MoveOn Members in Gunter, TX Gather for Virtual Town Hall Meeting on Climate Crisis

Local residents to watch Live Earth concerts and launch Virtual Town Hall Meeting with new video of presidential candidates talking about climate solutions in Gunter, Texas – On Saturday, July 7, local residents will participate in MoveOn’s second Virtual Town Hall meeting. At the gatherings, called “Party for the Planet,” members will watch the presidential candidates, for the first time, discuss their plans for addressing the climate crisis. Over 1,300 events will take place around the country, sponsored by MoveOn.org Political Action.

Saturday evening’s event coincides with a series of Live Earth concerts sponsored by former Vice President Al Gore, which partygoers will watch live on TV. After they watch the presidential candidates answering questions about the climate crisis posted by MoveOn members on YouTube.

“People who participate in MoveOn's Virtual Town Hall on climate are part of the solution to a crisis that affects us all,” said former Vice President Al Gore.

“This is the first time ever voters can compare the presidential candidates’ side-by-side on the climate crisis,” Christina Johnstone says a local mother, retiree and 3 year resident of Gunter. “The public is paying attention to the climate crisis like never before, and we will demand that our next president promise bold action on this issue.”

Beginning Sunday, July 8th, MoveOn members will vote for the candidate with the best plan. The results of the vote will be released on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007. Votes taken after the Virtual Town Halls do not represent an endorsement.

The first Virtual Town Hall was held in April and focused on Iraq. A third Virtual Town Hall will take place this fall on health care. MoveOn’s membership voted to make these three issues the organization’s top priorities.

In recent weeks, MoveOn gained 250,000 new members from a petition asking Congress to move toward a clean energy future—showing high energy among voters on this issue. The “Party for the Planet” is being co-sponsored by the Campaign for America's Future, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
Saturday “Party for the Planet” Details:

Who: Residents of Gunter, Texas, & all of TEXOMA, Moveon.org members
What: "Party for the Planet" - cookout, watch Live Earth concert,
debut video of presidential candidates talking about solutions to the
global climate crisis.
Where: 130 Whispering Winds Dr.
When: Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 7 p.m.

RSVP: click here >http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/index.html?submit=1&search_distance=30&search_zip=75058&action_id=86

Excellent visuals. Families, cookout, music, debut of celebrity video

What Hath the Neocons Wrought?

A large enough segment of individuals and corporations have become outrageously wealthy and solely interested in preserving their financial power through political means. The electoral and legislative system has become corrupted by money. War and death are just collateral damage in the rush for a greedy, gluttonous wealth. The rest of the country is made up of a minority of informed Americans, a sizeable comfortable class that is still riding the crest of Post World War II American, the religiously deluded, and the neglected, marginalized poor. Bush and Cheney aren't going to end the meaningless deaths of our GIs and Iraqis. The June death toll for U.S. troops in Iraq 27, bringing a total of at least 3,504 U.S. troop deaths and 23,417 wounded.

They have nothing to lose by continuing the war. They are already so far behind that they might as well run out the clock and hand the mess that they made over to the next administration. The next administration will inherit hundreds of billions of dollars in debt, a large amount to profiteering in Iraq by the likes of Cheney's Halliburton.

Neocons think America has both the means and the manifest destiny to promote democratic reform around the globe, and as the sole remaining superpower, America has the right to shape the world and get super rich in the process.

The following stanza from a poem by World War I soldier and poet Siegfried Sassoon is so applicable to the present:

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.

Liber, Liberal, Liberty, Liberate, and Liberalize

Democrat’s labeled as Elitists Snobs. That label, not the liberal label, is the one the Democrats must shake, give it to the Republicans, Liberalism is our best and predominant hope in the world today. A liberal society is a free society and a strong society whose strength comes from free people committed to great ends and using peaceful means to attain them. Liberals avoid and abhor war while waging peace. It is liberalism that can restore our national purpose, liberate our national energies for good, and repair our national power. In short, the word liberal is a great word, and being a liberal provides a courageous and altruistic energy for service to others, and living liberal uses that energy to help individuals and nations develop their lives and contribute to society and the world community. The ancient Romans and Greeks both used the word "liber" to denote being free. As such, the root "liber" is not only the root of "liberal," but also of "liberty" (being free from restraint), "liberate" (to set free), and "liberalize" (to free from prejudice and narrow beliefs), among many other such words. These meanings include "favorable to progress and reform, as in religious or political affairs"; "favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties"; "open-minded or tolerant, esp. free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc."; and "characterized by generosity and willingness to give in large amounts.” In other words, liberals support changes that increase personal freedom and tolerance, and exercise the liberty to empower government to the extent necessary to achieve those ends. Liberals see the role of all social institutions (church, family, education, politics, and economics) as providing a framework within which individuals can develop their lives and contribute to society. Each social institution, from the liberal perspective, provides for equal opportunity to ameliorate the effects of poverty and discrimination. Each social institution supports the values that health care and education should be universally available, since without either, individual choice is severely limited. Liberal values permeating the social institutions support the ideas that such social institutions are not there to protect people from themselves or to interfere in individual interaction, except insofar as to prevent systematic actions that cause harm.

