Left on 49 - Cabarrus County blog

Follow me on Facebook!

2010-03-02T18:57:00.001-05:00

Thierry Wernaers's Profile

Create Your Badge

Has tyranny come to our shores?

2009-04-08T10:28:00.003-05:00

As Jon Stewart explains to my GOP friends: " Losing is supposed to taste like a sh*t taco".

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Baracknophobia - Obey

comedycentral.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

Political Humor

I need your vote and support.

2009-04-06T22:43:00.012-05:00

After long consideration, I have decided to run for Chairman of the Cabarrus County Democratic Party for 2009-2010.

Why?

Because I'm crazy enough?

Seriously though, we've come a long way from the summer of 2004, when I first got involved with the Democratic Party. Thanks to past leadership and a "hardcore" group of active Democratic volunteers in Cabarrus County we helped realize huge victories in 2008. We now have a Democratic President and a Democratic Congressman and Democratic Senator representing us in DC.
Well, I believe that, since we just took our country back, it's high time we take our county back.
More than 38,000 Cabarrus County voters right now are not represented in our County government. There is absolutely no Democratic voice on our all Republican Board of County Commissioners. A government without an opposition is not a democracy. It's time we bring democracy back to Cabarrus County.

How?

By expanding and improving on proven successful tactics from the recent past, while at the same time trying new things.

The best place to find new Democrats is in your own backyard.
Back in 2004 I could count the number of local Democratic precinct organizations on one hand. Since then we've grown by leaps and bounds, but we still need to expand our local precinct organization.

We need to keep the newly discovered Obama volunteers engaged. This past year a lot of people came out of the wood works to help with the Obama campaign. Many of those volunteers had never been politically active before. We need to keep these volunteers engaged and in tune with our local Democratic Party organization.

We need to continue our effort to register new Democratic voters.
Thanks to a very dedicated effort to register new voters last year we closed the gap in voter registration between Democrats and Republicans by 4,000.
If we register another 4,000 new Democrats, we will turn Cabarrus County blue.
There are already more Democratic women than Republican women in Cabarrus County.

We need to engage folks who recently moved to Cabarrus County.
Our County is growing rapidly and a lot of traditionally Democratic people are moving in. We need to make sure to register these Democrats a.s.a.p. and get them involved in our organization.

Connecting with other local Democratic parties in "blue" counties and learn from their efforts while at the same time passing on our knowledge to other Democratic county organizations in our 8th Congressional District.

I will start a Committee that actively searches for excellent local candidates.
You can have the best county organization, if you don't have any candidates you won't win elections. In 2010 there will be 3 seats on the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners up for grabs. With some excellent candidates, who have the backing of a good Democratic county organization, the voice of almost 40,000 Democrats will be heard.

Of course, I am not going to do this all by myself.
It will take a big effort from all the active Democratic volunteers in our County, who I've gotten to know over the years, and many more who we still need to get to know.
I'm energized and hopeful for our future. Let's get to work.

How can you help me?

If you've attended your local Democratic precinct meeting this past March and got elected to be a delegate at our County Convention, i need your vote.
If you're not an official delegate you won't have voting rights, but I would love to see you come show your support at our convention as well.

The Cabarrus County Democratic Party holds its Convention on Saturday, April 25th from 10.30 am to 1.30 pm at Troutman's BBQ restaurant, 1388 Warren Coleman Blvd in Concord. You can click here for directions.

If you use facebook, you can join my support group on there.

I am, naturally, open to any questions and suggestions you might have.

Where in the world is that Left on 49 dude?

2009-04-02T00:03:00.001-05:00

Yeah yeah yeah. I know. I know, I know, I know. I KNOW. So get off my back already, will ya? I've been busy! Actually, maybe i haven't.

Call it recuperating, call it a burn out or maybe it was just time to get away from politics for a little while. In any case, i'm back baby!

The extremely busy year of 2008 started for me on October 6th 2007 in a high school in Rock Hill, SC, where i watched this Senator from Illinois give a speech and ended in Raleigh, NC on December 15th 2008 when i witnessed 15 Presidential Electors, including one from my own Cabarrus County, cast their vote for that same Barack Obama.

In that same 2008 i also saw the election of a new Democratic Governor, Senator and Congressman i really liked and i became a citizen of my new country and cast my very first vote.

I saw our President in Columbia SC, Durham NC, Charlotte NC and finally managed to shake his hand in Raleigh NC at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner.

I volunteered for him in Rock Hill SC for the South Carolina Primary and traveled to the freezing Cleveland OH to do the same for the Ohio Primary. Upon my return from OH i organized the "Cabarrus for Obama" group and all the volunteers i found with that i put to work in the NC Primary. Against all demographic odds and predictions by the Obama Campaign themselves, we managed to win the May 6th primary in Cabarrus County with a 4% lead.

When it came time for the General Election, i was employed by the Obama Campaign as Deputy Field Organizer for my County and together with the only other staff member and hundreds of volunteers we registered 6,000 new Democrats and won 12,000 more votes for Obama than we received for Kerry in 2004.

