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New Civilization News: Election '08: You Make Me Feel So Young! |
Category: Politics 42 comments
31 Aug 2008 @ 16:31 by Quinty @68.9.133.5 : Why 3 Sep 2008 @ 02:21 by jmarc : It makes me feel old Last time I talked to my city's Mayor, I'd joked with him that he was the first guy I'd voted for who was younger than me. I guess the same would be true if I were to vote the McCain / Palin ticket. It makes me pause and reflect on my own mortality, is what I guess I'm trying to say. If you believe that the Presidency and vice-presidency count for anything these days, and we could debate that one till the cows come home, I'd say that it's a plus to have children back in the white house, or the naval observatory. This should have a good effect on any decisions made by these people, I hope. On the R side, it's probably also a good thing that family is serving now in the armed forces, but that's a bit off topic. May November relationships in politics? Yeah, Biden gives a bit more gravitas to Obama, and Palin surely helps to soften McCains image. And it really all is just image with these people and their offices these days. Corporations and large Media conglomerates are the real decision makers. 3 Sep 2008 @ 16:16 by jazzolog : Repubs Actually Getting Away With It I heard the obedient lapdog, NPR Morning Edition, actually report this morning that all media questions about Palin's background must go through the Republican Party...as will all answers, no matter what the source. The report said the Party is determined to "control Sarah Palin's image." CNN is a little feistier with the treatment it's been getting. This from the Washington Post this morning, as we see all-out aggression in response to media attention to the various questions about Palin. [link] I want to do more with this comment, and hope to get to it later today. As before, my computering schedule has become limited by nevertheless beloved family houseguests. 6 Sep 2008 @ 12:01 by jazzolog : Roping Mavericks Anyone with a TV set 50 years ago knows what a Maverick is. Was your favorite Bret or Bart? James Garner showed up in the 1994 movie version too, in which Jody Foster's character steals the show...and the money of course. Hmmmm. Are the Republicans sure they want us to think of their candidates this way? 
Sarah and Bristol Palin in 2006 Anchorage Daily News/MCT Anybody who grew up with westerns, as I'm sure John McCain did, knows about mavericks. They're steers, often young and ornery, that won't stay with the herd. If you're going to lay around today, and have access to American cable, you could spend the whole day reviewing at AMC where they're showing some of the greatest westerns ever made. Or switch over to TCM tonight for a few Robert Mitchum flicks. Now there was a maverick! So is it really true that John McCain and Sarah Palin fit this portrait of mavericks...or are we being handed some kind of hype---again? 
Photo: Getty Images Jeffrey St. Clair is author of a book called Grand Theft Pentagon, published 3 years ago. Adapted from the book, this article at Counterpunch Thursday presented the following view of McCain~~~ "He is the senator of the hollow protest. McCain is nothing if not a political stunt man. His chief stunt is the evocation of political piety. From his pulpit in the well of the senate, McCain gestures and fumes about the evils of Pentagon porkbarrel. He rails about useless and expensive weapons systems, contractor malfeasance, and bloated R&B budgets. "But he does nothing about them. McCain pontificates, but never obstructs. Few senators have his political capital. But he does nothing with it. Under the arcane rules of the senate, one senator can gum up the works, derail a bad (or good, though those are increasingly rare in this environment) bill, dislodge non-germane riders, usually loaded with pork, from big appropriations bills. McCain is never that senator. He is content to let ride that which he claims to detest in press releases and senate speeches." [link] That sounds like politics-as-usual to me. How about Palin then? Judging from Time magazine's profile of her last Tuesday, her own description of herself as a "pitbull with lipstick" seems more appropriate than maverick---especially because a pitbull operates best with a handler who tells when and who to attack. "Governing was no less contentious than campaigning, at least to begin with. She ended up dismissing almost all the city department heads who had been loyal to (previous mayor John) Stein, including a few who had been instrumental in getting her into politics to begin with. Some saw it as a betrayal. (Irl) Stambaugh, the police chief and member of Palin's step aerobics class, filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination, alleging that Palin terminated him in part at the behest of the National Rifle Association, because he had opposed a concealed-gun law the NRA supported. He eventually lost the suit. The animosity spawned some talk of a recall attempt, but eventually Palin's opponents on the City Council opted for a more conciliatory route. "At some point in those the fractious first days, Palin told the department heads they needed her permission to talk to reporters. 'She put a gag order on those people, something that you'd expect to find in the big city, not here,' says (Frontiersman editor Vicki) Naegle. 'She flew in there like a big city gal, which she's not. It was a strange time, and [the Frontiersman] came out very harshly against her.' "Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. 'She asked the library how she could go about banning books,' he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. 'The librarian was aghast.' The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving 'full support' to the mayor." [link] Then there's Wasilla Bible Church where Governor Palin remains an active member and, until now, a regular parishioner on Sunday. Maybe she'll fly up there tomorrow too, since there are reports she won't be a talking head on the regular Sunday morning TV news shows. The preacher there is Larry Kroon but he likes to bring in guests. The transcripts of all the sermons are at the church's site---and since Obama was given such a tough time about his church affiliation, maybe you'd like to read a few. [link] If that's not your idea of happy Saturday morning fun, you might at least attend to Ben Smith's concern Tuesday at Politico about the sermon 3 weeks ago. Given by David Brickner, executive director of Jews For Jesus, it explains the real nature of what he calls "The Jerusalem Problem." Brickner reveals the terrorist attacks on Israelis are God's "judgment of unbelief" upon Jews who haven't embraced Christianity. [link] Sounds like another pitbull for Christ...but probably without lipstick. I'm still looking at photos of 3-month-old Trig Palin, and wondering if he isn't a bit big for that age. I thought the ponderings about whether Governor Palin could have given birth to the child were best summed up by Bryan Zepp on Labor Day. He says he only reluctantly put together this essay. [link] The real issue must be whether the VP nominee is lying...even though that's what mavericks supposedly do. What if Bristol has a mysterious miscarriage for an October surprise? Oh well, back to the real issues as presented last week at what the Washington Post characterized as "A Mostly White Convention." [link] The Associated Press took a look at a number of charges leveled against Democrats and claims by Republicans and compared them to pesky facts. [link] Of particular concern to Barack Obama was Sarah Palin's ridicule of community organizers. A bit of a maverick himself he wrote, "With the nation watching, the Republicans mocked, dismissed, and actually laughed out loud at Americans who engage in community service and organizing... But what the McCain attack squad doesn't understand is that people like you -- who devote part of their busy lives to organizing and building their communities -- have the power to change this country." One community organizing site is www.wellstone.org . Nor did the arrests of various reporters and journalists in Minneapolis last week fit very well into the welcoming maverick mode. Here's Time's account and analysis of how the McCain campaign views the press. [link] Amy Goodman's arrest got her handled with particular rudeness. [link] Here's the last photo found on AP photographer Matt Rourke's camera before he was arrested. 
