Obama’s Acceptance Speech Moved to Mile High Stadium

Barack Obama will accept the Democratic presidential nomination at Invesco Field at Mile High, a 76,000-seat stadium home to the Denver Broncos, the Democratic National Committee announced Monday.

The party’s convention will be held Aug. 25-28 at Denver’s Pepsi Center, which holds up to 21,000 people. Construction for the convention was beginning at the Pepsi Center Monday amid concerns about lagging fundraising and cost overruns.

Last month, the convention’s host committee reported it was nearly $12 million short of the $40.6 million it had pledged to raise for the effort. Host committee members spoke openly of needing the Obama campaign’s help to close the gap.

The decision to move Obama’s acceptance speech to the giant football stadium was expected to boost fundraising, convention organizer Jenny Backus said.

With a heavy influx of younger voters and Hispanics in recent years, Colorado, once heavily Republican, is one of a handful of states in the mountain West that have been trending more Democratic. Both campaigns view it as a general-election swing state; Republican John McCain was kicking off a five-day economy-focused campaign swing in Denver Monday.

The Obama campaign made its own announcement about the new speech venue in a fundraising e-mail to supporters Monday.

The campaign will choose 10 people who contribute at least $5 to the campaign between now and July 31 to fly to the convention and meet Obama backstage before the speech, Plouffe added.

Obama is known for drawing huge crowds to many of his speeches. In May, a record 75,000 jammed into a riverside park in Portland, Ore., to hear him speak shortly before that state’s primary.

Obama is scheduled to deliver his acceptance speech on Thursday, Aug. 28, the fourth and final night of the convention. It coincides with the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.

The Illinois senator is running to be the first black president.

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College Student Tries To Auction His Vote on Ebay

A college student claimed it was all a joke when he put his vote in this fall’s presidential election up for sale on the Web auction site eBay. But prosecutors didn’t see the humor.

University of Minnesota student Max P. Sanders, 19, was charged with a felony Thursday in Hennepin County District Court after allegedly asking for a minimum of $10 in exchange for voting for the bidder’s preferred candidate.

“Good luck!” Sanders wrote under the eBay handle zepdrummer612. “You’re (sic) country depends on You!”

Sanders was charged with one count of bribery, treating and soliciting under an 1893 state law that makes it a crime to offer to buy or sell a vote.

According to a criminal complaint, the Minnesota secretary of state’s office learned about the offering on the Web site and told prosecutors. Investigators sent a subpoena to eBay and got information that led to Sanders.

The student told investigators he made the eBay posting, adding, “That was a joke. It’s no longer listed,” according to the complaint.

“We take it very seriously. Fundamentally, we believe it is wrong to sell your vote,” said John Aiken, a spokesman for the office. “There are people that have died for this country for our right to vote, and to take something that lightly, to say, ‘I can be bought.’

“It’s a real shame,” he said. “I can imagine the conversations being held in American Legion Clubs and VFWs about whether this is a joke or not.”

The scarcely used law had its heyday in the 1920s, when many people sold their votes in exchange for liquor, Assistant County Attorney Pat Diamond said.

“There are two things going on here in terms of why it’s a crime,” he said. “One is the notion that elections should be a contest of ideas and not of pocketbooks - at least not in the sense of straight-out ‘I can buy your vote.’ The second notion is that everybody gets one vote, and you don’t get to buy another one.”

Sanders and his attorney, Steven Levine, declined to comment Thursday. The charge carries up to five years’ imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.

As for the offer on eBay? It got no bids.

Originally provided by the Associated Press

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Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Michelle Obama Cool and Cindy McCain Unknown According to Polls

The public hasn’t taken to Michelle Obama yet, especially whites. And it’s got a question about Cindy McCain: Who is she?

People are divided over whether they like the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, with 30 percent seeing her favorably and 35 percent unfavorably, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Wednesday.

They tilt positively toward the spouse of Republican hopeful John McCain, by 27 percent to 17 percent.

In other words: While the two women are about equally liked, Michelle Obama is twice as disliked as Cindy McCain.