So now, after a break from politics, i'm back and everyone who knows me a little knows that i'll stop caring about politics on the day i die.
So where do i go from here? You'll find out soon enough...

P.S.: All Obama pictures you see in this story have been taken by me.

Palin for President!

2008-09-08T22:59:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I said it.

What a day!

2008-08-29T19:21:00.010-05:00

Thursday, August 28 2008 was a historic day not only for this country, but also for me.
After a process that lasted about 15 months, i was sworn in as a new US citizen at the USCIS offices in Charlotte. With me, 102 other citizens from 45 different countries were sworn in as new Americans.
And if that wasn't enough, that same night i was treated to one of the most amazing speeches i heard in my lifetime, live from Denver, delivered by the first African-American Presidential candidate for a major political party, exactly 45 years after M. L. King gave his "I have a dream" speech.

Today i handed in my voter registration form at the Cabarrus County Board of Elections and i'm very much looking forward to casting my first vote in the USA for an historic presidential candidate. No, it won't be for the oldest candidate in history.

Want to get involved in the election campaign?

2008-07-16T00:08:00.006-05:00

This Saturday is the day to get active!
The Cabarrus County Democratic Party is kicking off the election season with a big organizational meeting for all experienced and new volunteers. If you want to be involved with the election campaign in any way, I highly recommend showing up.
I will see you there.

Cabarrus County Democratic Party (CCDP)
Election 08 Countdown Meeting

For everyone that wants to get involved in our 2008 election campaign. We need your help!

Please join us for a working lunch at Troutman's BBQ. Lunch will be $6.00/person.
Saturday, July 19th
Troutman's BBQ, Hwy 601, Concord (directions)
11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Now's the time folks. We need all of us working together!

And then there will be 7... in 2012

2008-06-18T10:51:00.006-05:00

During the Cabarrus County Commissioners meeting this past Monday, the commissioners made a decision on their board expansion plans. Remarkably enough it's not one of the options they had considered before.
After a lot of folks showed up and spoke up against the idea of quickly expanding the board haphazardly before the November election this year, Commissioners decided to expand the board in 2012 not in 2008.

There also seemed to be a majority on the current all republican board in favor of going to district representation and not keep the current at-large system. The consensus seems to be to have 5 members represent districts and have 2 at-large members next to that.
It will be interesting to see how those districts will be drawn. The final districting plan will more than likely be voted upon in a referendum on the ballot in 2010. We should all keep a close eye on this one.

For now I want to thank all the folks who showed up at the Board meeting or who made their voices heard in another way. Thanks to all of you sanity prevailed on this issue.

And then there were 7?

2008-06-15T17:15:00.006-05:00

The Cabarrus County Commissioners have to work too hard. That's why they say they need to expand the Commissioner Board from the current 5 members to 7 members. While hardly anyone disputes that expanding the board is a good idea, I'm all for it myself, there are a lot of questions about the timing of this move and about the way they want to do this.

Commissioners have been talking for years about expanding the board, yet they waited until the Primary of May 6th was over to bring this issue up again. Furthermore, they seem hell-bent on already having 2 more members after the November 4th election this year.

Proof that there has been talk for years about expanding our Board of Commissioners can be found in a Senate bill introduced in 1989 to expand the Cabarrus Board by 7 members and realize district representation.
Jim Johnson, former NC Senator and current Democratic candidate for NC Senate, introduced that one.

Our current, all republican, Board of Commissioners came up with 3 options on how to expand the Board.

Have the current Board just appoint 2 extra members.
Have the Executive Board of both local political parties each nominate 2 candidates. These candidates will then be added to the Party ticket. So instead of having the current 2 Democrats running against 2 Republicans, you will have 4 against 4, with the top 4 vote getters being elected.
Organize a non-partisan race for the 2 extra board members, next to the Partisan race for the 2 members who were already up for re-election. Anyone could then file for the 2 extra seats and we could have a long list of candidates, none of them having any mention of party affiliation next to their name on the ballot.

I see big problems, and probably legal issues, with all 3 of these options.

First of all, we don't appoint people to new political positions in this Country. Last time I checked this was still a democracy and in a democracy we have something called an election to elect politicians. While the current Board of Commissioners seems to recently have abandoned this option they should be chastised for even bringing it up.

The problem with the second option (both parties nominating 2 extra candidates) is that these new candidates wouldn't have to go through a primary to get on the ticket. In the past May primary there was a big list of candidates on the Republican side duking it out for their 2 nominations. Some of those spent a lot of money to be elected. They would now be joined on the same ticket by candidates who didn't have to spend a dime to get on the ballot. If I was one of those candidates that won in the primary I would be very pissed and would probably weigh my legal options.
Also, in that second scenario the Executive Committees of the political parties would nominate candidates, leaving out the voice of the Cabarrus County voters.
Let the people speak, it's what a democracy is all about.

