As Darraugh Murphy said, We ARE the ones no one was expecting!
Riverdaughter articulated the idea well with her inaugural article in June:
http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2008/06/02/monday-puma-power/
If accomplishments and events are markers for our life, it seems like this weekend is a good time to put a few together in one list.
Puma PAC and coalition members have assembled in Denver. Activities and links to other groups can be found on the I Own My Vote, Just Say No Deal, Puma Pac, and The Denver Group websites. Offices are set up, and media in the ready, on site bloggers are active NOW. The organization of these groups, assembled since June, is testament to real grassroots, and not the Obama AstroTurf to which we have been subjected the last several months.
Clinton suspended her campaign (Not conceded) and began supporting BO. We will soon know, what she intends to do. However, we must guess she will concede. An agreement, of unknown parameters, was made with the Obama folks to place her name on the roll call. However, 300 signatures and more from delegates, were gathered seperately to ensure that her name could be placed on the nominating roll call list; she only need sign it within the proper time frame.
Caucuses, once a symbol of small town democracy, are in fact anti-American and gameable.
http://grassrootsnewsucanuse.blogspot.com/2008/08/all-votes-arent-equal-texas-credentials.html
Heidi LI has memorialized events in her blog relating to delegate and convention shenanigans. We have witnessed caucus abuse and voter fraud, delegate theft, delegate numbers manipulation, voter disenfranchisement. There is no DNC plan to change above for next election in 2012. Lynette Long’s framework compendium certainly we be the start of further scrutiny, and drive for change:
http://www.lynettelong.com/CAUCUSFRAUD/
In some states the pledged delegates are required by law to vote for whom they were selected. Therefore disciplining or removing delegates who refuse to vote for Obama, is asking those delegates to do something illegal. Roll Call convention vote procedures are identified:
http://heidilipotpourri.blogspot.com/2008/08/stated-procedures-for-roll-call-vote-at.html
The loss of Gwatney has probably undermined further the HRC delegate count. The tragic loss of Tubbs Jones surely did, and may also change Ohio’s future, the house Ethics Committee, and, unless Boxer steps forward, the Ohio voter fraud issues, begun in 2005.
Hillary Clinton is still in debt at the end of July, even though it’s clear money was donated. Unless something huge happens in the next few days, she’s probably stuck with it. It is important therefore, if you cannot donate to her presidential campaign, to help in her senate war chest, in order to offset this loss:
Corporations now own voting machines and vote tallies. Counts are unreliable and may be schemed.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6283
A lawsuit has been filed regarding Obama’s Citizenship. What the circumstances of proof or likelihood of success will be is unknown.
http://www.bestsyndication.com/?q=20080822_obama_us_citizenship.htm
Obama has perpetrated a huge advertising LIE. The League of Women Voters has asked for clarification form the campaign. It will not arrive in time to affect outcome. I.e. Obama donors are less than 500,000, and probably closer to 300,000.
While eschewing PAC’s, and downplaying large money donors, soft money is playing a large role in the Obama campaign. This gives lie to the idea that his is a grassroots run. 527’s like Moveon.org while purporting to be voting advocacy groups are in fact, in having endorsed Obama are part of he campaign, even if he doesn’t directly manage them. Some of us have uncovered questionable names in the lists of donors. If a person has several home addresses, cannot that person give in more then one location? I don’t know, does anyone else?
Finally evidence of problems arises in the tangled web of 527’s, from other sources.
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/22/acorn-–-csi-–-obama-someone-else-noticed/
Knowing that the FEC had been without a quorum to meet until recently, I personally had been wondering whether these issues could even be addressed. I wondered if perhaps the blocking and failure to elect members was part of a Democratic manipulation. It seemed too Machiavellian. Then, this Politico article suddenly reemerged:
The Obama presidency will attempt to buy off the losing middle class by offering cash bribes as economic incentives, lowering taxes in a few visible areas, while raising them in others. The Obama presidency will proclaim a new age of free market economics under the cloak of 21st century modernity. Having come to an age where Reaganomics long ago successfully turned unions into nocturnal night scavengers, fearful of attack, Obama will now train technologists for the new world. Our new order Democrats (?) will bleat the need for Reich’s infrastructure but fail to train new labor or other workers that add to the common good, like teachers, social workers, inspectors, or even solar panel builders.
There will be no general reform, just an ever increasing lot of small business operatives, trying to make their way, at every increasing work hours. We are on our way to becoming a giant refuse heap of burned out factories, abandoned neighborhoods, never to be completed environmental projects, and offshore drilling. Our citizens are becoming a legion of economic rag pickers or dustbin sorters to which the whole of life is reduced. Only if Clinton’s healthcare plan is enacted will there be any relief.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/magazine/24Obamanomics-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
In the mean time “Democratic” Libertarians will rule. In a repeat of the railroads in the 1800’s, those few who rule by money will hold sway. We will continue to allow big business to be our government, to build our toll roads, to sell our fully depreciated plants, rather then reinvest, and to subsidize our new Pickens energy.
Strangely, the most conservative Americans are always on the lookout for collectivist behavior in Democrats. Usually this refers to those with socialist views. However, if people like T. Boone Pickens continue to get their way, the takeover of the government by large groups at the expense of the individual will be complete.
A neoliberal is not a liberal, but one who picks and chooses the menu as if in a cafeteria. Dr. Violet Socks rhetorically asks, “Who are Pumas”?
http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/2008/08/23/who-are-the-pumas/
PUMAs think a Party that allows the presumptive nominee to decide which delegates will be allowed to vote him in, as the nominated nominee is unfair and wrong. Yet we have done it. A great party schism has arisen and is unlikely to be smoothed over by the election of a democratic president.
PUMAs think people, with conservative or theological agendas, like Carl Rove and Leah Daugherty, are helping to decide our Democratic future. This process is allowing the Evangelicals to take over the Democratic Party, as a religious based organization. This will complete the process of outsourcing social services and charter schools. Reagan’s epithet of the “Nanny State” has so infiltrated modern thinking in the Democratic Party, that few of us even understand that it was a curse and untrue.
PUMAs think the Internet is the new plaything of the Party machine. In addition, it is inextricably tied to the nation’s defense, police departments and spy network, as the people over at World Wide Net will tell you. The rules of the Internet machine are: say whatever you can get away with, and let anyone say it, all you need is BUZZ. Get enough buzz then direct it, before anyone figures out the real answers. Speed of information does not lend itself to accuracy of information and truth telling.
And oh yes, PUMAs think, in the acknowledgment to the realities of experience and mainstream thinking, over hope and change, Joe Biden was picked as Obama’s running mate. What could be more perfect then to play Johnny Mnemonic, attempt the rebuttal to the 3:00 AM wake-up call, and once again stomp on Clinton?
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/08/the-money-behind-biden.html
I Own My Vote, Just Say No Deal, Puma Pac, the Denver Group
Grab and Keel 
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