Two excellent speeches: Dean and Huffington

Yesterday, today and tomorrow, there's is all sorts of coverage of the Take Back America conference hosted by the Campaign For America's Future (www.ourFuture.org) ... the conference has had numerous excellent speakers with some great ones still to come ... keep checking C-Span2 ... they periodically cover the conference either live or in reruns ...

coming up either later this evening or tomorrow, Katrina vanden Heuvel and George Lakoff ... they should be very interesting as well ...

Howard Dean reached out this morning to third party voters when he gave his support to Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) ... Dean made a very solid speech outlining the importance of developing a strategic vision to communicate to the American people.

Dean was followed by Arianna Huffington. Her speech started off a bit slowly and then burned down the barn ... if you consider yourself a progressive, don't miss this one ... it really was something ... one of the best i've heard in a long time ...

You can hear the speeches at the following url's (Note: copy and paste the url's below into your media player or go to www.ourFuture.org to see the "live" links to the audio):

Dean: mms://cdncon.wmod.llnwd.net/a277/o2/fotf/conf05/dean.wmv
Huffington: mms://cdncon.wmod.llnwd.net/a277/o2/fotf/conf05/huffington.wmv

and thought it was a good one. Every dollar I gave to his campaign was worth it the guy is - at least im my mind - my President.

Those were the days, weren't they? Good times, great dreams, and hope. Ahh, the value of hope.

Welcome to DU, btw.

Every once in awhile I'll play that Dean remix sound file or run the campaign DVD I got while working in NH - damn cold in January. When I can I send the DNC a few bucks. If all us regular folks throw a few dollars into the pot it adds up. It reminds me of going up to NH the weekend before the primary when the bus got stopped in Connecticut and the driver got fined. We passed the hat and in good old Democratic style we payed the fine. Each of us is just one drop but together we are a mighty tide that will wash our nation clean.

Just like me. That's why she has no fear of kicking butt, calling Cheney a liar, and calling Bush dangerous.

More progressives/Dems need to follow her example and stop being so kind , gentle and concerned about what the repubs have to say about us.

her ex-husband, Michael Huffington, a former Republican congressman from California.

These days, she refers to herself as "A recovering Republican".

to promote Howard Dean for President, and for DNC Chairman.
I've been donating what I can to DFA.
Tomorrow, payday, I'll give some to the DNC.
The man is simply inspiring.

:kick:

Dean was great. He emphasized the fight for elections we can have confidence in. He gets it -- no surprise.

But -- big surprise -- a vast majority of the speakers here fail to include the fight for free and fair elections as a priority. They list healthcare, energy independence, economic justice, and so on, but the demand for trustworthy elections isn't on their radar. The banners that frame the stage (not sure if these were shown on c-span), list a dozen or so items (healthcare, and so forth). Incredibly, the fight for Free and Fair Elections in America is NOT on the list.

This is intolerable. Let's wake them up!

WRITE TO Campaign for America's Future. Tell them what you think. Let them know that if they (and their coalition partners) want to make progress on anything, the fight for free and fair elections must be front and center. We can't advance our interests when our elections are wide open to corruption by systematic vote suppression, data manipulation, human and machine error, and willful fraud.

Let's do what we can to get "Trustworthy Elections" (or a more powerful phrase) at the top of EVERY list.

What do we want? Confidence that we are being afforded free and fair elections in which every citizen has equal access and opportunity to cast their vote and have that vote accurately counted. That's it. Nothing more. Nothing less. Revolutionary? You bet. But that's what we must have. Election Revolt.

If you want some real rabble rousing, though, find the speech by Stewart Acuff, Organizing Director, AFL-CIO.
It was part of the series entitled "Progressive Agenda: Five initiatives for a more Perfect Union." This guy was so mad he was shaking. It was one of the most impassioned ones I had ever seen.

Foreign policy?

She was terrific and she answered my question.

If you haven't seen it, it's up on Dembloggers:

http://www.dembloggers.com/story/2005/6/2/9141/91624

Edwards gave a great speech as well. This man understands - and speaks of - the core values of progressives very, very well. He deserves our respect.

and cannot watch these things on a computer?

Msongs
www.msongs.com/liberaltshirts.htm

i haven't been able to find a transcript for Huffington's speech but Edwards', Dean's and others are also available in .pdf format ...

check this link for details: http://www.ourfuture.org/projects/national_conference/2005/speeches_archive.cfm