The third option, which they seemed to favor at the last Commissioner work meeting that I attended, has the problem that you would have 2 totally different races for the same political position. Is that even legal?
You would also have the same problem that the candidates running in the non-partisan race would not have had to go through a Primary race like the candidates we already have on the partisan tickets did.

My conclusion: The Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners should delay board expansion until 2010, so that a comprehensive plan can be developed with plenty of input from voters. There will be plenty of time then to introduce a State bill to expand the board and have the new candidates go through the regular political process of Party Primaries.

All this still doesn't explain why the current board wants to expand the board in an extremely fast and haphazard way. Please allow me to come up with a conspiracy theory.
Since it seems clear that in the current political climate a lot of voters in November will not want to vote for anyone with an R next to their name, maybe some smart republican had the brilliant idea of organizing a non-partisan race where the candidates won't have an R or D next to their name?

The Board of Commissioners is organizing a public hearing during their regular meeting about this issue, tomorrow, June 16th. I urge anyone who is opposed to the current plans to attend and speak up. The meeting is held at 6.30 pm at the Cabarrus County Governmental Center. I'll see you there.

The current Commissioners also seemed to be in favor of introducing district representation, something I strongly favor, but that's food for another blog post and that's also something impossible to realize in the few months between now and November.

The race is over, let's start the race!

2008-06-03T22:25:00.004-05:00

After an excruciation year and a half, tonight, what most people already knew a few months ago, was finalized: Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for the Presidency and will be the next President of the United States.

I'm proud of having contributed a tiny little bit to the victory, together with a very big group of volunteers in Cabarrus County.

We now set our sights on November and start working hard for victory. If you haven't helped out yet, now is the time to start!
Please join the official Cabarrus For Obama group online.

Thank you Cabarrus County!

2008-05-11T19:47:00.005-05:00

After recuperating from several weeks of lack of sleep, with 2 or 3 hour long nights being very common, it is an absolute pleasure for me to use My 100th post to thank all the voters in Cabarrus County for giving Barack Obama a victory in My own County.

With the odds stacked up against us in this County, we managed to pull out a victory thanks to the very hard and dedicated work of dozens of volunteers. The demographics in Cabarrus County working against us, with a relatively small African-American population and a majority of older Democrats, the Obama campaign predicted we would lose here by 2%. Instead, thanks to staff and so many volunteers, we won by 4%.

We won, thanks to all those days of door-to-door canvassing, making calls, distributing fliers and door hangers, giving rides to the polls and putting up yard signs. It was hard work, but it paid off and I'm sure I speak for all the other local volunteers when I say that we very eagerly look forward to the fall to start doing it all over again.
It was very inspiring to witness the enthusiasm and spirit that drives all our volunteers on a scale I haven't witnessed in a political campaign before.

We won this battle, even though some people stubbornly refuse to admit it, but the war will be won in November.

After this Primary victory we're not hibernating, but we keep organizing and building upon this success to prepare for the big battle in November. So join our group and be a part of history.

Trust me, come this fall, Cabarrus County is in for a surprise.

Disgusting

2008-04-23T15:52:00.005-05:00

While the Primary race between Clinton and Obama has gotten pretty vicious lately, I was always convinced it's nothing compared to the stuff Republicans would be spewing around the general election. Turns out I didn't have to wait that long, thanks to the NC GOP and their head witch, Linda Daves.
Even John McCain and the Republican National Congress declared today how deplorable the latest stunt of the NC repugs is.

From The Dome:

A new TV ad from the N.C. Republican Party tries to link two Democratic candidates for governor to Barack Obama's controversial former minister.
"For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew, listening to his pastor," the ad says, segueing into video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, David Ingram reports.
The ad continues, "Now, Bev Perdue and Richard Moore endorse Barack Obama. They should know better. He's just too extreme for North Carolina."
The ad is titled "Extreme." Republican chairwoman Linda Daves of Charlotte appears briefly at the end.

I know this ad is just trying to use the old politics of fear, but the scariest moment in the ad is without a doubt the few seconds at the end where Linda Daves, Chair of the NCGOP, shows up. The Rev. Wright definitely has nothing on her. She could really use a make over.

The ad is of course extremely far fetched, calling out someone because a friend of a friend said something we think is wrong. For all my "moderate" Republican friends in the County i have the following question: Just because you went to a bunch of meetings of the Republican men's Club in the last few years, where Coy Privette and Ric Starnes where always prominently present and without a doubt said a bunch of crazy stuff, does that mean you agree with them and hence mean you're crazy too? Did you leave the Republican men's club? And did you never go back again?

The NCGOP ad is not only disgustingly playing into racial fears, it's also a very slimy way of trying to get some money for more dirty shenanigans that are no doubt heading our way. The ad starts and ends with a plea for donations. This ad is no more than a desperate attempt to get more money for the cash strapped NC Republicans and they're willing to pull the race card to do it.

In a sign that the Republican Presidential nominee and the national republican party have at least a quarter of a brain, they both publicly distanced themselves from the ad and asked the NCGOP not to run it anymore.

McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee for president, sent N.C. GOP Chairwoman Linda Daves an e-mail today about what he called an "offensive advertisement."

"The television advertisement you are planning to air degrades our civics and distracts us from the very real differences we have with the Democrats. In the strongest terms, I implore you to not run this advertisement."

"The RNC has been in contact with the NC GOP and communicated that we do not believe the ad is appropriate or helpful and have asked that they refrain from running it.”

The NCGOP is refusing to stop airing the ad.

"This is not about the RNC," Daves said, reports David Ingram. "It is about North Carolina, our values and two Democrat(sic) candidates who are out of synch with the values of North Carolina."

Values indeed. Jesse Helms is alive and well in North Carolina.

Voting starts today!

2008-04-16T23:10:00.006-05:00

Today our local Board Of Elections opens its doors for the early "one-stop" voting process.
You can vote early every weekday until May 2nd from 8.30 am - 5 pm at the Board of Elections offices on 53 Corban Ave SE in Downtown Concord.
There is also one Saturday you can vote early, May 3rd, from 8.30 am - 1 pm. This also the last day to vote early.

During early voting you can also register to vote and vote at the same time, in case you missed the voter registration deadline, this is your one chance to still vote!

Same day voter registration is NOT possible on election day, May 6th.
Same day voter registration is meant for new voters, they won't allow you to change your party affiliation at this time.
If you're 17 but turn 18 before the November election, you can register and vote in the primary during early voting even though you're only 17 at this time!
Check out the Cabarrus County Board of Elections website to find out all about same day registration.
You can also look at the Democratic sample ballots on the same website.

Since several folks have asked me who i would vote for in the Democratic Primary, I will put up several posts in the following days explaining who I would vote for and why. I'm pretty sure you know by now who i would vote for in the big Presidential nominee race :-)

Understanding the Washington game

2008-04-15T15:21:00.001-05:00

Instructional video:

The writing on the wall

2008-04-12T15:17:00.010-05:00

When it comes to voter registrations there's a very remarkable trend lately.

In the state of North Carolina more than 120,000 new voters have registered since the end of 2007.
Roughly half of the new voters have registered as Democrats, a little more than a third are unaffiliated and about 13 percent are Republicans, according to figures from the State Board of Elections.
Overall, the number of voters increased by about 2 percent to 5.7 million, Rob Christensen reports in the News&Observer.

"It started back in late December," said Johnnie McLean, the deputy state elections director. "It's obviously due to the presidential primaries."

For the week of March 23rd - March 29th, there were 12,000+ new voters registered in NC. Of those, 7,500 registered as Democrats, 4,500 registered as Unaffiliated, 173 registered as Republicans.

In Cabarrus County the trend is remarkable as well.

According to numbers from the Cabarrus County Board of Elections, local Democrats have closed the gap in registrations with the Republican Party by more than 1,100 voters so far. These numbers do not yet include Friday April 11th which was the last day to register. Democrats brought in another big number of registrations that day.

In August of 2007 there were 33,456 Democrats vs. 40,837 Republicans in Cabarrus County, a difference of 7,381.
As of April 10th, there are 34,950 Democrats vs. 41,752 Republicans in our County, a difference of 6,260.

I've personally helped register hundreds of new voters in several Cabarrus County High Schools these days and the pattern was always the same: 20% Republican, 35% Democrat, 45% Unaffiliated. Several kids told me it's definitely not "cool" anymore to register Republican, even though I was completely non-partisan and never told them what Party I belonged to.

Of course it's important to remember that we're still 6 months away from the general election and I fully expect this trend to continue until then.

Something is about to happen in November.

Back from the beach

2008-04-05T20:01:00.002-05:00

There's nothing better than letting the sea breeze blow all your worries and stress away for a week on Topsail Island.
But as you can see, even at the beach it's hard to escape politics :-)

Anyway, it's good to be back and for the next month I'll be giving it My all to win this Democratic Primary.
If you want to help, drop by the next meeting of Cabarrus for Obama this Wednesday!
Check out this link for all the details.

Black is the new president, bitch

2008-03-16T13:39:00.003-05:00

In case you missed Saturday Night Live yesterday, check out the following hilarious video.

And don't forget to read Barack Obama's personal answer to that whole preacher firestorm.

I'd love to see all of you at the second meeting of "Cabarrus for Obama" this Tuesday March 18th at 7 pm at the Sweet Pea Cafe in downtown Concord.
At our first meeting 65 people showed up. Join us!
For more information and to RSVP follow this link.

Obama has already won against McCain.

2008-03-09T15:43:00.001-05:00

By proxy that is.

Democrat Bill Foster, endorsed by Barack Obama, has snatched former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's congressional seat in a closely watched special election in Illinois that gave the longtime Republican district to the Democrats. Foster has won 52 percent of the vote compared to 48 percent for Republican Jim Oberweis.