Stealing Votes

In her testimony before the House judiciary committee, Monica Goodling referred several times to “vote caging” possibly done by Tim Griffin the ex-Karl Rove assistant in the Bush Administration, ex U. S. Attorney for Arkansas and possibly soon to be campaign manager for Republican Presidential candidate Fred Thompson. When asked to explain what the term meant Goodling testified, “it’s a direct-mail term, that people who do direct mail, when, when they separate addresses that may be good versus addresses that may be bad,” then tried to justify any possibility of wrong doing by saying, “I don’t … I believe that Mr. Griffin doesn’t believe that he, that he did anything wrong there and there, there actually is a very good reason for it, for a very good explanation.” The very good explanation was not given. That’s because the very good explanation is voter fraud. It’s best described as out and out theft of your vote if you happen to be a registered voter who is targeted.

Greg Palast an investigative reporter and author of “Armed Madhouse” started reporting allegations of Republican vote caging for the in 2004. Palast contends that vote caging, an illegal voter-suppression scheme, happened in Florida in 2004 this way: "The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked “Do not forward” to voters’ homes. Letters returned (”caged”) were used as evidence to block these voters’ right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and—you got to love this—American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.
Why weren’t these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation—and the soldiers were overseas." Palast supplies evidence linking Tim Griffin, then-research director for the RNC, to this caging plot; specifically, a series of confidential e-mails to Republican Party members with the suggestive heading “RE: caging."

Republicans have been systematically trying to suppress minority votes for decades, most recently calling it payback for their claim of liberal voter fraud. Bouncing voters from the rolls on the basis of their race violates federal law. We have heard them proudly boast that the ends justify the means. Bush loyalist would take whatever means available to insure victory for their “Dear Leader.” Bending or breaking the law, no big deal after all they have a very good explanation. It makes you wonder what kind of scheme is in the works for 2008?

Be sure and view the videos from youtube and goleft.tv by clinking the below links. Get ready to be mad as hell. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkvWkwv7UVo & http://goleft.tv/view.asp?v=206

Conservatism Defined

The ancient or archaic meaning of conservatism is "preservative agent or principle." More popular contemporary definitions present conservatives as people who uphold tradition and oppose major changes in laws and institutions. While they are often resistant to change, should they come to think that it is necessary, it should be gradual and minimal. Generally, conservatives oppose "big government" and support free-market economic policies and low taxes. Perhaps most consistently, they seem predisposed toward opposing liberal reforms. In other words, in any conversation or proposal suggesting change or reform, they are most likely to say "no‚" at the outset. At best, they sometimes say ‚"yes, but..."
Look at the years of 1980-1993 and 2000 to the present, years of conservative ascendancy, we see a steady growth in income inequality, a drop in savings, a rise in personal debt, the increasing need for two family incomes, an increase in poverty, a decrease in charitable giving among the rich (but an increase among the poor), the largest national debt ever, seeing the USA move from the greatest creditor nation in the world to the greatest debtor nation in the world, a severely weakened US dollar, and the largest foreign investment in and ownership of our businesses and industries. Because tradition is important to most folks of any perspective, an analogy might be helpful. It has been said that tradition is simply society's "attic" crammed full of all sorts of items, some valuable and worth keeping and some that are outdated and some that are simply junk. The traditionalist conservative would seek to keep saving it all. Conservatives seem predisposed to keep everything in society's "attic" as well as to say "no" to change or reform, liberals seem predisposed to keep cleaning the "attic" of old or useless relics, while feeling free to say "yes" to reform and change. This attitude by conservatives even extends to scientific facts and theories such as global warming and evolution. They have difficult accepting any thing that they perceive as a contradiction to their beliefs. They can not distinguish between belief and reality if it tends to conflict with their beliefs or their politics. This is taking being ridged to the extreme and is often transformed into a perception of arrogance, snobbishness and elitists. Does this make the Republicans elitist snobs?

Democrats are not Socialist

The Democratic Party traces its origins to the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other influential Anti-Federalist in 1792. The pro-working class, activist philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt called "liberalism" in the U.S., has shaped much of the party's agenda since 1932. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, championed by the party despite opposition at the time from its Southern wing, has continued to inspire the party's liberal principles. The Democratic Party has consistently positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party in economic and social issue matters.

The Republicans have labeled the Democrats as Socialist since it shares the word Democratic with the social ideology of Democratic-Socialism i.e. the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Democratic-Socialism is a political, economic and social ideology which advocates socialism as a basis for the economy; this implies that the means of production are owned by the entire population and political power is in the hands of the people.

The Democratic Party has no connection to the Democratic-Socialism or Socialist doctrines. It is a false label which is constantly bandied about by the Republicans to give the impression that Democrats or un-American. Democrats were Americans before the Republicans and the core of our beliefs are true American ideals. We believe in the capitalist system, individual property rights, a constitutional democracy and individual civil rights. The Democratic Party of the United States often refers to itself as the party of the people because it is a diverse party and represents all creeds, color and persuasions. This reference has also been exploited by the Republican’s to justify the socialist label. It is simply not true.