I want VIRGINIA!  NOW!  I want GEORGIA! NOW NOW NOW!

San Diego Wild Animal Park
October 25th, 2008
Reuders

In a move that's sure to send shockwaves through the Republican Party, Swazi, the leader of the seven-member African Elephant herd at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, has thrown her considerable weight behind the campaign of Senator Obama.

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I think Obama can win this election.  I even think he will.  But if he does, it will because we didn't coast to the finish.  It'll be because we continued going door-to-door, working the phones, and pouring all our energy into this election -- all the way through election day.

Why does it matter what we do? As political eggheads, we're well aware that Obama's victory hinges on several key "Bush" states: NV, CO, NM, NC, VA, NC, IN, IA, MO, GA, OH and FL.  All of those states are close enough that the difference in the election will be made by which voters actually show up and vote.

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Feel free to come on over to the 'aholics chat room. 

http://www.lingr.com/room/TPM-aholics

This is not a TPM-sponsored chat; it's just a handful of old TPM hands who enjoy real-time politalking (and talking about other stuff too).  All are welcome.

(I should add that the only real rule of the chat room is that we leave our mud and rivalries at the door.  Courteous discussion is always fun, but real time chatting with a group is not the most effective way to mediate serious disputes.)

Choose you own form.  Free verse, nursury rhyme parodies, limericks, and haikus are all acceptable.

Winner gets... um.... a prize TBD by me.

Here's a sample to get you started:
Scary Sary quite contrary... how does your garden grow? With flirty winks and empty blinks and screaming idjits, all in a row! 

We don't have the budget to acquire more servers, but, for the low low price of $18.95/month, YOU can be a proud graduate of the TPM Anger Management School!

You'll learn the secrets like:
How to deflect trolls
How to ignore excessive stupidity
and
How to find the positive side of TPM server malfunctions

That's right, YOU can learn to do all these things!  You'll be amazed at how simple these techniques are to master once you've learned the basics liking taking a break from your computer once in a while. So CALL NOW!  Our operators are standing by!

If you order in the next 15 minutes, we'll also throw in two more TPM classics:
How to generate attention by being childish
!!AND!!
How to get on the recommended list

All this can be yours three low monthly payments of just $18.95!!!!

Hurry!  Call now!  Our operators are standing by. Just call, toll-free: 1-800-BE-AN-ASS.

In an effort to streamline the TPM whining process, here is a form letter you can use draft your complaints about [INSERT NAME HERE], the new Democratic nominee for the Vice Presidency.

(Please select all that apply.)

[INSERT NAME HERE] is the absolute wrong choice because he/she...

[ ] Is an establishment candidate which doesn't help Obama's outsider cred
[ ] Doesn't have any experience, which is obama's weakness
[ ] Is from the wrong state
[ ] No minority representation 
[ ] Won't capture the white male vote
[ ] Voted for the war
[ ] Voted against the war  
[ ] Voted for FISA
[ ] Voted against FISA
[ ] Is an affront to Hillary Clinton supporters 
[ ] Is an affront to the Netroots
[ ] Does not have enough foreign policy experience
[ ] Does not have enough executive experience
[ ] Is an empty suit
[ ] Is not mean enough
[ ] Is too boring
[ ] Is too interesting and will compete with Obama 
[ ] Is too attractive and will compete with Michelle
[ ] Epitomizes all of the above

I spent this weekend with my "river people" -- immediate family, extended family, and friends-who-might-as-well-be-family.  The people who've known me since I was born and who, slowly, have been bringing their own friends and children into the clan.  There was the baby, daughter of close family friends.  Two sugar-and-spice-and-everything-nice girls who love to run around distributing hugs and demanding piggy-back rides.  A pair of preteen sisters who used to demand piggy-back rides and now just stand back shyly aloof.  Three male cousins, 15, 18, and 24, who seem to have suddenly morphed from endearing be inexplicable children into some creature entirely more nuanced and possibly even less explicable.  A fairly ordinary group, in many respects.  Perhaps with more love, trust, and respect than similar groups -- but, then, perhaps I'm biased.