That result was amazing given the 14th District's clear Republican lean.
President Bush won the district, which spans into the far western suburbs of Chicago, with 55 percent in 2004 and 54 percent in 2000.
Hastert won reelection easily for more than two decades.
Bill Foster was endorsed by Barack Obama, and ran on a similar platform of "change". Obama made a TV ad praising Foster. Meanwhile, McCain campaigned for the Republican candidate Jim Oberweis, and fundraised for his campaign.

Watch the Obama ad for Bill Foster:

Foster's win should demonstrate to the Democratic leadership that Obama can help elect more Democrats to Congress, even in formerly "safe" Republican sites.

The defeat is a major setback for the NRCC and House Republicans. The NRCC spent nearly $1.3 million defending the seat, a significant percentage of the $6.4 million the committee showed on hand at the end of January. That is a major investment of limited resources, only to
come up empty.

House Republicans, already dispirited by the loss of their majority in the 2006 election and more than two dozen retirements within their ranks since then, will likely take this defeat hard. Watch to see how many of them will retire over the coming weeks as vulnerable members take the Illinois special election as a sign of things to come in the fall.

Canvassing in a winter wonderland

2008-03-07T17:15:00.003-05:00

I returned on Tuesday from Ohio, where I volunteered for Sen. Obama's campaign in the frozen city of Cleveland. Hundreds of volunteers from all over the country descended upon the state to help out the Obama campaign.
What follows is the story of my journey in a winter wonderland.

Getting to Cleveland was no small feat. As the person who I stayed with told me, "February is the worst month to come to Ohio". I wish they had told me sooner.

I had planned on getting to Cleveland in one day. Including all the necessary stops, the trip should take about 10 hours under normal weather circumstances. The problem is that the weather was anything but normal, although it might have been normal under Ohio standards.

It was getting dark when I crossed the Ohio river and pretty soon after that it started snowing. With a high of 25 degrees the snow wasn't going to disappear anytime soon. I was tired and didn't feel like driving in the dark and snow anymore, so I stopped in Cambridge, OH and checked into a hotel.

The next morning i was looking forward to a mere 2 hour drive to my final destination. When I opened up the curtains of my room i found out that everything was covered in a thick blanket of snow and it was snowing even heavier than the night before. I could see the highway in the distance though and traffic seemed to be moving right along, so I decided to hit the road.

For the first 10 miles or so everything was fine, the road was clear, but after a short while it seemed like the snowplows had stopped working. Everything was white and you could not see the road anymore. It snowed even harder now and visibility was reduced. The only thing I could see were the tire tracks made by a truck that was in front of Me.

For the next 3 and a half hours I followed those tracks in what I would describe as "white knuckle driving". At several points my car started beeping and a light started flashing on the dashboard of My Prius, indicating that my tires were slipping. Until I got to Ohio I didn't even know my car had this feature. Hey, at least i learned something.

I got to Cleveland eventually, a day later than planned and a nervous wreck after that drive. The next day the canvassing started.

Saturday morning I reported to the local Obama Headquarters in Lakewood, a suburb on the west side of Cleveland.

As usual (we did the same thing in South Carolina and Illinois) we were asked to visit targeted voters in targeted neighborhoods with personalized door hangers which indicated where people had to go vote.
Because the campaign asked me not to, I can't tell you what neighborhoods and what voters get targeted exactly.

My door to door canvassing brought me to streets on the edge of lake Eerie and allowed me to snap some pictures of this massive, partially frozen, lake with the Cleveland skyline as a backdrop. The temperatures were still freezing. The advantage to this is that canvassing went pretty fast, people tend to not keep their front door open for very long when its 25 degrees outside.

On Sunday and Monday the weather got a lot a warmer, with temperatures reaching 50. The snow melted and roads were clear.

I had originally planned to stay in Ohio until after primary day, but the weather reports indicated that the weather was about to make a turn for the worse so i decided to leave while I still could. On Tuesday morning I headed home. This time I made the trip in one long drive.

On Tuesday afternoon Cleveland got covered in freezing rain. Pretty soon after that it started snowing. It has been snowing ever since and temperatures have yet to get above freezing again. I had escaped just in time.

Even though the results in Ohio weren't what i had hoped for, we didn't do too bad in the City of Cleveland. Obama won 69% of the vote there.

By the way, I didn't just work in Cleveland, I also managed to squeeze in a visit to this little hangout:

Luckily, the next step for me in this drawn out race will be right in my own backyard.
If you want to get involved with the Obama campaign right here in Cabarrus County, please join the "Cabarrus for Obama" group on the official Obama website.
May 6th is primary day!

Cleveland rocks!

2008-02-28T23:05:00.004-05:00

I've just arrived in Ohio where I'm hoping to help the Hillary Clinton campaign out of business. I'll be helping Barack Obama with the door-to-door canvassing operation until next Tuesday.
Good thing I'm not alone...thousands of out-of-state volunteers have traveled to Ohio to help out the locals. The locals know a lot better how to deal with the snow and temperatures in the 20's though.

I'm taking lots of pictures, but I forgot a cable I need to upload them, so I'll be posting those next week after I get home.

