Volunteering 3!

For our third time volunteering for Obama, Carrie, Tyler, Ronny, and I decided to distribute flyers. When we first got to the campaign office, they said there was no work, but we were persistent and finally got to copy some flyers to distribute around Herndon. We went around to some parking lots and put them on cars, and we got some places, like starbucks, blooms, and robeks, to put the flyers on their bulletin boards. However, some places refused to put up political flyers, such as Great Harvest Bread Company. We also found out that we can not put them up in government buildings - we tried the community center. Also, when we got back to the campaign office, we found out that someone had called complaining about flyers on cars in the parking lot at the Herndon Community Center. We felt bad, but how were we supposed to know we couldn't put them in the parking lot either? Oh well, I guess we know now for next time. Vote Obama for President of the United States!!!!

Current Event #4

On washingtonpost.com, I read an article about recent polls in the presidential election. I was very interested because I have been volunteering for Obama and I wanted to read more about how he was doing. The article was called, "Obama Up by 10 Points as McCain Favorability Ratings Fall." The article says that Obama is gaining momentum and at the same time, McCain is losing ground in his campaign. Part of the blame is laid on McCain's new negative campaigning. The story says that he has been spending too much time focusing on attacking Obama and not enough time spreading the word about his own policies. Voters said the debate last Tuesday night did not change their opinions much. However, something must be changing the minds of former McCain supporters. There are only about thirteen percent of undecided voters left so both campaigns need to step up their exposure and spread the word. I have high hopes for Obama's campaign as more and more television ads are on every night. It might just be a money thing, but I do not see nearly as many McCain campaign advertisements on when I watch TV.

Week 3 - Election Post

I think the race for the Senate is very important, so I decided to look into Mark Warner and Jim Gilmore. Mark Warner is the democratic candidate and has served as governor of Virginia from 2002 until January 2006. He believes in a new energy program that will invest in renewable energy and eliminates our dependence on foreign oil. Warner's stand on health care is to make sure every American has access to affordable, universal health care coverage– and 21st century health care must also emphasize prevention. On the war in Iraq, Warner's policy sounds a lot like Obama's, but with three important words inserted in the middle, "develop a responsible plan - without artificial timelines - to begin to bring our brave military men and women home from Iraq." I think Warner is a good choice for the Senate, and I hope he will be sitting in the Senate, supporting President Obama in 2009! On the other side of the ballet is Jim Gilmore, the republican candidate. He was the 68th Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and "since the expiration of his term of office, he has seen distinguished service on behalf of both his party and his country." I think the fact that Gilmore has been out of office will hurt him a little, giving Warner the advantage of coming right from the Governor's office. As for Gilmore's policies he hopes to decrease dependence on foreign oil by increased oil and gas production in the United States. He believes there is a need to implement tax reforms to will help people buy health insurance and encourage them to maintain health savings accounts. I feel the most important issue is clean energy and energy dependence. I think Warner's plan will work better for America because it has a long term solution that is good for the environment and will work with the national government to stop our dependence on foreign oil. Gilmore hopes to increase oil and gas production, domestic refinery capacity, and use of nuclear energy. This will help decrease our dependence on foreign oil, but not our dependence on oil. With our environment the way it is, politicians need to be addressing it in their energy plans, and I don't see Gilmore coming up with any ideas to stop Americans from polluting the environment and burning more fossil fuels than ever. In the polls that I have found, Warner seems to have the election in the bag, being over 20 points ahead!

Current Event #3

I signed up for washingtonpost.com to e-mail me political related news stories, and I was interested with one that said "Registration Gains Favor Democrats." The new voters are mostly Democratic, as in Florida, Democratic registration gains this year are more than double those made by Republicans. The Obama campaign expects the newly registered Democrats to swell even more later this month as elections offices process the tens of thousands of registrations still pouring in. many of these newly registered voters

Joseph Hodges, left, and others are in swing states such as, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina,

register to vote Friday at a table set Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico.

up by Obama supporters at the Obama has been campaigning hard in these key states that Bush won in 2004,

Franconia-Springfield Metro station but he will have to wait until election day to find out if his hard

in Fairfax County. work paid off. Young voters are also a big part of Obama's voter registration plan. Overwhelmingly the youth vote favors Obama over McCain, so the more that go to the polls means more votes for Obama.

Volunteering 2!

