Two Articles By Barack, Barack

Fine unscrupulous mortgage lenders

By Barack Obama

Published: August 29 2007 03:00

The implosion of the subprime lending industry is more than a temporary blip in our econ-omic progress. It is a cancer that, given today's integrated financial markets, threatens to spread with devastating impact to housing and to our economy as a whole, unless we act to contain it.

It is also a parable about how an excess of lobbying and influence can defeat common sense rules of the road, placing both consumers and our nation's economic well-being at risk.

This all started as a good idea - helping people buy homes who previously could not afford to. But over time, lenders began pushing low-income buyers into homes they could not possibly afford, abusing the system by lowering their lending standards, making loans that required no money down and offering low, teaser interest rates that explode after the initial grace period. Some borrowers were also lying to get mortgages or engaging in irresponsible speculation.

Nearly everyone - from lenders to investors to borrowers - fooled themselves into thinking that what they were doing was low risk when it in fact involved a lot of risk.

But we also know that Washington played a role. At a time when non-bank lenders were offering new kinds of mortgage, the federal government should have made sure it was all being done on the level. Instead, our government failed to provide the regulatory scrutiny that could have prevented this crisis.

There is a reason why this has happened. Over the past several years, while predatory lenders were driving low-income families into financial ruin, 10 of the country's largest mortgage lenders were spending more than $185m (£92m) lobbying Washington to let them get away with it. So if we really want to make sure this never happens again, we need to end the lobbyist-driven politics that made it possible.

Today, as we weigh our options on how best to resolve this crisis, many argue that bailing out the borrowers and investors will just encourage them to engage in more of the same irresponsible practices.

But I think we also have to recognise what will happen if we reward the mortgage industry's lobbying: they will keep using the same kinds of deceptive practices to make a quick buck, no matter what the consequences to home buyers and their communities. Rather than correct what they are doing wrong, these companies will know that if things go badly, they can always lobby Washington to let them off the hook.

The real victims in this crisis are the millions of borrowers who followed the rules, whose only crime was taking out mortgages that lenders told them they could afford. Normally, these borrowers could avoid foreclosure by refinancing their mortgages or selling their homes. The problem today is that they cannot refinance because no one will lend to them, and they cannot sell because the housing market has fallen. With some arguing that the effects of the worst subprime loans will not be felt until 2008 and 2009, this may be just the beginning.

We need to help struggling borrowers to weather this storm. One way to protect innocent homeowners - at least until this crisis passes - is to establish a fund to help people refinance or sell to avoid foreclosure. We can partially pay for this fund by imposing penalties on lenders that acted irresponsibly or committed fraud.

But we have to do more than just deal with the present crisis. If we do not address the root of these problems, it is just a matter of time before we will be dealing with them again.

The rules currently governing mortgages were written in the 20th century to make borrowing easier to understand for borrowers. We need to update these rules for the 21st century and enact the regulatory and disclosure laws that the mortgage industry has been lobbying against.

That is why I have proposed a Home Score system that would create a simplified, standardised metric for home mortgages - rather like the annual percentage rate (APR), the effective interest rate a borrower ends up paying on a loan - allowing prospective homebuyers easily to compare various mortgage products so they can find out whether they can afford to make the payments.

I have also introduced a bill in the US Senate called the Stop Fraud Act that would treat those who commit mortgage fraud as the criminals they are.

Owning a home represents a big part of the American dream and all Americans - no matter what their income level - should have the power to reach for that dream. But that is not going to happen until we stop the unlicensed, unregulated, fly-by-night mortgage brokers who are hoodwinking low-income borrowers into taking on loans they cannot afford.

If we are serious about stopping this crisis and preventing much larger turmoil in US housing markets, Washington needs to stop acting like an industry advocate and start acting like a public advocate.


Hit Iran where it hurts

By BARACK OBAMA

Thursday, August 30th 2007, 4:00 AM

Americans need to come together to confront the challenge posed by Iran. Yet the Bush administration and an anonymous senator are blocking a bill with bipartisan support that would ratchet up the pressure on the Iranian regime. It's time for this obstructionism to stop.

