Are You Waiting for Your Invitation?

December 21, 2008

Inside a Gritty Brooklyn Factory, Potomac Fever
By CAROLINE H. DWORIN
ON Thursday, Dec. 11, Jim Donnelly got the call at his office on Jay Street in Dumbo for the biggest job he had ever had. Emmett Beliveau, the executive director of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, told him that Precise Continental, Mr. Donnelly’s 26-year-old printing company, had won the bid to produce one million gold-and-black engraved invitations for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.
Mr. Donnelly gathered his staff for the announcement, and a cheer went up. “They were ecstatic,” he said. “They wanted to be a part of history.”
To meet the Jan. 2 deadline, Mr. Donnelly’s 65 employees have to work around the clock. But no one was complaining, Mr. Donnelly said, and he put out dozens of calls for rush orders of paper, ink and the like.
According to Mr. Donnelly, Precise Continental was selected over rival printers because it is a union company, it uses recycled paper and it is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which promotes responsible forest management. Although Clark Stevens, a spokesman for the inaugural committee, would not confirm that those factors were decisive, he did say, “These are issues that President-elect Obama campaigned on and that have concerned him throughout his career.”
Several days after the phone call, the snow fell heavily on the cobblestones in Dumbo, and trains rattled over the Manhattan Bridge. Inside Precise Continental, there was an almost poetic combination of mechanical repetition and human industry, all on an enormous ink-stained wooden floor. It could have been the 1800s.
The first order arrived by truck on Monday, from Neenah Paper, a Wisconsin company. Ink came on Tuesday from BuzzInk, in Chicago.
With clean hands, the workers inspected each invitation at each step in the process, and fed great machines moving back and forth. “This gentleman here can feed by hand as good as the automatic press can,” said Mr. Donnelly of a man he called Bobby, who was seated in front of a massive instrument moving sheets of paper from his left hand to his right.
Precise Continental prints stationery and specialty items, like certificates for Fordham’s million-dollar donors and invitations to an Emmy after-party sponsored by TV Guide. As for the inaugural invitations, they are being printed on recycled paper called Classic Crest (“It’s a distinguished cream color,” said Bernie Hennessy, area sales director at Neenah Paper), with an inaugural seal at the top in gold. The curling black script, modified versions of Shelley Allegro and Kuenstler typefaces, begins, “The Presidential Inaugural Committee requests the honor of your presence. ...”
Mr. Donnelly’s plant will hum 20 hours a day, with the workers in two shifts, to complete the project. “Our goal is to get as much done before Christmas Eve,” Mr. Donnelly said, “so they don’t have to work the day after Christmas.” He would not say how much the invitation project will cost.
A small, dark-haired, steady-handed man named Augusto Lovato, who speaks more Spanish than English, hunched over a drawing board in a quieter room off the main floor, a dusty lamp nearby. Peering though an old magnifying glass at a copper plate, he expertly cleaned the serifs and curls.
“This is a real economy,” Mr. Donnelly said of the printing business. “This is not that bogus economy of Wall Street. This country used to manufacture things.”
Mr. Donnelly does not believe he will be asked to attend the inauguration. Of course, he has not finished printing the invitations.

Keeping Up With Xanthe Hilton

A wonderful follow-up on Greencastle Antrim college member Xanthe Hilton's experiences as an Obama volunteer. Reprinted from the Colby Sawyer Current:

