I don't care if Dennis Kucinich isn't a Democratic front runner in the presidential campaign - I'm going to write him in regardless and I urge everybody else to do so. Not only is he against the war, for impeachment of Darth Cheney, and against weapons in space, but he's done the ultimate really cool thing - see a UFO! I just hope he comes out for full disclosure of the hundreds of thousands of pages of UFO documents that the U.S. national security state has covered up.

http://blog.cleveland.com/openers/2007/10/kucinich_see_ufo_new_book_clai.html

Kucinich sees UFO, new book claims
Posted by Mark Naymik October 22, 2007 16:25PM

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has seen a UFO, writes Shirley MacLaine in her new book, "Sage-Ing While Age-Ing."

Kucinich, she writes on page143-144 of the book, "had a close sighting over my home in Graham, Washington, when I lived there. Dennis found his encounter extremely moving. The smell of roses drew him out to my balcony where, when he looked up, he saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent, and observing him. It hovered, soundless, for ten minutes or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He said he felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind."

From Garry Shay...

Dear Readers:

Feinstein and Schumer say Mukasey is the best we can get. That may be true. And I will concede there may be times when that kind of logic is correct.

This is not one of them.

The entire world, yea verily, even the Bush Administration, agrees torture is wrong.

This has devolved into an issue of semantics as to what constitutes torture in an attempt to obfuscate reality.

I believe water boarding is torture. Torture is not limited to "organ failure" or whatever it is the Bush Administration defines it as this week.

You only need to think of the Chinese Water Torture to be aware of that. The steady drip of water on the forehead will not induce organ failure, nor anything they define as torture. Yet, I think all agree it is in fact torture.

Here's the recording of Colonel Ann Wright's address at Time-Tested Books on Oct. 17th.

AWright10-17-07.mp3 link here. (1:29:27)

AWright10-17-07.ra link here. (1:29:27)

Here's the Mp3 of Colonel Ann Wright's address to Sacramento City College from 12-1pm on 10/16/07.

AWright10-16-07.mp3 link here. (55:30)

AWright10-16-07.ra link here. (55:30)

The Only Thing Missing is a Democrat!

Town & Country Democrats 2007 Awards Dinner
Proceeds will go toward opening a 2008 Northeast Headquarters

The Town and Country Democratic Club cordially invites you to our
13th Annual Awards Dinner

October 16, 2007

Doors open at 6 p.m. No-host bar
Dinner 6:45 p.m.
Dante Club, 2330 Fair Oaks Blvd. (near Howe), Sacramento, California.

Keynote Speaker: California State Controller John Chiang

Receiving the Robert T. Matsui Award for Public Service: Dr. Bill Durston

Receiving the Great Grassroots Award: Ralph Cyfers

RSVP: Contact Nancy Tronaas, 916.386.1170 or n.tronaas@att.net
Cost: $50 per Person
Time: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - 7:00pm PST

How Congress Forgot Its Own Strength
By MARIO M. CUOMO | October 7, 2007 | Op-Ed Contributor

SENATORS Jim Webb of Virginia and Hillary Clinton of New York are right to demand that the president go before Congress to ask for a “declaration of war” before proceeding with an attack against Iran or any other nation. But there is no need for this demand to be put into law, as the two Democrats and their colleagues are seeking to do, any more than there is need for legislation to guarantee our right of free speech or anything else protected by the Constitution.

Article I, Section 8 already provides that only Congress has the power to declare war. Perhaps the founders’ greatest concern in writing the Constitution was that they might unintentionally create a president who was too much like the British monarch, whom they despised. They expressed that concern in part by assuring that the president would not have the power to declare war.

Because the Constitution cannot be amended by persistent evasion, this mandate was neither erased nor modified by the actions or inactions of timid Congresses that allowed overeager presidents to start wars in Vietnam and elsewhere without making a declaration.

New Jersey’s Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez Vote with Republicans Embracing HR 1585 76 – 22, the Project for a New American Century (PNACers), the Wishes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Dick Cheyney’s War Crimes, & the Death and Destruction of Iranian Women and Children
by Andrew H. Dral

New Jersey’s two Senators -- Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez -- threw their support behind the Republicans and their Neocon resolution HR 1585, calling for “the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of U.S. power“ against Iran. With this vote our Senators embraced the colonial policies detailed in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) furthering the Neocon agenda, the wishes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its goal for Israel to gain military and economic hegemony over the Middle East. The Senators sold out their constituents‘ wishes for diplomacy, in exchange for the narrow aims of the Israeli Likud and Dick Cheyney’s radical policies of death and destruction.

Region 3 will be holding a Platform Hearing/Regional Meeting

Saturday Oct 27th
1:00pm-3:30pm
Solano County Government Center
675 Texas Street Room 1600(If the room changes we will have sign age)
Fairfield CA 94533
Light refreshments will be served

Agenda:
Time: Saturday, October 27, 2007 - 2:00pm PST

The Democrats Who Enable Bush
by Helen Thomas | Published on Friday, October 5, 2007 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party’s leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.

Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.

Last week at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, and Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards refused to promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, at the end of the first term of their hypothetical presidencies. Can you believe it?

Annual Awards Dinner Thursday Oct 11th 6:00pm-8:00pm

Please join us for our annual awards dinner. We will be awarding Kevin McCarty with our Gordon Schaber Leadership award. Nancy Fox and Stephanie Mitchell will be receiving the first of our Don Douglas Volunteer award. Money raised from this event will go towards our full time office, full time staff, neighborhood leader program and voter registration.

Thursday Oct 11th
6pm-8pm
Firehouse Restaurant
1112 2nd Street
Old Sacramento

Tickets $50/Sponsorships available
Time: Thursday, October 11, 2007 - 7:00pm PST

The Platform Hearing is for the future Platform of our Party. Please either attend or give testimony via the website listed below. If you have any questions concerning the Party's Platform please visit our website at: www.cadem.org.