“Cindy seems like she’s laid back and not trying to run her husband,” said Linda Kaiser, 60, a Republican and church secretary from Clairton, Pa. “It’s nice to have a brain, but they should let their husband be president.”

Whites have an unfavorable view of Michelle Obama by 18 percentage points, while eight in 10 blacks like her. That is reminiscent of how Barack Obama fared in the Democratic primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In the AP-Yahoo News poll, whites saw Cindy McCain positively by 17 points, while one in eight blacks like her.

Michelle Obama does better with unmarried people and college graduates but is viewed poorly by people age 65 and up. Cindy McCain is seen more favorably by older people, those who are married and the more affluent, but she is less well-received by singles.

Cindy McCain is also more of a mystery. Nearly six in 10, or 56 percent, said they know too little to say much about her - exceeding the 34 percent clueless about Michelle Obama. Half of Republicans say they don’t know Cindy McCain, while three in 10 Democrats say that about Michelle Obama.

Barack Obama’s wife seems to incite stronger feelings. One in five had very negative views of her, triple the number who said so about John McCain’s wife. One in 10 had very favorable views of Michelle Obama, double Cindy McCain’s number.

“She’s African-American, she’s highly articulate, she’s young and she seems highly devoted to her husband and her family,” said Edythe Friley, 61, a retired teacher from Detroit. “She serves as a role model. There’s not a parent on planet Earth who wouldn’t want a daughter like this.”

Michelle Obama has been in the spotlight more than Cindy McCain, including stories on whether she was trying to reshape her image.

Michelle Obama, 44, a lawyer and hospital administrator, took flak in February when she said she was proud of her country “for the first time in my adult life.” Cindy McCain, 54, heiress to an Arizona beer distributorship, revealed in May that she earned more than $6 million in 2006 after saying she would never release her income tax returns.

The AP-Yahoo News survey of 1,759 adults was conducted from June 13-23 and had an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. Included were interviews with 844 Democrats and 637 Republicans, for whom the margins of sampling error were plus or minus 3.4 points and 3.9 points, respectively.

The poll was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it for free.

—

AP Director of Surveys Trevor Tompson and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report

The original story was found on AssociatedPress.com

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Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Bennett’s Idea To Abort Black Babies Missed Killing Obama

Degenerate gambler and CNN side kick Bill Bennett wrote an op-ed piece critical of Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Simply based on Billy’s past racisit comments it’s safe to say the piece is derived from Bennet’s ethnic prejudice. Why is he on CNN? I’m fearful of that answer. If he wants to abort black babies to reduce crime he must just LOVE the thought of one of those poor innercity black babies growing up to be President Of The United States.

Wikipedia about Billy Bennett

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iNPLACENEWS Interview of Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello

Tom Morello, best known for his work as the founding member and guitar player for RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, AUDIOSLAVE, and Nightwatchman is interviewed by iNPLACENEWS’ Paul Stewart. In this interview, they discuss Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the war in Iraq, and the Presidential Elections. Also, he talks about his most recent tour with Nightwatchman, social responsibility of rockstars and other artists, as well his nonprofit organization Axis of Justice.

Here is what was found in Wikipedia about Tom:

Tom Morello was born in New York, New York. His mother, Mary Morello, who is part Irish and part Italian, is a founder of Parents for Rock and Rap, an anti-censorship group. She was also a teacher at Libertyville High School. His father, Ngethe Njoroge, a Kenyan, was the country’s first ambassador to the United Kingdom. Morello’s great-uncle, Jomo Kenyatta, was the first president of Kenya.

Morello grew up in Libertyville, Illinois, at the time a virtually all-white suburb of Chicago. There he attended Libertyville High School. He sang in the school chorus and was active in speech and drama club - a prominent role was Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

He showed his political leanings early. Morello has described himself as having been “the only anarchist in a conservative high school”, but has since identified as a nonsectarian socialist. In the 1980 mock elections at LHS, he campaigned for a fictitious “candidate” named Hubie Maxwell, who came in fourth place after Jimmy Carter at the overwhelmingly Republican school. Ronald Reagan won the mock election. He also wrote a piece headlined “South Africa: Racist Fascism That We Support” for the school’s alternative paper, The Student Pulse.