Changing the World through Political Activism
By Amber Cronin '11
It's the day before the New Hampshire Primary, and people are clapping, screaming and cheering as if anticipating the arrival of a rock star. In the midst of the excitement, a college student makes her way through the crowd, pushing toward the rail. When she makes it, she can finally see what everyone is searching for: a tall, thin African-American man running for president of the United States. Sophomore Xanthe Hilton squirms as she waits for Barack Obama to make his way down the line to shake her hand.
“How's it going, nice to see you again,” he says when he finally reaches her.
“I'm voting for you tomorrow,” Hilton responds. It is her third meeting with the future president.
Hilton, a native of south central Pennsylvania, became involved with politics during her high school years. “I took a government class senior year,” she said. “When I told my professor I was going to college in New Hampshire, he said, 'You should get involved with the political scene because their primaries are first, and next year is an election year.'” Hilton took those words to heart and became a full-time volunteer for the Obama campaign.
“When I got here the only name that really caught my attention was Barack Obama's, and instantly the campaign hopped on me and asked if I wanted to get involved,” said Hilton. She told the campaign that she would volunteer, but on a limited basis. Her plan did not exactly work out the way she expected. After meeting Obama two or three times--she has now met the future resident five times total--she found herself wanting more involvement with his campaign.
A Key Player in Pivotal States
During primary season, along with her schoolwork and responsibilities on campus that include her role as a resident assistant (RA), a Student Government Association (SGA) senator, student representative to three different committees, and involvement in several clubs, Hilton served as a full-time volunteer doing outreach programs. After the primary season ended in the Northeast, she became a sort of cheerleader on campus for the Obama campaign. Over the summer, however, it was a different story.
Hilton moved to Toledo, Ohio, to work as a fellow, organizing campaign fundamentals and activities to engage the community and build the movement. The city where Hilton worked and the county that surrounds it ultimately voted Democrat after 40 years of voting Republican.
The Obama campaign office in Toledo, Ohio, where Xanthe Hilton worked in the summer of 2008.
“On a personal level the program allowed for me to understand what a small difference I, one person, can make, she said. “Working as an Obama fellow gave me the confidence that I can change the world. I already have.”
Once the fellows training was completed, she moved on to other duties. “We had to register voters; it was critical to get people registered to vote and then track those people, and call them on Election Day to make sure they could vote,” she said.
“I found that people were a little nervous about going out and asking other people how they are planning to vote, but what people were interested in was opening up their homes to a staffer and having someone live with them or bring in lasagna once a week until Election Day,” she said. “We had one woman who catered our office every week for the entire time I was in Ohio, which was amazing.”
Ramping Up for the Final Stretch
After completing her volunteer work in Ohio, Hilton made the long trip back to New London. “I know a lot of people who joined on as paid staff for the election, but because of commitments here at school I couldn't do that,” she said. “But I made it a month-long journey to drive back to school. I stopped at home for a bit, I volunteered in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and volunteered in New Hampshire for two weeks before school started.”
Her work in politics was far from over upon her return, however. Back in New Hampshire, Hilton began working as an organizer on campus and as unpaid staff for the New Hampshire Democratic Party. Hilton, along with several other Colby-Sawyer students, spent the evening of Nov. 4 in Wheeler Hall anxiously awaiting the declaration of the next president. When the announcement came in, she breathed a sigh of relief.
“It was kind of euphoric for me. It really felt like I had worked for the past 14 months to get this man elected and it finally happened,” she said.
Hilton spent her summer volunteering for a cause she really believes in. What will she remember the most? Not how all the work she did paid off in the end, but the people she met along the way. “A major part of [the Obama campaign] was telling your story, and telling his or her story. I listened to all those stories and carried them with me with everything that I did.”
One thing Hilton will always remember is the work that people did to get people involved in the campaign, gathering supporters and registering voters. She recalls that while they were registering people to vote, one of her friends called a woman and asked her if she was interested in registering. It was the last day to register, and she wanted to vote, but she had just had a baby and was still in the hospital. Within half an hour, the new mother was registered to vote.
“That shaped this woman's life; she had a role in choosing who was going to run her country and who was going to shape her new baby's life,” said Hilton. “That's what I think is great about politics, that such a small act, like giving up your life for six weeks, can change the world.”
With her busy schedule as an RA in Burpee Hall, an SGA senator, a campus organizer and a laundry list of other activities, Hilton harbors her own political ambitions and seems to be well on her way to playing an important role in the future of this country. “I plan on, if circumstances need be, fulfilling that position and running for office.”

