And So It Begins...

PleaseBarack... THANK YOU!

Hope is at a fever pitch. All of the congratulating and champagne-popping and crying was well-deserved. The energy Tuesday at Barack HQ in Atlanta and on the ground canvassing that afternoon was electric, and the honking and shouting and fireworks that night echoed from around the world.

But as Obama said in an e-mail before his address on Tuesday night, now the real work begins. His campaign has always emphasized that the real change is in each of us, not in him alone. He's going to use his massive e-mail list and wide coalition as a super-lobbyist to combat the entrenched Washington special interests. It's on each of us to remain vocal and engaged, to be active participants in history rather than spectators on the sidelines.

There's been a lot of rhetoric about our success. Others can reflect more eloquently on the historical impact of what we've done. For me it's time to look forward.

Jim Martin faces Saxby Chambliss (in all likelihood - the final vote count should come in today) in a run-off election on December 2. Motivating voter turnout for a run-off election is going to be very tough. The entire nation will be watching.

Our short-term mission is to get as many people to the polls as possible for that election. I'll be updating from here going forward.

GOBAMA

Mark and Katy are rocking this in front of their crib today.

Elliott and I got in line at Grady High School this morning at 6:45, and despite some inept polling workers who allowed a massive swath of people in front of our group on accident, we were able to complete our civic duty in about 2 hours.

I'm off to Obama HQ-Midtown to try to make a difference, after annoying a bunch of my friends with GOBAMA texts. More this evening on a day I look forward to telling my grandkids about...

VOTE EARLY: Atlanta Early Voting Locations

ATLANTA EARLY VOTING LOCATIONS
(Click to see Google Map)

Fulton

• Fulton County Government Center: 141 Pryor St., Suite 4064
  
• Atlanta North Fulton Service Center: 7741 Roswell Road, Room 209
  
• Atlanta South Fulton Service Center: 5600 Stonewall Tell Road, Room 105
  
• Adamsville Rec Center: 3201 M.L. King Jr. Drive S.W.
• Welcome All Park: 4255 Will Lee Road
• Hembree Park: 850 Hembree Road (Roswell)
• Northeast Spruill Oaks Library: 9560 Spruill Road (Alpharetta)

Dekalb

• Memorial Drive Complex (across street from the jail): 4380 Memorial Drive, Suite 300 (Decatur)
• 330 West Ponce de Leon Avenue, Room A, (Directly across the street from the Wachovia Bank, closer to the Post Office) (Decatur)
• Lithonia Middle School: 2451 Randall Avenue (Lithonia)
• Dekalb County Fire Headquarters: 1950 W. Exchange Place, Training Conference Room, (Tucker)
• Liane Levetan Park at Brook Run: 4770 N. Peachtree Road (Dunwoody)
• South DeKalb Senior Center: 1931 Candler Road (Decatur)

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Now the bad news: the PleaseBarack Concert never came together. We wanted to do something big. We reached out to lots of big names: Andre 3000, Big Boi, Black Crowes, REM, Derek Trucks, Janelle Monae, MGMT... All to no avail.

Almost all of them responded they were honored to be asked, and a couple even considered before bowing out due to scheduling difficulties. Big props to the Pop Death Squad for all of the work they put into trying to make the show happen.

Our friend Shawn Mullins wanted to be a part, but could only make an appearance, rather than headline due to his big show at the Variety later this month.

We decided early not to have a self-congratulatory small show that wouldn't make a difference in the election. Our time (and money) is better spent on organizing for the Obama campaign. I'll be volunteering this week. See you out there...

A Time for Hope

The dark times of the last few days have led me to take refuge in working on songs rather than blogs. Cynicism and disconnectedness have dominated society and government my entire adult life. This idea that we can let everyone fend for themselves has failed. The rich are undeniably richer, and its more difficult for the poor to pull themselves up by their bootstraps than ever before.

This culture of living beyond your means perpetuated by an irresponsible administration looking out for its rich friends is crushing all of us in the form of job losses, mortgage foreclosures, and disappearing retirement funds. Now, more than ever, we are in need of the hope and change that Barack offers.