What's interesting to me is the original Maverick was somebody McCain and Palin might admire. Yes, there was an actual Samuel Maverick in the real rootin' tootin' 19th Century, who was a Texas lawyer, politician, and land baron. Among other things he was a cattleman who refused to brand his steers---which meant that any cow he ran into without a brand must be his. Ah yes, the maverick style. So a maverick is somebody without a brand, who belongs to no one...maybe. Oh yes, Sam Maverick was a Texas Democrat. [link] 6 Sep 2008 @ 14:50 by jmarc : Maverick MAVERICK 6 Sep 2008 @ 20:13 by Quinty @68.9.133.5 : Norm Solomon on the two parties Some claim it doesn't make a difference who we vote for. That "they're all the same." Bush and Iraq war should be exhibit A on the fallacy of that..... Beyond the Conventions Sep 05, 2008 By Norman Solomon With varying degrees of confidence or even complacency, many people have assumed that the jig is almost up for the horrendous political era that began when George W. Bush became president. Always dubious, the assumption is now on very shaky ground. The Bush-Cheney regime may be on its last legs, but a new incarnation of right-wing populism is shadowing the near horizon. Much as modern capitalism is always driven to promote new products in the marketplace, the corporate-fundamentalist partnership must reinvent and remarket itself. We're now seeing the rollout of a hybrid product under the McCain-Palin brand. After watching Sarah Palin's acceptance speech and the laudatory responses from many TV journalists, I remembered wandering around the floor of the Democratic convention in Denver. At the base, the two major parties are even more different than the speeches are apt to indicate. Under the roof of the Democratic Party, notwithstanding its shades of corporatism and militarism and numerous other grave faults, there's a lot of longstanding and ongoing involvement from key progressive constituencies -- including labor unions, African Americans, gay rights activists, human rights defenders, environmentalists, fair-trade advocates, healthcare-for-all organizers, feminists, and on and on. In contrast, the Republican Party is a political institution that views all such constituencies and activists (including the new target of GOP derision, "community organizers") as enemies to be smothered and crushed. The party's latest "populist" packaging is another wrinkle in a timeworn pattern; the most avid political servants of corporate elites are eager to keep generating the anti-elites rhetoric and imagery of down-home regular folks. At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, some of the speeches ran counter to basic progressive tenets of peace and social justice. But none came close to the zeal for social Darwinism, jingoism and militarism routinely spewing from the Republican convention's podium. In ways too numerous to count and in realms too profound to truly evoke, this decade has grimly underscored that -- notwithstanding theoretical claims to the contrary -- it matters greatly who is president. From the Supreme Court to thousands of subcabinet positions to executive orders to a vast array of foreign-policy decisions including the potential use of nuclear weapons, the president is able to wield state power with consequences huge enough to be unfathomable. A popular strand of analysis on the left has downplayed the importance of the president. The story goes that corporate forces rule, and the person in the Oval Office is little more than a figurehead for those rulers. There's some validity to that assessment, but in the face of experience it has tended to calcify into a form of denial. With right-wing Republicans running the White House for 20 of the last 28 years, maybe the downplaying of the importance of the presidency has become a kind of coping mechanism for some progressives. Accustomed to a status quo that grows increasingly dire, we've settled into an uncomfortable "comfort zone" as familiar as it is macabre. At the same time, the cascading effects of right-wing control over most of the federal government have been cumulative and devastating. Of course progressives should always keep organizing, educating, protesting and agitating. But the potential for achieving progressive changes in government policies is severely limited while the right wing is entrenched in the White House. The changes we need can only be propelled from the grassroots, but the possibilities are badly circumscribed when the far right maintains a grip on state power. After the election in early November, it'll be President McCain or President Obama. We'll never pass this way again. ________________________ Norman Solomon, a national co-chair of the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign, is the author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." A documentary film of the same name, based on the book, has been released on home video. For information, go to: www.normansolomon.com 7 Sep 2008 @ 10:04 by jazzolog : Community Organizers have poured out of neighborhood projects and rural action to stand up for themselves in the face of Palin's venom Wednesday night. My wife linked me to the blogsite of The American Prospect magazine last night, where a retort was mounted. There are several comments there that are very good. One of them reminds the so-called Christian Governor Palin as follows: Jesus Christ was a community organizer and it was a governor that had him arrested and crucified. Posted by: namekarB | September 4, 2008 5:38 PM [link] Another comment revealed a new site set up especially by organizers to assert the work they do---and to receive any apology Ms. Palin might become convinced to offer. At this writing their are 508 comments on its Front Page. [link] Maureen Dowd laments that Senator Clinton isn't Obama's choice this morning, if only for the V-P debate we'd have gotten to see. She imagines her running against Palin next time around...and there are a few laughs. [link] The thing is had Obama chosen Clinton, McCain never would have picked Palin. Frank Rich disagrees with me that Sarah makes John look younger. Mr. Rich is a distinguished theatre critic and so I'll yield the point to him. He really gets after McCain this morning~~~ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The New York Times September 7, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage By FRANK RICH Sarah Palin makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech — longer even than Barack Obama’s — you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum’s rush. Still, attention must be paid. McCain’s address, though largely a repetitive slew of stump-speech lines and worn G.O.P. orthodoxy, reminded us of what we once liked about the guy: his aspirations to bipartisanship, his heroic service in Vietnam, his twinkle. He took his (often inaccurate) swipes at Obama, but, in winning contrast to Palin and Rudy Giuliani, he wasn’t smug or nasty. The only problem, of course, is that the entire thing was a sham. As is nakedly evident, the speech’s central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur. In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement. G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did his cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of the president who remained nameless Thursday night. (In the G.O.P., Bush love is now the second most popular love that dare not speak its name.) Even more fraudulent, if that’s possible, is the contrast between McCain’s platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become. He always puts his country first, he told us: “I’ve been called a maverick.” If there was any doubt that that McCain has fled, confirmation arrived with