The decision to wage a misguided war in Iraq has substantially strengthened Iran, which now poses the greatest strategic challenge to U.S. interests in the Middle East in a generation. Iran supports violent groups and sectarian politics in Iraq, fuels terror and extremism across the Middle East and continues to make progress on its nuclear program in defiance of the international community. Meanwhile, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared that Israel must be "wiped off the map."

In response, the Bush administration's policy has been tough talk with little action and even fewer results. While conventional Washington thinking says we can only talk to people who agree with us, I believe that strong countries and strong Presidents shouldn't be afraid to talk directly to our adversaries to tell them where America stands. The Bush-Cheney diplomacy of not talking to Iran has not worked. As President, I will use all elements of American power to pressure the Iranian regime, including the power of tough, smart and principled diplomacy.

For diplomacy to work, we need to dial up our political and economic pressure - not just our tough talk. Iran's troubling behavior depends in large part on access to billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue. That is why I introduced the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act last May, to build on a movement across the country to divest from companies that do significant business with Iran. This would send a clear message about where America stands, increasing Iran's isolation and hitting the Iranian regime where it hurts.

The bill works in three ways. First, it would educate investors and pressure foreign companies to reconsider doing business with Iran by requiring the U.S. government to publish - every six months - a list of companies that invest more than $20 million in Iran's energy sector. Second, it would give explicit congressional authorization to state and local governments to divest the assets of their pension funds and other funds under their control from any company on the list. Third, it would give private fund managers who divest protection from lawsuits, while urging the government's own 401(k) fund to create "terror-free" and "genocide-free" investment options for government employees.

This common-sense approach enjoys broad support. Sam Brownback, a Republican senator and presidential candidate, joined me in introducing this bill. A companion bill passed the House of Representatives 408 to 6. The only obstacle now is a single senator who placed an anonymous "hold" on the bill, blocking it from coming to a vote.

This is exactly the kind of unaccountable obstruction that needs to change in Washington. Instead of having a debate in the open, a Bush administration ally is blocking the bill through a secret Washington maneuver - a maneuver that would be banned if a sweeping bipartisan ethics reform bill that I led the fight to pass is signed into law.

Talking tough and keeping our troops in the middle of Iraq's civil war has only served to strengthen Iran's position. It's time to turn the page on a failed foreign policy. It's time for strong diplomacy backed by common-sense measures that pressure the Iranian regime.