Obama responded to this economic crisis with a clear path to recovery, anchored by specific proposals to cut taxes for the middle class, provide mortgage relief to homeowners as well as banks, and institute new-job tax credits for businesses.

McCain's economic plan was in shambles until yesterday, when he scrambled to unveil a plan that does little to help the average American and gives even MORE tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations than President Bush's failed policies have.

See the breakdown of the candidates' economic policies here.

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I found a napkin from the RNC party in the jacket of my black suit when i took it to the cleaners, and it reminded me that blogs are important, too.

I also learned how to use my new wireless scanner. That's my name tag from meeting Clinton a couple of weeks ago. As I've told my friends, I felt like a high school girl at a Beatles concert.

Tomorrow night Elliott and I are attending an Obama fundraising event. Supposedly Jim Martin will be there, and he supposedly has a chance at upending Saxby Chambliss for one of Georgia's United States Senate seats.

Chambliss receives insanely low ratings on Civil Rights, and was hammered by Martin in the debate for his staunch support of the deregulation that led to Wall Street's collapse. Go Jim!

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We're in the studio tonight (yet another DVR'd debate) with my friend Ben H. Allen (Gnarls Barkley engineer and Moviekiss remix-er), who took Neal Boortz to task about (unsurprisingly) false deficit claims he made last week on his radio show.

Ben called in to point out that the deficit (as a percent of Gross Domestic Product) is at its highest point since the country was paying down its World War II debt in the 1950s, thanks to the very un-conservative fiscal policies of the Bush Administration. And Ben's info came from zfacts.com - a site that translates official White House figures into graphs we can all understand.

Victory: Boortz hung up on him. The facts indicate Democratic chief executives are superior stewards of the economy - check out this graph of investment growth during Democrat versus Republican administrations. Even I was surprised by these results.

The predicitons McCain would go negative i mentioned in my last post came to fruition... to the maverick's detriment, according to a NYT / CBS poll that has Obama leading 53% - 39%. If only McCain were more like the REAL Maverick!

I Met Bill Clinton on Thursday!

If I could choose to meet three living people, Bill Clinton would be one of them. Now I can cross him off my list - I shook his hand Thursday evening at an Obama Fundraiser Event at the Lowe Gallery in Atlanta!

Dan and Sue (pictured with the President above) Lipson were very gracious to take me as their guest. I didn't get a picture with the President, but I did get inspired by the riveting talk Mr. Clinton gave. He made the most logical and compelling case for Obama I've heard yet. Here were a few of his talking points:

* Obama has the upper hand on the most important issues - the economy, the war, and health care. The Republicans have been notorious for clouding the issues with personal attacks over the last few years, but there has been less of that this year. Mr. Clinton contended voters won't stand for it - this election is too important. (McCain will supposedly go on the attack pretty soon, so we'll see how that holds.)

* We don't get anywhere by looking down our noses at Sarah Palin. She's weathered extraordinary family challenges, and we should not underestimate her. (Personally, that's tough to do for me following her inability to assemble anything resembling a rational thought in response to a few of the questions in Thursday's debate. If I were moderator, this would have been my response.)

* For the next couple of years, the President is going to need to hunker down and solve this economic crisis. The person in charge has to have the intellectual tools to understand very complicated systems. Barack Obama is that man. (By what he didn't say, Bill insinuated President Bush did not have these tools. The audience got a chuckle out of that, but Clinton was careful to qualify his statement by saying Mr. Bush has done what he thinks is right, and it's exactly what he said he'd do in his campaign in 2000.)

* Given the President's need to focus on the economy, the Vice President will have an unusually important role travelling and handling foreign relations, and we need someone with the knowledge and experience for the job: Joe Biden. (This seems a bit of a stretch to me, but Biden certainly could be trusted dealing with foreign dignitaries. I can't say the same for Palin.)

He made it all sound so simple - I wish he was speaking to an audience of undecideds rather than 80 of Obama's biggest supporters in the state. Clinton's ability to communicate his understanding of complex issues in a way that everyone can not only understand but feel creates a charisma unlike any I've ever encountered.