At age 13, Morello joined Nebula, a Led Zeppelin cover band as lead singer. At this same age, Morello purchased his first guitar at Rigoni Music in Libertyville. He wanted a solid-body Ovation guitar, but he didn’t have the money to buy one. Instead, he purchased a Kay guitar. Wanting to learn how to play “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin, he took two guitar lessons, but instead was taught the C-major scale. He decided that playing the guitar was a waste of his time, so he placed it in his closet for the next three years.

Around 1984, Morello first started studying the guitar seriously. He had formed a band in the same year called the which featured future Tool guitarist Adam Jones on bass.

Few if any of the Sheep could really play an instrument at first, but the band was an impetus for Morello to start honing his skills. Instead of performing cover songs, the Sheep wrote original material that included politically charged lyrics. None of the songs composed by the Sheep contained solos; soloing was a skill that Morello began learning in college.

At the time, Morello’s musical tastes lay in the direction of heavy metal, particularly Kiss, Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. Morello developed his own unique sound through the electric guitar. Later, his music—and musical politics—were greatly influenced by punk rock bands like The Clash, the Sex Pistols, and Devo.

Morello graduated in 1982 and began attending Harvard University. There, he made a point of practicing every day for up to eight hours without fail, no matter how much studying he had to do. He graduated in 1986 with an honors degree in political science. He moved to L.A., where he briefly worked as an aide to Senator Alan Cranston as he set about trying to join or start a band. Adam Jones moved to L.A. as well; Morello introduced Jones and Maynard James Keenan to Danny Carey, who would come to form the band Tool.

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John McCain’s 300 Million Dollar Prize For a Battery

A day after his rival for the presidency, Barack Obama called for greater oversight for energy traders, John McCain is expected Monday to call for a $300 million prize for an innovation that would help the U.S. decrease its reliance on oil

During a town hall-style meeting at Fresno State University, McCain is expected to propose a $300 million prize for whomever can develop an automobile battery that “has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars. . . (the battery) should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs.

“In the quest for alternatives to oil, our government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special interests and excusing failure,” the prepared speech read. “From now on, we will encourage heroic efforts in engineering, and we will reward the greatest success.”

McCain also is calling for a “Clean Car Challenge” for U.S. automakers in hopes to encourage them to develop and sell vehicles with no carbon emissions. As part of the challenge, a $5,000 tax credit would be given to buyers of of such cars, making such vehicles more appealing to consumers and thus easier to sell.

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Bush Urges Congress to Lift Ban on Offshore Oil Drilling

With gasoline topping $4 a gallon, President Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to lift its long-standing ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, saying the United States needs to increase its energy production. Democrats quickly rejected the idea.

“There is no excuse for delay,” the president said in a statement in the Rose Garden. With the presidential election just months away, Bush made a pointed attack on Democrats, accusing them of obstructing his energy proposals and blaming them for high gasoline costs. His proposal echoed a call by Republican presidential candidate John McCain to open the Continental Shelf for exploration

“Families across the country are looking to Washington for a response,” Bush said.

Congressional Democrats were quick to reject the push for lifting the drilling moratorium, saying oil companies already have 68 million acres offshore waters under lease that are not being developed.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Bush’s proposals “another page from (an)… energy policy that was literally written by the oil industry - give away more public resources.”

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, rejected lifting the drilling moratorium that has been supported by a succession of presidents for nearly two decades.

“This is not something that’s going to give consumers short-term relief and it is not a long-term solution to our problems with fossil fuels generally and oil in particular,” said Obama. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, lumping Bush with McCain, accused them of staging a “cynical campaign ploy” that won’t help lower energy prices.

“Despite what President Bush, John McCain and their friends in the oil industry claim, we cannot drill our way out of this problem,” Reid said. “The math is simple: America has just three percent of the world’s oil reserves, but Americans use a quarter of its oil.”

