The subject line of this entry is something I would also like to discuss. Indianapolis Gay Pride Festival is going on June 13-15, but I will be working the Democratic booth on the 14 from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM, this is when all the major festivities will be going on and I would love to see a major turn out of people wanting to register and I’ll be selling buttons I’ve made endorsing Obama. But this booth isn’t just for the presidential candidate we’ll be handing out information about local politics which is just as important as presidency. So if you get the opportunity please stop by. I feel very honored to be running the booth and have already put a lot of my time in trying to make it the best it can be. Whether your gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered or just straight please please please come out.

A lot has happened since my last update, first off Hillary did in fact gain Indiana and then she went on to later claim West Virginia, but Obama is still in a really large lead with delegates and he has John Edwards backing him. So now the candidates wind it down to Oregon and Kentucky..as of yet I really can’t make a valid decision on who will win what. But during their whole running they had to stop and say a prayer for Senator Ted Kennedy, he was transported over to Cape Cod Hospital than over to Massachusetts General Hospital for fear of a seizure at the Kennedy compound. He’s said to be resting comfortably after all those tests.

There’s not much to say about the candidates at the moment, they’re testing the waters in both states to prepare for speeches. It’s too early to really write anything about it. Unless you want to hear about Obama stopping for ice cream in Oregon.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/17/obama_offers_prayers_for_sen_k.html

But it looks like Clinton is pulling in Indiana.

Obama needs only 200 more delegates. Can he do it? Or can Hillary sweep everything and become the Democratic candidate?

Sunday night I attended the very important Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner at the Indiana Convention Center. When you walked in you saw a small crowd of people getting name tags and then heading up the escalators to get checked by lax, but still there, security and then heading down the hall to greet their colleagues and friends. We arrived at about 4:00 and there was still a small crowd but by 5:00 the crowds had started to grow. There was a big enough crowd to see the Hoosiers for Obama marching down the street and stopping outside the convention center. At about 7:00 the doors opened for the dinner and we were all greeted with a huge room with a full length American Flag, by full I mean it was way larger than what you imagined on a flag pole, and two TV screens for the people way in the left and right corners of the room. Sponsors such as the Metal Workers, and UAW were scrolling on the screens as people sat down at their tables which had a nice salad on it. We were seated at table #146, which was paid for by the Obama campaign (30 tables were purchased) and was right in the middle of the podium.

Guests that were in attendance were Andre Carson, Woody Myers David Orentlicher (all three of whom are running for Congress on the Democratic side of course) Sean Astin, Rob Reiner, Ex-Governor and a person friend of mine Joe Kernan, Melina Kennedy who ran and lost prosecutor and lost to Carl Brizzi and is now an attorney, Jill Long Thompson and her foe Jim Shellinger, both running for Governor against Mitch Daniels, Howard Dean who is Chairman of the Democratic Committee, Joe Andrew the former Democratic Committee Chair with the Bill Clinton campaign, Baron Hill (9th district House of Representative), Former First Lady of the Governor Judy O’bannon, Cordelia Lewis, Mark Crounce, and Senator Evan Bayh. Now all these people made the night a very special night but the top two were presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. This was the most sought after event of the year.

The night started off with Cordial Lewis introducing Wayne County Sheriff Roy Dominguez who introduced Jill Long Thompson who talked about her middle class childhood on the farm and a feminist respect that politics has gained, not only due to Hillary but over time. After she got off stage her opponent Jim Shellinger’s wife Laura stepped up and talked about how great her husband is, why you should vote for him and he then got on stage, the first thing he said was he was sorry that the governor election overshadowed the ongoing presidential campaigns of Barack and Hillary. It was a very Pro-Indiana speech and Anti- Mitch Daniels, both of whom are strongly against Mitch and his selling the state out of the country. Shellinger wants to reinstate collective non- bargain which just means unions again. Then Dan Parker came on to introduce Father Glenn O’connor for the invocation and dinner was started.

