photo by psd

So yeah I was late on the Blog Action Day tip, due to some technical difficulties, but poverty’s an ongoing problem, so on with the show.

Since John Edwards dropped out of the presidential race last spring, the national conversation as to how we will deal with poverty as a nation has basically fallen by the wayside.

Sure, among all the talk about our economic crisis, we hear about the middle class, the top 1 percent of earners, tax cuts, tax breaks, capital gains taxes, and so on. But in the 360 minutes of presidential debates between Barack Obama or John Mccain, and in the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, the words “poverty” or “poor” were not uttered once (I’m serious, go check). “Working class” gets an utter every once in a while, and “low income” just one time. And I’m almost positive those words won’t be uttered tonight, either.

So, I’m urging us to all think about how poverty affects the way we think about our class system, and how our class system is morphing in the next administration, Obama or McCain. Many of us are living paycheck-to-paycheck, a layoff or a medical emergency away from being bankrupt. With the way that our economy is, we can’t afford not to lend a helping hand, we can’t afford not to vote, and we can’t afford to be apathetic.

Wanna help? Awesome. Here’s a few places to get you started:

Blog Action Day:
Mercy Corp
Business Fights Poverty
Millennium Promise
End Poverty by 2015

http://www.debates.org/pages/debtrans.html

Here’s Rachel on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, on Pat Buchanan, the conundrum that is Congress, and the bailout… I swear sometimes, I just want to cuddle her brain. (For more reasons than one) I think Rachel Maddow is the only woman who can sit next to Marky Mark for 10 minutes and not get her panties in a Funky Bunch *rim shot*.

Photo by Richard McFarland

So that whole big ridiculous Troopergate Investigation? Turns out Palin “abused her power as governor of Alaska” but did not break the law. Though, I thought abuse of public office was breaking the law, but whatever…

Firstly, if you’re not aware, basically Palin attempted to get her brother in law fired after he became a douchebag to her sister. When his boss wouldn’t budge, she fired him.*

The 263-page report concludes that Palin “had herself exerted pressure to get Trooper Michael Wooten dismissed, as well as allowed her husband and subordinates to press for his firing, largely as a result of his temperament and past disciplinary problems” says the New York Times. The lead investigator says Sarah Palin’s permission for Todd Palin to pressure police to fire Wooten was wrong — she also let him abuse the office of the governor by allowing him access to state employees, to persist in getting the trooper fired.  However, she’s been cleared for firing Public Safety Officer Walter Monegan (the trooper’s boss).

Here’s a quote from a statement she made on the matter:

“I’m thankful that the report has shown that, that there was no illegal or unethical activity there in my choice to replace our commissioner, so now we look forward to working with the personnel board that the entity that is charged with looking into any activity of a Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, or an Attorney General,” Palin said. “A partisan kind of process that had been undertaken by some of the legislators that haven’t been real happy with anything that I’ve done along the way as Governor, that process now is over with that finding that I haven’t done unlawful in replacing a commissioner, now it’s up to the personnel board.”

Wait, no “unethical activity?” What part of “abuse of power” doesn’t this woman understand?! I would say abusing the office of the governor, and letting your husband meddle around and do your dirty work isn’t ethical. Lack of ethics may not land you in jail, but they sure have some social consequences. At least Monegan is OK with the end result:

“I feel vindicated,” Monegan said. “It sounds like they’ve validated my belief and opinions. And that tells me I’m not totally out in left field.”

It’s not clear what could go down in Palin’s future — maybe a legislative sensure, but that seems unlikely. How will this help or hurt the McCain-Palin presidential campaign? We’ll see in the coming days…

*Note: I’ll be honest, if my either of my sisters’ future husbands was a douchebag and put either of them through a brutal divorce, I would certainly consider trying to make his life hell, too. And I’d take anyone down who wasn’t on my side. I’m sure they would do the same for me. But the three of us aren’t governors, or public figures… so yeah.

Thousands of voters in at least 6 swing states have been blocked from registering to vote, or even removed from the voter rolls. According to the NYT, Michigan and Colorado are removing people from the rolls within 90 days of the election, which is illegal unless the person died, have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote (so, convicted or committed).

Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, and Ohio are using Social Security info to verify voter applications. Alabama, and Georgia are using Social Security records to screen registration applications. Louisiana has removed thousands of voters after the federal deadline.

Although much attention this year has been focused on the millions of new voters added to the rolls by the by the candidacy of Barack Obama, there has been far less notice given to the number of voters being dropped from those same rolls.

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and remove the names of voters who should no longer be listed; but for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.

According to fivethirtyeight, here are the numbers on the swingstates as of today (their likelihood of leaning toward either candidate):

Ohio (20 EC votes): 76% Obama

Nevada (5 EC votes): 73% Obama

Colorado (9 EC votes): 86% Obama

Florida (27 EC Votes):71% Obama

Indiana (11 EC Votes): 59% Obama

North Carolina (15 EC votes): 64% Obama

Missouri (11 EC Votes): 58% Obama

via Rod 2.0

Photo by Transplanted Mountaineer

I always wondered how voters interpret the way that Barack Obama properly pronounces certain words (and I’m not only talking about nuclear). One of my personal pet peeves is that we don’t pronounce the names of countries properly, and we’ve had a president who really doesn’t care too much to figure it out. We “Americanize” (also known as “orally mutilate”) the way we say the names of countries like Puerto Rico, or names of public figures like Dmitry Medvedev or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which, if you think about it, aren’t really that hard to say.

But then again, I grew up in New York City, and half of my friends had foreign names because many of them were first and second generation immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Turkey, and so on. We (meaning square American kids with boring names like Michelle) had to pronounce our friends’ names (cool names with Z’s like Rezzan and Zuhair) properly because we respect them, and who they are. We didn’t make up dumb/obvious nicknames because we didn’t care to learn how to correctly pronounce their names.

So why is it so ostentatious that Obama pronounces things properly? He says “Pakistan” with the soft “a,” like “Pohk-eh-stahn.” The National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez writes, “[N]o one in flyover country says Pock-i-stahn. It’s annoying.” Well just because a massive block of people do something, doesn’t mean it’s right. A lot of people confuse the words “their,” “there” and “they’re.” Just because so many people do it, doesn’t mean it’s right.

Have they really run out of ways to attack Obama, other than screaming “kill him” and calling him “that one“? Is the right really discouraged that we’ll likely elect a man who values intellectualism? I’ll tell you, if we do end up electing Obama, it will mean to our allies and “those liberal elites” that this country doesn’t mind the nerd over the quarterback… because nerds are hot, and QBs just end up with brain damage by the time they’re 30.

Photo by Marcn

Senator Hillary Clinton has raised more than $8 million for the Obama campaign since she dropped out of the presidential race in June. Just over the weekend she brought in $1.5 million at events in Texas and California for Obama and a few congressional candidates.

She’s headlining fundraising events in cities across the country to raise some more cash. She’s also trying to help more women get in on the Senate. According to USAToday:

On Friday, she issued an e-mail fundraising appeal for Louisiana incumbent Mary Landrieu and challengers Kay Hagan, who is locked in a tight battle against Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, and former New Hampshire governor Jeanne Shaheen, who is engaged in a repeat of her close 2002 race with GOP Sen. John Sununu.