In The News

Potentially Dangerous Chemical Found Inside UN Building WNBC Potentially dangerous chemicals were found in vials in a United Nations Office building and FBI, NYPD and FDNY hazardous materials responded to remove them Thursday. ...... the vials were found at 866 East 48th Street and possibly included one vial of phosgene, a chemical warfare agent. .... the vials are sealed and the public is not at any risk. Officials said the vials were recovered from a former Iraqi chemical weapons facility by UN weapons inspectors back in 1996. ...... "There is no hazard tot he people of New York from this operation." ... the items were sealed and were in plastic bags and a metal box. .... during a routine archives check. ..... shipped more than 10 years ago and that "There is no indication of questionable activity."
UN Inspectors Find Chemical in UN Office Forbes
Vials of dangerous nerve gas found at UN building 7Online.com
Immigration Raid at Ohio Poultry Plant Forbes About 160 illegal immigrants were arrested in a raid Tuesday at a poultry processing plant ...... most of the illegal immigrants are believed to be from Mexico, other Latin American countries and Africa .... deportation proceedings will begin immediately in most cases. .... Meat-processing plants around the country have been frequent targets of immigration authorities as they have stepped up efforts to track down undocumented workers.
Spitzer Talks of Suing to Expand Health Plan New York Times New York would consider suing federal health officials if the state was not granted a waiver to expand its federally subsidized health insurance program for children. ..... “It is not right. It is not fair,” Mr. Spitzer said of the new federal requirements ...... Bush, who has called New York’s and other states’ plans a step toward socialized medicine ..... Under the new rules, states seeking waivers for a higher income ceiling would have to show that they have already enrolled 95 percent of children whose parents make less than twice the poverty level. Currently, no state in the country meets that standard, which Mr. Spitzer said violated federal laws that give governors broad discretion in setting the income eligibility levels in their states. ....... the change would have effectively made health insurance universal for children in New York. .... the one sought by New York would give the state the highest income ceiling in the country .... the new rules include what Mr. Spitzer called “poison pill” requirements that he said would effectively kill New York’s and others states’ plans. .... “If they come back to us and refuse to budge from the positions they’ve taken, then we will sue,” he said.
For Obama, Nothing is the Matter with Kansas Washington Post In 2004, 78% percent of White Evangelicals voted for George W. Bush. ....... Obama may be able to do is siphon off scads of “Swing Evangelicals” in battleground states ...... It’s mid-October and the senator is addressing a room full of Kansans in a non-college town. ..... Obama opens his talk by reminding them that he too is from Kansas (being from Kansas: Kansans love that!). He then surprises his listeners by pointedly noting his disagreements with certain secular mantras of his party (Indeed, it suddenly dawns upon the lone, closeted village atheist in the room that when it comes to separation of church and state, Barack Obama is no Michael Dukakis). ....... he fires up his audience with Jimmy Carter like gospel-based oratory, except that it’s interesting and fun to listen to. He speaks out-loud about an awesome God and his awesome God does not appear to be a card-carrying member of the ACLU ...... the Kansans head home in advance of their self-imposed, statewide 7:30 pm curfew ...... pleased to learn that Mr. Obama is a Good Christian Man (because Kansans are fair, big-hearted folks ...... Twenty five percent of his listeners, however, will now consider casting their vote for a Democrat (because Kansans are open-minded folks, after all). The next evening the scene repeats itself in Columbus Ohio. ...... if there is any present Democratic candidate who can manipulate faith-based rhetoric to trigger a political conversion among conservative religious voters it is the talented junior senator from Illinois.
Hillary Clinton Expresses Surprise at Big Money Donor's Wanted Status FOX News
Castro backs Hillary Clinton NEWS.com.au
Obama brings his pen on vacation Boston Globe For the second time in two days, Obama has penned an op-ed in a major publication outlining his views on a pressing issue. ..... in The New York Daily News urging Congress to pass a bill that would increase pressure on the Iranian government. ...... "It's time to turn the page on a failed foreign policy," he writes. "It's time for strong diplomacy backed by common-sense measures that pressure the Iranian regime." ..... in The Financial Times on the mortgage lending crisis, calling for sanctions on unscrupulous lenders. "If we are serious about stopping this crisis and preventing much larger turmoil in US housing markets, Washington needs to stop acting like an industry advocate and start acting like a public advocate

Some antics for the web Economist FOR all the tricks that the world wide web can perform, it still resembles a collection of one-trick ponies rather than a concerted cavalry charge. You can book an airline ticket, hire a car at your destination, arrange concert tickets for the evening that you arrive and even get directions from the airport to the concert hall. But you have to do it all yourself, one element at a time. You cannot delegate the process to a website as you might delegate it to your secretary or your long-suffering spouse. ...... The semantic web is so called because it aspires to make the web readable by machines as well as humans, by adding special tags, technically known as metadata, to its pages. .... a trio of new technologies: the Resource Description Framework (RDF), the Web Ontology Language (OWL), and the SPARQL query language. Together, they allow computers to group objects and their features—from prices and measurements to locations and user ratings—into meaningful relationships and hierarchies, by analysing their associated metadata. ........ In the field of travel, attaching metadata to everything makes it possible to link up airline schedules, car rental and hotel bookings. ..... TripIt .... Wesabe refers to as “bank puke”