Debunking The Myth of the $70 per hour autoworker

by Johnathan Cohn

If you've been following the auto industry's crisis, then you've probably read or heard a lot about overpaid American autoworkers -- in particular, the fact that the average hourly employee of the Big Three makes $70 per hour.

That's an awful lot of money. Seventy dollars an hour in wages works out to almost $150,000 a year in gross income, if you assume a 40-hour work week. Is it any wonder the Big Three are in trouble? And with auto workers making so much, why should taxpayers--many of whom make far less -- finance a plan to bail them out?

Well, here's one reason: The figure is wildly misleading.
Let's start with the fact that it's not $70 per hour in wages. According to Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automative Research -- who was my primary source for the figures you are about to read -- average wages for workers at Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors were just $28 per hour as of 2007. That works out to a little less than $60,000 a year in gross income -- hardly outrageous, particularly when you consider the physical demands of automobile assembly work and the skills most workers must acquire over the course of their careers.

More important, and contrary to what you may have heard, the wages aren't that much bigger than what Honda, Toyota, and other foreign manufacturers pay employees in their U.S. factories. While we can't be sure precisely how much those workers make, because the companies don't make the information public, the best estimates suggests the corresponding 2007 figure for these "transplants" -- as the foreign-owned factories are known -- was somewhere between $20 and $26 per hour, and most likely around $24 or $25. That would put average worker's annual salary at $52,000 a year.

So the "wage gap," per se, has been a lot smaller than you've heard. And this is no accident. If the transplants paid their employees far less than what the Big Three pay their unionized workers, the United Auto Workers would have a much better shot of organizing the transplants' factories. Those factories remain non-unionized and management very much wants to keep it that way.

But then what's the source of that $70 hourly figure? It didn't come out of thin air. Analysts came up with it by including the cost of all employer-provided benefits -- namely, health insurance and pensions -- and then dividing by the number of workers. The result, they found, was that benefits for Big Three cost about $42 per hour, per employee. Add that to the wages -- again, $28 per hour -- and you get the $70 figure. Voila.

Except ... notice something weird about this calculation? It's not as if each active worker is getting health benefits and pensions worth $42 per hour. That would come to nearly twice his or her wages. (Talk about gold-plated coverage!) Instead, each active worker is getting benefits equal only to a fraction of that -- probably around $10 per hour, according to estimates from the International Motor Vehicle Program. The number only gets to $70 an hour if you include the cost of benefits for retirees -- in other words, the cost of benefits for other people. One of the few people to grasp this was Portfolio.com's Felix Salmon. As he noted recently, the claim that workers are getting $70 an hour in compensation is just "not true."

Of course, the cost of benefits for those retirees -- you may have heard people refer to them as "legacy costs" -- do represent an extra cost burden that only the Big Three shoulder. And, yes, it makes it difficult for the Big Three to compete with foreign-owned automakers that don't have to pay the same costs. But don't forget why those costs are so high. While the transplants don't offer the same kind of benefits that the Big Three do, the main reason for their present cost advantage is that they just don't have many retirees.

The first foreign-owned plants didn't start up here until the 1980s; many of the existing ones came well after that. As of a year ago, Toyota's entire U.S. operation had less than 1,000 retirees. Compare that to a company like General Motors, which has been around for more than a century and which supports literally hundreds of thousands of former workers and spouses. As you might expect, many of these have the sorts of advanced medical problems you expect from people to develop in old age. And, it should go without saying, those conditions cost a ton of money to treat. To be sure, we've known about these demographics for a while. Management and labor in Detroit should have figured out a solution it long ago. But while the Big Three were late in addressing this problem, they did address it eventually.