his last-minute embrace of Sarah Palin. We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction. She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same. How long before we learn she never shot a moose? Given the actuarial odds that could make Palin our 45th president, it would be helpful to know who this mystery woman actually is. Meanwhile, two eternal axioms of our politics remain in place. Americans vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom. And in judging the top of the ticket, voters look first at the candidates’ maiden executive decision, their selection of running mates. Whatever we do and don’t know about Palin’s character at this point, there is no ambiguity in what her ascent tells us about McCain’s character and potential presidency. He wanted to choose the pro-abortion-rights Joe Lieberman as his vice president. If he were still a true maverick, he would have done so. But instead he chose partisanship and politics over country. “God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man,” said the shafted Lieberman in his own tedious convention speech last week. What a pathetic dupe. McCain is now the man of James Dobson and Tony Perkins. The “no surrender” warrior surrendered to the agents of intolerance not just by dumping his pal for Palin but by moving so far to the right on abortion that even Cindy McCain seemed unaware of his radical shift when being interviewed by Katie Couric last week. That ideological sellout, unfortunately, was not the worst leadership trait the last-minute vice presidential pick revealed about McCain. His speed-dating of Palin reaffirmed a more dangerous personality tic that has dogged his entire career. His decision-making process is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless. As The New York Times reported last Tuesday, Palin was sloppily vetted, at best. McCain operatives and some of their press surrogates responded to this revelation by trying to discredit The Times article. After all, The Washington Post had cited McCain aides (including his campaign manager, Rick Davis) last weekend to assure us that Palin had a “full vetting process.” She had been subjected to “an F.B.I. background check,” we were told, and “the McCain camp had reviewed everything it could find on her.” The Times had it right. The McCain campaign’s claims of a “full vetting process” for Palin were as much a lie as the biographical details they’ve invented for her. There was no F.B.I. background check. The Times found no evidence that a McCain representative spoke to anyone in the State Legislature or business community. Nor did anyone talk to the fired state public safety commissioner at the center of the Palin ethics investigation. No McCain researcher even bothered to consult the relevant back issues of the Wasilla paper. Apparently when McCain said in June that his vice presidential vetting process was basically “a Google,” he wasn’t joking. This is a roll of the dice beyond even Bill Clinton’s imagination. “Often my haste is a mistake,” McCain conceded in his 2002 memoir, “but I live with the consequences without complaint.” Well, maybe it’s fine if he wants to live with the consequences, but what about his country? Should the unexamined Palin prove unfit to serve at the pinnacle of American power, it will be too late for the rest of us to complain. We’ve already seen where such visceral decision-making by McCain can lead. In October 2001, he speculated that Saddam Hussein might have been behind the anthrax attacks in America. That same month he out-Cheneyed Cheney in his repeated public insistence that Iraq had a role in 9/11 — even after both American and foreign intelligence services found that unlikely. He was similarly rash in his reading of the supposed evidence of Saddam’s W.M.D. and in his estimate of the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. (McCain told MSNBC in late 2001 that we could do with fewer than 100,000.) It wasn’t until months after “Mission Accomplished” that he called for more American forces to be tossed into the bloodbath. The whole fiasco might have been prevented had he listened to those like Gen. Eric Shinseki who faulted the Rumsfeld war plan from the start. In other words, McCain’s hasty vetting of Palin was all too reminiscent of his grave dereliction of due diligence on the war. He has been no less hasty in implying that we might somehow ride to the military rescue of Georgia (“Today, we are all Georgians”) or in reaffirming as late as December 2007 that the crumbling anti-democratic regime of Pervez Musharraf deserved “the benefit of the doubt” even as it was enabling the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. McCain’s blanket endorsement of Bush administration policy in Pakistan could have consequences for years to come. “This election is not about issues” so much as the candidates’ images, said the McCain campaign manager, Davis, in one of the season’s most notable pronouncements. Going into the Republican convention, we thought we knew what he meant: the McCain strategy is about tearing down Obama. But last week made clear that the McCain campaign will be equally ruthless about deflecting attention from its own candidate’s deterioration. What was most striking about McCain’s acceptance speech is that it had almost nothing in common with the strident right-wing convention that preceded it. We were pointedly given a rerun of McCain 2000 — cobbled together from scraps of the old Straight Talk repertory. The ensuing tedium was in all likelihood intentional. It’s in the campaign’s interest that we nod off and assume McCain is unchanged in 2008. That’s why the Palin choice was brilliant politics — not because it rallied the G.O.P.’s shrinking religious-right base. America loves nothing more than a new celebrity face, and the talking heads marched in lock step last week to proclaim her a star. Palin is a high-energy distraction from the top of the ticket, even if the provenance of her stardom is in itself a reflection of exactly what’s frightening about the top of the ticket. By hurling charges of sexism and elitism at any easily cowed journalist who raises a question about Palin, McCain operatives are hoping to ensure that whatever happened in Alaska with Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. Given how little vetting McCain himself has received this year — and that only 58 days remain until Nov. 4 — they just might pull it off. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company [link] 7 Sep 2008 @ 19:05 by quinty : Groan, Palin and McCain..... A good piece..... and pretty well outlines much of what’s scary about McCain. His brand of western conservatism is wealth oriented and often nasty. He can be cruel at times, laughing at the sufferings of the poor. I’ve seen him do it. Goldwater was cut much the same. Had not Bush and the Neocons so blurred who was actually responsible for 9/11 some of McCain’s bellicose rhetoric might be more clear. For those who believe the “surge” basically solved our problems in Iraq might remember the tangle of lies which got us there. Which McCain, as Rich points out, eagerly supported. The far right is gloating over the response of progressives to the choice of Palin. They seem to take pleasure in our alarm and concerns. What, are the headless leading the charge? That comment about Christ as a “community organizer” was right on, but I don’t think it will penetrate Palin and her admirers. They’re too caught up in the blind hysterics of their hate filled rhetoric. As for earmarks I rather like them. If our Congressman, Patrick Kennedy, would come home with the money to put street signs up in Providence - we are woefully lacking - that would be great. After all, that’s what government is