randallt's blog

"All politics is local" observed Tip O'Neill, a former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.



Gordon Smith, from the gorgeous Western North Carolina city of Asheville, has taken the lessons of Tip O'Neill and has crafted a modern local campaign that is bold, inspiring, fun and accessible like none other I have ever seen. He is using social media, personal outreach and good old fashioned door to door politicking combined with energetic public events to reach thousands of people with his very progressive ideas.

Please follow me below the fold to learn more. Local politics. It all starts here.

Cross posted on Kos

by Aileen at My Blog

Way back in early September I posted about a strange incident at Minot AFB in North Dakota, where 5 (now increased to 6) stockpiled nuclear warheads were taken out of storage, armed, attached to supposedly decommissioned Advanced Cruise Missiles, loaded onto the pilons of a B-52 strategic bomber, and flown to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana - a forward staging base for deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

My analysis at that time was that the whistleblowers who reported the incident to The Army Times - which then broke the story - were just doing their job, which had to do with some rather obvious "Saber-Rattling" by the Bush administration against Iran. In that post I noted that ex-CIA analyst Larry Johnson> agreed with my analysis on his blog.

Daily Kos election roundup includes NC 08 and NC 11

I just stumbled on this roundup over at Daily Kos and was delighted to see that my diary on raising money through ActBlue for Heath Shuler and Christopher Walker's excellent diary on Larry Kissell were included in the roundup of state race pieces posted.

Please visit the Kos diary roundup and see how other states are being represented. The diarist will apparently be doing these roundups through the election. Then write a diary! The more attention we can bring to our state races through non traditional media, the more traditional media will pay attention. The netroots are driving the bus right now, let's open the windows and shine as much light as possible on North Carolina.

Thanks to Scrutiny Hooligans
for the link to the On Notice Generator.

Thanks to my last excursion into local and state politics, I am growing more and more aware of how important things are here down on the ground, so to speak. And how fun and energized.

I was inspired this week by a Netroots fundraising Drive on Daily Kos to start my own fundraising page for Heath Shuler. I had been to ActBlue once to donate during a Lamont net drive, but didn't realize at the time that people could create their own page, for their own candidate. What a great idea. I know, I know, I'm a little slow but I try.

Cross posted on my blog and on DailyKos

I ran across an ad for a State Representative candidate the other day in my local newspaper's online edition. I noticed right away that there was no party affiliation listed in the ad, just a nice picture, a few words and a link to his web site. His name is Charles Thomas (R) and he is running for a seat in the General Assembly representing North Carolina's 116th District.