Blue Guy, saying, "Forty years after the murder of MLK, the US still has to push for equality."

reallywrong presents Crashing the Gate posted at keep it really wrong.

In Politics:
DWSUWF presents Lets Play Oddball! Televison personality shoots self in head. Reloads. Shoots Obama Campaign. Reloads. Shoots self in head again. posted at Divided We Stand United We Fall, saying, "What do I know? I am just a pissant blogger and Keith Olbermann is a cable news giant. Let me be clear so there is no confusion about the point of this post. Keith Olbermann is not an Obama cheerleader and a sexist pig. He just talks like one."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of the liberals using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags:

carnival of the liberals, blog carnival.

I enjoyed every single post and look forward to hosting again sometime in the future. Check back for my post on New Media. Thanks again and....

-Fight the Powers.

China's Rep Being Torched in Olympic Flames

I'm glad to see the Olympic games become a lesson in human rights and their reputation in the world for China. The Bush administration could use the same lesson in foreign policy, but their time is up soon. But I'd like to see more in the headlines about Darfur as well. It seems that the Tibetan monks controversy, which is no less relevant and deserving of headlines than Darfur, is getting all the attention. I hate to see this opportunity to send a message to China about their influence with the Sudanese government and the Darfur crisis pass all the attention going to Tibet and little to Darfur.

The video below is a wide ranging religious one that starts with the Dalai Lama, goes through the spread of Buddhism and Islam, and ends with Barack Obama's church Black

Liberation Theology on Morning Joe. I don't watch Joe in the morning, but if this kind of discussion happens often I may start. What's not surprising to me is Tucker Carslon's admission that he can't wrap his mind around the mix of his own religion and Buddhism.

MLK Disappointed with Civil Rights Bill

In this clip Dr. King expresses his dissatisfaction with the Civil Rights Act of 1960 in an interview with Meet the Press on NBC. Check out the chick in the hat and rhinestone specks, Ms. May Craig. She's questioning the tactic of civil disobedience, equating it with randomly deciding which laws to follow and which to break. In doing so she's arguing against breaking laws that are unjust, when the goal of society should be justice. Not blind obedience to any law, just or unjust.

What is actually being said is don't push it. Wait. Justice will come. Don't fight. Don't break laws to get there. The law will get around to you eventually. Your chance at equality will come. But it never comes. You have to push it. British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone said, "Justice delayed is justice denied."

What's ironic is the fact that she was a female journalist, a member of the

National American Woman Suffrage Association, and must have been the victim of the same kinds of efforts to slow her progress into the male dominated world of journalism. In fact some of the same protest methods were used in the Women's Suffrage Movement. It's an irony that stands out as starkly as the hat on her head.

The Colbert Report: Let the Games Begin

Again Stephen Colbert displays his mastery of the magnification of the absurd. What would be reductio ad absurdum except that he is mocking the absurd. This time he skewers both the idea of a boycott of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing China this summer and it's critics. A boycott is not likely, but the leaders of several nations are skipping the opening ceremonies or not attending at all and I think it's a good way to send a message to China. Not only about their civil rights abuses of monks in Tibet, but of their support for the Sudanese government responsible for the genocide in Darfur.

Yes They Can

What's amazing to me is how many hours of cable news coverage of the election you can watch and not hear as much intelligent and thoughtful analysis of what this election means as you did in just a few minutes with these kids. Their opinions of media and what their angle is are already forming. Witnessed in statements like, "the media is trying to take this race thing and turn it to something else." You see they have the impression that the media is focusing on race in a way the candidate is not.

I think it's been a long time since there's been a politician anywhere that has been this inspiring to young people. The other important thing about the video is that it isn't anything any of the campaigns could stage. It is not one of those scripted moments we see constantly. It is real people expressing real feelings because they felt inspired to, not because it's what someone asked them to say. I could say that I hate to repeat a campaign slogan, but I don't when it's real. That's what's meant when Barack says that real change comes from the bottom up. It's true whether the candidate believes it or not. Whether or not it is a slogan.

That's the part of this that the other campaigns don't get. They go on and on about experience and their years in Washington. They try to instill fear that the country might not be safe with someone who isn't the same as what we've always had. Americans have seen the results of what years of experience in the White House brings. It's what they have now and they are tired of it. They want something different. That's why people are registering to vote and contributing to the Obama campaign in unprecedented numbers. Even if the highly unlikely happens and Obama is not the

nominee and not our next president, this is a phenomenon like we have never seen before on the political landscape. And the Clinton campaign and a couple Saturday Night Live skits have practically brow beaten the press out of saying so. That doesn't matter because the people know it. Even the children know it. No matter what the press says.