Friends of Barack Obama

Celebrate Barack Obama’s Inauguration with BAND at Dimassi’s Tuesday in Webster, Texas, Beginning at 10 AM!

You are invited to the Obama Inauguration event at Dimassi’s Restaurant on Tuesday, Jan. 20. The Bay Area New Democrats will set up our large projection screen to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office as the 44th President of the United States ! We’ll have full audio to watch the Inaugural Parade as well. Televised festivities begin at 10:30 a.m. Houston time, so please join us and get settled between 10 and 10:15 a.m. The Mediterranean-style lunch buffet is $10.81 and includes a full meal, dessert and beverage. The restaurant is located at 1039 West Bay Area Blvd. (Webster 77598) and the Gulf Freeway, near Barnes and Noble, at the site formerly occupied by Macaroni Grill.

If you can, please RSVP to Diane Rhorer (dianejr@earthlink.net) or go online at http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gptz5d or to Moveon at http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=91787&id so we can know how many celebrants to expect. See you there!

Information from Texas for Obama
http://blog.texansforobama.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=719381F54DA73FC17...

"Inauguration Watch Party"
Tuesday, January 20
10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Scholz Garten
1607 San Jacinto Blvd
Austin, TX 78701

Free admission
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"A Dream Realized"
Tuesday, January 20
7:00 p.m. - midnight
Monarch Event Center
Lincoln Village
6406 North I-35
Austin, TX 78752

Come walk on the red carpet at our gala celebrating Barack Obama's inauguration - Texas style. Big screens, food and music. Attire is semi-formal. General admission tickets get you complimentary snacks, cash bar and DJ music. VIP tickets get you complimentary appetizers, champagne and live music. A professional photographer will be on hand to capture the excitement.

TICKETS:
General - $25
VIP - $50
Click here to RSVP

Contact Gerry or Tom for more information, (512) 371-1711.

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"All Y'all's Inaugural Ball"
Tuesday, January 20
6:00 - 11:00 p.m.
Mercury Hall
614 Cardinal Lane
Austin, TX 78704

The All Y'all's Inaugural Ball is a formal fancypants ball for all y'all that want to celebrate the Inauguration of our 44th president. Tuxes and ball gowns encouraged but if you don't have anything to wear, then put on your boots and come anyway. Children are welcome for free. In order to make this event cheap and affordable, it's BYOB.

TICKETS:
Advance - $10
General - $15
Click here to RSVP

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"Texas Presidential Inaugural Celebration/Gala"
Tuesday, January 20
6:30 p.m. - midnight
Four Seasons Hotel
98 San Jacinto Boulevard
Austin, TX 78701

The Texas Presidential Inaugural Celebration/Gala is a celebration of democracy and marks the beginning of a historic journey for the 44th President of the United States, President-Elect Barack Obama. This gala event is presented by 360 Media & Over The Top Events in conjunction with the National Women's Political Caucus-Texas and the Center for Public Policy and Political Studies (ACC). The Mistress of Ceremonies will be Judy Maggio, Anchor/Managing Editor at CBS KEYE-TV (Maggio has covered three presidential inaugurations). Dress is Texas Glam/Black Tie Optional.

Also, the Four Seasons is offering a special discounted room rate of $150 for the evening so come on over and enjoy the hospitality, food and drink. We will have live music so stay late and dance the night away. Wide screens with official inaugural activities will be featured. Also, that evening an original artwork of President Obama will be given away, value over $1,000.

The Host Committee includes:
Ada Anderson, Willie Mae Kirk, The Honorable Mark Strama, The Honorable Bruce Elfant, Fr. Senator Gonzalo Barrientos and Emma Barrientos, John and Charlotte Sharp, Bruce Todd and Elizabeth Christian, Ian Davis and Amy Everhart, Malcomb and Toni Gardner, Peck Young, Brenda Burt, Alicia Del Rio, Bob Cash and Linda Young.