After dinner Dan Parker once again took the podium to give the Hoosier Democratic Award to Mary Titsworth for pro-bono work with the party, and after the award Senator Evan Bayh was introduced. Bayh gave a very Pro-voter in general vote, he said even if he was good friends and endorsing Hillary that doesn’t mean he didn’t like Barack or anyone who voted for him.

“The consequences of this race go far beyond the candidates.

Our nominees will lift up American families, that’s what our party is about.

States are too great for anyone of us to not give our all.”

Hillary Clinton was introduced by Bayh, and when she came on it was to many people off their chairs and applause. She came on at 8:41 PM and it didn’t seem like that long of a speech, but it was heart felt and very into the voters and wanting Bush out of the white house so the Democrats could finally take over office again. Many have made the point of Indiana not being this important since the 1968 Robert F. Kennedy campaigns, and she made the same point.

So with the 500 around the corner, I will ask you America…are you ready to start your engines?

She had light humor and a very soft voice, wanting people to bend over in their chairs to hear how important America needed to be changed and how she could change it. And also getting raging applause for her bashing Bush tactics.

If you listen close enough you can almost hear the sound of the moving van taking Bush back to Texas.

We don’t ask for special privilieges as Democrats, we ask that it isn’t against us.

At this point in time a Hillary supporter came and sat down at the Barack table, probably not knowing this was a table paid for by the Obama’s, but he had a pamphlet that caught my eye, as he sat there and made a CD for Hillary. It said “S-Day, May 6.” I took it as success day. Very catchy,.

I believe if everyone is secured the cost for everything will go down.

Needless to say when she said this quote, it kind of caught me off guard because it was unbacked and it came out of nowhere. The people at my table at this point were talking about how Hillary was a liar and needed to stop feeding the American people little fairy tales. Hillary ended on a very optimistic note about taking things for granted and her closing statement was this:

This next generation will grow up taking advantage that a woman and an African American can be President of the United States.”

Howard Dean then came on and talked about how you need to knock on doors, the same ones, at least 3 times before the elections, how this little amount will mean a load to the Democratic candidates. “In the long run this is not about Hillary or Barack this is about our country.” He endorsed the site democrats.org and told people to go out and get involved and surprisingly took a few wise cracks at Governor Mitch Daniels selling out the Indiana toll roads, and how we need the money at home.

At around 9:47 closing up the night, when dessert was finished and everyone was on the end of their seats for Obama, Lee Hamilton took the stage and introduced Barack. The hall was deafening with applause, it took him three or four times saying thank you to quiet the crowd and he got twice as many standing ovations as Hillary did. Lee Hamilton said quote “He’s the candidate whose life story is uniquely and distinctively American.” Lee Hamilton if you don’t know was the Vice Chairman for the 9/11 Commission and serves on the President’s Homeland Security Advisory Counsel.

Obama talked about how our politics have gotten smaller but the problems are continuinly getting larger. How we needed, and were ready to turn the page and write a new chapter in American History. If you’ve seen Barack speak before, he repeated a few lines but he never ceased to amaze the people at that dinner. He spoke of the old American ways of life, how jobs were easy to come by and people were willing to work their fingers to the bone just to pay for their family, and how dreams were still around.

The jobs they got didn’t just give them a paycheck but a sense of dignity.

How many decades have we talked and talked and talked of these problems and Washington does nothing?

Obama spoke of shell games with gas prices, politicians losing their sense of self and morals and principals. Only taking on political titles to have the power and forgetting the bills and taxes they had signed against and now were for (Shooting this one at McCain) He ended reminding us that Washington needs to change for the whole United States of America to change, and he fed us his ever so popular line “Politics didn’t lead me to the working people, working people lead me to politics.

This morning I woke up at 9:00 AM to get ready for Obama’s speech, I arrived at about 11:00 there was a decent crowd there and we were all informed to take off Obama buttons because, as I was later informed me, this would be a serious speech on poverty. No one knew what time he was going to go on and speak but he soon was on at a little after 12:00, actually right on time at 12:45. Which was the now estimated start time. There were no LN students there and few teachers managed to show up. The principal of our school Steven Goeglein had sent out an email to all the teachers but it looked like only few wanted to participate in what seemed like to me, a very big honor.