Virginia Tech Criticized for Actions in Shooting New York Times
Two prominent senators call for Craig to resign Kansas City Star
Senator claims plea was error, denies being gay Concord Monitor
Senator's scandal rocks Republicans ABC Online
Blood-red eclipse stops nation Daily Telegraph the moon was eaten by darkness before emerging a bright red colour. .... If you missed out the next blood moon will be visible about 11.45pm on December 10, 2011.
Obama Dominates GOP Rivals in Illinois Angus Reid Global Monitor, Canada
In US Race, Obama Leads Giuliani and Thompson Angus Reid Global Monitor
Obama Tops Rudy, Thompson New York Press
Obama’s Attack Town Hall, DC
The God Vote Washington Post “Everybody digs Barack Obama.” .... he does possess qualities that make him uniquely attractive to people with advanced degrees in religious studies and other subjects. Obama can sound awfully professorial, as opposed to wonkish, when discussing issues pertaining to faith. The decade he spent as a lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago has clearly left its mark. When reading or listening to him analyze questions of public policy and religion many scholars undoubtedly experience the pleasure of recognition. They may even conclude--somewhat narcissistically-- that “Senator Obama is one of us!” ....... “a narrative of faith.” ..... As a child, he was schooled in both Catholic and Muslim institutions. Too, there is reason to believe that prior to his later-life baptism he was under-churched or non-churched and may even have flirted with a casual sort of non-belief. All of these experiences tincture his thinking on religion with more sophistication and edge than any other candidate in the race. ....... Obama is a very original and cunning operator. .... Obama can lampoon the faith and values game while playing it with extraordinary skill. ... His quip about the “politician who shows up at a black church around election time and claps (off rhythm) to the gospel choir” is a classic zinger. It is a mustard-filled paint-ball aimed at John Kerry that then ricochets directly into one of Hillary Clinton’s preferred photo-ops.

Take Camp Obama Online: Cash On The Enthusiasm

You should be able to do it through MyBO. There should be a manual that you should be able to read online. And there should be tests you can take and get certified right there at MyBO. And it should show on your profile that you attended the Camp Obama Online.

Why? Because we got to scale this thing. Training thousands is not enough. We got to train tens of thousands all over the country, in small towns, and not just in big cities. We got to totally translate enthusiasm into organization. We got to get sophisticated. Otherwise we stand the risk of squandering the amazing grassroots response Obama 2008 has generated so far. We owe it to our army of small donors and volunteers to go all the way.

The Grassroots Power Woman
Zip Code By Zip Code: Synergy Needed Between Local Groups And The National Email Treasury
The Countdown Has Begun: Marathon Now Turns To Sprint

We will soon be into the sprint phase full blast.

This is a movement you are talking about. This is not your traditional presidential campaign. When we say change, we mean it. We mean every letter of it.

We are using online tools better than any campaign. But we can do much better. We need to do much better. The competition is not with the other campaigns. The competition is with our own benchmarks.

The course online has to be evolving and interactive. It should be a tool to be build community online and offline.

We have got to go online, because we have got to mass produce.


In The News

Obama getting tough as going gets rough Chicago Sun-Times his strategy: to introduce himself as a Washington outsider but someone who understood the global stage and who believed in consensus. ..... For months this strategy had little variation. ..... And then the crowds started to dissipate. Obama didn't do as well as his aides had anticipated in the presidential debates and forums. He paused a second or two too long at times. He seemed awkward. He made a few gaffes. A poised Hillary Clinton was often declared the winner. ....... CNN's in early August: Clinton 40 percent, Obama 21 percent. Rasmussen's in late August: Clinton 39 percent, Obama 23 percent. People were getting to know Obama, but they weren't certain about his ability to don the presidential cloak. ...... as he shifts the gears of his strategy, taking bolder attacks against Clinton (note his description of her as "Bush-Cheney lite" on foreign affairs); retreating from many debates and presidential forums; presenting more detailed policies, as in his recent outline about how to resurrect a New Orleans still suffering two years after the debacle of Hurricane Katrina. ...... John Kerry was "at 4 percent in the polls before he won the Iowa caucus," adding, "I am happy to concede these polls in August. I am more interested in January." ....... Obama's tougher strategy may well give him the push needed in the early-voting states.

