Videos, transcripts..from Take Back America conference Thursday.

[madfloridian]

http://www.ourfuture.org/projects/national_conference/2004/conf_transcripts.cfm

I know some of the conference links were posted and just dropped like rocks. There is also a video at C-Span of Hilary, Soros, and Dean.
www.c-span.org

I guess it is ok to post these conference links here. Kerry was supported by all the speakers, so I guess it is ok to post it here even if ignored. There were great speakers and great enthusiasm.
:shrug:


Outstanding speakers, some videos, and transcripts in Word.
Blades, Joan - Co-Founder, MoveOn.org
TRANSCRIPT

Bond, Julian - Chairman, NAACP
VIDEO | TRANSCRIPT

Borosage, Robert L. - Co-Director, Campaign for America's Future
TRANSCRIPT

Boyd, Wes - President, MoveOn.org
TRANSCRIPT

Corzine, Senator Jon D-NJ
TRANSCRIPT

Dean, Gov. Howard - D-VT
VIDEO | TRANSCRIPT

Echaveste, Maria - Co-Founder, the Nueva Vista Group
TRANSCRIPT

Greenberg, Stanley, Chairman, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research
TRANSCRIPT

Hickey, Roger - Co-Director, Campaign for America's Future
TRANSCRIPT

Soros, George - International Philanthropist and Financier
TRANSCRIPT

Democracy Corps Polling Data (pdf format)
http://www.ourfuture.org/docUploads/DCorp060204grppt.pdf

[hedda_foil]

1. Guys, I was there and you won't regret watching this!

Great speakers. Amazing speeches. And don't miss Stan Greenberg's analysis.

[madfloridian]

2. Can't wait to see your write-up, Hedda. Love what Soros said.....

SNIP..." The reason I feel that I had to get engaged is because I don't think this is a normal election. This is a referendum on the Bush administration's policies, the Bush doctrine and its application, it's first application which was the invasion of Iraq. The Bush doctrine, people don't actually talk about it very much as a doctrine, but it really is quite an atrocious proposition.

(Applause.)

It's built on two pillars. One, that the United States must maintain its absolute military superiority in every part of the world and, second, that the United States has the right for preemptive action. Now, both these propositions taken on their own are quite valid propositions. But if you put them together, they establish two kinds of sovereignty in the world. One, where the sovereignty of the United States, which is in violate, not subject to any international constraints, and the rest of the world which is subject to the Bush doctrine. To me, it is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm.

(Applause.)

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. " END SNIP

[madfloridian]

3. Good quotes.

SNIP..."It's about time somebody in this administration resigned over all the misdeeds that have gone on, and let this not be the first one, culminating on November 2nd, when George Bush is the the truth. We can do better than that.

(Applause.)

How about that e-mail that Dick Cheney sent over to the Army Corps of Engineers about Halliburton. Do you think that had anything to do with putting a little money in Halliburton's pocket? And did you know that Dick Cheney is getting money from Halliburton directly under his deferred compensation? How about a GAO investigation of that, if you want to worry about corruption in the highest office of the land.

(Applause.)

How about all that wealth transfer. The Republicans used to be against wealth transfer, but they don't mind now that it's coming from working people into the pockets of people who run the largest corporations in America. How about what this president has done for the environment? How about that? The Clear Skies initiative, which allows us to be 5 percent more mercury emissions into the air. We can do better than that, and John Kerry will do better than that when he's the President of the United States."

(Applause.)

[Cheswick2.0]

4. My favorite segment of Soros's address

Then, we survived the Holocaust and the country was occupied by the Soviet Army, and I think that my life would have been wasted if I hadn't taken the precaution of leaving the country and coming to this country. This is the country that I believe in and I stand for.

(Applause.)

So I experienced at a very early age how important it is what kind of social system prevails. And when I left Hungary, I went to England, London School of Economics, and I studied and I was very much influenced by the philosophy of Karl Popper who wrote a book Open Society and Its Enemies, and he explained that there is something similar, a common ground between fascism and communism. And that is that they believe that they have access to the ultimate truth, and they want to impose that, their view of the world. Now, nobody has access to the ultimate truth and, therefore, if you believe in it, you have to impose it by force and repression. And he said that this leads to a form of closed society.

And he proposed an alternative, which is the recognition that we all base our decisions on imperfect understanding and different people have different views, different interests, and we need institutions that allow them to live together in peace. And that is open society, democracy. The United States is a prime example of an open society.

[Cheswick2.0]

5. part of Julian Bond's address Democrats should listen to

Now, election 2000 - election 2000 confirmed our deep national divisions. Not only did Al Gore receive 90 percent of the black vote, George W. Bush, a majority of the white vote, whites made up 95 percent of Bush’s total votes. Although 57 percent of voters with incomes under $15,000 voted for Gore, even poor whites cast a majority of their votes for Bush. Similarly, 54 percent of women voted for Gore, but white women slightly favored Bush. In politics, as in life, race trumps class and race trumps gender.

But the election also revealed a cultural as well as a racial divide. Gore won every major city and almost all suburbs, while Bush took every small town on a straight line from Redding, California to Springfield, Illinois giving new meaning to Woody Guthrie’s old song, “This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land.”

The only demographic groups that cast a unified vote were blacks, Latinos, Jews, union members, residents of large cities, all of whom voted 60 percent or more for Gore, and white males, who voted 60 percent for Bush. We know these divisions, for the most part, have deepened since the last election, so this divide pretty much tells us where we must begin. We can begin to close the divisions that separate us if we can bring cyberspace and city sidewalk together, if we can tell the evil empire move out or we’ll move on all over you.

Now - (applause) - as a - as any long-suffering Red Sox fan ought to know, your team won’t win if you don’t touch the bases or if you run too far outside the base path. You can’t win this race by ignoring race. In the 50th anniversary year of Brown we have a chance to become the first nation in human history to wholly assimilate a racially distinct former slave class. We know that if whites and nonwhites vote in the same percentages as they did in 2000, President Bush will be re-defeated by 3 million votes. (Cheers, applause.)