Notice how, in this article, I've constantly referred to 2007 figures? There's a good reason. In 2007, the Big Three signed a breakthrough contract with the UAW designed, once and for all, to eliminate the compensation gap between domestic and foreign automakers in the U.S.
The agreement sought to do so, first, by creating a private trust for financing future retiree benefits -- effectively removing that burden from the companies' books. The auto companies agreed to deposit start-up money in the fund; after that, however, it would be up to the unions to manage the money. And it was widely understood that, given the realities of investment returns and health care economics, over time retiree health benefits would likely become less generous.

In addition, management and labor agreed to change health benefits for all workers, active or retired, so that the coverage looked more like the policies most people have today, complete with co-payments and deductibles. The new UAW agreement also changed the salary structure, by creating a two-tiered wage system. Under this new arrangement, the salary scale for newly hired workers would be lower than the salary scale for existing workers.

One can debate the propriety and wisdom of these steps; two-tiered wage structures, in particular, raise various ethical concerns. But one thing is certain: It was a radical change that promised to make Detroit far more competitive. If carried out as planned, by 2010 -- the final year of this existing contract -- total compensation for the average UAW worker would actually be less than total compensation for the average non-unionized worker at a transplant factory. The only problem is that it will be several years before these gains show up on the bottom line -- years the industry probably won't have if it doesn't get financial assistance from the government.
Make no mistake: The argument over a proposed rescue package is complicated, in no small part because over the years both management and labor made some truly awful decisions while postponing the inevitable reckoning with economic reality. And even if the government does provide money, it's a tough call whether restructuring should proceed with or without a formal bankruptcy filing. Either way, yet more downsizing is inevitable.

But the next time you hear somebody say the unions have to make serious salary and benefit concessions, keep in mind that they already have -- enough to keep the companies competitive, if only they can survive this crisis.
Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor at The New Republic, where this article first appeared on Nov. 21, 2008. Used with permission.
© 2008 The New Republic.

President Elect Obama's Weekly Address and More

http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/your_weekly_address_from_the_president_elect/

Lt. Governor Catherine Baker Knoll Dies

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Catherine Baker Knoll, who at age 72 became the first woman to be elected as Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor, died Wednesday. She was 78. Franklin County Democrats knew Knoll as a person willing to come and speak at our dinners and picnics. She loved meeting people throughout the state.

Gov. Ed Rendell said in a statement:
"Today we mourn the passing of one of the strongest, most dedicated public servants in Pennsylvania's history," Rendell said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with Catherine's family. She will be deeply missed."

.

VICTORY!!!!!

It's hard to believe but victory has come to the Democratic Party under the leadership of our president elect Barack Obama. Back in the District of Columbia the streets were filled with revelers who left the restaurants and bars on the new U Street NW, and danced their way up to Pennsylvania Avenue and the White House. The White House police were smiling and accepting, and let the celebration continue. The next day the Washington Post had to print 250,000 more copies of the paper's election special and people lined up for hours in CVS and the Giant food stores to get their copies. It was all quite wonderful. African American families in particular paid homage to the parents and grandparents who would have loved the moment. But all people are exuberant in their gratitude. We in Greencastle are grateful for a smooth election; for the long lines at Antrim 5 (even if they were majority Republican); for the many, many volunteers who worked on the campaign. We are also saddened that Tony Barr and Bruce Tushingham failed to capture the prize they so richly deserved. Now we must look ahead. We will be meeting in 2008 on November 10 and again on December 8. We will in the Greencastle Square during the Heritage Holiday celebration. The work goes on.

Obama Wins in Weekly Reader Poll

Last update: 5:00 a.m. EDT Oct. 29, 2008
PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y., Oct 29, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- America's most trusted and accurate student survey has predicted the winner in 12 of the past 13 elections.
Just days before Americans choose our next president, voting has concluded in the Weekly Reader Student Presidential Election Poll. And the nation's students resoundingly say that Barack Obama will be the country's next leader. In the 14th Weekly Reader election survey, with more than 125,000 votes cast from kindergarten through 12th grade, the result was Obama 54.7% and John McCain 42.9% (with "other" candidates receiving 2.5% of the student vote). The Obama victory in the classroom electoral vote was even more resounding: The Democrat won 33 states and the District of Columbia, garnering 420 electoral votes, while McCain took 17 states and 118 electoral votes.