2008: Endorsements, Fund-Raising and Primaries New York Times Obama won the support of L. Douglas Wilder, the mayor of Richmond, Va. and the state’s former governor. Mr. Wilder, who was also the nation’s first elected black governor, predicted that Mr. Obama would do well among Southern voters. ...... McCain’s presidential campaign is eligible to receive public financing
Dodd Catches Fire Yahoo! News
Fire Fighters Endorse Dodd Hartford Courant
Senator Craig Insists He Is Not Gay Miami Poetry Review
Why Apple Can't Stop iPhone Hackers BusinessWeek 17-year-old .. Hotz hacked his iPhone and unlocked it so that it can be used on a variety of cell-phone networks
What Will Fix the Mortgage Mess?
Corporate E-Mail on the iPhone
Lawmakers sound off on Gonzales’ resignation The Citizen's Voice
2 Years After Katrina, Bush Sees Hope in New Orleans New York Times
Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast struggling 2 years later CNN
Jailed dictator Noriega a hot potato Melbourne Herald Sun
GOP Plans Early-Primary Penalties New York Times
Castro: Clinton-Obama ticket a winner Houston Chronicle a "seemingly invincible ticket" of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama would easily land in the White House. ..... mockingly wrote that Obama and Clinton, both Democrats, "feel the sacred duty of demanding 'a democratic government in Cuba.' " ... Castro said Bill Clinton was friendly and intelligent, and that Jimmy Carter was the only U.S. president he has met who "was not an accomplice to terrorism against Cuba."
Fidel Castro Death Rumors Give Way to Clinton-Obama Support National Ledger
Fidel Castro Wants Clinton-Obama White House Judicial Watch
White House pranksters deck out Karl Rove's car with 'I love Obama ... CBC Nova Scotia Rove's car is easily recognizable because of its "I love Barack Obama" bumper sticker
Pranksters Wrap Rove's Car Forbes
Rove's Ride Pimped The Gate - National Journal
Karl Rove's Car Vandalised at White House ShortNews.com
Obama unveils radical mortgage plan Financial Times Unscrupulous lenders who deceptively sold subprime mortgages to millions of Americans should be fined and the proceeds used to help bail out borrowers facing a wave of foreclosures, according to Barack Obama ..... “Our government failed to provide the regulatory scrutiny that could have prevented this crisis. ..... “While predatory lenders were driving low-income families into financial ruin, 10 of the country’s largest mortgage lenders were spending more than $185m (€136m, £92m) lobbying Washington to let them get away with it,” he wrote, citing figures from the Centre for Responsive Politics. ...... Obama said the government needed to “stop the unlicensed, unregulated, fly-by-night mortgage brokers who are hoodwinking low- income borrowers into loans they can’t afford”. ...... Curtailing undue corporate influence on policymaking in Washington is one of Mr Obama’s signature issues. ...... “There needs to be rationalisation – more centralisation – of how mortgage lending is regulated.”
Obama would target sub-prime lenders United Press International
Google expert says 'TV is dead' Telegraph.co.uk One of the founding fathers of the internet has predicted the end of traditional television. ... television was approaching its "iPod moment" ...... viewers would soon be downloading most of their favourite programmes onto their computers. ..... 85 per cent of all video we watch is pre-recorded ... Cerf, who is now the vice-president of the Google ...... some internet service providers, have warned that the internet will collapse under the strain of millions of people downloading programmes at the same time. ..... Over the next four years, it is thought that the number of videos watched over the internet will quadruple, with people moving from short clips to hour-long programmes. ..... "I want every one of the six billion people on the planet to be able to connect to the internet - I think they will add things to it that will really benefit us."
Google: censorship is not up to us Times Online
Google CFO to Retire At Age 53 ABC News
Google CFO Out Forbes
Original Document: Obama's Field Director On Enthusiasm And ... Atlantic Online crowds of more than 20,000 in Atlanta, GA; 20,000 in Austin, TX and a historic crowd of 10,000 in Iowa City, IA. ...... how are we going to channel this enthusiasm into an organization capable of delivering victories in the early states and the February 5th states? ..... marrying traditional field organizing training with the community organizing tactics Obama learned as a young man on the south side of Chicago. ...... Camp Obama: Turning Enthusiasm into Organization ..... the last three months, the Obama campaign has trained thousands of volunteers and supporters at “Camp Obama” trainings. ..... almost twenty Camp Obama trainings across the country including