TAKE ACTION: Bill's always trying to put that charisma to use, whether it be in $1 million speeches for his own coffers, raising $400,000 for Obama as he did on Thursday, or working with Bush Sr. on hurricane relief. Watching Sunday football, the two ex-prezes reminded me of the massive rebuilding project we have on the gulf coast. Make a donation @ bushclintoncoastalfund.org.

What IN Politics?

These are heavy times. Therefore, we here at PleaseBarack sent our top correspondents (Stills and Cobb) into the field to ask the age-old question: What IN Politics?




We're on the Barackit Ship and so is Slash! Barack says pain has trickled up, and he has a NEW economic plan focused on lower taxes for 95% of Americans, more effective government oversight of big business, and an Apollo program for green energy.

The (non-elected) President of Camp Jam and I were talking yesterday about teetering on the brink of economic disaster and gas-pump-line-rage in metro Atlanta. He perceptively labeled it as a Mad Max environment (here's the classic chase scene)... which was actually on Showtime last night. Spooky.

I understand Barack doesn't want to associate himself with this economic mess or the half-assed attempts to clean it up. (FDR did the same thing to Hoover according to this article in the New York Times.)

But it would be nice if he, or McCain for that matter, was in a position to do something about it. The leadership vacuum created by W is turning into a Mad Max doomsday black hole faster than you can say, "Large Hadron Collider."

Also spooky: Sarah Palin's refusal to give a straight answer to Katie Couric in the NBC interview. Tina Fey's SNL parody didn't even have to change that much. Even the conservative columnists are starting to turn against Palin for her lack of experience. Let's see what happens Thursday night in the vice-presidential debate...

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To prove our patriotism (yet again) we wore our American Flag Eagle Shirts to the Chili Cook-Off, where we brought a thunderous rock fight of John Cougar versus Bob Seeger.

Q: Who won this rock fight?
A: America.

You smell something? Nope, that's not chili. That's the smell of freedom.



Correpondent / Manager Melkonian iPhoned in this observation from a local parking lot:

Register to Vote w/ the PleaseRock Revue this Friday

Here's a more in-focus shot of us with the Governor from the RNC.

Let's talk pop culture today: On Rachel Ray, John McCain allegedly claimed Food Network recipes were his old family recipes. Who cares?

First off, McCain hasn't cooked for himself in a while - he married a beer heiress, something we should all try according to the Onion. Secondly, I refuse to vote for anyone who claims that 1/3 salt, 1/3 pepper, and 1/3 garlic is a sufficient spice mix for ribs.

While Senator McCain was in the kitchen, Senator Obama was shifting the momentum in the race, according to Drew Westen. I hope he's right...

My favorite president of my lifetime appeared on the Daily Show last night. Jon Stewart might love him more than I do. Mr. Clinton certainly cleared up any remaining questions about his support for Senator Obama.

In the Bat(out of Hell)-Shit Crazy Department, I discovered the guy who wrote the hits for Meatloaf, Air Supply, and Bonnie Tyler wasn't very impressed with the Republican National Convention.

Jim Steinman's blog rips the right wing a new one while simultaneously professing allegiance to Bob Barr (though he hopes Obama wins) and proclaiming Richard Wagner as his idol? Sorry Jim: Two Out of Three are Bad.

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Our oldest friends in Atlanta - the Limerick's Junction - have asked us to headline their Oktoberfest Party out of doors in the Virginia Highlands on Friday night. The weather will be beautiful and we'll have the most righteous PleaseRock horns on the "festival" stage.

We've asked the non-partisan voter registration group Headcount to join us, and they'll be signing up new voters all evening. I'll be hanging at the table in between our sets, please come say hello.

This is a non-partisan event, so don't expect any PleaseBarack bluster on the mic, out of respect for our hosts. However, I'll be happy to crack wise on politics or any other topic off-stage... so bring it.

Lure your unregistered friends (and enemies) with the promise of good music and good beer, and then get them signed up to vote. Use all of the tricks you use to get your dog to take a bath.

I'll be recording the big foreign policy debate on the DVR. See you Friday...