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From what I've seen thus far, Senator Hillary Clinton did a pretty good job tonight of endorsing Obama and encouraging her supporters to do the same.

The line I agree with the most is when she said "we don't need four more years of the last eight years." That is exactly right. No matter how angry, disappointed, etc. we may be that our chosen candidate didn't win, we have to remember how bad the last eight years are and how things will be with another four years of this Administration's policies.

I also liked how Senator Bob Casey said that McCain isn't a maverick - he's a sidekick. And that they don't need four more years - how about four more months.

I'm looking forward to rewatching the convention later tonight on CSPAN since I missed it while I was out running errands.

So a few moments ago I was reading a story about how Ralph Nader will be the Peace Party's candidate for president on Oregon's ballot this year.

At the end of the story was this paragraph:

Nader drew 10,000 people to a rally in Portland in 2000 and won 5 percent of the state's presidential vote that year, about 77,000. George Bush won the state and its seven electoral votes by about 7,000 votes.

That paragraph makes it seem that Nader cost Gore the election in Oregon.

Now I know that I just enjoyed a margarita with some friends, but I was pretty sure that Al Gore won Oregon. As a matter of fact, we now know that Oregon's results would have been contested in 2000 had Florida fallen through for Republicans. So I was almost certain Gore won. So I went and pulled up the official results for Oregon:

George W. Bush: 713,577
Ralph Nader: 77,357
Al Gore: 720,342

Now, like I've said, I just enjoyed a nice margarita. However, even I know that 720,000 is more than 713,000. Makes me wonder about the author of the story, as well as his/her editor(s). Plus the fact that at least one local news entity is running this story - it's a front page story on KGW.

This evening Abby, our six year-old daughter, and I attended Ignition, the Bus Project's graduation ceremony for its Politicorps fellows and the christening of a new bus.

The old bus, purchased in 2002, was "born" the same year I was. While in the grand scheme of things 30 might not be so old for a person, it is for a bus - and it was having trouble bridging the rural-urban divide (otherwise known as crossing the mountains). Earlier this year at Rebooting Democracy the Bus Project had announced it was purchasing a new bus and auctioned off parts. At the time I made a $25 donation towards a part later to be determined.

The part ended up being a cylinder head, which is ironic since my very first car (a brand new 96 Saturn) had a cylinder head problem that caused numerous problems until it was fixed. Hope that doesn't mean I'm going to jinx the new bus.  ; )

Months have gone by since then, and the new bus has been purchased. It's even been used for a few canvasses. For instance, we had so many canvassers a few weeks ago for Nick Kahl and Greg Matthews that both buses came out to Gresham. We were all filled with laughs as we chanted "our bus is painted!" as people exited the new bus (to which Garrett responded "our bus is newer!").

I've been too busy with summer vacation, getting Abby ready for first grade, and getting everything together for my campaign for city council to write as often as I should. However, I wanted to do some quick hits on some items going on in the news that I find important.

With everything on the news about the Olympics, a lot of important stories are being buried in the press. I'll try to give an updated listing every few days. Here's today's listing:

I recently posted on my personal blog a commentary on a recent post at another local blog, LoadedOyrgun. Fomer senatorial candidate Steve Novick writes in support for allowing Senator Hillary Clinton's name in nomination at the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Please click here to read the post. My response from my blog is below.

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The story now is that Bruce Ivins, a researcher at the U. S. government’s Fort Detrick Laboratory, mailed the deadly letters. Then when the FBI closed in, he took his own life.

Victims, relatives of a victim, or simply American citizens, ought to have a few questions about this case:

·        If Ivins was a lone actor, how did such a dangerous psychopath get a security clearance to work with this deadly anthrax?

The Democratic Party of Oregon today sent out an action item on the topic that I've been covering lately - women's reproductive health. As I wrote a few days ago, the Bush Administration is working on instituting new rules that will make it more difficult for women to have access to reproductive health services like annual exams as well as pushing birth control into "abortion" territory.

The Merkley campaign has put together a petition on this issue, and the DPO sent out this email about it today:

Sign the petition.

Write a letter.

Call out Gordon Smith.

While Jeff Merkley takes a public stand to protect a woman's right to choose, Gordon Smith offers only silence.

We need to respond with two actions:

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