Obama was introduced by the Fisher family who live in Beech Grove and who he had spoken with. Then him and his wife came on, and soon she left leaving him at the podium. He spoke about Hillary’s plans and how they were understandable but not what we needed, how she wanted to try the gas plan holiday, but it had already been done and amounted to failure. Obama who is notorious for not having any real plans went over a few of them but not as much as you would have hoped. He gave a general rough draft of what would happen. Other than that, it was very pro-America, saying how most of these plans sounded very one man-ed but the country would fall from it together. We needed to be unified

Tim Russert managed to show up to watch the speech, no there was no George Stephanopoulos, but Tim managed to get a few people standing up, (when it was all over I went up and got a picture with him) and then the camera’s came out and they were all told to sit down when the Fisher family stepped up to the microphone. Obama’s two girls made an appearance as well in the beginning and the end. It was just very calm and I thought, needed speech.

Tomorrow night is the ever so important J.J. Dinner event which I am lucky to be attending and of course there will be a blog about that. Also my mother’s name was chosen (..ok so my dad gave the people my moms name) for a question on Clinton. Yes, you heard correctly the whole Russert/Stephanopoulos rivalry has hit Indiana. My mom plans to ask about Clinton’s deal with college tuition, even though her and my dad have already voted for whomever they have voted for, no candidates names will be dropped here of who, but she’s excited.

Only Clinton news I have for right now is on Thursday night I went down with my family to a very homey Irish pub at 8:30 to see Sean Astin come in and try to talk everyone into voting Hillary. We met him and he was Very well informed. I also hear on the local news Clinton is ahead by 10% here. 48% to Barack’s 38%, but we know how polls/statics work.

“If we can beat the Soviet Union to put a man on the moon we can beat the world at spreading battery powered cars and Hillary plans on doing it.”

Then he started to talk about foster care, jobs getting more and also them being given to other countries, gas prices..and everything but, it seemed, the war in Iraq and immigration. Sure he said Hillary wants us out of Iraq but he didn’t go much further. He also didn’t look at Barack as a threat, he didn’t make fun of him or smear his name, whenever he was mentioned it was only as “opponent.” Near the middle of the speech he went on to say

“I have Clinton laws, and since I can’t run for anything anymore I might as well pass them down to Hillary,” one that stuck out was “If people say you can’t win it means you can.”

His speech was full of stories and applause was enormous even though the New Castle Middle School wasn’t quite full to the brim. He ended with a very patriotic pro-Hillary voting. Before this giving us ammo to use if we wanted to change someones mind to go for Hillary, and then saying how if he wasn’t married to Hillary he would still think of her as a strong candidate.

Although it was a powerful and amazing speech, and despite the fact that I got to shake his hand..I still am unconvinced, not that I can vote anyway but I still like to say I go for someone. Just means I have to hear this all from Hillary, and then the other side of Barack.

Now I don’t know about anyone else but I love me some Carville. His thick Louisiana accent “The Ragin Cajun,” and his political knowledge. It’s just easy to get lost in his conversation, especially if he isn’t letting Richardson talk at all on Larry King Live. For Bill Richardson (Remember him? New Mexico Democrat who used to be running for President?)  to say that debates aren’t helping because they’ve been saying the same thing is insane! Debates are always necessary. It keeps their information straight. Sure Carville is pro-Clinton of course, once being the political adviser of Bill but if it did come down to Obama he would vote for him. What America is looking for now when it comes down to is a Democrat in the office.

Opinions?

“I am appalled,” Yale College Dean Peter Salovey said in a statement Friday. “This piece of performance art as reported in the press bears no relation to what I consider appropriate for an undergraduate senior project.”

On to other more local news. As you know Bayh and Hillary are very buddy buddy, and he’s been by her side ever since she came to Indiana to speak, but is Bayh all Hillary has right now? She has a very important Indiana endorsement, and I have yet to hear, besides Andre Carson, who backs up Obama. You have the whole “Vice President Bayh” thing going on which only means more publicity for Hillary, but wait what does Bill have to say about this?