For the past 52 years, the results of the Weekly Reader poll have been consistently on target, with the student vote correctly predicting the next president in 12 out of 13 elections. (The only time the kids were wrong was 1992, when they chose George H.W. Bush over Bill Clinton.) This year, as in 2000 and 2004, the student election was conducted in conjunction with noted polling organization Zogby International.

Below are more thought-provoking, and perhaps prescient, results from the Weekly Reader Student Presidential Election Poll: -- While the election results may appear one-sided, they actually were extraordinarily close in many places. In three states, less than a tenth
of a percentage point separated the winning ticket from the losing one.
Iowa and Missouri were the states where Obama barely squeaked by, while
in North Dakota, McCain won by the same slim margin.
-- Most, but not all, swing states went to Obama. The Democrat took
Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and Virginia. McCain won Minnesota and New Hampshire, each
by a surprisingly wide 8 points, as well as North Carolina in a 4.6%
victory over Obama.
-- McCain took Republican strongholds Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky,
Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming. Obama
romped in the deep blue states of California, Illinois, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Washington, and the District of
Columbia.
-- The Democratic candidate had a few startling triumphs -- such as
sweeping the vote in the Republican slate's two home states of
Alaska and Arizona, registering a big win in Georgia, receiving 82% of
the student vote in Nevada, gaining a 34-point win in Mississippi, and
logging a 10% victory over McCain in George W. Bush's home state of
Texas.
-- Obama was the victor in every grade -- except grade 10, which chose
McCain. The results were the tightest in the 11th grade, where Obama
slid by with a 1.5% victory, followed by second grade, where Obama won
by a margin of 1.8%. The widest spread appeared in the ninth grade,
where Obama's gigantic 85.6% beat McCain's 12.4% -- a whopping
73.2% margin!

"Historically, our poll has been an amazing indicator of the presidential race's outcome, so we're all waiting with great anticipation to see what happens on Election Day," said Neal Goff, President of Weekly Reader. "Throughout the past few months, we've delivered cutting-edge multimedia election materials directly to schools so that students could cast an informed vote. We're excited to have given kids this important forum to express their opinions about who should be the next president."

Barack Makes Calls in Missouri

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGraCrU_mR8

Pennsylvania Republicans Send out Smear

The Pennsylvania Republican Party is mailing a vile leaflet to independent voters attempting to link Barack Obama to Professor William Ayers. Smears like this are often spread as part of a broader strategy to scare people who aren't very familiar with Barack by spreading false information.

Here’s the truth: the smear associating Barack to Ayers is “phony,” “tenuous,“ – even “exaggerated at best if not outright false.” They have served together on the boards of local charities, but do not know each other well. Ayers is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Barack has publicly denounced the acts Ayers committed in the 1960’s (when Barack was only 8 years old). The leaflet manages to skip over 25 years of time and then associate the Obama of the 90's with the Ayers of the sixties.

You can get more details and help spread the truth about these shameful attacks:
http://my.barackobama.com/AyersSmear Tell your neighbors if they ask.

