Chocolate lovers are picking Obama chocolates 3 to 1 over McCain in an unscientific poll.

Will the US withdrawal from Iraq include contractors? Obama's commitment to withdrawal is already sketchy. He might leave 30,000 troops in Iraq, possibly in a permanent US base, and call it withdrawal, move many of the troops to Afghanistan - or he might just completely change his mind and not withdraw at all.

One of the main problems of activists advocating for the Democrats in the 2008 US election is that it contradicts our values and will cause the public to stop trusting us.

It's morally fine for activists to advocate for a Democrat vote if you call it a "lesser evil", but when we say that the Democrats are actually "good" then we are being dishonest.

There is no such thing as a "fair" election, there are only elections that are more fair than others.

If you look right now at the Yahoo News page there are two conflicting stories:
1 "Obama lead on McCain grows to 12 points"
2 "AP presidential poll: Race tightens in final weeks"

Either Obama has a 12 point lead (Reuteurs) or 1 point lead (AP).

Arxiv.org has over 500,000 papers on Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology and Statistics.

It's an example of what is possible.

Activists should do the same (maybe not 500,000 at first, but starting off with a goal of 1000 would be good).

I think putting a ban on foreclosing mortgages and printing money (increasing liquidity) would "solve" the crisis. Let the banks fail (currently the largest bank that was failing was bought up by another corporation (JP Morgan I think) which seemed happy to get it!). Let the stock market fall 20%.

Also, I think there are more important economic problems in the US including unemployment, poverty, and non-existent or overly costly healthcare.

For the first time, the Canadian Green Party stands a realistic chance of winning a seat in current federal election.

It looks like they, after two elections of stagnated support (4.5%), they have intentionally embraced a strategy of vote-concentration. They've done this by forming a non-agression pact style alliance with the Liberals, allowing Green Party leader Elizabeth May to have a strong chance at winning her Central Nova riding in Nova Scotia.

Currently a bunch of organizations have their own website calendars. These generally include their own events, and sometimes events organized by allies. Quality and format varies.

There are also several websites that try to have a calendar that covers their geographical area (city or state), an issue, the US, another country, or even the world.

Most of the significant activist events (eg. conference level, not just a weekly group meeting) are located on organizational websites. They don't make it on to the "calendar" websites, like CampusActivism.org/ActivismNetwork.org.

Obama is calling for hope, but failing to talk about power and is failing to be an organizer. The goal of community organizing is for the organizer to help people realize that they have power, to help them organize around their grievances, and for the people to lead.