Edwards is IN for Prez

John Edwards, a former Senator and John Kerry's 2004 running mate, is going to run again for president in 2008.

- DLL

Democrats wanted Minneapolis

Here's an interesting and disappointing excerpt from Bob Novak's latest column....

Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean faces a dilemma in choosing the site for the party's 2008 national convention. He would prefer Denver, but he may have to be content with New York.
Denver lacks sufficient hotel facilities, a suitable arena and labor union support, not to mention adequate financing. But when New York was leaked as the site, the reaction was so negative that Dean delayed a decision.

Party members complained that it would be the fourth out of the last nine Democratic conventions scheduled for New York. Backers of Sen. Hillary Clinton don't want her nominated in her place of residence. George H.W. Bush and John Kerry lost elections when nominated in their respective hometowns of Houston and Boston.

A footnote: The Democrats' first choice for '08 was Minneapolis, a rare city that wanted the conventions in this round. But Republicans beat them to the punch in scheduling their convention there. Democratic Party rules prohibit them from convening in the same place (as they did in Miami Beach in 1972).

I say let them have it in St. Paul and we can still do it in Minneapolis. Heck, its not even the same county, what's the big deal?

Happy Holidays,

Aaron

Mark Ritchie's Swearing-In Invitation

Students for Ritchie is hosting some events on January 2nd, the day that he gets sworn in. Hopefully we can have some UDFL representation there.

Come Celebrate Mark's Swearing In As
Minnesota's Secretary of State

Come celebrate with us the swearing in of Minnesota's 21st Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie on Tuesday, January 2nd in the State Capitol from 5:00 - 7:00 PM.

There will be an official ceremony sponsored by Governor Pawlenty at 11:00 the morning of the 2nd at the Fitzgerald Theatre (limited public seating available on a first come first serve basis) and then Mark will be hosting receptions for the staff of the Office of the Secretary of State in the afternoon. At 5PM we will be gathering in the Rotunda of the State Capital to celebrate with supporters, volunteers, family, friends, and well-wishers of all kinds! Please come and join us on this special occasion.

Please RSVP to MaryB by Thursday, December 28th.

This event is on Facebook here.

- DLL

TIME Magazine "Cartoons of the Year"

Good Bayh (Sorry)

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IL) will announce his non-candidacy for the presidency tomorrow.

- DLL

Predict06 Results

Back before Election Day we started a Predict06 pool to try to guess the election results. As a group we got 51 of 77 races right (66.2%), which puts us 32nd of 96 pools. Not bad.

David Liebow: 55/77 (71.4%)
Justin Henry: 47/77 (61.0%)
Noah Seligman: 47/62 (75.8%)
Brendan O'Shea: 45/62 (72.6%)
Eric Brown: 44/62 (71.0%)
Max Page: 12/14 (85.7%)
Sean Olson: 1/1 (100%)
Ben Drewelow: 0/0 (0%)

- DLL
____________________________________________________________________

Update: The person who guessed closest to the correct balance of Congress won the prize- and being that person I am content with the satisfaction of being just one off in the House and the Senate. I guessed the House to be 232-203, Senate 50-50 (actual House 233-202, Senate 51-49). -Justin

McCain-Pawlenty 2008?

An article in the New York Sun (don't count it as an overly credible source) indicates that Karl Rove and the GOP are really eyeing Minnesota. Tim Pawlenty, has been active supporting the endless presidential campaign John McCain, the Arizona Senator who has been basically running for more than 6 years. McCain has been flip-flopping all of the board courting the religious right. The Sun reports that a McCain-Pawlenty ticket is possible.

However, Pawlenty has said that he will not seek national office while he is Minnesota Governor. Of course, he also claims to care about education...


Thoughts?

Are you ready?

The opening from last night's Monday Night Football game:


More '08 news: Congressman Dennis Kucinich from Ohio announces he is running for President.

-Justin

New Exec Board Member

Congratulations to Michael Walters, the new Vice President of UDFL who took over the position at our final meeting of the semester tonight.

UDFL will likely have a new meeting time next semester, probably 5:30pm, but still on Monday. As always, stay tuned to the website for updates.

New Website

If you're reading this, you probably can see that we have our new web site address in place. Though we are going to continue using our old blog for a little while, we have already begun building our new blog and web site.

- DLL

UDFL will be holding its final meeting of the year, Monday December 11th at 5pm in room 307 of Coffman.

I will be resigning as UDFL President, and Shannon will be taking over. This means the Vice President position will be open so we will hold an election at the meeting to fill that spot. We will conclude this semester and outline plans for the next.

-Noah

Cute Barack Obama Story

This was a very interesting story of love, loss and redemption:

Obama accidentally humiliated a young columnist who was sent to report on the senator with a young intern/love interest during a recent visit to Southern Illinois State Univerity. The columnist then wrote that he would never vote for Obama because he ruined his chances with this girl. Well, Obama got wind of it and phoned him for an apology, which was recorded for the popular NPR radio show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" (Blogger note: my dad loves this show).