Obama Rally Draws 100,000 in St. Louis

October 18, 2008, 1:48 pm
Amy Chozick reports on the presidential race from St. Louis.
Barack Obama attracted 100,000 people at a Saturday rally here, his biggest crowd ever at a U.S. event.
The crowd assembled under the Gateway Arch on a sunny Saturday afternoon to hear Obama speak about taxes and slam the Republicans on economic issues.
Lt. Samuel Dotson of the St. Louis Police Department confirmed the number of attendees piled into the grassy lawn by the Mississippi River.
To be sure, big crowds don’t always signal a big turnout on Election Day. But Obama’s ability to draw his largest audience yet in a typically red state that just weeks ago looked out of reach, could signal a changing electoral map.
For months Missouri polls put Obama as much as ten percentage points behind Republican John McCain. It was widely believed that McCain’s pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate would have won over the state’s conservatives and boosted his chances there. So far, that hasn’t happened.
A Rasmussen poll released on Friday shows Obama leading in Missouri 52% to 46% for McCain.
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill had harsh words for Palin when she introduced Obama on Saturday. Referring to comments Palin made earlier this week in North Carolina about “pro-America” states, McCaskill said “We have reached a new low in America politics when a candidate dares to say that one part of America is pro-America and another part is anti-America.”
She also took a dig at McCain for selecting a vice presidential nominee with limited experience. “One [candidate] picked one of the strongest candidates for vice president he could’ve picked in the United States and well, the other didn’t.”
Recognizing that big rallies don’t always result in cast ballots, the Obama campaign has dispatched thousands of field organizers and volunteers to Missouri to knock on doors in a statewide get out the vote effort.

Interested in Polls?

Here's a web site that will help you monitor the Presidential and Congressional polls in every possible way: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters

Here's a wonderful story about a kind deed that Barack did many years ago and has brought him support.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/5/183340/309/352/621029

Ralph Stanley Endorses Obama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUOfaIyv4Bs

A New Kind of Patriotism

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08friedman.html?em

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman analyzes Palin's statement about taxes.

NOW is the time

How important is this election to you and your family? Will you knock on doors? Write a letter? Phone potential voters? Staff a campaign office?

Not everyone can do everything. But everyone can do something! Go to my.Obama.com to sign up for a telephone list. Call Tim Diehl, (717) 222-7745 or 965-5888 for an assignment. We need to contact voters to make sure they turn out to vote. Can you telephone from home? Can you staff a polling place -- pass out literature and/or watch the polls.

If you can watch the polls on election day we need to get you certified with the Board of Elections so please let us know by adding a comment or writing to us on the Greencastle Democrats EMail list.

Huge Rally of Alaskans Against Palin

This is too good to pass up. My favorite is the sign that says "McCain and
Palin, Unstable and Unable". This event was started by two women in Alaska who were tired of the Palin hype. They were helped when a rightwing radio announcer denounced them. It really brought out the supporters.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/14/103042/902/965/597033

Letter from a DC Democrat

"So now the Republican Party is trying to use Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to attack Sen. Barack Obama ["Obama's Family Night Out," front page, Aug. 26]. In January, my husband and I walked the snowy streets of New Hampshire for Ms. Clinton and came down the mountain at the end of primary day crying and cheering as she won her remarkable, unexpected victory. We walked miles in Pennsylvania and Ohio on her behalf, donated to her campaign, and urged friends and relatives all over the country to vote for her.

But we are now ready, willing and able to support enthusiastically Mr. Obama, who, like Ms. Clinton, stands for the things we care about. We are also thrilled with his choice for vice president, Sen. Joseph R. Biden. What a great team."

LORETTA NEUMANN *
Washington
*(Editors Note: Loretta is a good friend and neigborhood leader. RJ)

You NEED an Obama Windsock

Local Democrats are hand crafting some beautiful windsocks that are both patriotic and Democratic...take a look at their wonderful website. http://www.heritagepatrioticflags.com/

Make Obama a Member of Your Family

Everyone has a refrigerator filled with family pictures. Here's a suggestion from one of our Greencastle Antrim Democrats that makes good sense.