Meanwhile on the home front I'm very pleased with the fact that no Cabarrus County Republican will be running unopposed this election!
You can check who all the candidates are by following this link.

More to come soon!

The Clinton's are funny?

2008-02-14T17:01:00.003-05:00

As you know, and you might be sick of hearing me talk about it by now, I'm an Obama fan.
However, I'm not one of those people who support Obama because they think Hillary is just a "B***".
I respect her, but I think Obama is by far the better candidate.

That being said I wanted to share some humor out of the Clinton campaign with you all. The problem is that none of this was meant to be funny.

First of, a supporters' YouTube video that's meant to counter the many stirring Obama videos that have reached millions of young people by now.
Judge for yourself, but I think it inspires me almost as much as a rusty doorknob does. It has a very high "Up with People" level.

Then we also learned that Bill Clinton argues that Hillary has done excellent in the primaries, considering that she is "operating on a shoestring". She raised $140 million.

I hereby volunteer to drive Bill Clinton around in some areas in Rock Hill, SC, where I was campaigning for Obama during the SC primary. I visited people there that lived in totally dilapidated houses with "port-a-potties" by the side of the road because they didn't have any sewer access. I'll let them explain to Mr. Clinton what a shoestring budget really is.

Calling $140 million for a political campaign a shoestring budget is the kind of Washington-speak we have tolerated too long. It's time for a change of the guard.

Monday blues: November edition

2008-02-11T14:05:00.000-05:00

A very quick and short "Monday blues" feature this week. With all this primary stuff going on I haven't had much time to look for funny videos, but I didn't want to withhold the one I did find.

Note: If you get my posts through certain RSS readers or in your e-mail you might have to go to the website to watch video's.

You might have seen the following music video about Barack Obama. It was made by Will.I.Am from the Black Eyed peas and you'll see several musicians and celebrities participate in it. The reason you might have seen it is that it apparently gets about 1 million views a day on YouTube. You can watch a high quality version of the video by following this link.

The McCain "straight talk" campaign has it's own version of this, but it's just a tad bit less inspiring. Makes you think about the November contest :-)

Have a great week at work!

Why doesn't it pay to recycle in Cabarrus County?

2008-02-09T18:27:00.000-05:00

There was a lot to do recently about a pretty big hike in the fee for garbage pick up as Allied Waste Services added curbside recycling services for County residents that live outside the Concord and Kannapolis city limits.

Allied Waste added the recycling service for the unincorporated portions of the county at the specific request of the Cabarrus County Commission.
I'm one of the customers who now has to pay 43% more for my garbage pick up. While I love finally being able to recycle, I think something is not quite right.

My family of 3 members puts out a full recycling bin once a week, next to a big 95 gallon rolling cart with exactly one garbage bag in it. One of my neighbors down the street, who lives alone, doesn't recycle at all and puts her big rolling cart overflowing with garbage bags (usually the lid can't be closed) on the same curb.
The problem I have is that we both pay the exact same amount for our garbage collection.

Apparently nobody on the County Commission has ever heard of the internationally well known and accepted "the polluter pays principle".
Besides the "good feeling" you get from doing something positive for the environment, why should anyone recycle when it takes a lot more time and effort and your neighbor, who just pollutes away, only has to pay the same amount you do?

In a letter I received from Allied Waste Services, which was sent out after they received numerous complaints from customers about the raise in fees, they say that one of the main reasons they added the curbside recycling was that

"Cabarrus County wishes to encourage more residents to recycle in order to better protect our environment".

Can someone explain to me how you are encouraging residents to recycle by having them pay more and ask them to invest more time and effort at the same time? Basically you're asking people to work harder for something they have to pay more for.

What's even worse is that people who say they can't afford to pay 43% more for their garbage pick up will now start dumping their trash everywhere or just burning it in their yard. Why not tell people they won't have to pay more if they participate in the recycling program? Let the people, who are too lazy to get of their butts and just want to dump all their trash in one pile, pick up the slack for everyone who does care about the environment.

Also, I don't see anyone talking about the fact that all that recycled material is worth money. I'm sure companies pay Allied Waste Services for their cans, paper and glass, because all that stuff is raw material for an industrial process.
So I'm pretty sure that Allied Waste is getting extra money from 2 ends now. We pay more for their services while at the same time providing them with more material they can sell to other companies.
Why not include the proceeds from the collected recyclable material in to consideration when Allied Waste Services rates are determined? One good example for this I found in the State of Washington where they require this.

Once again logic seems missing in Cabarrus County government.

My trip to Chicago; adventures in Obamaland

2008-02-05T12:47:00.001-05:00

This past weekend I flew to Chicago to help a Belgian TV News crew make a report on the Barack Obama campaign. As you might know, Chicago is Obama's hometown and it's here that his political campaign started.
We visited the National Obama Volunteer headquarters and went to the communities where Obama was a community organizer some 25 years ago.

When I landed, the contrast between Charlotte and Chicago couldn't have been any bigger. In Charlotte it had been a balmy 60 degrees, in Chicago it was 30 and there was at least 10 inches of snow on the ground. The skyscrapers were hidden in a dense, low hanging cloud cover and it gave the whole city a weird kind of atmosphere.

