how depressing, I thought for sure Obama would be here fighting for votes. This goes against what the talking heads on tv said last night...of course what do they know.

Bah Humbug !

All the more reason for Obama supporters to come out in droves! Fire it Up! Call your neighbors - eMail your friends and family. Let's go for record attendance records at the caucus.

Maine likes leadership.
Maine likes integrity.
Maine likes Barack Obama !

--Not sure where to go for your Caucus?
Goto: http://www.mainedems.org/caucus08.aspx

AUGUSTA -- Barack Obama's chief economics adviser Austan Goolsbee today boasted that the Obama campaign had helped to prevent emergency heating assistance for low-income families from being included in the just-approved economic stimulus package which is now on its way to President Bush's desk for signature. An increase in federal low-income heating assistance (known as LIHEAP), Goolsbee pointed out, had been championed by Obama's opponent, New York Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton. Goolsbee's remarks came in an interview this morning with Carl Quintanilla of CNBC business news television.

Goolsbee stressed that the main difference between Obama and Clinton was that Obama was "more respectful of market forces." Goolsbee was adamant that Obama was opposed to expanding the stimulus package to include "money for low-income heating assistance through a bureaucratic program."

Goolsbee's statements came just one day after leaders of the Maine legislature had convened in Augusta to face the dire situation of low income families who cannot afford to heat their homes this winter, partly as a result of the sky-high price of heating oil. Some influential members of the Legislature spoke of taking money from Maine's Rainy Day reserves to help people who are running short of heating oil this winter. Supporters of the proposed move said the high price of heating oil is cutting into the size of deliveries to households receiving Low Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP), with many low-income families not being able to afford a full tank. This puts many Maine residents in danger of going without heat, as House Speaker Glen Cummings of Portland noted.

Cummings and other Democratic and Republican lawmakers want to take $5 million from the state's reserve funds to make sure that LIHEAP deliveries fill the tank. "With Maine facing a large-scale budget crisis, this is money that we can ill afford to spend. We need help from the federal government to face the consequences of George Bush's obscene love affair with Big Oil," said independent US Senate candidate Laurie Dobson. "Mrs. Clinton wanted to send us some help right away, but Obama's circle of right-wing elitist economics professors stepped in to block that help. By bragging about this criminal swindle on CNBC to the Wall Street crowd, Obama's man Goolsbee is in effect saying to Mainers, 'Drop dead.' Many here will want use the Maine Democratic caucus on Sunday, Feb. 10 to send Obama and Goolsbee a message and tell them what they think of this chiseling. I understand that Goolsbee like Bush is a Skull and Bones member, and a follower of Milton Friedman's Chicago School, the ones who worked with Pinochet in Chile. If this is what Obama will do in the White House, we don't want any part of it," Dobson added.

Goolsbee also used his CNBC interview today to repeat that Obama is opposed to solving "the mortgage crisis by freezing interest rates," a freeze which Wall Street is lobbying against. Such a "teaser freezer" would prevent rapacious mortgage bankers from re-setting upward the interest rates on Adjustable Rate Mortgages which they sold to unsuspecting homeowners. If there is no such freeze, monthly mortgage payments will suddenly rise for millions of current homeowners, forcing many of them out on the street through foreclosure because of their inability to pay the new, higher rate. "Mrs. Clinton has proposed a five-year freeze on mortgage interest rates," commented Senate candidate Dobson, "but that seems to be a voluntary program so far. I am proposing a compulsory federal law to block interest rate hikes and outlaw all foreclosures for at least five years, or for as long as this depression lasts. Once again, Mrs. Clinton goes in the right direction, but Obama's right-wing economists are offering nothing to the hard-pressed homeowners of Maine. Paul Krugman, a real economist, is right: the choice between Clinton and Obama could not be clearer," she concluded.

Well, I am not caucusing in Maine but I am not so sure Obama is going to lose Maine.

Once people get a chance to get to know Obama, they really get "FIRED UP AND READY TO GO"!!! They, also, embrace a "CHANGE THEY CAN BELIEVE IN" too!

GO OBAMA NATION!!

Well, Ms. Dobson, you certainly made your views clear. You said, "I am proposing a compulsory federal law to block interest rate hikes and outlaw all foreclosures for at least five years, or for as long as this depression lasts."

That is wrong on so many levels, I'm flabbergasted.

I will definitely rally support against your campaign. Thank you.