"Yesterday I got an email from a friend who had put Barack's photo on her refrigerator. Her son, who was visiting from California, said it looked like Barack was part of the family now. Last night I cut out a photo of Barack, Michelle, and their girls from a campaign brochure, and put it on our refrigerator. Since then, I've thought this would be a great thing to get started. Perhaps have groups or event tables to cut out photos, put them on magnetic backings, ready to go on everyone's refrigerators. You'd be more likely to vote for someone you consider a part of your family, someone you look at every day as you open the refrigerator."

Great idea for our first September meeting. Start collecting pictures of Obama and family and we'll put them on magnets.

Meet Barack Obama--an AFL-CIO website

The AFL-CIO website has good information on Barack Obama The organization is also debunking rumors -- many of which we're sure you've heard from your neighbors.

1)Does Obama wear a flag pin on his lapel?
Yes, but not always. Like many presidential candidates, sometimes he wears a flag pin, sometimes he wears a breast cancer awareness pin, sometimes he wears his U.S. Senate membership pin and other times he wears no pin at all. (Rutenberg, Jim and Zeleny, Jeff. “The Politics of the Lapel, When It Comes to Obama,” The New York Times, 5/15/08)

2) Is Obama a Christian?
Yes. He is a committed Christian. In 1985, he began working as a community organizer with a Christian church-based group seeking to improve the living conditions in poor Chicago neighborhoods. (Pulliam, Sarah and Olsen, Ted. “Q&A: Barack Obama,” Christianity Today, 1/23/08)

3) Was Obama sworn in on a Bible?
Yes. Barack Obama took the oath of office on his personal family Bible. (It was U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison from Minnesota who was sworn in on the Quran.) (Fiore, Faye. “He’s the Hill’s King for a Day, but Senate Has Other Plans,” Los Angeles Times, 1/5/05)

4) Was Obama born in America?
Yes. Barack Obama’s birth certificate shows he was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m. (Malcolm, Andrew. “Barack Obama’s Birth Certificate Revealed Here,” LATimes.com, 6/16/08)

5) Does Obama place his hand over his heart when he says the pledge of allegiance?
Yes. Barack Obama always places his hand over his heart during the pledge of allegiance. (Dobbs, Michael. “Obama Nabbed by the Patriot Police,” WashingtonPost.com, 11/2/07)
Now, with those rumors out of the way, let’s get back to what matters. Barack Obama will work for working families. Find out more at http://www.meetobama08.org/.

Unions Signing on to Single Payer Legislation

More and more unions are supporting the bill in Congress that calls for single payer. Two central labor councils, in New York and Pennsylvania, have endorsed HR676single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

In York, Pennsylvania, the York-Adams County Central Labor Council has
endorsed HR 676, reports Council President Clark Ruppert of IAMAW #1403.
Ruppert said: “Delegates have approved the resolution supporting a single
payer health care plan for all Americans because they have all seen that
the current health care coverage is not affordable and is not working for
the American workers, and it is not working for our employers either. It
is one more unfair burden on the worker and the employers who are
competing with foreign business.”

You can celebrate Medicare's Birthday by learning more about the health care legislation pending in the Pennsylvania legislature. http://www.healthcare4allpa.org/

Check Out Tony Barr's TV Commercials

Tony Barr has posted two commercials on YouTube that you will enjoy seeing. Pass them on to others. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqWD529G6j8 Tony needs our help. You can access his website and from there make a contribution. Please help!

You Saw Her on the News Hour

McCain economics advisor, Nancy Pfotenhauer, has appeared several times on the PBS News Hour. Her points were straight out of the conservative playbook. But if you want to know more about her check out this site on the internet: http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/06/28/dirty-nancy-pfotenhauer/

Obama Meets With The Troops

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1icHG0x0Am8

View this video and watch our candidate sink a terrific three pointer

New York Times Article on Al Gore's Energy Crisis Speech

WASHINGTON | July 18, 2008
Click on this link:Gore Urges Change to Dodge an Energy Crisis
By JOHN M. BRODER
Al Gore said the goal of using only electricity produced by renewable energy in 10 years was achievable and necessary for national security.