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POPSJesus was a Community Organizer, Pilate was a Governor Thank you to my friend Daniel, who has done community organizing from Harlem to LA to Boston. Thank you to Biko Baker of League of Young Voters, who I once interviewed and was immediately impressed by. Thank you to Saul Alinsky, largely considered the father of community organizing (pictured above). Thank you to all of you I don't know, who every day, make the choice to listen to ordinary people's stories and help them link these stories into a template for honest-to-goodness social change. And, yes, thank you to Barack Obama, for making the choice to be a community organizer so many years ago and for continuing to be proud and loud about the importance of the role of the community organizer for our nation's well-being.
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POPSYour Pocket Guide to Speaking Palin-guage (Vol.1) If you're a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual you're "reckless." A Republican who doesn't fully vet is a "maverick." If you say that for the "first time in my adult lifetime I'm really proud of my country" it makes you "unfit" to be First Lady. If you are a registered member of a fringe political group that advocates secession that makes you "First Dude." A DUI from twenty years ago is "old news." A speech given without proper citation from twenty years ago is "relevant information." And, finally, if you're a man and you decide to run for office despite your wife's recurrence of cancer you're a "questionable spouse." If you're a woman and you decide to run for office despite having five kids including a newborn... Well, we don't know what that is 'cause THAT'S NOT A FAIR QUESTION TO ASK. Just learned a new one: IOKIYAR: It's OK if you're a Republican!
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POPSNo Gay Sex, Please; We're from Virginia The Minneapolis-St. Paul area has a large and vibrant gay nightlife, where club managers said many Republicans were expected this week. "We've had quite a spike, mostly people who are curious come down and they wind up leaving and having a good time," said Robert Parker, the manager of the Gay 90's club in downtown Minneapolis which features a popular "drag queen" show. "Mississippi, Alabama, California, Arizona, I've seen people from all over, said Parker.
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POPSMcCain Health Policy Advisor: There Are No Uninsured Americans! Voila! Problem solved! Just don't count them. Ignore them. Screw them. Voila! Unbelievable. Emergency room care is NOT health care. These people really are heartless, because they can't be so stupid as to not understand that preventative medicine is not only cheaper, it also saves, lengthens, and improves lives. So they just must be heartless. I don't know what else to call them. Unless I depart from polite discourse.
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POPSMatt Taibbi: Full Metal McCain You'd never know it from listening to McCain, whose kickoff speech is the same election-year diatribe that Republicans have been giving for decades, one long broadside against those goddamned overgrown Sixties weenie liberals who hate the flag, love the bomb-tossing enemies of America and are bent on the twin goals of ending the system of free enterprise and placing every aspect of our lives under government control. McCain pegs Obama as a man who wants to take America "backward," to the failed ideas of the Sixties. "I'm surprised that a young man has bought into so many failed ideas!" he says, to furious applause. Then, spitting out a forced, ugly laugh that he must have practiced many (but not enough) times in the bathroom mirror of the Straight Talk Express, he adds, "That's not change we can believe in!"
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POPSGut Check Time for White Americans The Wright affair has such resonance in this campaign because Wright has shown himself to be the kind of black person that white people don't like. He brings out our prejudices. Yes, I said "our" prejudices. Part of it is Wright's ignorance and part of it is his arrogance and part of it is that he talks louder than white people would prefer and part of it is that he uses the sing-song cadence they associate with other black ministers they have grown to hate over the years such as Jesse Jackson. Obama is none of those things (OK, maybe a little arrogant at times), so Wright has been brought to the forefront as a substitute punching bag.
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POPS White Radical Evangelicals Get a Pass "Thus, white evangelical Ministers are free to advocate American wars based on Biblical mandates, rant hatefully against Islam, and argue that natural disasters occur because God hates gay people...By contrast, black Muslim ministers like Farrakhan, or even black Christian ministers like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are held with deep suspicion, even contempt. McCain is free to hug and praise the Rev. Hagees of the world, but Obama is required to prove over and over and over and over that he does not share the more extreme views of black Ministers."
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