According to yesterday's Obama for America e-mail.
Barack Obama is just 17 elected delegates away from a majority -- and you can help get him there.
At the start of this race, there were 3253 elected delegates at stake in primaries and caucuses across the country. After winning 32 of 49 contests, Barack is within reach of an absolute majority.
We believe that the winner of the majority of elected, pledged delegates should and will be the Democratic nominee.
Important primaries are coming up this Tuesday in Oregon and Kentucky. With your help, Barack could win enough delegates to reach this crucial milestone on his way to securing the nomination.
We need to do absolutely everything we can to help put Barack over the top.
Right now, thousands of people in these states are thinking seriously about what they're looking for from our next president -- and one voice could sway their decision.
I'm asking you to be that voice.
Use our simple online calling tool to call potential supporters in Oregon and Kentucky and make sure they vote for Barack:
http://my.barackobama.com/callnow
We've come a long way together in this campaign, and Tuesday could be the day we reach a majority of elected delegates.
Passing this milestone will be an unmistakable signal to the media, the superdelegates, and everyone watching this election all across the country -- the people have spoken, and America is ready for change.
Use our online calling tool to build our support in this final push -- even if you've never done anything like this before. Here's how it works:
When you log in, you'll get a list of 25 names that only you will receive. (If you don't have a My.BarackObama account, creating one is fast and easy.)
Click on a name, make a call, and you'll be led through a simple script, question by question.
If you want, you can even print your numbers and the script and enter your results back into the system later.
Get started making a difference now:
http://my.barackobama.com/callnow
For more than a year, we've relied on everyday supporters like you, reaching out person-to-person to build our movement.
We're close to the nomination -- please keep working to help Barack cross the finish line.
Thank you,
Jon
Jon Carson
Voter Contact
Director
Obama for America
Sunday 18 May 2008
Snap, crackle and 'alcopop'
Spooner cartoon in The Age yesterday."All the same, from a political and an economic viewpoint, what Nelson had to say stank. His about-face on the increase in the tax on premixed alcoholic drinks could well turn out to be the decision that cruelled his leadership once and for all.
Here's the fundamental truth of it: you can't say on April 27 that you support a tax increase on alcopops and then declare in a nationally televised prime-time parliamentary speech 18 days later that you're utterly opposed to it and will block it in the Senate, and retain your political credibility.
This is what the Opposition Leader said only a little over two weeks ago, after Labor announced its decision to lift the tax on alcopops by 70%. "While we're not normally supporters of tax increases, increasing the tax on these alcopops, these mixers, that young people are in many cases abusing, if that is going to reduce the abuse of these alcoholic mixers then it's something that we certainly are prepared to support."
How can you go from accepting something as a reasonable preventive health measure to seeing it as a blatant tax grab? When you're desperate, you have no genuine new ideas, your political mortality is so strong you can taste it, and you're still not fully accepting that you've lost power, you'll do it."
Saturday 17 May 2008
Are Costa and Meagher trying to stiff sick and needy in the Clarence Valley?
The Clarence Valley has been waiting for the promised upgrade to Grafton Base Hospital for over a decade now.
The NSW Government had told us on more than one occasion that the money was there and that work was starting soon - then returned to ignoring the health needs of Valley residents.
It took Labor's Janelle Saffin and the 2007 federal election to see another health funding pledge of $18 million.
But the NSW Minister for Health, who has had a departmental master plan before her ever since she took over this portfolio, is yet to supply the Commonwealth with a timetable and schedule of works.
Many in the Valley are beginning to wonder if the Iemma Government is trying to obtain the offered funding without it being tied specifically to a Grafton Hospital upgrade, so that it can plug the gap elsewhere.
Or if it is procrastinating in the hope it will not have to come up with its upgrade funding share for another decade.
Are we to be diddled again?
Journalist and Deputy-Editor of The Daily Examiner, David Bancroft, ran this frontpage comment on Thursday.
WE asked NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher a simple question yesterday: when will work start on the upgrade of the promised operating theatres and emergency department at Grafton Base Hospital?
Her answer was waffle.
She told us that that the Federal Government's announced funding was welcome. Obviously.
She told us that planning had already started. That started more than a decade ago.
She told us that Grafton Base Hospital played an important role in delivering health services. Again, obviuously.
And she told us admissions to the emergency department had increased. Exactly.
What she did not tell us was when work would start and if the State Government would provide additional money needed for the projects to proceed.
We need answers, Ms. Meagher, not platitiudes, and we need them now.
The NSW Government had told us on more than one occasion that the money was there and that work was starting soon - then returned to ignoring the health needs of Valley residents.
It took Labor's Janelle Saffin and the 2007 federal election to see another health funding pledge of $18 million.
But the NSW Minister for Health, who has had a departmental master plan before her ever since she took over this portfolio, is yet to supply the Commonwealth with a timetable and schedule of works.
Many in the Valley are beginning to wonder if the Iemma Government is trying to obtain the offered funding without it being tied specifically to a Grafton Hospital upgrade, so that it can plug the gap elsewhere.
Or if it is procrastinating in the hope it will not have to come up with its upgrade funding share for another decade.
Are we to be diddled again?
Journalist and Deputy-Editor of The Daily Examiner, David Bancroft, ran this frontpage comment on Thursday.
WE asked NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher a simple question yesterday: when will work start on the upgrade of the promised operating theatres and emergency department at Grafton Base Hospital?
Her answer was waffle.
She told us that that the Federal Government's announced funding was welcome. Obviously.
She told us that planning had already started. That started more than a decade ago.
She told us that Grafton Base Hospital played an important role in delivering health services. Again, obviuously.
And she told us admissions to the emergency department had increased. Exactly.
What she did not tell us was when work would start and if the State Government would provide additional money needed for the projects to proceed.
We need answers, Ms. Meagher, not platitiudes, and we need them now.
No wonder John Howard and George Dubbya got along so well
Rumours have never completely died down that former Prime Minister, John Winston Howard's grandfather and father were probably members of a 1930s Australian fascist group which supported Hitler in the early days of his rise to power. In 2004 The Guardian reported on how US President George W. Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power.
"George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy."
All of which goes some way to explaining the image above (which has been doing the email rounds for years) and why Bush was so eager to create another ethnic bogeyman teh Muslim.
Pity Bush didn't recall the talk about his family when he whaled into Barak Obama this week for his supposed willingness to talk with Islamic nations.
Of course this is another thing he has in common with John Winnie - this skewed view of Obama which Howard also displayed last year.
I wonder what sort of WWII memorabilia Howard and Bush would be swapping if they were so inclined?
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