TICKETS:
General - $80

Amanda Jones was Central Texas' oldest voter
Daughter of slave dies days after her 110th birthday.
By Joshunda Sanders
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Amanda Roberts Jones, who was the daughter of a man born into slavery and who lived long enough to vote for the country's first African-American president, died in her sleep about noon Thursday, two days after her 110th birthday, her family said Friday.

Jones, who had recently been hospitalized with pneumonia, was preparing for a birthday party Sunday afternoon that was expected to be a standing-room-only event at a downtown Austin hotel. On her birthday, Tuesday, Jones became a member of a small group of supercentenarians — people who live to 110 or older, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which validates claims of extreme old age.

"She lived awful long," Jones' granddaughter Brenda Baker said. "It was a full life, and her faith in God helped her live a long life."

The middle child of 13, Jones was part of a family that had lived in Bastrop County for five generations. Her father, Emmanuel Alfred Roberts, worked as a slave for a rancher before he was emancipated at age 12.

When she mailed in her ballot for President-elect Barack Obama in late October, Jones became a minor celebrity.

Eloise Baker, 75, said she had taken her mother to vote for Obama in the March primary. Area election officials said Jones was probably the oldest active registered voter in Central Texas. When news of her vote spread, Jones was profiled in the American-Statesman and later on National Public Radio and ABC News. More than 200 people signed an online petition to send her to Obama's inauguration. Birthday cards from around the country arrived at her home, Baker said.

During a life that touched three centuries, Jones worked as a maid, a farmer and a stay-at-home mother of 10 while keeping a deep faith as the cornerstone of her life, Baker said. Jones attended the Inspiration Pentecostal Church in Bastrop for more than 30 years, Baker said.

"She went every Sunday she was able," Eloise Baker said. "She always said that she had lived so long because she followed Christ and because she was obedient, and she taught us to do the same."

Jones had voted for more than 70 years — even when it meant she had to pick cotton to save money to pay a poll tax, her daughter said.

President-elect Obama today chose Eric Holder as his pick for U.S. Attorney General. He would become the first African-American to head the Justice Department, according to Newsweek.

In an interview with the New York Times in 1997, Holder separated his personal opposition to the death penalty from his professional responsibilities:

Mr Hatch questioned Mr. Holder about his views on the death penalty in general and in particular about a case in which Mr. Holder initially did not seek the death penalty for someone who was accused of killing a District of Columbia police officer.

''I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I will enforce the law as this Congress gives it to us,'' Mr. Holder said.

Mr. Holder said that at first he had not thought the crime met the legal conditions for the death penalty. But he said he changed his mind after a conversation with Attorney General Janet Reno. ''I hope that the committee would feel very assured that even with those statutes that have death penalty provisions will be fully enforced by me,'' he said.

Janet Reno, Attorney General for 8 years under Bill Clinton, was also personally opposed to the death penalty, although she sought the death penalty in some prosecutions.

In an interview with Jim Leherer, Reno explained her position:

JANET RENO: I was personally opposed to the death penalty, and yet I think I have probably asked for the death penalty more than most people in the United States.

JIM LEHRER: Was that difficult for you to do?

JANET RENO: I had concluded when I was the prosecutor that I would vote against the death penalty if I were in the legislature but that I could ask for it when I was satisfied as to guilt and to the proper application of the penalty.

Given that there is more recognition today about the problems with the death penalty and the risk of executing innocent people, we expect that any attorney general under Obama would support significant reform of the federal death penalty and increased support for states that need federal support for reforms at the state-level, such as increased funding for innocence programs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwaEEtS0lWE.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081117/greider_election

From "The Nation" - the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the US, founded by abolitionists in 1865.

By William Greider

We are inheritors of this momentous victory, but it was not ours. The laurels properly belong to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and all of the other martyrs who died for civil rights. And to millions more before them who struggled across centuries and fell short of winning their freedom. And to those rare politicians like Lyndon B. Johnson, who stood up bravely in a decisive time, knowing how much it would cost his political party for years to come. We owe all of them for this moment.

