Democracy for New Mexico

East Mountains for Obama: River, Baby, River

Read all about it in newmexicobear's diary on Daily Kos. (And don't miss the donkey.) River is an 11-year-old, homeschooled Obama activist from Edgewood NM. A rousing speech -- and a reminder that now's the time for ACTION.

New ARG NM Poll: Obama 51%, McCain 44%

A new American Research Group poll that surveyed 600 likely voters in New Mexico on September 14-16 shows Obama pulling away from McCain 51-44% with 5% undecided and a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points.

Obama was also ahead with Independent voters 50-41%, women voters by 61-35%, 18-29 year olds by 53-41% and those 50 and older 49-48%. McCain came out ahead only with men voters, 55-39%

Political Wire reports additional ARG poll results in these states showing tight races, many within the margin of error. Surprising numbers in Montana and West Virginia:

Colorado: McCain 46%, Obama 44%
Missouri: McCain 50%, Obama 45%
Montana: McCain 49%, Obama 47%
Nevada: McCain 49%, Obama 46%
North Carolina: McCain 52%, Obama 41%
Ohio: McCain 50%, Obama 44%
West Virginia: McCain 49%, Obama 45%

Meanwhile, today's Gallup Tracking Poll has Obama ahead for the first time since the GOP convention, 47-45%. Tight but trending our way ....

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The Party That Ruined America

Just read it: A Ripe Moment by James Howard Kunstler. Now repeat after me: "The Party That Ruined America." Say it again. Put it in every email, every blog comment, every diary, every post. Pass it on. Mention it to those you canvass and those you call. Tell it to your friends, your neighbors, your colleagues. It is the truth and we can use it to beat them, at last, as we must. And then we can see if that means anything. And it must. And it will, if we unite and make it so. (h/t to my fellow traveler in Ft. Worth)

(Updated x2) Obama to Appear on Espanola Plaza on September 18

Update 2: The event is free and open to the public; however, a ticket is required. Seating is limited, and available on a first-come, first-served basis online:

https://nm.barackobama.com/espanolachange

For security reasons, please limit bags or personal items. No signs or banners are permitted.
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Update 1: This has now been confirmed by the Obama campaign. Gates will open at 10:30 AM. Still awaiting ticketing info.
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The Word is that Barack Obama will speak at a public event on Thursday, September 18, at 10:30 AM on the Plaza de Espanola,706 Bond Street, Espanola NM. Confirmation and ticket info to come.

(Updated) Saturday: Help Celebrate Opening of Obama Campaign's South Valley Office

New Obama Ad: Real Change

Update: Belen Native U.S. Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA), Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has been added to the list of elected officials who'll be welcoming attendees at the Grand Opening
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Come on down and check out this weekend's grand opening of the Obama Campaign's South Valley Office -- the 34th such office in New Mexico. The celebration will feature food, live music, and appearances by the following elected officials:

U.S. Rep. Joe Baca, Chair, Congressional Hispanic Caucus
State Auditor Hector Balderas
State Senator-Elect Eric Griego
State Senator Linda Lopez
Martin Heinrich, NM-01 Congressional candidate

Obama South Valley Office Grand Opening
Saturday, September 13, 5 to 7 PM
3211 Coors Blvd. SW, Suite A 3-4, ABQ, 87121 Map
RSVP for this event

The New Mexico Campaign for Change is building a culture of participation and empowerment, and this new office is another step toward that goal. If you can't make it to the grand opening, you’re more than welcome to stop by and check out the office in the coming days and find out about volunteer opportunities.

The South Valley Field Office is one of more than 25 offices in the state. View a complete list of New Mexico offices. This will be a great opportunity to learn what we can do to support the Obama Campaign and to talk about what is needed to win the South Valley and all of New Mexico. Please come and help bring in the South Valley for Sen. Barack Obama!

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Guest Blog by Stephen Fox: September 11, Tom Udall, What Obama Needs to Do to Win

This is a guest blog by Stephen Fox of Santa Fe. This piece is cross-posted at Stephen's MyBarackObama blog, where you can read more of his writing.

U.S. Representative Tom Udall, D-NM, released the following statement today in solemn remembrance of the tragedies of September 11, 2001:

"September 11 is a day that invokes immense sadness in all of us. Today, we remember the pain that we felt seven years ago. But Americans learned something about ourselves on September 11, 2001, and what we learned should make us all proud. We learned that, in America, when we find ourselves face-to-face with tragedy, we know a simple truth: we are our brothers' keepers; we are our sisters' keepers.

We know that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. That if one American dies needlessly, we are all diminished by that loss. As we mark this somber day, let us take comfort in that lesson: whatever our enemies do to us, Americans will stick together. And we will not be defeated."