Region 7 Meeting / Platform Hearing
October 14
11:00 AM - 01:00 PM

Description
Regional Meeting for Region 7 / Northern CA Statewide Platform Hearing
The California Democratic Party invites all Democrats to help shape
our Blueprint for 2008. Join our effort to promote a progressive
platform so that all may achieve the California of their dreams.
Please share your values and priorities -- attend a Platform Hearing
in your area and/or make a submission for consideration by emailing
us at cali4us@cadem.org. It is not necessary to submit testimony
online in order to present it at a Platform Hearing, but it would
help us to better plan the meetings.
Date/Time
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Regional Meeting begins at 11am -- Platform Hearing begins approx.
Noon
Location
Time: Sunday, October 14, 2007 - 12:00pm PST

The Democratic leadership needs to ask themselves only two questions in deciding what to do next on Iraq. The first is whether they would send their own child to die in this war. If the answer is no, they need to vote as if every soldier were their child. That's what it means to support our troops. And that's all they need to tell the American people.

Rethinking Democratic Strategy on Iraq
New Democrats
by Drew Westen
Only at TNR Online | Post date 09.20.07

To read the whole article:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070917&s=westen092007

CSUS Forum to explore The Crisis of Democracy
Sacramento Progressive Forum
9 Am- 4 PM.
October 4, 2007. CSU-Sacramento. University Union

The Progressive Forum will bring together scholars, students, social justice and union activists, and policy makers. The forum is created to nurture a new kind of conversation from within the campus and the social movements.
The key thematic areas for the Fall 2007 Forum will include:

Immigration
The War
Democratic Party
Media and democracy
An Economic Justice Agenda: Crisis in public education
Race/ ethnicity and the political organizing .
Corporatization of University/ decline of public universities
New Fronts in the Feminist Struggle
Working class life and culture
The state of our unions
Time: Thursday, October 4, 2007 - 10:00am PST

Press Conference: 9:30 a.m.
Cathedral Square Light Rail Station, 11th and K streets

Guest Speakers
Congresswoman Doris Matsui
State Senator Dave Cox
Sacramento County Supervisor and RT Board Member Roger Dickinson
Time: Friday, September 14, 2007 - 10:30am PST

Time for Congress to take a stand
Barbara Lee | Tuesday, September 4, 2007

If you believe the Beltway hype, members of Congress will return today to a fiery debate about whether or not the president's so-called "surge" has produced military progress in Iraq. Beltway pundits are breathlessly predicting Democrats will be thrown into disarray by claims that the increased troop levels in Iraq may have produced security results.

Don't believe the hype. First off, the data are suspect. The Pentagon refuses to share the methodology by which it arrived at the metrics used to claim success. Even if the progress is real, it is hardly encouraging when put in perspective. When discussing the alleged gains he has overseen, Gen. David H. Petraeus stated that they put us on a course to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq sometime nine or 10 years from now.

What the debate about military progress really does is serve as a distraction - a smokescreen - put forth by an administration that finds it rhetorically convenient to speak in terms of "victory" and "defeat."

It serves to obscure the basic, fundamental fact that there is no military solution to the situation in Iraq. Our troops are trapped in a civil war and occupation, a situation where there can be no "victory." Our continued presence there is not only breaking our military, it is undermining our national security and our efforts to fight international terrorism.

EMILY'S List steps up efforts
Nation's largest political action committee seeks to persuade more women to run for political office.
By Peter Hecht - Bee Capitol Bureau | Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, August 19, 2007

Cristina Uribe looks into the faces of 42 women in a hotel ballroom near San Francisco International Airport and sees the political future.

From this gathering of recent college graduates, lawyers, savvy business executives and other professional women, she envisions tomorrow's state lawmakers, members of Congress, maybe even a governor -- or a president.

But first, Uribe offers them a critical lesson: It can only happen if you "stay on message."

"If you're not sick of your message," declares the Western region director for the EMILY's List Political Opportunity Program, "you're not saying it enough."

Shaping the message is key on the training circuit for EMILY's List, the nation's largest political action committee and a potent force for luring women into politics.

You can watch the online ad by clicking here.

Dear WDSC Members and Friends:

Please join us at our monthly meeting on Monday, August 20th.

Location: Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA) Building
5300 Elvas Avenue

Time: 6:30 p.m. (doors open @ 6:00 - come early for refreshments and socializing)

Program:
“Bead for Life: Eradicating Poverty One Bead at a Time”

A short video will explain this unique program. Beautiful jewelry will be available for purchase (cash or check).
Time: Monday, August 20, 2007 - 7:30pm PST

Read the text of the resolutions.

* Adequate Funding, Policies and Standards for California Transportation

* Allow Counties and General Law Cities Public Campaign Finance Option (Clean Money)

* Apology from the Government of Japan for Wartime "Comfort Women"

* Assure That Parents Know Their Right to Opt-Out Of the Military Recruitment Requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)

* Bring Home and Support the California National Guard

[Yes, that is a Samuel Adams glass, which I deliberately used as a metaphor]

I can't drop this.

The Democratic Leadership wanted -- needed -- the Spying on Americans Bill to pass. They actively worked and maneuvered it through the process. The Senate Majority Leader schedules which bills are voted on and when; the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader and the Whip, marshal bills through their half of Congress; there is absolutely no way that they can claim ignorance, to do so would be disingenuous and duplicitous.

They think we don't watch what they do ... but they're wrong. This is how they did it

The Senate-passed version (Republican) of FISA (and no other) was allowed onto the House floor on Saturday by the House leadership,