Whatever happens next, Barack Obama has already changed this nation profoundly. Like King before him, the man is a great and brave teacher. Obama developed out of his life experiences a different understanding of the country, and he had the courage to run for president by offering this vision. For many Americans, it seemed too much to believe, yet he turned out to be right about us. Against all odds, he persuaded a majority of Americans to believe in their own better natures and, by electing him, the people helped make it true. There is mysterious music in democracy when people decide to believe in themselves.

Waiting for the results, we all felt nagging tension, even when we were fairly sure of the outcome. I heard from a newspaper friend, a wise old reporter who never gave in to Washington cynicism. "This election eve night," he wrote, "I feel myself tingling about the prospect of a nation which used to lynch blacks during my lifetime electing a black man president. I so hope it happens, believe it would electrify the world. I think he is the bravest man in the world, perhaps the most foolish one as well.... I worry about him like a Jewish mama."

We heard from another family friend, an African-American woman who teaches law in North Carolina. She reported weeping involuntarily when she saw Obama's picture. Did she know why? She said she saw her adolescent son's face in Obama's. Great moments in history give emotional definition to our lives and we carry those feelings forward with us, our own private meaning of events.

In this way, Obama redefined the country for us, but our responses involved generational differences. For younger people, white and black, his vision seemed entirely straightforward. It is the country they already know, and they expressed great enthusiasm. Finally, they said, a politician who recognizes the racial differences that are part of their lives and no big deal. For young blacks and other minorities, Obama's place at the pinnacle of official power lifts a coarse cloak that has blanketed their lives and dreams--the stultifying burden of being judged, whether they succeed or fail, on the basis of their race.

For others of us at an advanced age, Obama's success is more shocking. We can see it as a monumental rebuke to tragic history--the ultimate defeat of "white supremacy." That vile phrase was embedded in American society (even the Constitution) from the outset and still in common usage when some of us were young. Now it is officially obsolete. Racism will not disappear entirely, but the Republican "Southern strategy" that marketed racism has been smashed. Americans will now be able to see themselves differently, North and South, white and black. The changes will spread through American life in ways we cannot yet fully imagine. Let us congratulate ourselves on being alive at such a promising moment.

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 4, 2008; A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/03/AR200811...

Better plan on an early dinner tonight.

It is possible that, at 7 p.m., network anchors and their map manipulators will make projections that strongly suggest Sen. Barack Obama is on his way to winning the presidency. But if Obama fails to capture a handful of key states by 8 p.m. or so, then John McCain has a shot at getting to the magic 270 and everyone could be in for a long night.

For those keeping score, the biggest early bellwethers are the once reliably Republican states of Virginia and Indiana -- where polls close at 7.

"These are canaries in the coal mine," said Charlie Cook, the veteran analyst and NBC contributor. "When they start dying, there are huge problems for the Republicans."

"If Obama wins Virginia, he's won the election," said Tad Devine, who worked for John F. Kerry and Al Gore. "It says Obama was able to do something we only dreamt of four years ago."

Mike Murphy, a former McCain adviser, said his onetime boss "has basically got two strikes and you're out. Any two bad things happen -- losing Virginia and North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, Virginia and Ohio -- and it's over . . . I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I know where my crying towel is."

Network executives say they will be cautious about making projections, given the undeniable problems with exit polls in the past two White House contests. Obama, for instance, might be ahead in Virginia, but by a small enough margin that the networks hold off on awarding him its 13 electoral votes.

Down-ballot races could provide a clue, analysts said. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, is expected to prevail in Kentucky, where polls close by 7 p.m., but if he is trailing it would be a bad omen for McCain. The same goes for Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, another 7 p.m. state where Cook thinks Obama has an outside shot.