My own recollection/observation was after 9/11 when the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar al Saud, donated a check for many millions of dollars to the 9/11 victims fund, as I recall $10 million, and accompanying the check was a letter in which he made many points, and among them was the question of the United States' need to figure out what it might have done to cause this ghastly disaster and act of terrorism.

That was too much for Rudy Giuliani, who immediately returned the check to Bandar, objecting very vociferously to Bandar's his commentary.

When I read about this in the New York Times, I immediately recognized this as Giuliani's error, but we all throughout life recognize this uniquely human trait of not being able to accept responsibility (or even a hint of a discussion of responsibility) by someone who is in some kind of serious trouble. It is just too much for them to deal with.....

The Saudi passport of Saeed Alghamdi, said to be discovered in the wreckage of Flight 93.

Steel beams from the WTC were already being removed and recycled on September 20, 2001. [Source: Associated Press]

A chunk of hot metal being removed from the North Tower rubble about eight weeks after 9/11. [Source: Frank Silecchia]

From left to right: Dick Cheney, Prince Bandar, Condoleezza Rice, and George W. Bush, on the Truman Balcony of the White House on September 13, 2001. [Source: White House]

Bandar certainly should have had some keen insights into these matters; from Wikipedia, in italics:

[Prince Bandar has formed close relationships with several American presidents, notably George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, who gave him the affectionate and controversial nickname "Bandar Bush". His friendship with Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne Cheney, extends to the years before Cheney took office as the United States Vice President. Prince Bandar invited the Cheney family to his daughter's wedding in the 1990s, but they did not attend.

The close relationship with the Bush family is also described in Craig Unger's book House of Bush, House of Saud and is highlighted in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11....

Prince Bandar has endured controversy over allegations in the book Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward that President George W. Bush informed him of the decision to invade Iraq ahead of Secretary of State Colin Powell. Also, the book alleged a deal had been worked out to reduce oil prices just ahead of the November 2004 election. Bandar publicly endorsed President Bush.

On June 26, 2005, Prince Bandar reportedly submitted his resignation as ambassador to the United States for "personal reasons".[4][5] Bandar's return to Saudi Arabia was announced weeks prior to the death of King Fahd upon which Bandar's father, Sultan bin Abdul Aziz became the nation's Crown Prince. It has been rumoured that Bandar's return was timed in order to secure a position in the new government.[6] In October 2005 he became the kingdom's national security chief.]

What happened? According to another source; "Saudi princesses are no less benevolent than their husbands, brothers and cousins. Ambassador-Prince Bandar's own wife Princess Haifa, daughter of the late King Feisal, received a letter from an unknown woman telling of problems with medical bills. The Princess-Ambassadress dashed her off a check in six figures -- and the money by some strange route ended up among the resources of the perpetrators of the September 11 atrocities. The revelation so upset Her Royal Highness that various sympathetic Washington ladies rushed their condolences and sympathy to her -- including Mrs. George H.W. Bush and Mrs. Colin Powell. "

I am not a 9/11 conspiracy kind of guy/paranoid, not at all. I concluded long ago that even talking about such was a waste of time, my time at least....

However, having said that, since September 11, 2001, I do believe we have a lot of evidence of how our hostility about Islam now has alienated most of the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, about 60 nations; it is obvious that the Chinese have run rings around us in terms of investment and economic policy throughout most of the world, particularly in Africa; it is screamingly obvious that American excursions into Iraq along with most of the US wars since 1945 have been in essence imperialistic in nature, and as such have earned us increasing hostility; one British tourist visiting Santa Fe compared the British in Ireland to the Americans in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

"If you kill their mothers and children and cousins and brothers over several years, pretty soon the entire nation becomes terrorists."

I do believe that the core of this Modern History was all essentially delineated by Marx, Engels, and especially by Hegel, in his discussions of Dialectical Materialism.

All those ISM's and the thesis/antithesis/synthesis processes make perfect sense to me in explaining the History of Economic Systems; it is clear to me that when Big Pharma and Big Junk Food corporations and their hired guns/lobbyists effectively take over the regulatory processes of a nation, like they have done with the FDA, that we are doomed in health, in history, in medical and consumer credibility, and in economic well-being.

I have written a lot of articles on related subjects, particularly consumer protection, aspartame, and Donald Rumsfeld's having forced through the FDA the approval for aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde, so he could make $12-20 million personal profit, the health of hundreds of millions of people be damned....

I won't regale you with this on this solemn occasion, but allow me to recall a lecture in Santa Fe a few years ago by former President of Poland and Nobel Laureate Lech Walesa to the effect that the USA has lost its moral stature in toto as well as most of its political power, squandered its economic power in order to preserve and just barely maintain its military power, which was no replacement for moral, political, or economic power. That was quite brilliant, truly.