for. 9 Sep 2008 @ 07:35 by jazzolog : That Sense Of Dread There has been some kind of heavy silence in the air since the Republican Convention. People of my acquaintance don't seem to know what to say...although a few have confessed some jitters. The righties I know aren't talking...although the paranoid old man at work asked if I was plotting more activism as he listened to my phone conversation yesterday. Actually I was talking to my credit union about our accounts, but like McCain Bill still is fighting the Chinese in Viet Nam. One must be careful around such people: they're always on the alert for opportunity. I've been bugged by obvious, annoying paradoxes in Republican strategy shifts. At first Inexperience was the charge leveled at Obama, but since Palin inexperience is OK. You can learn on the job. Then it was Celebrity. That's what was wrong with Barack and Michelle. But now Palin's the celebrity and of course it's to be expected. We were going to debate issues---after we're sure we understand McCain was a POW...and Alaska is right next to Russia---but now Image is what we all need to see. And the media toddles right along with it all...as if they've been trained by experts these past 8 years. I've been hoping someone somewhere would sum it up for me, help me grab something I can use to continue the climb and the work. Maybe we've been in the eye of the election hurricane. Finally this morning an article has popped up. It's not so much about what went on inside the "America First" convention hall, but what was going on just outside. I find myself thinking back to almost exactly 4 years ago, when I tried to catch a glimpse of President Bush at a campaign rally in Parkersburg, West Virginia. [link] Apparently such aspects of citizenship are even more gravely threatened this time. The author of this essay is Chris Hedges, a member of the team of reporters that won the 2002 Pulitzer for The New York Times' coverage of global terrorism. The following year he gave a commencement speech at a college in Illinois, in which he condemned the Iraq occupation. The incident got him a formal reprimand from the newspaper because his address showed bias. He resigned...and since then has been writing for numerous publications including Foreign Affairs, Harper’s magazine, The New York Review of Books, Granta and Mother Jones. Hedges, the son of a Presbyterian minister, has a B.A. in English Literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity from Harvard University. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard during the academic year of 1998-1999. He has a strong grounding in the classics and knows Greek and Latin, as well as Arabic, French and Spanish. Chris Hedges currently is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and a Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University, and spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, where he spent fifteen years. Truthdig Tyranny on Display at the Republican Convention Posted on Sep 8, 2008 By Chris Hedges 
The AP photo is another by Matt Rourke that shows police using pepper spray on a woman as she approaches them with a flower during a rally at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. St. Paul is a window into our future. It is a future where, as one protester told me by phone, “people have been pepper-gassed, thrown on the ground by police who had drawn their weapons, had their documents seized and their tattoos photographed before being taken away to jail.” It is a future where illegal house raids are carried out. It is a future where vans containing heavily armed paramilitary units circle and film protesters. It is a future where, as the protester said, “people have been pulled from cars because their license plates were on a database and handcuffed, thrown in the back of a squad car and then watched as their vehicles were ransacked and their personal possessions from computers to literature seized.” It is a future where constitutional rights mean nothing and where lawful dissent is branded a form of terrorism. The rise of the corporate state means the rise of the surveillance state. The Janus-like face of America swings from packaged and canned spectacles, from nationalist slogans, from seas of flags and Christian crosses, from professions of faith and patriotism, to widespread surveillance, illegal mass detentions, informants, provocateurs and crude acts of repression and violence. We barrel toward a world filled with stupendous lies and blood. What difference is there between the crowds of flag-waving Republicans and the apparatchiks I covered as a reporter in the old East German Communist Party? These Republican delegates, like the fat and compromised party functionaries in East Berlin, all fawned on cue over an inept and corrupt party hierarchy. They all purported to champion workers’ rights and freedom while they systematically fleeced, disempowered and impoverished the workers they lauded. They all celebrated the virtue of a state that was morally bankrupt. And while they played this con game, one that gave them special privileges, power and wealth, they unleashed their goons and thugs on all who dared to challenge them. We are not East Germany, but we are well on our way. An economic meltdown, another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, a war with Iran, and we could easily swing into an authoritarian model that would look very familiar to anyone who lived in the former communist East Bloc. A few of those arrested in St. Paul, including eight leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee— one of the groups organizing protests at the GOP convention in St. Paul [link] —now face terrorism-related charges. Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald and Max Spector could get up to seven and a half years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge, which allows for a 50 percent increase in the maximum penalty. This is the first time criminal charges have been filed under the 2002 Minnesota version of the federal Patriot Act. The Patriot Act, which was put in place as much to silence domestic opposition as to ferret out real terrorists, has largely lain dormant. It has authorized the government to monitor our phone conversations, e-mails, meetings and political opinions. It has authorized the government to shut down anti-war groups and lock up innocents as terrorists. It has abolished habeas corpus. But until now we have not grasped its full implications for our open society. We catch glimpses, as in St. Paul or in our offshore penal colonies where we torture detainees, of its awful destructive power. The commercial media told us that what was important in St. Paul was happening inside the convention hall. The vapid interviews, the ridiculous soap opera sagas about Sarah Palin’s daughter and the debate about whether John McCain or Barack Obama has proprietary rights to “Change” divert us from the truth of who we have become. You had to search out www.democracynow.org/ , www.theuptake.org/ , www.twincities.indymedia.org/ , www.iwitnessvideo.info/ , along with a few other independent outlets, to see, hear or read real journalism from St. Paul. It does not matter that the RNC Welcoming Committee describes itself as an “anarchist/anti-authoritarian” organization. We don’t have to embrace a political agenda to protect the right to be heard. Shut down free speech and radicals only burrow deeper underground, splitting ossified political systems into fractured extremes. We may well end up with the Christian right on one side, with politicians like Sarah Palin providing an ideological veneer to a Christian fascism, and embittered leftist radicals who turn to violence on the other. St. Paul was not ultimately