Since the networks' policy is to refrain from calling any state until all its polls have closed, the trick is to listen for code phrases. If Obama appears headed for victory, said Paul Friedman, CBS's senior vice president, "you'll hear a lot of language, from all of us, 'It's going to be very difficult for John McCain to pull this out.' "

Television's latest touch-screen maps, which can turn every correspondent into a hyperactive John Madden diagramming a flea-flicker pass, will be a colorful blur. The handicappers say Obama has a reasonably firm hold on the blue states carried by Kerry four years ago, so nearly all the action is in the red states won by President Bush.

The two largest red-state prizes that McCain needs are Ohio, where polls close at 7:30, and Florida, an 8 p.m. state. If the Republican nominee loses either, the airwaves will be filled with chatter about how his path to victory has dramatically narrowed.

The one blue state that the McCain camp hopes to steal is Pennsylvania, where polls close at 8. Such an upset would unleash waves of punditry about a closer-than-expected race -- that is, according to expectations set by the media. Missouri is another key 8 p.m. state.

Even if McCain holds his strongholds plus Virginia, Florida and Ohio -- but loses Iowa, where Obama is ahead -- he would be 10 electoral votes short of victory. McCain would have to win two of these three Western states: Nevada (five electoral votes), New Mexico (five) and Colorado (nine). Polls close in Colorado and New Mexico at 9 p.m. Eastern time and in Nevada an hour later. If the race isn't settled by 10, when Iowa voting also ends, viewers might want to haul out more snacks.

The 11 p.m. states -- California, Oregon, Washington -- are all solid bets to be bathed in blue. So if the country is up late, the election will probably revolve around the three Mountain West battlegrounds that went for Bush last time.

Joan Cheever reports on The Huffington Post in an article entitled "Fifty Years later, the Oldest Survivor of Death Row USA Casts Ballot for Obama" that Moreese "Pops" Bickham is voting for Barack Obama. Ms. Cheever accompanied Mr Bickham to our 2007 Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break. He is pictured at left with some of the students.

From Joan Cheever's article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-cheever/fifty-years-later-the-old_b_1...

Moreese Bickham spent 13, 695 days behind bars; 37 years and six months in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. He stayed 14 years and 10 months on Louisiana's death row.

But the 91 year-old Bickham is not looking back. He's focused on living in the Free World in a country he hopes will soon be governed by the first African American president .

"In all my life, I never thought I'd see this day. A black American going to be the next president of the United States of America," Bickham said. "I am the grandson of a slave. Born in Tylertown, Mississippi and farmed my grandma's land. And then we had the poll tax."

Between 1889 and 1910, 11 Southern states adopted a poll tax, targeted to disenfranchise black Americans. The poll tax wasn't eliminated until 1964 when the 24th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

But one month ago, on a crisp fall afternoon in late September, I drive Mr. Bickham to the Obama headquarters in the small Pacific Northwest town where he currently resides, to make sure he is registered to vote. I have known Moreese Bickham since 1996, the year he was released from prison. He is a subject in my book, Back From the Dead: One woman's search for the men who walked off America's death row. (John Wiley & Sons 2006).

In the past 18 months, Mr. Bickham and I have often talked of the 2008 presidential election. During a fishing trip in mid-June, after the Democratic primary, our conversation turned to the very real possibility of an Obama presidency. And the impact it would have on all Americans.

After the recent media reports of voter intimidation, especially in regards to convicted felons, I became alarmed that this former Death Row inmate might not be allowed to vote - a man who survived seven execution dates, three heart attacks, prostate cancer, and a questionable conviction for murder, in the first place.

Three weeks after visiting Mr. Bickham, with more news of voting list purges and intimidation primarily in six swing states, I call a family meeting and tell my two teenagers and husband, that we must make an emergency trip to North Carolina. That's how we ended up last week in the Cary, NC Obama office for our dual "family political vacation" and on site civics lesson.