The ironically named Lovelady says he was trying to impress an attractive female news intern, and doing a pretty good job of it, if he says so himself, when he arose to ask Obama a question at a press conference. But Obama mistook him for a student journalist, and then explained: "You have such a baby face." Everybody laughed, including the intern, and that was the last Lovelady ever heard from her.

Here's the story in more depth: http://media.orkut.com/articles/0619.html

-Aaron

Final Meeting Monday

UDFL will be holding its final meeting of the year, Monday December 11th at 5pm in room 307 of Coffman.

I will be resigning as UDFL President, and Shannon will be taking over. This means the Vice President position will be open so we will hold an election at the meeting to fill that spot. We will conclude this semester and outline plans for the next.

-Noah

Truthiness

SPRINGFIELD, Massachusetts (AP) -- After 12 months of naked partisanship on Capitol Hill, on cable TV and in the blogosphere, the word of the year for 2006 is ... "truthiness."

The word -- if one can call it that -- best summed up 2006, according to an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster.

"Truthiness" was credited to Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

"We're at a point where what constitutes truth is a question on a lot of people's minds, and truth has become up for grabs," said Merriam-Webster president John Morse. "'Truthiness' is a playful way for us to think about a very important issue."

Other Top 10 finishers included "war," "insurgent," "sectarian" and "corruption." But "truthiness" won 5-to-1, Morse said.

Colbert -- who once derided the folks at Springfield-based Merriam-Webster as the "word police" and a bunch of "wordinistas" -- was pleased.

"Though I'm no fan of reference books and their fact-based agendas, I am a fan of anyone who chooses to honor me," he said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "

And what an honor," he said. "Truthiness now joins the lexicographical pantheon with words like 'squash,' 'merry,' 'crumpet,' 'the,' 'xylophone,' 'circuitous,' 'others' and others."

Colbert first uttered "truthiness" during an October 2005 broadcast of "The Colbert Report," his parody of combative, conservative talk shows.

Mark Foley Continued...

The House Ethics committee, still controlled by Republicans, reported today on their investigation of the Mark Foley scandal. They found the GOP was "negligent" but didn't break any rules. Hardly a harsh rebuke, and there is no indication of what the end result be, specifically what reforms will arise.

“In its review of this matter, the investigative subcommittee was disturbed by the conduct of some of those who dealt with allegations regarding the conduct of former Representative Foley.”

A date that lives in infamy

Today is December 7th, the 65th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor that prompted U.S. involvement in World War II. The Naval Historical Center has a summary of the events of the tragic day, and links to more information.

National Geographic also has very complete coverage of the attacks, and an interesting historical perspective.



CLICK HERE to listen and read the speech FDR gave to a joint session of Congress and the nation:

"Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

"No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory."

Iraq

Today, the Iraq Study Group (a bi-partisan 10 member commission) released its report on the situation in Iraq, calling for more diplomatic and political pressure, and a change in US military goals.

If you're feeling ambitious, you can CLICK HERE to download the entire 160-page report.


Yesterday, Bush nominee for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates breezed through the confirmation hearings gaining unanimous approval of the committee. He could gain full Senate approval as early as today.

TShirts

Very productive meeting with plenty of fireworks, as UDFL took decisive action today and has a new T Shirt design to unveil for the masses. We will hopefully have the order filled and ready for sale starting next semester.

The shirt will be a TBD shade of blue, with white lettering.

FRONT:





BACK

"Reality has a well known liberal bias."
-Stephen Colbert


www.udfl.org

Meeting Monday

Reminder, that UDFL has a meeting Monday December 4th, at 5pm in room 307 of Coffman Memorial Union. This will be our second-to-last meeting of the year. Tomorrow, we will be focusing on getting new UDFL T-Shirts. So please come and share your ideas. If you can't make the meeting, feel free to post an idea in the Comments section or email me at seli0052@umn.edu. Thanks.

-Noah

Toys for Tots

The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party will once again be participating in the U.S. Marine Corps Toys for Tots program.

Since 1948, the Marine Corps has collected and distributed toys during the holiday season for children that might otherwise go without. Local coordinators of the program work closely with social welfare agencies, churches and other local community groups to distribute toys to children in need.

We are pleased to join other communities throughout the nationin this common cause. The DFL Party Headquarters.will be an official drop-off site for this wonderful program.

If you would like to donate new, unwrapped toys, please drop them off at our St. Paul office, 255 E. Plato Blvd Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. between Monday, December 4 and Wednesday, December 20.

Bayh forming presidential exploratory committee

Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) will form a presidential exploratory committee next week according to MSNBC. Bayh will become the third Democrat to take official steps for a 2008 presidential run, following former Alaska senator Mike Gravel and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack. Joe Biden, a senator from Delaware, has also unofficially declared his intentions to run in '08. We are going to have a large field of candidates, and each are likely to "officially" announce their candidacies two or three times to try and maximize their media exposure.

-Justin

WORLD AIDS DAY: TAKE A SECOND TO HELP

TODAY, December 1st is World AIDS day, and you can help out by taking a quick second to visit a website and light a candle. For every candle lit, there will be a $1 donation made in the fight against AIDS. CLICK HERE TO LIGHT A CANDLE TO HELP FIGHT AGAINST AIDS

Check out the official website for more information on World AIDS day, and what you can do to help.