I just did something I have not done in a long time, and that is to make a donation to a Presidential nominee. If you are like me, and know that we cannot afford even 4 more years of anything like we have had for the last 8, I ask you to either MEET or EXCEED my donation of $25.00 to Barack Obama. This election is just that important. WE have so much work to do and some many major problems to tackle its hard to know where to start. WE need CHANGE and we need it NOW! I ask my fellow Democratic Outsporters and anybody else to join me in this effort, and I thank you too!
thank you!

He'll get my vote but he's not getting money from me.

Ditto.

I thought he had pledged to go the public finanacing route? Oh, wait, that was THEN, this is NOW.

I guess it's all part of the change he's talked about for so long. I said it before and I'll say it again: the only change we'll see is that the word "change" will cease to be used.

I will not give any money to the Dems, since they would only count half of my vote...they don't want my vote, they don't need my money. Many people in Florida feel the same way.

Well, you thought wrong. What Obama pledged to do was work with the eventual GOP nominee toward a publicly financed general election. He did, admittedly back off on that, but given his opponent, why shouldn't he? I mean, McCain says now that he is going to take public financing, but he can change his mind at any turn - why should Obama or the country believe him? After all, during the primaries he actually entered the public financing system in order to secure a loan to keep his campaign afloat. He then knowingly violated his own campaign finance law when it became financially more attractive for him.

As for hockeytom's challenge - I'm way ahead of you buddy. I've given about $700 to Obama's alternative public financing, and am sure to give more.

CPT: thank you sir.

Florida's state legislators and governor are far more culpable in that situation than "the Dems" who "don't want [your] vote." Your elected representatives are the ones who moved up the primary date in violation of party rules. What did you expect to happen? That the DNC would just say "OK, sounds great!" and seat everyone?

Of course, the irony is that Florida would have mattered all the more, the later the election...

What percentage of Florida voters are really this stupid? Seriously? Your own (Republican) legislature did this for political purposes, not the Dems. I really just cannot believe this line of thinking. Are you only going to make a 1/2 donation to the Republican candidate or register 1/2 a vote in the General Election? Geez Louise. Floridians once again proving they really shouldn't be allowed near a hanging chad, much less a voter's booth.

Oh, and I've been making regular donations. They owe me a T-shirt.

Thanks Horn, and I agree about the t-shirt.

They have a cute Obama Pride T-shirt with a rainbow on it for just a $30 donation per an email I got from them a couple of days ago. I had just made a donation a few days before that, so I'm getting a regular Obama T-shirt.

I can't figure how to post a pic of the Obama Pride shirt, but you can see it here.

Obama Pride T-shirt

No, I thought right, as a quick search of the Washington Post, NY Times and USA Today of 6/19 and 6/20 confirm (I can't get the link function to work tonight). We shouldn't pretend otherwise. I suppose McCain could follow suit, who knows? Indeed, why should the country believe him? After all, the candidate who spoke so eloquently about being a different kind of politician has already shown that while he is indeed a politician, he is not the least bit different. Given that precedent, any cynicism from the electorate would be rather understandable.

After FISA? I'm no less likely to give $$$ to that maniac McCain.

But the Repubs counted the votes in Florida, so I beg to disagree with you...screw the party rules. Because of this stupid rule, Florida will probably go to the Repubs now.....

Screw the rules? Heck, let's just scrap the whole primary process.

All that being said I'm not pleased with how it came out but the FL primary was tainted at best. Obama didn't campaign in the state after the party warned the FL Dems of the issue. Clinton didn't care about the rules. So counting your vote would be suspicious to me at best from a state that did play by the rules. Honestly if we did count your vote fully I'd question anything that came out of FL regarding this election.

I don't know what should be done in FL but something needs to. I actually got to listen to Annette Taddeo talk at the Netroots Nation 08 convention about the presidential primary system. Based on her analysis of the situation I'm so "excited" to see what the presidential election will hold in November.

Dang it, quit griping about your primary situation and work to vote some state legislators into office that might actually come up with something other than a Rube Goldberg experience every election.

I've given to Obama, to Hillary Clinton, to Dodd, and to some of the other Democrats, both in this run and in others. After the FISA debacle I was tempted to give to Nader and McKinney, but thought better of it.

Just keep in mind that in 2000, quite a few people said that Gore and Bush were basically the same, though all signs pointed to how dramatically different they would be. Obama isn't going to be a savior, he isn't going to push the country in as progressive direction as people are hoping, he isn't going to immediately solve or resolve the hydra's head of problems the Bush administration has created or presided over, and as his FISA vote showed, he won't forcefully investigate or punish the corruption and criminality that has occurred over the last 8 years. At times he seems ideologically like a more religious, less randy Bill Clinton.

But as his overseas trip did show, he is leagues away from the Bush approach on almost every major foreign policy issue (except the Israel-Palestine conflict), and if elected will offer a "change" in POLICIES, if not always POLITICS.

That is the key: policies. Don't forget that. Politics put politicians in office and determine which policies get enacted, whereas policies ultimately govern the way we live.

Bush often substituted politics for policies or rolled them into one, which is why conservatism has proved to be such a total disaster as an ideological system of governance.

Speaking of campaign finance, according to the Federal Election Commission, a nonpartisan federal institution, John McCain has been violating the campaign finance laws since March. As Mediamatters.org points out, the press have carried water for him on this since it began. His violations are pretty serious, but the establishment media, as par for the course, was mainly concerned about Obama's broken "pledge," at least for the hot moment that they could focus on campaign finance at all.