But on the afternoon with Mr. Bickham, he does not share my fear about whether he can vote. He knows that he can. He voted in the 2004 presidential election. He has confidence in the 2008 electoral process and the patience of a 91-year-old African American.

The campaign office is empty when we walk in at 3 pm. Angela and Ann, Obama volunteers, are busy organizing stacks of campaign literature.

"Good afternoon, ladies. My name is Bickham. Moreese Bickham," he says, and tips his black felt hat. "I'm here to make sure I'm registered to vote. Was born in Tylertown, Mississippi in 1917."

The two women jump up and grab a folding chair, opening it and asking the World War II Navy veteran to sit down.

"I got here my Veterans Administration ID card. Now here's my Social Security card. Miss Joan here told me to bring proof of address. So I have."

Mr. Bickham became eligible to vote the day he was released from prison. He has never been on parole. In January 1996, he walked out as a free man, after serving almost 40 years. During his time inside, Mr. Bickham had an no disciplinary infractions; he received his GED and became an ordained Methodist minister. During the last two years in Angola, Mr. Bickham worked as the caretaker of the prison cemetery. On the last day in Angola, he went to a funeral for a fellow inmate.

Mr. Bickham was sent to Death Row for the July 12, 1958 murders of two white police officers in Mandeville, Lourisiana, an area where Jim Crow segregation prevailed in the 1950s and where there was an active chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

In the early morning hours of July 12, Mr. Bickham and his girlfriend got into a fight at Buck's Bar in Mandeville; one of the officers broke up the fight and gave Mr. Bickham's girlfriend a ride home. The then 41-year-old Bickham, who had no prior record, said the officer called him a "Nigger" and threatened to kill him. But prosecutors maintained that Mr. Bickham returned to his home and waited to ambush the two officers.

Mr. Bickham says when they arrived, he put his hands up to surrender. But one of the officers shot him in the chest and then both officers continued to shoot. He then returned fire and moments later, both officers were dead.

"I pray all the time for forgiveness. It always weighs heavy on my mind. I didn't feel like I had a choice that night. It was me or them."

Mr. Bickham was more surprised that he was still alive on the day of his trial.

"My two great grandfathers were lynched. So I was surprised that I didn't end up at the lynching tree."

In closing arguments, his own lawyer called him "a darky on a Saturday night." The all-white male jury took only two hours to find Moreese Bickham guilty and sentence him to death.

Joan Cheever, with Moreese Bickham in background, at the 2007 Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break.

Visit Joan Cheever's Website for her book "Back From the Dead".
http://backfromthedeadcheever.com

Gallup's Daily Tracking Poll says "Voters' presidential preferences remain favorable to a Barack Obama win on Tuesday, with 51% of traditional likely voters supporting the Democratic nominee for president, and 43% backing John McCain. An additional 1% say they support some other candidate, leaving 5% undecided.

Click the image for a map on How to Watch the Election Returns.

I just saw one of the early voting locations in Austin Texas and there was a very long line. Tomorrow is the last day of early voting in Texas. Austin is located in Travis County in Texas.

The Travis County Clerk's office says:

Travis County voters broke previous Early Voting turnout records Wednesday. More than 229,500 voters have cast a ballot, topping the 2004 record of 222,085. More than 15,000 votes had been cast mid-way through the voting period Thursday.

Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said that vote totals are steadily climbing toward what she expects to be a fantastic finish to the Early Voting period on Friday.

"We won't be surprised to see 50,000 voters on the final day--about twice the first-day turnout," DeBeauvoir said. "We're still trying to spread the word that voting early is going to be more convenient than voting on Election Day."

USA Today reports that "Brisk early voting in Texas has surpassed the state's 2004 presidential election total of 2.4 million early voters in the state's 15 largest counties.

The Secretary of State's Office, which tracks early voting in the 15 most populous counties, reported Thursday that in those counties 2.7 million people have cast early ballots. That includes 2.5 million early ballots cast in person and 186,803 by mail."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-10-30-texas-earl...