Similarly, DNC Chairman and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean III, M.D., was recently in Santa Fe to fire up the troops, and one thing in particular stuck with me, when he said no nation could bring peace in any conflict unless it had the moral authority to sit at the negotiating table.

We don't have that power and that moral authority throughout most of the world right now, thanks to the past 8 years of Bush/Cheney/Neocon/Blackwater/Halliburton/Kellogg Brown, and Root mode of economics and government economic policies.

I really don't believe that in general Economics nor specifically that Macro Economic insights from government economic advisors, for example, qualify as rocket science.

It is more akin to the old irrigation system of colonial New Mexico, in which the farmer who controlled the flow of the irrigation ditch, or ACEQUIA MADRE ("MOTHER DITCH" in Spanish) determined which field the water would flow into. He was called the Majordomo, and in that society, was much more important than any Mayor, or "ALCALDE" in Spanish.

That is what has happened during the past 8 years. The White House and other government masters of the flow of monies have purposefully turned the irrigation ditch waters into such things as military, defense contractors, weapons, hardware, security, etc.

What was in that other field, the one that got neglected and deprived of water?

Just about everything else: education, inner cities, highway maintenance and construction, infrastructure, huge realms of scientific and medical research like stem cell research, etc. You name it: our American economy is in terrible shape, and with the way our international respect has deteriorated, squarely because of Bush and Cheney, it might get a lot worse....the signs are everywhere; they are well known and they are easily recognized: endemic mortage failures, high gas prices, a deflated stock market, high unemployment, failed schools especially in the inner city, store closings, et. alia.

Much of this election hinges on our ability to change all of that, to put America back on a sane and internationally effective tack, and that is at a minimum, just to ensure our survival as a nation.

That is why I want to see Dr. Dean be the Obama Cabinet Secretary for Health or as FDA Commissioner, and that is why I want to see NM Governor Bill Richardson as the next Secretary of State. I think also that Jerry Brown of California would make a great consumer protection-oriented United States Attorney General, one who would also reconstruct all of our civil liberties.

Such speculations are of course something else entirely, but I am certain that Obama should discuss such things seriously and frequently, ignoring the advice of some who say that that would be ridiculed by the right wing as "presumptuous" or as "arrogant," so that the American people can gain some glimmer of an insight into what he really would like to achieve as President, in terms of names, both possible and real and well known names.

Will Obama win?
To get to that victory, I work day and night as a member of 328 Obama groups, coordinating correspondence, and urging people to not just "preach to the choir," as that is how Democrats usually lose elections, but to get out there and go door to door to tell folks how much is really at stake in this election, plus my special focus: Letters to the Editor, Opinion/Editorials, and so on, all over the United States, wherever they could be published.

Surprising how few people comprehend this in only a few states, and in not many of the so-called BATTLEGROUND STATES, for Obama and for US Senate candidates, as described in my blog about a week ago in the letter from Senator Charles Schumer.

I am going to take a break from all of this furious emailing, so you won't hear from me for a while.

I will conclude with a few paragraphs written today, not by me, but an astute observer and friend of mine,who wishes to remain anonymous, about 50 years old, a realtor, former actress, and thinker:

Recently, I was on a flight to Texas and sat next to a very personable and fairly astute guy. We began talking politics and went back and forth about the issues. He was really impressed by my research and said so.

Then he leaned over to me and whispered conspiratorially, "I concede all the points but Obama is a Muslim, you know."

And when I calmly explained that that particular lie fed on our basest fears, he held up Reverend Wright as proof. This scene has been repeated numerous times with different characters but the underlying emotional message is clear and powerful. Their winning on a gut level. They are afraid and the facts don't matter.

Obama is perceived as "the other."

The Republicans have clearly defined him emotionally and he must wrest these irrational pictures away from them and supplant them with powerful and soothing reassurance.

Obama may loose this election if he does not connect on a visceral level soon. He must capture the emotional narrative and stop trying to be only reasonable. People do not reason their way into the voting booth. They move from the gut.

He has much "low-hanging fruit" to choose from. Sarah Palin is a right-wing fundamentalist wack-job. She is an extremist and Americans of all stripes are uncomfortable with extremism. John McCain has abandoned every "maverick" position he's ever held.

It's all on video, from her prayers to the oil pipeline god to the massively naked ambition which has led him to do a 180 on every major political stance of his past. Use Their Own Words To Out This Outrageous Hypocricy. Draw passionate simple pictures once again and reframe this narrative, from the gut. It's the only way. "

Obama has to win!

This is a guest blog by Stephen Fox, Contributing Editor of the New Mexico Sun News and founder of New Millennium Fine Art, a Santa Fe gallery since 1980. Guest blogs provide an opportunity for readers to express themselves on topics of interest to the political discourse here, and may or may not express the views of the DFNM blog. If you'd like to submit a post for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand corner of the page.