Burbank, CA; San Francisco, CA; Atlanta, GA; St. Louis, MO; Salt Lake City, UT and New York City, NY. In October, we will hold trainings in Birmingham, Alabama and Memphis, Tennessee and will continue the trainings in Chicago. ..... What happens at the trainings? .... a marriage between community organizing and traditional organizing tactics .... a vigorous two to four day program that includes training on setting up and running phone banks, planning and organizing a door-knocking program and role playing common scenarios from the campaign trail including the process of registering voters and speaking with voters about Obama’s leadership on key issues. ...... community organizing tactics—like relationship building and the ability to find common interests in people and employ them ....... building local leaders in the communities and fostering long-term relationships to support our common values ..... mini-campaign offices with these groups—self-sufficient, interdependent teams that take responsibility for all aspects of a campaign within their congressional district. ....... provide supporters and volunteers with the tools to take organizing into their own hands. ...... enthusiasm alone will not win the nomination ...... turning energy into action all the way to the White House. ...... local people are the everyday experts on the issues important to their communities .... equip the everyday experts with the same organizing tools and the roadmap to victory that our paid campaign staffers rely on across the country. ....... Ben Turner, 17, Student, Atlanta "For me, Barack Obama is a symbol of what's to come, of an entire movement. Just like MLK ...... the February 5th states where most candidates are struggling to decide if they should invest resources. ..... investing in everyday people and encouraging them to be our ambassadors, our organizers and our voices in places where we don’t have paid staff or official offices yet. ...... early states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina and in February 5th states like California, New Jersey, New York, Georgia and Missouri. ...... a winning campaign will need deep organizations in dozens of states to prevail. .... We will have the largest and most committed grassroots organization in the race, allowing us to build our support, chase absentee ballots, conduct early vote programs and turn out Obama supporters in any state we need to.
The Battle for the Democratic Nomination: Hillary Clinton vs ... TransWorldNews (press release), GA
Countdown begins for real in America's first billion-dollar ... Times Online In five days most Americans will begin enjoying their long Labor Day weekend - the traditional end of summer - in the usual way: barbecuing, a final trip to the beach and watching sport. ...... two of the whitest and least populated in America ..... Labor Day also marks the traditional start of the presidential primary campaign ... the moment when many voters begin to focus on the candidates and the issues. .... the longest and most expensive campaign in US history - it will be the first $1 billion election ..... “Tsunami Tuesday” ... America is probably only 20 weeks away from knowing who its two main candidates will be. .... The 2008 race is the first since 1928 in which both parties have genuinely open primary contests ..... In four out of five times in the post Second World War era - 1960, 1968, 1976 and 2000 - the party holding the White House for two consecutive terms has failed to win a third. ...... In 2002 party identification split evenly between the two parties. Now only 35 per cent of Americans call themselves Republican - compared with 50 per cent who say that they are Democrat. ...... Mrs Clinton fares the worst. She is in a statistical tie with Mr Giuliani and just ahead of Mr McCain. This is feeding Democratic fears that although she is a prohibitive favourite for her party’s nomination, she will prove too unpopular and polarising to win a general election. She has the highest “negatives” - unfavourable ratings - of any candidate. ...... She has run an utterly disciplined primary campaign. In debates she has been relaxed, confident and clearly the most knowledgeable and experienced. Her “negatives” have also started to inch downwards. She has been a better candidate in the skills of one-to-one retail politics than most predicted. Her closest adviser is America’s shrewdest political tactician: her husband. ......... Nationally her lead over Mr Obama is 16 per cent, 38 per cent to 22. That has edged down from 20 per cent from two weeks ago, and in the early nominating contests of Iowa and New Hampshire it is far closer. Mrs Clinton, Mr Edwards and Mr Obama are in a statistical tie in Iowa. She leads Mr Obama by eight points in New Hampshire. ..... his greatest challenge is to convince enough voters that