The Obamas Spend July 4th in Butte, Montana (Obama leads McCain by 5 points in RED Montana)

  Obamas arriving for July 4th parade

Barack Obama is leading John McCain by five percentage points in Montana. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state shows Obama attracting 48% of the vote while McCain earns 43%. In April, the numbers were reversed with McCain leading 48% to 43%.

It would be truly stunning if Obama could turn Montana into a competitive state this November. George W. Bush won Montana’s 3 Electoral College Votes by twenty percentage points in 2004 and by twenty-five points four years earlier.

Sabrina Holland, 25, isn’t typically an early riser.

“I am today,” said Holland, who at 5:10 a.m. Thursday was the first person in line for tickets to an Independence Day picnic with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

“I’m a Republican,” Holland said. “I’m here (to get tickets) for friends and to see what we’re up against.” This week, the Montana’s Obama for America campaign announced not only that the candidate would spend the Fourth of July in Butte, but also that he’d be the featured guest at a public picnic Friday at the practice field south of the Montana Tech HPER Complex.

News spread throughout the community Wednesday night and Thursday morning that a limited number of tickets to the picnic would be available at the Venus Rising Espresso House at 124 S. Main St. beginning at 7:30 a.m.

Behind Holland, Democrat Rob Fleming, 40, was second in line.

“I was here at four and nobody was here so I went home,” he said. When he came back a little after 5 a.m. and saw Holland at the door, he got in line.

Like Fleming, Ken Devine, 59, was driving through Uptown Butte in the wee hours of the morning, not wanting to miss another chance to see Obama.

“I came by at quarter to three because when they had them (tickets) at the Civic Center I didn’t get any,” he said.

Devine, a self-proclaimed Union Democrat said that he circled back several times before seeing Holland and Fleming and joining them in line shortly after 5 a.m.

Number seven in line was Wende Dwyer, who arrived at 6 a.m. Dwyer is a Butte native who said that she was back in Butte from Fort Worth, Texas for the holiday.

“My boys are 13 and 10 and when you have an opportunity to be part of a movement in America that’s so exciting and optimistic I think parents have an obligation to expose them (children) to what’s happening,” she said.

232 Years of Independence — Happy 4th of July!!!

   It’s been 232 years since we got rid of King George; today we have President George.  It seems like America has come full circle…

After two wars King George was in debt up to his eyeballs.

One major expense that drained the English treasury was the ‘management’ of the American colonies:

1.    It was expensive to pay the many English troops shipped across the Atlantic to protect the colonies.

2.    It was costly to pay the English governors assigned to oversee the colonies.

3.    It was pricey to fight simultaneous wars against the French and the Indians in the colonies.

King George reasoned that if he was spending money to govern the colonies, then the colonists should pay for the services rendered on their behalf. George also knew that it would be much easier to convince Parliament to tax the colonists than to try to get more money from the already poor English citizens. 

George received a shock and became incensed when the insolent American colonists objected to the new taxes being imposed upon them, particularly the Stamp Act.

The Stamp Tax required that colonists pay a special tax for every printed piece of paper they used – that included newspapers, playing cards, pamphlets, legal documents, advertisements, etc. The Stamp Act was passed by Parliament in 1765 — the colonists were furious.