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New Obama Ad: WHOA! (and Palin's First Major Gaffe)

Crack that whip! Yeee, haaaa. Time to call a huckster ticket a huckster ticket. And time to get involved if you want real change in America and not a lobbyist-concocted mirage.

Oh, and by the way Ms. Palin has already made a whopper of a gaffe talking about Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. Maybe she should talk to McCain's former top economic advisor, Phil Gramm, who masterminded so much of the banking and mortage deregulation that has brought us to this precipice. Go read about Foreclosure Phil and ponder how he's shaped McCain's positions on the economy. Oh right, maverick.

Guest Blog: Vote, Baby, Vote ... Are You Registered, Baby?

Rachel N. Rodriguez talks about her experience becoming a voter registrar today

This is a guest blog by Rachel N. Rodriguez of Albuquerque. Also see her previous guest blog about attending Friday's Michelle Obama rally at UNM.

By October 7 at 5 PM, anyone who wants to vote in the presidential election must be registered. That's the deadline -- just one very short month from tomorrow.

If you're wondering how you can help get Obama in the White House (as well as NM Dems in office), show up at the Nob Hill Obama office -- right there on the corner of Carlisle and Central -- at 10:45 AM next Saturday to get yourself "deputized" to register others to vote. It's ridiculously easy, and it's critically important!

I showed up this morning at the training, and by the time the County Clerk's representative showed up -- an hour late due to the fact that the earlier training at another office had 88 people attend! -- the office was overflowing with folks wanting to get deputized. The training was short and simple, and the paperwork easy and quick. A notary signed my paper and used her stamp, and I was done!

Obama Nob Hill campaign office today with people signing up to be voter registrars

Other things we can do to help:

1. Sign up to vote by mail. This is being pushed hard so we can beat the R's in voting by mail.


2. Encourage others to vote by mail.


3. Be part of the "99" program - talk to 99 people between now and the election about Obama (and NM Dems!)


4. Take an hour or two each week to volunteer at the Obama office -- calling folks on the phone, entering data, going door-to-door.


5. Call the Obama office at 425-0723 to get linked into the folks working in YOUR neighborhood to help put Obama in the White House.

And, if you are itching to donate stuff and money, they can use it. Phones are especially needed as an important "voter contact tool" -- if you have $125 burning a hole in your pocket, you can go to (or call) the Cricket store on Menaul and purchase a phone for the campaign to use.

Whatever you do, it will make a difference!

Rachel N. Rodriguez
rachelnrodriguez AT yahoo.com

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Barack Obama to Visit Northern New Mexico September 18th

Obama at Pepsi Center: change from the bottom up, not the top down (better quality here)

Note: See my later post more information.
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The Obama campaign announced that Barack will make his fifth visit to New Mexico, hosting an event in Northern New Mexico on September 18th. More details will be released when they become available.

No Way, No How, No McCain-Palin

I could go into what the Repubs were on about last night, but we all know what it was -- a charade to convince those who don't know any better or who prefer not to know the truth that the GOP is on the side of ordinary Americans. It was very difficult to listen to McCain profess his desire to "reform Washington" when we know his remarks were written by Bush's former speechwriter and that he has pandered away any credibility he once had to gain the support of the wacky neocons and religious fundies he used to disdain. I'm sure you had a very similar reaction. So let's move on.

Now that the GOP dishonesty-and-denial-fest has ended, here's a just released statement by Hillary Clinton about where we stand:

The two party conventions showcased vastly different directions for our country. Senator Obama and Senator Biden offered the new ideas and positive change America needs and deserves after eight years of failed Republican leadership. Senator McCain and Governor Palin do not.

After listening to all the speeches this week, I heard nothing that suggests the Republicans are ready to fix the economy for middle class families, provide quality affordable health care for all Americans, guarantee equal pay for equal work for women, restore our nation's leadership in a complex world or tackle the myriad of challenges our country facses.

So, to slightly amend my comments from Denver: NO WAY, NO HOW, NO McCAIN-PALIN.

Hillary says NO WAY at DNCC

Hillary will be in Florida on Monday campaigning for Obama. Also on Monday, the Obama campaign plans to begin a volunteer campaign to register 30,000 voters in 30 days right here in New Mexico. What will you be doing? Join Vote for Change 30/30 and be a part of the solution.

If you share Obama's sentiment of ENOUGH in terms of failed leadership and failed policies, now's the time to do something about it. VOLUNTEER!

From Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic Convention in Denver:

America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.

This country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of hard work.

This country is more generous than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment he's worked on for twenty years and watch it shipped off to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his family the news.

We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land - enough! This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough."

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