Daily Online

I attended the big rally with Barack Obama here, July 24, not as a press representative but as one of the crowd. And what a giant crowd it was! The news reports counted “over 200,000” but to someone sandwiched in so tight I could hardly lift my hand to scratch my itching nose, much less applaud, it seemed like a million! The predictions had been for “anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000” and the official start was at 7, so I stupidly arrived at 6.30, too late to find anything but a tiny spot to stand on (when the pushing ceased), so far back from the monument where Obama spoke that I couldn’t even see the big screen. I saw only the heads and backs of those in front of me.

You knew something special was happening when the youngest, freshest face in the room got up, took charge and called the meeting to order — “Hello, I’m Scout Sanders, and welcome to the first meeting of Aliquippa for Obama!”

The specter of runaway inflation haunts our country. It is already beginning to create havoc and wreak devastation to our national economy. It is deepening and spreading hunger to new millions. It has caused the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in an ongoing job loss spiral. It is creating a crisis for rent payers and homeowners. It is complicating the struggle to stem the rising tide of home foreclosures.

At dawn on July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro, a young lawyer, told a group of young people, “Comrades, within a few hours, we will either succeed or be defeated. But regardless of the outcome, listen well, comrades, this movement will triumph.”

State workers are reacting with outrage to reports July 23 that Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to sign an executive order on July 28, temporarily cutting pay for over 200,000 state employees to the federal minimum wage, $6.55 per hour. The order, effective with the August pay period, would last until a budget is signed. Workers would then be paid their full back salaries. The governor’s office would neither confirm nor deny the reports.

As he refines his economic message on the campaign trail this summer, Republican John McCain has made it clear that, previous positions notwithstanding, he has now embraced the Republican economic orthodoxy: eliminate regulation, cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy and the free and unfettered market will take care of everything.

Struggle vs. supply and demand
Answered
Campaign financing
Armed robbery
TAKE ACTION
We want to hear from you!

Under the title “Listening to America,” the Obama campaign issued an open invitation to voters to organize meetings in their homes, union halls, churches and schools this month to discuss what planks should be added to a 2008 “Platform for Change.” In the past, the Democratic Party platform was written by “paid professionals,” the call said. “This year, that’s going to change.”

The good news is Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama continues to project withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq by mid-2010. The bad news is, he is proposing to transfer a significant number of those troops to Afghanistan.

Sen. Edward Kennedy’s appearance in the Senate recently, in the midst of his personal battle against brain cancer, to break a Republican filibuster against a bill to save Medicare will go down in history. Days later, on July 15, as the result of a 383-41 congressional vote to override a Bush veto the progressive measure became law.