Last night I went back to the Obama campaign office to do some more volunteer work. With me were, Carrie, Tyler, and Sarah! We were kind of hoping to make phone calls this time, but once again we found ourselves walking door to door. At least we didn't have to deal with the rain, but it still got dark pretty fast. We started out well, the first two houses we went to, not only answered the door, but were for Obama!! The second guy even tried to give us some tips for getting young voters to the polls. As we moved on though fewer and fewer houses answered the door, even if they were home! We could see them in the kitchen, but they didn't bother coming. Also, more people simply refused to answer our questions. They said they did not have time, or wouldn't share their views. We had one house on our list that had a McCain/Palin yard sign. Thank goodness they weren't home! We did end the night on a good note though. Our last house had two people that were voting for Obama, and their little boy even offered us a snack for our hard work! Back at the office, we had to tally all of our information that we collected. It was a little sad to see how little we had actually done. We knocked on about forty doors, but only got information for twenty or so people.

Current Event #2

I was looking on washingtonpost.com when an article entitled, "On the Sunny Beaches of Brazil, A Perplexing Inrush of Penguins," caught my eye. The penguins were washed by ocean currents more than 2,000 miles north from their homes in southern Argentina near the bottom of the world. Every year a few penguins get washed ashore, but this year over 1,000 peguins have turned up in Brazil. Locals are making an effort to help these penguins by taking care of them, and even trying to ship them home. I am very worried about global warming, and I wondered if it could have anything to do with this phenominon. Sure enough, as I was reading the article mentioned climate change and its implication in melting polar ice caps. The penguins, who swim North looking for food, have stopped turning around soon enough because of the colder water temperatures. They then get pulled to far North, to Brazil, by the ocean currents. Unfortunately, there is not a firm scientific grasp of where and why currents end, so it is hard to find a definate cause and/or solution.

Week 2 - Election Post

The state issue I find the most important is immigration, especially in the Herndon area. One of the major problems is how long it takes for people to apply to be a legal immigrant. People are unwilling to wait the years it takes to enter the country through the system. There are about twelve million illegal immigrants in the United States and it is unreasonable to believe that we can simply expose them and send them back to their countries. Obama plans to revise our immigration system so that families can stay together and immigrate to the U.S. legally. He also wants to create a plan to help aliens come out of hiding and become citizens, but perhaps his point that I find most important is working with Mexico to promote economic development to decrease illegal immigration to the United States.

I watched the debate last Friday, between Senators Obama and McCain, and I was a little disappointed at how it started. The economy was included on the list of national issues, so I had been excited to see where they stood. It took a while for the debate to even get going. For a while both candidates seemed to avoid actually debating any particular point. Throughout the debate they seemed to not answer questions directly, but instead twist it to talk about what they wanted to say. The biggest national issue is the economy and the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Many people are worried about the economy, so it was important for the presidential candidates to give their opinions on the bailout plan. Obama said the bailout plan included "some core principles that I set forth," such as strong oversight, taxpayers sharing in any dividends, and "reciprocity" through relief to homeowners, and limits on CEO compensation. Obama continued to suggest that he would support a measure that included those four provisions. McCain opened with stressing the importance of Democrats and Republicans working together in Washington DC. I found this a strange point to be making in a debate because it was a sort of cop-out. He did not focus on what he had done to help the plan, but instead on what was everyone was doing together. Later, when asked if he was going to vote for the bailout he said "sure" then moved on to another point. Obama and Mcain were then asked to explain what they would do as president to lead the country out of the financial crisis. McCain said he would cut government spending by eliminating earmarks on federal bills. He added that Obama "has asked for $932 million of earmark pork-barrel spending." This is an example of where he isn't really answering the question, but twisting the question to make his opponent look bad. Obama responded well by saying that earmarks did need to be cut, but only the unessecary ones. He also added that, "earmarks [only] account for $18 billion in lastyear's budget" and McCain is proposing "$300 billion in tax cuts to some of the wealthiest corporations and individuals in the country." I think Obama did a better job of responding to accusations than McCain did, but that is probably because Obama's accusations have a stronger base. I believe our economy needs to be fixed before any of the other issues can be addressed because we do not have the money or stability to deal with other crises right now.

I think that today electronic media plays a huge role in the November election. It is the easiest and fastest way to hear about news in our country, and, for many people, it is the only way they hear about the issues. Why would someone read an article about the war in Iraq if they could just listen about it on the radio on the way to work? Also campaign ads come on during normal television programs, so even people that do not usually pay attention to politics are exposed to Obama and McCain.