And there's Sam.  He's ten now, and he sits strapped into his own chair, contemplating the fire or reaching out to grasp at the nearest hand, face, or shirt.  Grab his hands in yours (so he doesn't cling to something else instead) and lean in, sticking your nose right in front of his, and he starts to giggle.  It's a contagious, gleeful sound.  And he'll keep laughing as long as you're playing with him -- bopping your face in and out, making silly noises.

Sam has Angelman syndrome (http://www.angelman.org), a genetic condition characterized by easy laughter and affection.  His parents are amazing: strong, patient, loving.  I don't know how they do it; loving Sam is easy, but raising him must be extremely difficult.  People with his condition develop, at most, a 5-10 word vocabulary.  (Currently, Sam doesn't speak at all.)  I don't know, because I've never asked, what Sam's medical expenses are, or whether the goverment assists in any way with them.  But I wonder: what would Sam's life have been like if he had been born to parents with less personal strength or who didn't have high-paying jobs?  And, furthermore, what responsibility does society hold to people like Sam and his parents?

We're all no more and no less than our own human selves, getting along in the world as well as our abilities allow. The acceptance that Sam's parents demonstrate inspires me to be both more forgiving of my own shortcomings and to (try to) understand the shortcomings of others.  And Sam himself, with his happy giddiness, teaches another rudimentary lesson: spreading joy is worth more than most things in life.  His condition, which seems at first glance to be a encumbrance, has its own advantages, too.

Welcome to your official live party blogging thread.

Congrats, TPM-aholics!  We've made it.  It's not Saturday, July 19th, and the fun is about to begin.

(And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then where have you been for the last month?  Er, I mean, read Genghis' latest post.)

An hour from now, we'll begin our conversation with Don Bivens, DNC chair from Arizona.

So let's get ready to rock, roll, and GOBAMA!

And yes, in case you wondering, even if you won't be able to attend on of the parties, you can support this fine effort -- and the Obama campaign -- by contributing through the  TPM-aholics fundraiser page.

This event is neither sponsored nor supported by Talking Points Memo.

I posted this notice at the bottom of LisB's love-fest post, which will be expiring shortly ... so it occurs to me that, perhaps, it deserves a post of it's own.

Please feel free to drop by the new TPM-aholics chat room anytime.  I can't guarantee the discussion will always be about politics, or even that there will be a discussion... You people are beyond my control.  But so far, topics of conversation have ranged from from NY vs. CA to Ralph Nader (and covered much in between).

This may be a Bad Idea(tm), but I happened to stumble across a free web-based chat app today, so I set up a "TPM-aholics" room. Don't know if we need this sort of thing any more (or ever did), but I figured, "why not try it?"

Anyway, it's a persistent link; you don't have to create an account, you can use whatever name you like, and it's supposed to work with all browsers: http://www.lingr.com/room/TPM-aholics

Enjoy!

Seriously.

We've got food fights, analysis, idealogical discussions, a visit from MonicaL, and a meta-debate about what constitutes trolling and free speech.   It's like coming back to school after a vacation.  There's the slow trickle of  friends returning to the cafeteria, and a few new transfer students peeking in to see what's happening.  Sure, it was great playing in the sun and going to Disneyland, but I missed you guys.   Especially the food fights.

P.S. Happy Bloomsday (which a friend of mine described as "an excuse to drink Guiness at lunch").

Hi all,

Welcome to your Thursday morning brainstorming project.

For those of you who missed the previous posts, there's a group of us here at TPM who have decided to organize a Barack Obama house party fundraiser. (Note: although we'd originally planned for a June 14th event, we've now rescheduled to July 19th.) We've been trying to work with the campaign to arrange for a guest speaker, but at this point it appears that our event is on a much smaller scale then the events they are focused on at the moment.  Therefore, we're exploring other avenues for bringing in interesting speakers. 

So what do you think? 

Is there anyone you'd be particularly interested in hearing from?

Is there anyone you have a connection to whom you'd be willing to contact (or put someone else in touch with)?

If you haven't yet joined the TPM-aholics group on my.barackobama.com and would like to, please do so.  If you would like to host a house party for this event, please contact me or Genghis.  (Really, it's not difficult at all -- and the party can be as small or large as you choose.)

Now, the fun part. 

