Born in 1963 in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Rebecca Schneider grew up in rural western Pennsylvania in a middle class neighborhood.  Rebecca graduated from Mars High School in 1982 and Slippery Rock University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology.  During the course of attending College and working two, sometimes three jobs to pay her way, she set the course of her career when she began working in the library and currently works as a Library Supervisor for Arizona State University.

By Dave Lindorff

There are a number of reasons why the Puerto Rican Democratic primary election set for this coming Sunday won’t matter, in terms of Hillary Clinton’s failed bid for the party’s nomination.

The main one is that she’s not going to get the big vote that she has been predicting.

Clinton, trailing Obama by about 400,000 votes nationwide with only three primaries to go, is fantasizing that she will win the lion’s share of one million Puerto Rican votes, which would put her in the lead for the nomination in terms of the popular vote, though not in the delegate count.

Well, as we all know, election season is once again upon us. Our choices are, as always, a great source of controversy and strife among the American people. This is understandable as not every candidate fits our ideals of the perfect President.

However, I've noticed some very disturbing trends among voters and, most glaringly, the Democrats. Frankly, it's appalling. I can't get through a blog or a chat room without seeing Democrats at each other's throats, each bashing the views and private lives of one another's pick as the Dem candidate.

You know what, people?? Knock it off. I'm not particularly wild about Hillary nor Obama either, to be honest... but all have a common goal here. That goal is to do everything we can to keep the GOP out of the White House.

By Dave Lindorff

The results in Tuesday’s twin primaries—Barack Obama by 14 percent in North Carolina and Hillary Clinton by 2 percent in Indiana—confirmed that Clinton is finished as a contender. Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president this fall.

Clinton, the private-schooled, Wellesley and Yale-educated millionaire lawyer from Chicago, who first tried to present herself as a White House veteran, and then, in recent weeks, as a NASCAR mom on Food Stamps, and who in Pennsylvania resorted to cheap race-baiting and red-baiting in an effort to derail her opponent, has failed. Barack Obama, another private-schooled Harvard and Yale-educated lawyer, but one who actually did have to work his way up the economic ladder, won decisively in North Carolina, even drawing a significant number of working-class white voters in a state where white voters have not traditionally voted for candidates with dark skin.

By Dave Lindorff

The corporate media have been quick to buy into and promote the Hillary Clinton campaign claim that she won the Pennsylvania primary by "double digits," but the truth is, that involves a bit of creative rounding.

The final figures for the vote are that Clinton won 1,258,245 votes out of 2,300,542 cast, compared to 1,042,297 for Barack Obama.

If you do the math, that works out to 54.71 percent for Clinton, and 45.31 percent for Obama.

Now granted, if you use the convention of rounding up numbers 5 or above and rounding down numbers below 4 and below, you get 55 percent for Clinton and 45 percent for Obama. But if you take the actual numbers, 54.71 and 45.31, and calculate the difference, it works out to 9.40 percent. And that is a number closer to 9 than to 10.

By Dave Lindorff

Well, the toll of wasted American lives in Iraq has hit 4000. But hey, who’s counting?

Certainly not the folks in the White House and the Pentagon, and certainly not John McCain, the prospective Republican nominee for president, who thinks the war is going just dandy.

But it’s worth noting that about a year ago, around the time that Bush’s “surge” plan got implemented with the addition of some 30,000 additional troops to the Iraq theater, the number of dead was about 3000. So it’s fair to say that Bush’s “surge” policy—his “escalation of the war in order to end it” plan—has directly led to the deaths of 1000 more young American men and women.

And what has he achieved with this bonus sacrifice?

I am late deafened and live in Rutledge (19070).  I am frsutrated in that I cannot find ways of getting information about access at events.  When I learned that Michelle Obama would be at Villanova University, I thought this would be a great historical experience for my two school age children.  They are Obama supporters (I am on the fence but leaning his way).  I tried contacting the Obama campagin to see if there would be a sign language interpreter.  I found no one of finding out through their website.  I wrote an email to someone at Villanova.  I got no result.

How do I find out if any of these events are interpreted?  I am a Democrat but on the news I am more apt to see an interpreter beside the Republican candidate.  Why?

Can someone help?

By Dave Lindorff

While Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination debate and compete over whose healthcare reform plan is best, and over whether or not it’s okay to talk with “America’s enemies,” and while Democrats and Republicans lob attacks over whose foreign policy is more muscular, there is a lengthening list of global catastrophes all of which are simply being ignored.

Let’s look at that list:

By Dave Lindorff

A new report on the August 30 incident in which six nuclear-armed advanced cruise missiles were effectively “lost” for 36 hours, during which time they were, against all regulations, flown in launch position mounted on a pylon on the wing of a B-52H Stratofortress, from Minot AFB in North Dakota across the continental US to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, has left unanswered some critical questions about the event.

Directed by retired Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch, the task force’s Report on the Unauthorized Movement of Nuclear Weapons found plenty wrong with the way the US military handles its nuclear weapons, but appears to have dealt lightly with the specific incident that sparked the inquiry—only giving it a few paragraphs.

By Dave Lindorff,

President Bush has turned to the cheapest lies in an effort to protect himself from being exposed as a criminal in the ongoing campaign to have the National Security Agency spy at will on Americans.

Claiming—without a scintilla of evidence to back him up—that there are people planning a “much worse attack” than 9-11 on America, he says he must not only have free rein to unleash the NSA
spymasters on American telephone and internet communications, but also a grant of complete immunity from prosecution for such spying for the telecom industry.