about selecting a presidential candidate. It was about the power of the corporate state to carry out pre-emptive searches, seizures and arrests. It was about squads of police in high-tech riot gear, many with drawn semiautomatic weapons, bursting into houses. It was about seized computers, journals and political literature. It was about shutting down independent journalism, even at gunpoint. It was about charging protesters with “conspiracy to commit riot,” a rarely used statute that criminalizes legal dissent. It was about 500 people held in open-air detention centers. It was about the rising Orwellian state that has hollowed out the insides of America, cast away all that was good and vital, and donned its skin to shackle us all. [link] Toles today shows a VP candidate, in her designer glasses (frames $400, $600-800 with lenses---so hot now stores can't keep 'em in stock!), planning things out at an undisclosed location~~~  9 Sep 2008 @ 16:14 by quinty : While all that was going on there was next to no mention on the non-stop cable coverage of the convention. Only a few "dramatic" shots of police roughing up protestors. No probing or digging on the part of the media. Nothing which could tarnish the image of the RNC. But do you want something else scary? This was on Wolf Blitzer last night, on CNN news: a prediction that a new "Cold War" with Russia is about to begin with Hugo Chavez taking the part of Fidel Castro. I won't go into the whole sordid story, but Chavez could have been our friend. Instead, we are insuring he will be our enemy. All because he strayed off the range and went his own way, trying to improve life for the Venezuelan poor. Our media is complicit, too, clinging to that unending "dictatorship" story. There have been eight or nine elections in Venezuela, all free and honest. Chavez lost one, and abided by the results. How many more free elections does he have to have before he ceases to be a "dictator?" This whole new "Cold War" approach to Russia and Hugo Chavez as Castro is worse than ignorant and stupid: it is an insane self-fulfilling prophecy. 9 Sep 2008 @ 16:22 by Quinty @68.9.133.5 : I should have mentioned that Chavez is seen as the new Castro because Venezuela bought arms from Russia. That Russia is arming them the way the Soviet Union did Castro. (So, would the US ever sell arms to Chavez?) McCain, I'm sure, will all too readily see it that way. With Obama let's hope there is more sanity, though the far right in this country would love to have a new "cold war." And there will be pressure on Obama to be "t;ough" and "realistic." 10 Sep 2008 @ 16:03 by jazzolog : United States' True Color jazzoLOG also shows up over at blogger.com where comments often appear from someone who prefers to remain "anonymous." I believe this person to be a member of NCN too, but lately he adds much thoughtful commentary there as well. I was especially impressed with what he had to say yesterday~~~ Anonymous said... jazzolog said: "I've been bugged by obvious, annoying paradoxes in Republican strategy shifts. At first Inexperience was the charge leveled at Obama, but since Palin, inexperience is OK. You can learn on the job. Then it was Celebrity. That's what was wrong with Barack and Michelle. But now Palin's the celebrity and of course it's to be expected. We were going to debate issues---after we're sure we understand McCain was a POW...and Alaska is right next to Russia---but now Image is what we all need to see. And the media toddles right along with it all..." Indeed! The double-standard should be blatant for all to see. Why isn't it? Is it because people don't see it or is it because people don't want to see? Maybe Homer Simpson got it right: "It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen." In an earlier comment on another jazzolog entry, I had brought up Drew Westen's commentary, [link] : "This year should be a perfect storm for a Democratic presidential candidate, particularly one with the rhetorical gifts of Barack Obama. McCain has literally every indicator political scientists enter into their models to predict electoral success or defeat working against him: He has repeatedly allied himself with the most unpopular president since the history of modern polling, describing Bush in 2006 as one of our greatest presidents and musing about having Dick Cheney in a McCain cabinet (two facts the Obama campaign has failed to advertise). He has embraced the most unpopular war since Vietnam. And in the summer before the election, the economy is arguably in its worst shape since the Great Depression, with American families spending a greater percentage of their income on basic necessities, home foreclosures at their zenith, and the ratio of job loss to job creation at its highest since the 1930s. "And those are just the beginning of McCain's problems. Every time he panders to the right he turns off moderates, and every time he takes a moderate position he reinforces the view on the right that he is not a 'true conservative' and depresses voter turnout from his base And finally, whether the stress of tacking right and left so many times over the last two years has taken the wind out of his sails or whether he's just gotten too old and tired to take on the rigors of a presidential campaign, he has lost the sparkle that once drew many moderates and even many liberals to him, while running against the most charismatic leader to emerge on the political scene since Bill Clinton. "Yet now John McCain is tied with Obama in the Gallup polls, in a dead heat in the mid 40s for the third consecutive day." So, what gives? Drew Westen hit the nail square on the head: the candidates are" tied in the Gallup polls," "in a dead heat for the third consecutive day." It is as if nothing new had changed since 2000 or since 2004. In view of all the circumstances the author enumerated, how is that even remotely possible, one wonders? Interestingly, and most relevantly, the same question was asked in 2004: [link] . The brief entry there (titled "54%") - but especially some of the follow-up comments on that thread - is very telling. It raises an interesting question: Where was the outrage then at the Bush administration? Where is the outrage now? The mistake here might be in the postulate that such an outrage even exists or in the assumption that president Bush wouldn't win another election, were he allowed to run for a third term. The percentage of Americans who resonate with unilateralism, global domination, "cow-boy diplomacy," the "Bush Doctrine" and the project for the New American Century is higher than most pundits are (publicly) willing to acknowledge. Were George Bush running today against Barack Obama, chances are that we would have the same virtual tie that the polls are reporting today between McCain and Obama. It is a phenomenon, I suspect, that has very little to do with either Bush or Kerry, or McCain or Obama, or whatever the particular (tired) negative rhetoric (rationalization/ alibi?) happens to be this time around. Way too much credit is given to Karl Rove and his ilks. It helps assuage our collective conscience as a Nation. But, there is no hiding form it: for better or for worse, once again America is going to be given the opportunity to show its true color. This election is not about Obama or McCain but about us: about who we are as a People, and what the polls are pointing to is rather scary. But then again, the unexpected rise of a candidate such as Obama on the political scene and the socio-political climate which made it possible is a testimony to the presence of another zeitgeist. How big that new zeitgeist is (The Times Are They A-Changin'?) is what this election will show. In a recent article for the Telegraph, Billy Simpson reflecting