Here's a list of possible speakers to get the ball rolling.... (Note: Whether we can arrange to work with any of these people is still very much TBD.  So don't get your hopes up to much, but go crazy with the brainstorming anyway!)

Staff...
David Plouffe
David Axelrod
Robert Gibbs
Austan Goolsbee
Chris Hughes (technology)
Jon Favreau (speech writer)
Paul Tewes (field staff)
Mitch Stewart (field staff)
Valerie Jarrett (sr. advisor, insider)

Names...
Tom Daschle
Howard Dean
Caroline Kennedy
Tim Kaine
Janet Napolitano
Gary Hart
Claire McCaskill
John Conyers
Dick Durbin
Geraldine Ferraro
Dick Cheney


This event is neither supported nor endorsed by Talking Points Memo.

I finally figured out what bothered me so much about the alternately dismissive and combative attitudes toward HRC supporters* on this site during the primary: by belittling someone else's argument, you lose an opportunity to understand what really shapes their choices.  It's a bigger question than incivility and effectively winning an argument, which is important but has already been discussed in depth.  It's also about missing an opportunity to really know the "enemy."

As we head into the next phase of this race, there seems to be a movement building that's focused on McCain-hate.  While I fully support efforts to identify and take advantage of McCain's weaknesses, what I'm arguing  right now is that it's also critical to talk about his strengths.  I understand much less about his strengths than I do about his weaknesses, and that frankly scares me. 

If we want to convince people to support Obama, it's necessary to be able to answer the question "why do people actually want to elect this guy?" first.  I'm not saying that we're likely to see McCain supporters show up on this website with a genuine interest in sharing ideas and perspectives; but most of us know plenty of people in our "real" lives who are planning to vote McCain and with whom we'll talk about politics sometime between now and the election.

As the SF election-watch party was winding down last night, I found myself talking with some of the other attendees about McCain and Bush.  And it was really easy to lapse into thinking of both of them as useless tools.  The problem with that discussion, as one voice of wisdom suggested, is that none of us were the people who would have considered voting for McCain or Bush, and to see either them through our own eyes leads to an extraordinarily inaccurate picture of how the rest of the country views them.

As I mentioned above, I don't have any insight -- yet -- into the world of Replican and swing voters -- so please consider this post a request for stories and perspectives from the people in your life who are McCain supporters or potential McCain supporters.   LisB has written a couple excellent, informative posts on her family's perspective -- so please, be inspired by her example and tell us about your experiences!

*The same goes for the dissmissive and combative attitudes toward Obama supporters, though I found that to be less of a problem, simply on numerical grounds. .

Please ignore.

Also might as well test the blog post, to:

CaliforniaPaige's Test to See If Blog Post Tittles Support HTML Entities

Hi all,

It's been a while since the last post about our TPM-aholics group over at my.barackobama.com, so I hope you'll forgive this intrusion into your regularly-scheduled political debate. (By the way, if you haven't joined the group and would like to, you may do so here:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/TPM-aholicsSupportGroup.)

Date Update
We've rescheduled the TPM-aholics fundraiser (see this thread for more information) to July 19th, 2008.  If you'd like to host some friends for this worthy event, contact Genghis or myself.  Also, we've run into some difficulties in coordinating our efforts with the campaign, so if you have any connections which might be of use, let us know.

Tomorrow: San Francisco & New York Election-Watching Parties
Those of you in the San Francisco and New York areas: now you don't need to watch the primary results all alone!  This is the last primary of the season, so it's your last chance to take in some beverages and enjoy the company of your fellow TPM-aholics while glued to the TV.  Also, Bay Area people: Genghis is in San Francisco and will be joining us.  And we really don't want him to head to back to New York with the impression that the Bay Area is less fun.  So please, come by!

Location

Dewey's Flatiron Bar & Grill, 210 5th Ave. (x 25th & 26th St. ), New York , NY

Time

7:00 PM

Host

AM et al.

Special

$4 domestic drafts and $5 well drinks

RSVP

http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4sfs

 

Location

Club Waziema, 543 Divisadero St, San Francisco, CA

Time

6:00 PM

Host

CaliforniaPaige

Special

Genghis

RSVP

http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4sr2

The Fine Print
Please recommend so that this thread stays makes the recommended list.

This event is not supported or endorsed by Talking Points Memo.