The New Statesman reports: "Of the five most widely-distributed newspapers in Texas—all of which endorsed 'native' son George W. Bush in 2004— the Austin American-Statesman, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and the Houston Chronicle endorsed Obama this year. (The Dallas Morning News and the San Antonio Express-News backed McCain.)"

109-year-old Bastrop woman casts her vote by mail.

By Joshunda Sanders
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, October 27, 2008

Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee.

The middle child of 13, Jones, who is African American, is part of a family that has lived in Republican-leaning Bastrop County for five generations. The family has remained a fixture in Cedar Creek and other parts of the county, even when its members had to eat at segregated barbecue dives and walk through the back door while white customers walked through the front, said Amanda Jones' 68-year-old daughter, Joyce Jones.

For at least a decade, Amanda Jones worked as a maid for $20 a month, Joyce Jones said. She was a housewife for 72 years and helped her now-deceased husband, C.L. Jones, manage a store.

Amanda Jones, a delicate, thin woman wearing golden-rimmed glasses, giggled as the family discussed this year's presidential election. She is too weak to go the polls, so two of her 10 children — Eloise Baker, 75, and Joyce Jones — helped her fill out a mail-in ballot for Barack Obama, Baker said. "I feel good about voting for him," Amanda Jones said.

Jones' father herded sheep as a slave until he was 12, according to the family, and once he was freed, he was a farmer who raised cows, hogs and turkeys on land he owned. Her mother was born right after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Joyce Jones said. The family owned more than 100 acres of land in Cedar Creek at one point, she said.

Amanda Jones' father urged her to exercise her right to vote, despite discriminatory practices at the polls and poll taxes meant to keep black and poor people from voting. Those practices were outlawed for federal elections with the 24th Amendment in 1964, but not for state and local races in Texas until 1966.

Amanda Jones says she cast her first presidential vote for Franklin Roosevelt, but she doesn't recall which of his four terms that was. When she did vote, she paid a poll tax, her daughters said. That she is able, for the first time, to vote for a black presidential nominee for free fills her with joy, Jones said.

One of Amanda Jones' 33 grandchildren, Brenda Baker, 44, said the family is moved by the election's significance to the matriarch.

"It's awesome to me that we have such a pillar of our family still with us," Baker said. "It's awesome to see what she's done, and all her hard work, and to see that she may be able to see the results of all that hard work" if Obama is elected, she said.

Jones lives in a small gray house with white trim just off Texas 21. These days, a curious white kitten and a sleepy old black dog guard the house. Inside are photographs and relics of a long, full life, including a letter from then-Gov. George Bush in 1998 commemorating her 100th birthday. A black-and-white picture of her in a long flapper-style dress was taken between 1912 and 1918 — no one can remember the exact year, Baker said with a chuckle.

Jones is part of a small percentage of active voters above the age of 100 in the state — and the country.

Sister Cecilia Gaudette, a 106-year-old nun born in New Hampshire but living in Rome, made recent national headlines as the nation's oldest voter. But if Texas records are any indication, that's hard to validate.

Secretary of State spokeswoman Ashley Burton said Texas can't confirm whether Jones is the state's oldest active voter because there is too much voter information to sort through. At the county level, there are other challenges. An election official in Hays County said its records are not searchable by age, and Bastrop County elections administrator Nora Cano said that some counties automatically list voters who were born before the turn of the 20th century with birth dates of January 1900.

The oldest active voter in Travis County is 105, officials said, and in Williamson County the oldest is 106 — making Jones the oldest-known active voter in Central Texas.

Making it to see the election results on Nov. 5 is important, but Jones is resting up for another milestone: her 110th birthday in December. "God has been good to me," she said.

joshundasanders@statesman.com;445-3630

Today is the first day of early voting in Texas, so I am going to cast my vote today for Obama.

It could be that 50 percent of all ballots will be cast early this year. Early voting started in the 1980s and has been adopted by most states. I don't know one that doesn't do it, but maybe there are some.

