GREETINGS FELLOW DEMOCRATS!





Thank you to...

...Barry Clar and Linda Coats for keeping the office open for the next two weeks. Be patient if you don’t get the phone answered immediately or if the door is closed.





Great turnout last night at Margarita Rocks for Voter Registration!

Almost 40 people. We love you! It is not too late to sign up. We need at least 60 more people. If you have not volunteered to do something for this campaign season this may be for you!





Running Mates for Obama?????

CHICAGO — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called on two potential running mates and a host of foreign policy experts Wednesday as he pushed his agenda for Iraq and his views for U.S. foreign policy elsewhere.

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., were scheduled to join Obama for a national security roundtable at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

"Sen. Obama understands that the threats we face in a 21st century go far beyond the wars of today," the Obama campaign said in a statement. "In order to be fully prepared, we must begin to implement effective strategies now that reduce the risk of three particularly catastrophic events _ a nuclear attack, a biological attack or a cyber attack."

The event continued the buildup for Obama's upcoming visit to Iraq and Afghanistan. He also plans to visit Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and Britain during his overseas trip. Visiting Purdue also brings Obama back to Indiana

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/16/potential-obama-vp-candid_n_113022.html





COMMENTARY: We need to fire back at the 24/7 fear spread by cable news

John Young
WACO TRIBUNE-HERALD

You almost can't find a public place anymore where you feel safe. Safe, that is, from cable news.

In the diner. In the airport. In the hotel breakfast bar. I once complained at a blood bank where I was giving my pint and a blaring Fox News was altering my blood pressure.

Actually, having just returned from vacation, I have to give credit to the airports in Denver and Dallas. They realize that not everyone wants his skull drilled courtesy of CNN Headline News.

Unlike previous excursions at these airports, I did not have to skulk around near my assigned gate for a quiet place or sit under a TV with my hands covering my ears.

You may think of this as nothing more than an information-age nuisance. I think of it as a public health problem. Moreso, cable news is a public safety problem.

How so? Well, recently the Waco Tribune-Herald reported on the increased numbers of Waco residents who were packing heat.

They aren't exceptions. The Texas Department of Public Safety says applications for concealed weapons permits are up 5 percent in the state over last year, causing a major backlog.

Why are people arming themselves in said fashion? Locals told our reporter why.

"Church shootings. Mall shootings. School shootings," Erin Quinn wrote.

Church shootings? Here? No. A deranged man shot up a church in Colorado. Mall shootings? Here? No, but some guy had just shot some shoppers in Florida.

The newly armed people weren't reacting to incidents where they live. They were reacting to what TV, particularly 24/7 cable news, was pumping into their brains at a breathtaking, nerve-rattling pace.

In recent days, you heard a steady stream of speculation, then horrifying news, about a 12-year-old abductee found dead in Vermont. You think, "Yep. No 12-year-old is safe."

That's bull corn, of course. Snap out of it.

Sure. Be smart about child safety. But part of being smart is not overreacting to perceived threats. Part of being smart is taking a deep breath and knowing hysteria for what it is. Hysteria is the coin of the realm for cable news.

However, understanding as I do the affinity for firearms in an age of 24/7 fear, and the American profit motive, I've decided that if the cable networks can make money from all that fear, so can I.

I'm starting a shooting range on the outskirts of town. We'll call it the 24-Hour Cable News Firing Range.

Lock and load. Instead of perceived and distant threats that drive people to arm themselves, we'll employ the real threats: the televised images that scare people into adult diapers.

At my range, we'll have moving images from Fox, CNN and MSNBC projected on target screens. No faceless human silhouettes here. Fire at the news that scares you so, though it has scant bearing on your community, your neighborhood, your family, your life.

Scared to death? Have you really given reality a try, as opposed to that spliced between commercials for anti-depressants and incontinence remedies?

Have you walked in your neighborhood, nodded to people down the block, seen the sunset, heard the birds, lived in real time?

If not, the purveyors of 24-hour fear have you right where they want you.

jyoung@wacotrib.com





Brazos County Democratic Party
P.O. Box 4568
Bryan Texas 77805
979-779-5600 Fax 979-779-5601

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
Harry S. Truman, Democrat, President of the United States of America