on how "a philosopher once claimed that there is a little bit of Jesus in all of us. And a little bit of Hitler," commented that "appealing to what Abraham Lincoln called 'the better angels' of our nature can be a bit of a vote loser. It is usually cheaper to appeal to the inner bigot." Sad but true - or certainly too close to home. In the end, it is ultimately "We The People" who speak, everything else--Sarah Palin, the "culture war," the Karl Rovian ads, the "talking points," or the lies and innuendo people pretend to believe, or not---is just mere rationalization. "It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This morning I made this reply~~~ That's quite a wonderful post just above, anonymous, and I believe we're thinking along similar lines. Much of what I came to think of about the United States was taught to me in the post-World War II and pre-McCarthy eras. That's a pretty short period of time, but we were very idealistic then---and so I heard much about liberty, freedom and democracy in the Lincoln-Jefferson tradition. Today's kids think of freedom and democracy in the Bush tradition probably, which means CIA and capitalist empire. One is not necessarily more "American" than the other. At the core of this country is something very central and that is ownership of property. Possibly both traditions would agree on the basics. You own property by mixing your labor with the land. What you do on your property is your own business and no one, nothing should interfere with you or tell you what to do. People came to these shores to be left alone, and there is a mighty streak of isolationism running through our whole history. We also like ideas of God being on our side. We like God because He helps us out and protects us...and also can become very Old Testament in punishing the enemy. A God-fearing businessman is a civic hero. We prefer to reward business rather than government, and we shall see if most Americans would prefer to leave profits private and debts for public bailout. This election is about these things and I won't be surprised if the majority chooses the political party that represents capitalist empire and theocracy. It may be who we really are as a people---or at least who we have become. We are not alone in wondering along these lines these days. Perhaps most startling to me was Juan Cole's article at Salon yesterday. Titled What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick; it's located here~~~ [link] Then there's Empire and Imperialism and the USA by James Petras here~~~ [link] At CNBC Jim Rogers claims US Is "More Communist than China"~~~ [link] Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor indicates along the same lines Comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke Welcome You to the USSRA (United Socialist State Republic of America)~~~ [link] And more on the Republican Convention violence from Ray McGovern Storm Troopers at the RNC~~~ [link] This is strong stuff, all within the last day or 2, and there are some highly respected analysts here. Since the working class abandoned the Democrats of Carter and moved into Reagan domain, these changes have been taking place. That's a couple of generations. 10 Sep 2008 @ 17:11 by quinty : We do seem to be at a crossroads this years. The ugliness has always been with us (McCarthyism was a lark too.... all the violent “progressive” struggles of the past.... the rise of fascism, etc.) and this time Obama is fighting back. Which makes a difference. After all, when a candidate slinks away from the mud that’s not very reassuring. And can Obama, through the deep candy coated corporate fog calling itself news, reach most American voters? Well, maybe. A lot is coming out on Palin which is a good sign. Americans live by many myths. Some Republicans I’m acquainted with will not vote for McCain because Palin scares them. She and McCain should scare all of us. But if a voter lives within the same narrow world Palin lives and breathes in then the voter will be comfortable there, and his or her myths won’t be disturbed. We are separated, after all, from the rest of the world by two enormous oceans. We also look down upon our neighbors. When I lived in Terre Haute, Indiana, there were people there who literally believed Terre Haute was the center of the world. You find people like that everywhere. There was plenty of outrage against Bush in 2004 from those who opposed the war. But I believe that at that time the country still supported it. Bush won because many Americans still believed he could protect the US from the hobgoblins (some were actually real) he exploited. And it wasn’t until Katrina that the Bush bubble finally began to burst. That is the difference between 2004 and 2008. Only true believers don’t think Bush has been totally discredited. And how much will race have to do with this election? As Pogo put it: “we have met the enemy and he is us.” 11 Sep 2008 @ 09:11 by jazzolog : Nostalgia And The Republicans I just Googled "Palin Reagan" and was surprised to get an inside glimpse of how Republicans are powering up for the campaign. The woman is being compared to Ronald Reagan all over the place---when she isn't labeled the new Margaret Thatcher. Many articles refer to Reagan nostalgia, calling the faithful back to the excitement of those days when the neo-cons took over. It's Morning again in Smalltown America. Smell the coffee and the bacon...but now Mom has to go to work too. We know the Bible says she should keep the apron on and get to the washing and ironing, but these days Mom has to help with the plowing. Other than that, Plain Palin brings back those golden days of yesteryear just like Reagan. Ronnie's son Michael even has written a piece about all this called "Welcome Back Dad." But here's the deal: few people ravaged small towns more than Reagan. Where did the rust belt come from? It came from the destruction of the unions, tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, and consequent export of jobs. With the decline of the unions has come the decline of the middle class. Coincidence? No way. Union benefits were how working people climbed into the middle class. Reagan's first act as president was to declare a threatened strike by air traffic controllers to be illegal. I had employment in industry when Reagan dismantled CETA, whereupon 600 workers, many of them VietNam veterans who just had started a family and bought a home, were laid off in a single day in my hometown. I was among them, with a wife 6 months pregnant. It took that small town 25 years to begin to get back on its feet---and downtown still is full of empty shops and crumbling old stores. That's the reality of smalltown America. See here~~~ 
