This article by Joshunda Sanders of the American-Statesman is award-winning material.
Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee.
The middle child of 13, Jones, who is African American, is part of a family that has lived in Bastrop County for five generations. The family has remained a fixture in Cedar Creek and other parts of the county, even when its members had to eat at segregated barbecue dives and walk through the back door while white customers walked through the front, said Amanda Jones' 68-year-old daughter, Joyce Jones.
For at least a decade, Amanda Jones worked as a maid for $20 a month, Joyce Jones said. She was a housewife for 72 years and helped her now-deceased husband, C.L. Jones, manage a store.
Amanda Jones, a delicate, thin woman wearing golden-rimmed glasses, giggled as the family discussed this year's presidential election. She is too weak to go the polls, so two of her 10 children — Eloise Baker, 75, and Joyce Jones — helped her fill out a mail-in ballot for Barack Obama, Baker said. "I feel good about voting for him," Amanda Jones said.
Jones' father herded sheep as a slave until he was 12, according to the family, and once he was freed, he was a farmer who raised cows, hogs and turkeys on land he owned. Her mother was born right after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Joyce Jones said. The family owned more than 100 acres of land in Cedar Creek at one point, she said. Read the full story at the American-Statesman
John McCain's campaign has directed $175,000 to the firm of a Republican operative accused of massive voter registration fraud in several states.
According to campaign finance records, a joint committee of the McCain-Palin campaign, the RNC and the the California Republican Party, made a $175,000 payment to the group Lincoln Strategy in June for purposes of "registering voters." The managing partner of that firm is Nathan Sproul, a renowned GOP operative who has been investigated on multiple occasions for suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away registration forms and even spearheading efforts to get Ralph Nader on ballots to hinder the Democratic ticket.
In a letter to the Justice Department last October, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said that that Sproul's alleged activities "clearly suppress votes and violate the law." Read the full story at Huffingtonpost.com
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced on "Meet the Press," today that he is endorsing Barack Obama for president saying Obama "has both style and substance. I think he is a transformational figure."
From Time Magazine:
The decision is not only symbolic but, in terms of timing, one of great tactical importance. Powell is a brand unto himself in American politics, and clearly transcends the media's tendency to hype endorsements more than their actual importance to voters. However, the indisputable benefit that Powell brings Obama is that the former Secretary of State and general is sure to block out any chance McCain has of winning the next two or three days of news coverage, as the media swoons over the implications of the choice. It is simple political math: McCain has 15 days to close a substantial gap, and he will now lose at least one fifth of his total remaining time.
Powell's decision brings other clear benefits as well. He is so trusted for his judgment on national security (even in the wake of his role in the current Iraq War) that his confidence in Obama to become commander-in-chief will resonate with many elites and voters. Read the full story here
Senator Barack Obama's list of editorial endorsements continue to rise. Several endorsements include traditionally Republican papers like the News-Register, in conservative Yamhill County, Oregon. The editors are citing Senator John McCain's selection of an unprepared running mate and his "dysfunctional," "erratic," "incompetent," and negative campaign as reasons that McCain is not ready to lead America.
From Editor & Publisher--The Denver Post, which had backed George W. Bush in 2004 and is owned by Republican-leaning William Dean Singleton, this evening endorsed Barack Obama for president. So did the Chicago Sun-Times, Kansas City Star. Southwest News-Herald (Ill.) and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And to top it off: two more Bush backers in 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune and Las Cruces (N.M) Sun-News.
This followed this afternoon's surprises: the Chicago Tribune, which has never in 150 years endorsed a Democrat, backed Obama, as did its fellow Tribune paper, the Los Angeles -- which had endorsed no one in more than 30 years. It seems like a dam broke yesterday with the unexpectedly early choice of Obama by The Washington Post.
In E&P's exclusive count, Obama now leads 62-18 in editorial endorsements. New additions for him include the Miami Herald, the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Oregonian of Portland. Check out our running list, updated Saturday here.
From the Atlanta Journal Constitution- By Jay Bookman, Cynthia Tucker --- OUR EDITORIAL BOARD’S OPINION: Obama is the choice
In a race between two admirable public servants, the Illinois senator shows sounder judgment, offers better chance for change.
...However, in his current role as Republican nominee, McCain has yet to explain how most of his proposed policies and approaches differ from those of the current president. From deregulation of Wall Street and tax cuts that favor the richest 5 percent of Americans to a more aggressive foreign policy, McCain’s approach now reflects the same Republican orthodoxy that has governed this country since 2000. Time and again, he has been offered chances to explain how his philosophy differs from that of the current president, and he has not been able to do so.
And it’s not just a matter of policies. A third term under another Republican president would inevitably be populated by much the same cast of GOP staffers, executives and bureaucrats that has run Washington for so long and with such disastrous results. McCain’s campaign staff illustrates that problem perfectly because it is populated by many of the same people who ran previous Bush campaigns. They are also still trying to run the same basic Republican playbook that the party has used since 1980.
In fact, the competence of McCain’s campaign staff is itself cause to question the candidate’s executive abilities. To some degree, the rigors of creating and running a campaign organization can be a test of the skills needed to create and run an administration. And even many Republicans acknowledge that the McCain campaign has been poorly organized and erratic, lurching from one crisis to another without the sense of a strong hand at the tiller.
Columnist William Kristol, a longtime McCain backer, calls the McCain campaign “close to being out—-and—-out dysfunctional,” concluding that “its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic.”
And of course, the most unfortunate evidence of that “strategic incoherence and operational incompetence” was McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, a person utterly unprepared for the high post in question. Read the full endorsement here.
I just got back in town so I wasn't able to vote on the first day of early voting in Georgia. It's the last day to register, so I decided to make sure I voted today just in case I encountered a problem. I put my computer on sleep to run over to the county to cast my ballot. I was shocked and elated to see a very, very long line. I never felt so good to wait on a long line. The workers were a bit disorganized, but everyone was happy and patient. It was an amazing experience.
While I was on line I helped to give out the forms the people had to fill out in order to vote. After I voted, I helped direct a little traffic and wheeled a disabled person around the building and down a steep dangerous hill so she could vote. When I was leaving I stood in the parking lot truly amazed at the car loads of people coming to vote.
After I left, I stopped by the bank and the teller noticed my "I'm a Georgia Voter" sticker. She asked with excitment, "You voted?" I told her I did and she yelled over to another teller "She voted already." Even the person working the front customer service desk came over to talk about when he was going to vote. They all wanted to be among the first to vote, way before November 4.
Here's a shot of a first time voter, John Jude. He's just old enough to vote in this election. He was very proud to cast his ballot for the first time. He said he voted for President Obama.
In the second in our two-part series about the Republican ticket's economic past, we saved the best for last. As we mentioned in our first piece, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin doesn't have a long record, but it's one that would make any economist (or working, middle class American for that matter) shake their head in disbelief.
Arizona Sen. John McCain, on the other hand, has a long, rich history of either screwing up the economy or just ignoring it, hoping the problem will go away or be handled by his lobbyist friends and advisors.
We could start as early as the late 1980s with the embarrassing Keating Five incident, in which McCain used his influence in Congress to help out his friend and donor, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. Keating spent five years in jail on corruption charges stemming from his influencing McCain and four other senators. McCain brushes off questions about the incident, saying he's paid for it and learned his lesson. It seems the lesson was "let other people handle economics. It's not that big of a deal anyhow." Read the full story here
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