After checking in to our downtown hotel we only had to walk a few blocks to reach the National Obama Volunteer Headquarters on W. Adams Street.
From the sidewalk it looked like any normal entrance to a huge office building and there was not one sign mentioning Obama. After making sure we were at the right address we took the elevator to the 10th floor. As soon as the doors opened there was a sight to behold.

The whole 10th floor of this building was filled with hundreds and hundreds of volunteers, almost as far as the eye could see. There were volunteers sitting behind rows of computers and the rest of them were just sitting on ever chair and in every corner they could find making phone calls all over the country, From California to Tennessee. I picked up a list of voters and a calling script as well and made some calls into New Mexico.

The whole operation seemed very professionally organized while at the same time having a fun and personal vibe. There was a childcare corner where little kids were making the well known Obama symbol with finger paints and on the other side of the building was a store selling all the popular Obama merchandise, there was also a buffet style kitchen where everyone could pick up a slice of pizza (there were about a dozen different kinds) and a drink. Speeches of Obama and the latest election news were projected on big screens.

People kept pouring in and out by droves, picked up a list of voters at the big front desk and started making calls.
It was easy to make friends, especially after I mentioned that i was a volunteer with the campaign in SC.
It quickly became clear that the campaign isn't spending much time and energy on Chicago and the state of Illinois, Obama out-polls Hillary by a 2 to 1 margin here, but is using the big pool of volunteers here to make a difference elsewhere in the country.

I was very impressed with the enormity of the operation, these headquarters are open 24 hours, but after a few hours we had to leave the HQ and head for bed, tomorrow was going to be a long and busy day.

The next morning we followed Obama's path he described in his book "Dreams from My father", in which he talks about his work in the late 80's on the south side of Chicago as a community organizer.
If you haven't read the book yet, I highly recommend it, even if you're not a big Obama fan. It's a very human story about the struggles of a multiracial person trying to figure out where he belongs.

We had set up a meeting with the Reverend Dr. Alvin Love of Lilydale First Baptist Church. Dr. Love was one the people who hired Barack Obama in 1985 to start working for a new community organization called "Developing Communities Project" or DCP for short.
The DCP still exists today and Dr. Love is now the President of the organization.
You can find a lot more about Obama's time there in the "Dreams from My father" book and there are also some interesting online articles about it.

Reverend Love turned out to be a very inspiring man. The TV crew had me interview him on camera and I came away with a much better sense of what makes Barack Obama tick and where he gets his drive.
I asked Dr. Love, who still talks to Obama regularly, if the thought that politics had changed Obama at all. His answer was refreshing:

"I don't think politics have changed him, he's only gotten better at what he used to do here and he does it on a much larger scale."

I also asked him if the US are "ready for a black president" and once again the answer was refreshing.

"Let me answer that in 2 parts. I think that the challenges and problems we face in this country by far transcend any question about race and gender and my second answer would be, ready or not, Here he comes!".

My final question was if Dr. love thought that Barack's work here 25 years ago had made a difference.

"Oh there's no doubt, our crime rate is down and back then I didn't even know the name of the pastor of the church 2 blocks down from here. Now we all know each other, talk and meet all the time and fight together for our neighborhood."

It was nice to have confirmed that Obama really is the candidate who brings people together to face the challenges of the future.

After the interview we stayed for the very lively church service, with a lot of gospel signing and great music.

We closed off the day and our stay in Chicago by walking around in "Altgeld Gardens", the first public housing project in the United States, built in 1945. It was especially this area where Obama focused his effort in the 80's.
There were Obama signs everywhere, because the folks that live here know what a difference Barack Obama can make. I'm hoping the rest of the US catches on as well.

If you want to see the Belgian TV news report, you can do so by following this link. Mind you, most of the report is in dutch, so you won't understand a lot of it, but you can at least enjoy the images. You will see the whole news broadcast, but if you fast forward to the 18 minutes and 30 second mark you'll see my report.

How I (and thousands of others) helped the Obama landslide in SC.

2008-01-28T22:01:00.000-05:00

The victory on Saturday in South Carolina wasn't a surprise to all the volunteers who had been working for the Obama campaign there, but the extent of the victory was.

For the past few weeks I was one of thousands of volunteers working all over the state of South Carolina to make sure we got the result we saw on Saturday evening.
I'll try to give you a little peek behind the scenes of the campaign from my personal view.

There wasn't any new groundbreaking strategy used as far as I could see; the same old tactics to win political campaigns was put in motion: build an army of volunteers, identify your supporters early and then do everything you possibly can to get those supporters to the polls.

When I first got involved with the local Rock Hill headquarters, several weeks ago, the emphasis seemed to be on identifying who would vote for Obama and convincing folks who were still undecided to join our side.
This was done through phone canvassing and door-to-door canvassing. The headquarters were always filled with people making phone calls, sometimes it was hard to find a little corner to sit in and make your calls.
We noted who was already convinced to vote for Barack and the folks who were still doubting got literature in the mail and sometimes a house visit in an effort to help them "see the light".