White House spokesman Tony Fratto retorted: “Anyone out there saying that something can be done overnight, or in a matter of months, to deal with high gasoline prices is trying to fool people. There is no tool in the toolbox out there that will lower gas prices overnight, or in weeks, or probably not even in months.”

Bush said offshore drilling could yield up to 18 billion barrels of oil over time, although it would take years for production to start. Bush also said offshore drilling would take pressure off prices over time.

There are two prohibitions on offshore drilling, one imposed by Congress and another by executive order signed by Bush’s father in 1990. Bush’s brother, Jeb, fiercely opposed offshore drilling when he was governor of Florida. What the president now proposes would rescind his father’s decision - but the president took the position that Congress has to act first and then he would follow behind.

Asked why Bush doesn’t act first and lift the ban, Keith Hennessey, the director of the president’s economic council, said: “He thinks that probably the most productive way to work with this Congress is to try to do it in tandem.”

Before Bush spoke, the House Appropriations Committee postponed a vote it had scheduled for Wednesday on legislation doing the opposite of what the president asked - extending Congress’ ban on offshore drilling. Lawmakers said they wanted to focus on a disaster relief bill for the battered Midwest.

Bush also proposed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, lifting restrictions on oil shale leasing in the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and easing the regulatory process to expand oil refining capacity.

With Americans deeply pessimistic about the economy, Bush tried to put on the onus on Congress. He acknowledged that his new proposals would take years to have a full effect, hardly the type of news that will help drivers at the gas stations now. The White House says no quick fix exists.

Still, Bush said Congress was obstructing progress - and directly contributing to consumers’ pain at the pump.

“I know the Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past,” Bush said. “Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions.”

Bush said that if congressional leaders head home for their July 4 recess without taking action, they will need to explain why “$4 a gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act. And Americans will rightly ask how high gas prices have to rise before the Democratic-controlled Congress will do something about it.”

Bush said restrictions on offshore drilling have become “outdated and counterproductive.”

In a nod to the environmental arguments against drilling, Bush said technology has come a long way. These days, he said, oil exploration off the coastline can be done in a way that “is out of sight, protects coral reefs and habitats, and protects against oil spills.”

Congressional Democrats, joined by some GOP lawmakers from coastal states, have opposed lifting the prohibition that has barred energy companies from waters along both the East and West coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico for 27 years.

On Monday, McCain made lifting the federal ban on offshore oil and gas development a key part of his energy plan. McCain said states should be allowed to pursue energy exploration in waters near their coasts and get some of the royalty revenue.

Obama retorted that the Arizona senator had flip-flopped on that issue.

This story is courtesy of Associated Press

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Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Polls Show Republican Support and Enthusiasm Dying

The Republican party may face tough times at the polls come November, according to results of a new national survey.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Survey out Friday indicates that 2008 may not be a good year for Republicans up and down the ticket, even though most national surveys indicate the race for the White House between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama is quite close right now.

Sixty-three percent of Democrats questioned say they are either extremely or very enthusiastic about voting this year. Only 37 percent of Republicans feel the same way, and 36 percent of Republicans say they are not enthusiastic about voting.

“Republicans are far less enthusiastic about voting than Democrats are, and enthusiasm has plummeted among GOPers since the start of the year,” said Keating Holland, CNN polling director. “There was already an ‘enthusiasm gap’ in January, when Democrats were 11 points higher than GOPers on this measure. Now, that gap has grown to 26 points.”

“Bottom line: After eight years of the Bush presidency, Republicans are demoralized,” said Bill Schneider, CNN senior political analyst.

Fifty-three percent of registered voters questioned in the poll say they think that Obama, D-Illinois, will win the election, with 43 percent saying that McCain, R-Arizona, will win.

“In recent elections, the public has a good track record at predicting the outcome of presidential elections. Most polls which asked this same question in 2000 and 2004 showed more Americans predicting a victory by George W. Bush over John Kerry or Al Gore. The public also correctly forecast that Bill Clinton would beat Bob Dole in 1996,” Holland said.