In early voting, people go to various locations around their cities and cast their votes in person. If a person is out of town or unable to physically attend a polling place, they can also request a ballot by mail. More people vote early than by mail.

By voting early, I won't have to stand in long lines on Election Day.

And if I get hit by a truck and die, at least I will have voted. That may be macabre, but it may in fact happen that some people who vote early, particularly very elderly people or people who are sick, may in fact not live until election day, but by voting early, their votes count.

Many people will be holding parties or gathering in public places to watch the returns come in on Nov 4.

For those people in Europe, you have to take into account the 6 hour time difference between Western Europe and the Eastern Coast of the U.S. It is a five hour difference for the UK.

So, if your party went from 2 am to about 5 am in Europe, you should be able to leave shortly after 5 am knowing who won the election, unless things go crazy like they did in 2000. The hours from from 3-5 might be the most exciting hours when the key states start reporting.

The first major round of poll closings will be at 8 PM eastern U.S. time, which will be 2 am in Europe. The television networks will probably start calling the winner in a bunch of states in the Eastern time zone shortly after 8 based on exit polling. In that first round, watch for how Virginia and North Carolina go. If Obama wins either of those states, then it will likely be a nationwide landslide for Obama. If McCain wins those states, then it will be a closer election. At 9 PM on the east coast, we will begin to hear results from some of the toss-up states, like Missouri, Ohio and Florida. McCain can not win, unless he wins Florida and Ohio.

You can see what times the polls will close on this website:

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/G08/closing.phtml?format=ga

There is growing optimism that Obama will win big on Nov 4, perhaps even helping the Democrats pick up as many as ten seats in the U.S. Senate and increasing their majority in the U.S. House as well.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin enters her debate tonight with Joe Biden needing to make a strong positive impression on voters, many of whom are expressing serious doubts about her readiness.

A new AP-Gfk poll released Wednesday found that just 25 percent of likely voters believe Palin has the right experience to be president. That's down from 41 percent just after the GOP convention, when the Alaska governor made her well-received debut on the national stage.

TIME-DATE: 9 p.m. EDT, Thursday, Oct. 2.

PLACE: Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.

SUBJECT: Domestic and foreign policy.

MODERATOR: PBS' Gwen Ifill, "The NewsHour" and "Washington Week."

The commentators are mostly saying that Obama did better in the debate than McCain. This could have a similar effect as in 1992, when Clinton was able to close the deal with the voters with his strong debate performance.

It starts at 9 PM Eastern Time.

The first debate between Obama and McCain is scheduled for tonight, but no one knows yet if McCain is going to show up, since he claims he is busy working on the financial bailout. We should know later today if he is going to debate tonight. Obama is definitely showing up.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama will participate in three 90-minute debates in the next three weeks. Their running mates, Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden, will hold one debate. All four are sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The details:

FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

TIME-DATE: 9 p.m. EDT, Friday, Sept. 26.

PLACE: University of Mississippi, Oxford, Miss.

SUBJECT: Foreign policy.

MODERATOR: PBS' Jim Lehrer, "The NewsHour."

VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

TIME-DATE: 9 p.m. EDT, Thursday, Oct. 2.

PLACE: Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.

SUBJECT: Domestic and foreign policy.

MODERATOR: PBS' Gwen Ifill, "The NewsHour" and "Washington Week."

SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

TIME-DATE: 9 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, Oct. 7.

PLACE: Belmont University, Nashville, Tenn.

SUBJECT: Issues raised by audience members and submitted by Internet participants, in town-hall format.

MODERATOR: NBC's Tom Brokaw.

THIRD PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

TIME-DATE: 9 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, Oct. 15.

PLACE: Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.

SUBJECT: Domestic policy.

MODERATOR: CBS' Bob Scheiffer.

If anyone would like to contribute to this project as an editor or administrator, just send me a message and I will change your status.