The week before the primary the tactics shifted to finding volunteers within the group of people who said they would vote for Obama. These volunteers would help on primary day, by phone canvassing and making door to door visits. This time I decided to walk around neighborhoods and participate in the door to door canvassing.
I usually drove to the HQ in Rock Hill where I picked up my "walking lists" and then drove even further south to places like Lancaster and Chester to knock on some doors.

What struck me as I was driving all over the northern part of SC was the hundreds of Hillary signs you saw everywhere along the road. You hardly saw any Obama signs. You see, the Obama campaign didn't invest a lot of money in signs, for a good reason.
Maybe somebody should have told the Clinton campaign that yard signs don't vote and that it's better to invest money in organizing your supporters and volunteers. On the other hand, maybe Hillary's campaign just couldn't find all those volunteers?

Another thing that struck me was the poor state a lot of the areas that I drove through were in.
While I'm sure that the folks who live in Charleston and Hilton Head island are not doing too shabby, it's obvious that the rest of the state is really hurting. Why a lot of them keep voting republican is beyond me. The only reason I can come up with is that probably some preacher told them they would go to hell if they voted Democratic.

The folks I talked to on their door steps were all very nice and I found about a dozen volunteers for election day.

The day before election day most of the people who the campaign had identified as strong Obama supporters got a big personalized door hanger placed on their front door explaining where they had to go vote and how the electronic voting process was going to look. Thousands and thousands of those got distributed all over the state and I hung up a few hundred myself.

On January 26th, the day of the primary, we had the most volunteers working, in an effort to make sure all of our supporters went to vote.
The staging area for the campaign in Rock Hill was moved that day from the headquarters we had on Ebenezer Road to the Freedom Center in downtown Rock Hill to be able to accommodate the hundreds of volunteers working that day.
I was the precinct captain for Precinct 8 in Rock Hill. That day about 60 volunteers were working in Rock Hill alone, going door to door and visiting everyone on their list of Obama Supporters. Many more volunteers were making phone calls out of the Freedom Center as well. The plan was to visit all of our supporters once before noon, once more in the afternoon if they hadn't voted yet and also call them to remind them to vote. So if you waited a long time to get your butt to the polling station you might have been "harassed" 3 times that day.
I walked door to door with a young team member from Pennsylvania from 9 am to 6 pm. What was really satisfying to see was that the work we were doing had an immediate effect. At one point while walking along a long straight street we looked behind us and saw 3 cars pull out of different driveways at the same time, all of them on their way to vote. In my precinct we also had the problem that the polling place was different from the one people were used to. We met a lot of people who said they went to vote that morning at their usual polling place,but found it locked and empty and they had returned home without voting. We were there to tell them where the new polling place was and a lot of people immediately went out again to vote as soon as they found out. If there hadn't been any volunteers visiting those folks that day, they would not have voted.
The 8th precinct is a very diverse area. We walked through neighborhoods that look very much like the one I live in but we also walked on dirt roads to visit people living in totally run down houses with no sewer facilities. They all had a port-a-potty standing in their front yard. This is also America.

My energy was drained by about 6 pm and I drove down to the Headquarters on Ebenezer road that I had worked out of the past few weeks. I found a small group of people watching TV, anxious to get some results. Most folks had driven down to Columbia to join the celebrations there. We ordered pizza for everyone and counted down to 7 pm.
When at 7 pm CNN projected Obama as the winner the roof almost came off the building. All the hard work had been more than worth it.

I'm impressed by the very diverse crowd that volunteered for Obama, from all walks of life and from all over the Country, with folks coming from Texas, Kentucky, New Hampshire and all over the place, next to a lot of native South Carolinians.
I also met several people who had never voted before and a lot of folks who never voted in a primary before.
The headquarters was run by folks who were all less than 30 years old. The energy and excitement was always around.
It's the same energy, inspiration and drive that will help us win the presidential election.
It's the kind of coalition of new voters, young voters and experienced voters that will win the presidential election.
The only candidate that brings all of this together is Barack Obama.

In case you're still wondering why I support Barack Obama, I can just use the words Senator Kennedy used today: "Barack inspires me, it's that simple."
And in the words of President John F.Kennedy:
"The world is changing. The old ways will not do... It is time for a new generation of leadership."

On a sidenote:
You'll remember from my previous post that the Belgian media has been interested in my work for the Obama campaign. You can now see an interview online that a reporter from Public TV in Belgium had with me and my lovely wife by clicking on the following URL: http://www.deredactie.be/cm/de.redactie/mediatheek/1.241790
You'll hear a lot of dutch, but big parts of the interview are also in english, so go ahead and have a peek.
I'll be going to Chicago this weekend with a crew from a commercial TV station in Belgium. We will walk around in the neighborhoods where Obama used to work as a community organizer and also visit the national Obama Headquarters. I'll keep you posted as to how that trip goes.