The Wall Street Journal The Tilting Yard The GOP Loves the Heartland To Death By THOMAS FRANK September 10, 2008 It tells us something about Sarah Palin's homage to small-town America, delivered to an enthusiastic GOP convention last week, that she chose to fire it up with an unsourced quotation from the all-time champion of fake populism, the belligerent right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler. "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity," the vice-presidential candidate said, quoting an anonymous "writer," which is to say, Pegler, who must have penned that mellifluous line when not writing his more controversial stuff. As the New York Times pointed out in its obituary of him in 1969, Pegler once lamented that a would-be assassin "hit the wrong man" when gunning for Franklin Roosevelt. There's no evidence that Mrs. Palin shares the trademark Pegler bloodlust -- except maybe when it comes to moose and wolves. Nevertheless, the red-state myth that Mrs. Palin reiterated for her adoring audience owes far more to the venomous spirit of Pegler than it does to Norman Rockwell. Small town people, Mrs. Palin went on, are "the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars." They are authentic; they are noble, and they are her own: "I grew up with those people." But what really defines them in Mrs. Palin's telling is their enemies, the people who supposedly "look down" on them. The opposite of the heartland is the loathsome array of snobs and fakers, "reporters and commentators," lobbyists and others who make up "the Washington elite." Presumably the various elite Washington lobbyists who have guided John McCain's presidential campaign were exempt from Mrs. Palin's criticism. As would be former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, now a "senior adviser" to the Dickstein Shapiro lobby firm, who hymned the "Sarah Palin part of the party" thus: "Their kids aren't going to go to Ivy League schools. Their sons leave high school and join the military to serve our country. Their husbands and wives work two jobs to make sure the family is sustained." Generally speaking, though, when husbands and wives work two jobs each it is not merely because they are virtuous but because working one job doesn't earn them enough to get by. The two-job workers in Middle America aren't spurning the Ivy League and joining the military straight out of high school just because they're people of principle, although many of them are. It is because they can't afford to do otherwise. Leave the fantasy land of convention rhetoric, and you will find that small-town America, this legendary place of honesty and sincerity and dignity, is not doing very well. If you drive west from Kansas City, Mo., you will find towns where Main Street is largely boarded up. You will see closed schools and hospitals. You will hear about depleted groundwater and massive depopulation. And eventually you will ask yourself, how did this happen? Did Hollywood do this? Was it those "reporters and commentators" with their fancy college degrees who wrecked Main Street, U.S.A.? No. For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town's mortal enemies. Without raising an antitrust finger they have permitted fantastic concentration in the various industries that buy the farmer's crops. They have undone the New Deal system of agricultural price supports in favor of schemes called "Freedom to Farm" and loan deficiency payments -- each reform apparently designed to secure just one thing out of small town America: cheap commodities for the big food processors. Richard Nixon's Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz put the conservative attitude toward small farmers most bluntly back in the 1970s when he warned, "Get big or get out." A few days ago I talked politics with Donn Teske, the president of the Kansas Farmers Union and a former Republican. Barack Obama may come from a big city, he admits, but the Farmers Union gives him a 100% rating for his votes in Congress. John McCain gets a 0%. "If any farmer in the Plains States looked at McCain's voting record on ag issues," Mr. Teske says, "no one would vote for him." Now, Mr. McCain is known for his straight talk with industrial workers, telling them their jobs are never coming back, that the almighty market took them away for good, and that retraining is their only hope. But he seems to think that small-town people can be easily played. Just choose a running mate who knows how to skin a moose and all will be forgiven. Drive them off the land, shutter their towns, toss their life chances into the grinders of big agriculture . . . and praise their values. The TV eminences will coo in appreciation of your in-touch authenticity, and the carnival will move on. Write to Frank@wsj.com1 Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company [link] Thanks to Nausicaa for referring me to that article. Joe Klein went even further yesterday in a piece for Time, in which he asserts that smalltown America was gone in Reagan's time...and that his magic was all fantasized nostalgia too. It seems the Republican fire is pure theatrical imagination. Is that mental health in the 21st Century? TIME in partnership with CNN Wednesday, Sep. 10, 2008 Sarah Palin's Myth of America By JOE KLEIN Sarah Palin has arrived in our midst with the force of a rocket-propelled grenade. She has boosted John McCain's candidacy and overwhelmed the presidential process in a way that no vice-presidential pick has since Thomas Eagleton did the precise opposite — sinking his sponsor, George McGovern, in 1972. Obviously, something beyond politics is happening here. We don't really know Palin as a politician yet, whether she is wise or foolhardy, substantive or empty. Our fascination with her — and it is a nonpartisan phenomenon — is driven by something more primal. The Palin surge illuminates the mythic power of the Republican Party's message since the advent of Ronald Reagan. To start with the obvious, she's attractive. Her husband ("And two decades and five children later, he's still my guy...") is a hunk. They have a gorgeous family, made more touching and credible by the challenges their children face. Her voice is more distinctive than her looks: that flat, northern twang that screams, I'm just like you! Actually, the real message is: I'm just like you want to be, a brilliantly spectacular...average American. The Palins win elections and snowmobile races in a state that represents the last, lingering hint of that most basic Huckleberry Finn fantasy — lighting out for the territories. She quoted Westbrook Pegler, the F.D.R.-era conservative columnist, in her acceptance speech: "We grow good people in our small towns..." And then added, "I grew up with those people. They're the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars. They love their country in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America." Except that's not really true. We haven't been a nation of small towns for nearly a century. It is the suburbanites and city dwellers who do the fighting and hourly-wage work now, and the corporations who grow our food. But Palin's embrace of small-town values is where her hold on the national imagination begins. She embodies the most basic American myth — Jefferson's yeoman farmer, the fantasia of rural righteousness — updated in a crucial way: now Mom works too. Palin's story stands with one foot squarely in the nostalgia for small-town America and the other in the new middle-class reality. She brings home the bacon, raises the kids — with a significant assist from Mr. Mom — hunts moose and looks great in the process. I can't imagine a more powerful, or current, American Dream. Nearly 50 years ago, in The Burden of Southern History, the historian C. Vann Woodward argued that the South was profoundly different from the rest of America because it was the only part of the country that had lost a war: "Southern history, unlike American...includes not only an overwhelming military defeat but long decades of defeat in the provinces of economic, social and political life." Woodward believed that this heritage led Southerners to be more obsessed with the past than other Americans were — at its worst, in popular works like Gone With the Wind, there was a gagging nostalgia for a courtly antebellum South that never really existed. During the past 50 years, the rest of the country has caught up to the South in the nostalgia department. We lost a war in Vietnam; Iraq hasn't gone so well either. And there are two other developments that have cut into the sense of American perfection. The middle class has begun to lose altitude — there isn't the certainty anymore that our children will live better than we do. More important, the patina of cultural homogeneity