Bill Clinton chose Bayh to deliver the keynote address at the 1996 Democratic National Convention and referred to Bayh in his 2004 memoir as “a gifted leader who might be president some day.”

So Bill likes him, what else is there? It sounds like Hillary has it in the bag to nab up Indiana, which to some people is essential. Yet Obama leads Clinton in the donations, almost three times as much. Obama is more appealing to the young voters and over the weekend Obama called Senator Richard Lugar to wish him a happy birthday, even if Lugar never gets into the Democratic sidings, just that friendship is good to hear. This seems so much like a real fight I feel like I should start taping it, it’s getting so intense. Who WILL get Indiana? As of yet it’s down to a 5% lead, and Obama has it, we have to wait and see. If Hillary does well tomorrow and in Indianapolis she could be the come back kid. Let the ramblings began.

No Democratic presidential nominee has carried Indiana since Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1964, and the poll showed that either Obama or Clinton would have an uphill battle against the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080420/NEWS0502/804200368/1008/LOCAL19

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080419/NEWS0502/804190465/1008/LOCAL19

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080421/NEWS0502/804210364/1008/LOCAL19

I was surfing the web when I came across a story about a Yale Art Student who graduates this year and her final project. Aliza Shvarts is a very opinionated student, pro-creativity, art, feminism, abortion. Why should I mention the latter? Shvarts inseminated herself and made it into her project, yes this is a nine month long pregnancy video done with a splash of creativity. Sounds innocent and beautiful right? Wrong. She took abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. You may want me to stop right there but her project also contains viles of her miscarriages blood.

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

The only thing that she didn’t do is pay the sperm donors for their services. She only required them because she needed to take tests for STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases). What’s amazing is that in the end she doesn’t care what those drugs did to her body, both in ability to become pregnant again or any other side affects. Her art teacher however, LOVED this project idea but knew a lot of people out there were very disturbed by it. I wonder why? She failed to go to a doctor because she thought since the drugs were herbal and legal that she didn’t need to go.

The display of Schvarts’ project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts’ self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

What do you think of this? A lot of Yale students, students from other campuses and other people in general think she took her constitutional right of her body way too far, think its morally wrong, and don’t think she should be so open about. Discuss.

Exhibit will be open April 22-May 1 in Holcombe T. Greene Jr. Hall on Chapel Street

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24513

Ms. Cyrus: Hello?

Mr. McCain: Miley, it’s John McCain.

Ms. Cyrus: John McCain?

Mr. McCain: I think you know why I’m calling.

Ms. Cyrus: I can’t vote yet.

Mr. McCain: No, no. I need tickets for the show. And as a U.S. senator, of course, I’d have to pay for them.

Ms. Cyrus: Wish I could help, but I’m all out. Oh, sorry, I gotta run, Senator McCain, but good luck with the whole running for president thingy. Sounds kinda fun.

Mr. McCain: Well, what about an autographed Hannah Montana lunch box?

(Ms. Cyrus hangs up.)

Ms. Cyrus: Miley Cyrus speaking.

Mr. Obama: Miley, it’s Barack Obama.

Ms. Cyrus: Let me guess. You want tickets?

Mr. Obama: Uh, yeah. I’ve got two daughters, and they really, really love you.

Ms. Cyrus: Sorry, but I don’t–

Mr. Obama: Four words: Treasury Secretary Hannah Montana.

Ms. Cyrus: Gotta go! Since when are awards shows so political?

It’s cute right? Miley plays the ditzy pop star and McCain and Obama try and make people laugh with wanting the ever so popular tickets (and ever so expensive) to a show. What do you think about this? I have mixed reviews. It used to be SNL was what political candidates went on but that’s gone done the drain too..now Hillary Clinton is appearing on The Colbert Report for the first time ever. Which would appeal to a crowd more? Colbert..or Cyrus..?

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/the-phone-rings-its-hannah-montana/