In the battle for Congress, 54 percent of those questioned say they would vote for the Democrat in their congressional district, with 44 percent saying they’d vote for the Republican candidate.

“Democrats lead Republicans by 10 points in the congressional vote. At this point in 2006, the Democratic lead was seven points. Democrats went on to win a landslide in 2006,” Schneider said.

Another question hovering over this year’s campaign: Race. Forty-two percent say Obama’s race will make it more difficult for him to get elected, with 57 percent disagreeing.

“That concern is higher among Democrats, at 48 percent, than Republicans, at 36 percent,” Schneider said.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted by telephone on June 4 and 5, with 1,035 adult Americans questioned. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall sample and 5 percentage points for the answers of just Democrats or Republicans.

This story was originally found on CNN.COM

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Barack Obama First Black President of Harvard Law Review

The Harvard Law Review, generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.

The Harvard Law Review, generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.

The new president of the Review is Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University who spent four years heading a community development program for poor blacks on Chicago’s South Side before enrolling in law school. His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii.

”The fact that I’ve been elected shows a lot of progress,” Mr. Obama said today in an interview. ”It’s encouraging.

”But it’s important that stories like mine aren’t used to say that everything is O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me, there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal talent who don’t get a chance,” he said, alluding to poverty or growing up in a drug environment.

What a Law Review Does

Law reviews, which are edited by students, play a double role at law schools, providing a chance for students to improve their legal research and writing, and at the same time offering judges and scholars a forum for new legal arguments. The Harvard Law Review is generally considered the most widely cited of the student law reviews.

On his goals in his new post, Mr. Obama said: ”I personally am interested in pushing a strong minority perspective. I’m fairly opinionated about this. But as president of the law review, I have a limited role as only first among equals.”

Therefore, Mr. Obama said, he would concentrate on making the review a ”forum for debate,” bringing in new writers and pushing for livelier, more accessible writing.

A President’s Future

The president of the law review usually goes on to serve as a clerk for a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals for a year, and then as a clerk for an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Obama said he planned to spend two or three years in private law practice and then return to Chicago to re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing.

Professors and students at the law school reacted cautiously to Mr. Obama’s selection. ”For better or for worse, people will view it as historically significant,” said Prof. Randall Kennedy, who teaches contracts and race relations law. ”But I hope it won’t overwhelm this individual student’s achievement.”

Change in Selection System

Mr. Obama was elected after a meeting of the review’s 80 editors that convened Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.

Until the 1970’s the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.

That system came under attack in the 1970’s and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.

Harvard, like a number of other top law schools, no longer ranks its law students for any purpose including a guide to recruiters.

Blacks at Harvard: New High

Black enrollment at Harvard Law School, after a dip in the mid-1980’s, has reached a record high this year, said Joyce Curll, the director of admissions. Of the 1,620 students in the three-year school, 12.5 percent this year are blacks, she said, and 14 percent of the first-year class are black. Nationwide enrollment by blacks in undergraduate colleges has dropped in recent years.

Mr. Obama succeeds Peter Yu, a first-generation Chinese-American, as president of The Law Review. After graduation, Mr. Yu plans to serve as a clerk for Chief Judge Patricia Wald on the of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Mr. Yu said Mr. Obama’s election ”was a choice on the merits, but others may read something into it.”

The first female editor of The Harvard Law Review was Susan Estrich, in 1977, who recently resigned as a professor at Harvard Law School to take a similar post at the University of Southern California. Ms. Estrich was campaign manager for Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts in his campaign for the Presidency in 1988.

Found originally @ New York Times

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Barack Sizes Lieberman Up On Senate Floor

Why not simply pee where your territory is, like a wolf or another wild animal? Rather than being so of the wild, Joe Lieberman decided to pull presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama to the side to have words off of the CSPAN cameras. Some reports suggest it may have been the other way around. Perhaps, Barack is making early moves. More as this story unfolds. Please, discuss it.

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