Old Brown Shoe

Ramona victimized my favorite pair of shoes a few months ago. She ripped out one of the tongues, and made it her baby. She had to have it under her chin while napping.

I kept wearing the shoes like my second skin, until Barack did them in last week with a cracked sole.

I knocked on 55 doors yesterday, and 82 tonight.

Starting with tonight's canvass, I'm not resetting my pedometer until after my last Get Out The Vote effort on the 4th.

Visit BarackObama.com to find out how you can help.

Pinkertons!

We packed up the dog and headed for Danielle's parents' house yesterday, we were over due for a visit, but we also wanted to make a final pitch to her mom for Barack.

I don't know if we were successful, we were up against a lot. Danielle's great-great-grandfather was once the mayor of the town she grew up in, and his legacy is calling in the Pinkertons to break a strike of steel workers. It's not just bloodlines, a sign with the ten commandments on it is displayed in the front yard, and abortion is a big issue.

On our side, we took Sicko as a discussion starter.

My mother-in-law works in a factory, her last annual raise was a nickel an hour, and the employee share of her health insurance went up significantly, leading to take-home pay that is not only less than last year when adjusted for inflation, or the cost of living, but less in terms of the actual dollar amount on the check - all this while the owner has recently bragged about record profits.

One of the extras on the Sicko dvd is about Norway, a reaction to the Sean Hannity's of the world crying about the horrors of socialized medicine, European socialism in general. Danielle's mom and I talked about education, in particular, the free higher education of many European countries. She worried out loud about where employers would find cheap labor if everyone had an opportunity to earn a college degree.

How did the workers of this country, those who see their paychecks go down, come to have concerns for their employer's ability to find cheap labor when they themselves are unable to take a hot shower, or cook on their stove for having fallen too far behind on their gas bills and it having been shut off months ago.

A fluff piece.

According to the latest filing with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday night, the McCain campaign's highest paid employee for the first half of October was celebrity make-up artist Amy Strozzi ($22,800 for two weeks), who travels with Governor Palin.

By contrast, Randy Scheunemann, McCain's Chief Foreign Policy Adviser, made under $13,000 over the same time period.

In my opinion, these things aren't the things that should decide a person's vote, but I don't think that's what McCain wanted us to think a few months ago when he was running his 'Celebrity' ads.

This comes from the ladies at Bust magazine.

Give some thought to voting early (you can find out where at VoteForChange.com). Voting early does a number of things, most importantly ensuring you will get a vote. I say this because I recently read that one of the largest counties in Ohio only ordered as many ballots as they did in 2004, despite the predictions of a record turnout.

Voting early will also help reduce lines for other people, and hopefully help discourage them from leaving before casting their ballot (I've talked to people on my canvasses that waited as long as 3 hours to vote in 2004).

"I felt like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest"

A long time ago I posted a blog about childhood vision problems and Dennis Kucinich, which I linked by UFO stories. It got picked up by some UFO enthusiast webpage, and my blogspot blog briefly went from a dozen or so views a day to several hundred.

The subject line is a quote I read the other day from a pilot in the 1950's who received orders to fire on a UFO. I read it on cnn.com, I'm not UFO crazy.

Below is the complete interaction between Barack Obama and 'Joe the Plumber'. It's not an ass-kicking, but I couldn't come up with a better title, what it is is Barack clearly laying out his rationale for his taxation plan in terms that make a lot of sense.

Do you think Barack Obama is circumcised or uncircumcised?

I didn't think of that question myself, David Sedaris did.

Some of the most compassionate, thoughtful, and loving people I know are Republicans. I know the people in this video don't represent all Republicans, nor do I believe in any way they could be convinced to vote for Barack Obama.



Regardless of political affiliation, I hope you found that disturbing.

If you are a supporter of Senator Obama, please consider adding Barack's myspace if you haven't already, and putting him in your top friends. In past elections I've discounted the value of yard signs, and even canvassing, but I recently heard a report on NPR about how both are helping Obama in areas where race may be an issue, because people see it as their neighbors vouching for him.

Also, I recently set up a fundraising account for Obama/Biden. The money goes directly to the campaign, and not through us in any way. I set the goal at an incredibly reasonable total of $250.00, to encourage small donations.