he has the gravitas to lead America in a time of colossal foreign policy uncertainty. ..... Mrs Clinton’s relentless exploitation of it ... unlike the New York senator, had the judgment to oppose the Iraq war ..... a relatively stable two-horse contest. .... a personal wealth of $250 million ..... He is a hugely successful venture capitalist who rescued the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. He desperately wants to be president. He is the Republican most on the rise. ...... A possible entry by Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, this year will shake up the already volatile Republican race even further. .... US presidential politics is a mercurial and brutal affair where conventional wisdom is often turned on its head. Michael Dukakis warned his party this week how quickly things can change. He should know. In July 1988 the former Democratic nominee held a 17-point lead over George Bush Sr. Three months later he lost in a landslide.
Stories and Numbers - a Closer Look at Camp Obama Huffington Post, NY No one who attends a "Camp Obama" training weekend can deny that something truly beautiful is taking place inside the Barack Obama campaign. ... lead by Harvard Professor Marshall Ganz ..... applying story telling, emotion and faith to politics. .... He was there when Robert Kennedy was shot .... says that for America it's been 40 years in the desert since that time. But he says he's beginning to see an out. ...... Almost every sentence Ganz speaks is at the same time intensely intellectual and intensely emotional. ...... telling our stories to each other ..... learn how to tell our own stories ...... how to "put into words why you're called, and why we've been called, to change the way the world works." ...... recruiting and motivating volunteers and building relationships. ..... emerge being able to tell their "story of self" in less than two minutes ..... I wasn't prepared for anything like who the people in this room turned out to be when they began to tell their stories. ...... two different professors tried to steer her towards a major in education. One told her, "This isn't a field for black girls." ...... Another told her he was sure she was being set up by affirmative action for failure, though actually her scholarship had been awarded for academic performance only. Despite that discouragement, she stuck with it and now does some crazy high tech job for NASA .......... After hearing their stories, I certainly was looking at this group differently than when we first sat down. ...... In just that first morning session, this group of "ordinary campaign volunteers" had been revealed to actually be a group of insanely talented, wise and courageous leaders. Now that that had been established, the real work could start. ...... This potential-revealing process of story telling ... a key tactic of every social movement from the American revolution to the Great Awakenings to the Civil Rights Movement. .... first appeared: as "ordinary volunteers." Because that's how organizers saw them, and how they saw each other, that is how they functioned. ...... the nuts and bolts: training and exercises on how to function as an effective team, skills training for volunteer recruitment and voter contact and review and explanations of field plans for Georgia, South Carolina and the rest of the South. ...... a process of setting goals and making a plan to achieve them ...... While still at the training, thirteen different teams scheduled thirteen different volunteer recruitment meetings back in the districts--and picked up their cell phones to get 284 commitments to attend from friends and neighbors. ..... the closing ceremony ... was incredibly high-energy and emotional. ....... establish parallel teams of five to eight people to be responsible for cities and neighborhoods all the way down to the precinct level. ...... There's no question that Camp Obama is a beautiful thing. ... communities benefit from the leadership development that takes place at Camp Obama. ..... But is there time for this meticulous organization-building to make any kind of difference in the vote in the "Super Duper Tuesday" February 5 nationwide primary? That all depends on the actual numbers of high-functioning teams that Camp Obama graduates are able to create in their districts, and the actual numbers of voters those teams are able to persuade and get to the polls. ..... the vast half of the country that votes on February 5. .... the hard numbers of this great experiment.

Obama's campaign gets mobile boost from Bellevue startup Seattle Post Intelligencer allows supporters of the Democratic presidential candidate to receive news and other information on their mobile phones. The service, which also was built by Distributive Networks, includes ringtones with excerpts from Obama's speeches.