that camouflaged 1950s suburbia has vanished. We have become more obviously multiracial. There are lifestyle choices that were nearly unimaginable in 1960 — the widespread use of the birth control pill, the legalization of abortion, the feminist and gay-rights revolutions, the breakdown of the two-parent family. With the advent of television, these changes became inescapable. They intruded upon the most traditional families in the smallest towns. The political impact was a conservative reaction of enormous vehemence. Enter Reagan. His vision of the future was the past. He offered the temporal pleasures of tax cuts and an unambiguous anticommunism, but his real tug was on the heartstrings — it was "Morning in America." The Republican Party of Wall Street faded before the power of nostalgia for Main Street...at least a Main Street that existed before America began losing wars, became ostentatiously sexy and casually interracial. In his presidential debate with Jimmy Carter, Reagan talked about an America that existed "when I was young and when this country didn't even know it had a racial problem." The blinding whiteness and fervent religiosity of the party he created are an enduring testament to the power of the myth of an America that existed before we had all these problems. The power of Sarah Palin is that she is the latest, freshest iteration of that myth. The Republican Party's subliminal message seems stronger than ever this year because of the nature of the Democratic nominee for President. Barack Obama could not exist in the small-town America that Reagan fantasized. He's the product of what used to be called miscegenation, a scenario that may still be more terrifying than a teen daughter's pregnancy in many American households. Furthermore, he has thrived in the culture and economy that displaced Main Street America — an economy where people no longer work in factories or make things with their hands, but where lawyers and traders prosper unduly. (Of course, this is the economy the Republican Party has promoted — but facts are powerless in the face of a potent mythology.) Obama is the precise opposite of Mountain Man Todd Palin: an entirely urban creature. He lives within the hilarious conundrum of being both too "cosmopolitan" and intellectual for Republican tastes — at least as Rudy Giuliani described it — while also being the sort of fellow suspected of getting ahead by affirmative action. The Democrats have no myth to counter this powerful Republican fantasy. They had to spend their convention on the biographical defensive: Barack Obama really is "one of us," speaker after speaker insisted. Really. Democrats do have the facts in their favor. Polls show that Americans agree with them on the issues. The Bush Administration has been a disaster on many fronts. The McCain campaign has provided only the sketchiest policy proposals; it has spent most of its time trying to divert the national conversation away from matters of substance. But Americans like stories more than issues. Policy proposals are useful in the theater of presidential politics only inasmuch as they illuminate character: far more people are aware of the fact that Palin put the state jet on eBay than know that she imposed a windfall-profits tax on oil companies as governor and was a porkaholic as mayor of Wasilla. So Obama faces an uphill struggle between now and Nov. 4. He has no personal anecdotes to match Palin's mooseburgers. His story of a boy whose father came from Kenya and mother from Kansas takes place in an America not yet mythologized, a country that is struggling to be born — a multiracial country whose greatest cultural and economic strength is its diversity. It is the country where our children already live and that our parents will never really know, a country with a much greater potential for justice and creativity — and perhaps even prosperity — than the sepia-tinted version of Main Street America. But that vision is not sellable right now to a critical mass of Americans. They live in a place, not unlike C. Vann Woodward's South, where myths are more potent than the hope of getting past the dour realities they face each day. Copyright � 2008 Time [link] 11 Sep 2008 @ 19:26 by quinty : Myths.... Yes, we live by many myths as well as within many limitations. The Republican Party truly does attract and bring together the ugliest aspects of human nature. Ignorance, fear, nativism, racism, greed, bigotry, religious fanaticism, cruelty, homophobia: all find their expression in the Party through various self justifying fantasies. Look at Palin, still running about with her scripted two liner about the Bridge to Nowhere. Never mind that numerous mainstream news outlets have debunked her claim. She still hands out the same repetitive lie and, worse yet, the crowds still shout with joy. They seem mesmerized, and don’t appear to care. Or do they even know her claims are false? Palin is the latest Jesus face found within a sea shell or cantaloup rind. Frank is great, his finger on the pulse. Two very excellent pieces. Too bad their audience is limited. 12 Sep 2008 @ 10:18 by jazzolog : Fury On 9/11 It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know--or care--about circumstances in the colonies. ---Bertrand Russell I lay in bed an extra hour this morning because I thought, with both campaigns praying for the victims of 9/11 yesterday, it would have been a slow news day. Good grief, a bunch of writers took advantage of the quiet to let loose! Garrison Keillor posted his at the Chicago Trib on Wednesday, but it showed up in our local paper yesterday. Since the Repubs convened in his hometown, I was eager to learn what he had to say. The column concludes~~~ "When you check the actuarial tables on a 72-year-old guy who's had three bouts with cancer, you guess you may be looking at the first woman president, a hustling evangelical with ethics issues and a chip on her shoulder who, not counting Canada, has set foot outside the country once—a trip to Germany, Iraq and Kuwait in 2007 to visit Alaskans in the armed services. And who listed a refueling stop in Ireland as a fourth country visited. She's like the Current Occupant but with big hair. If you want inexperience, there were better choices." [link] Speaking of pigs at the trough, Katha Pollitt exceeds even her own typical brilliance with "Lipstick On A Wing Nut"~~~ "John McCain chose the supremely under-qualified Sarah Palin as his running mate partly because she is a woman. If you have a problem with that, you're a sexist. She talks incessantly about being a mother of five and uses her newborn, Trig, who has Down syndrome, as a campaign prop. If you wonder how she'll handle all those kids and the Veep job too, you're a super-sexist. 'When do they ever ask a man that question?' charges that fiery feminist Rudy Giuliani. Indeed, Palin, who went back to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review, who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic, harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating working mothers. Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old, Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens for having sex--and blaming their parents for letting it happen. "If there were an Olympics for hypocrisy, the Republican Party would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. And Palin would be wearing quite a few of them. It takes chutzpah for a mother to thrust her pregnant teen into the world's harshest spotlight and then demand the world respect the girl's privacy. But then it takes chutzpah to support criminalizing abortion and then praise Bristol's 'decision' to have the baby. The right to decide, and privacy, after all, are two of the things Palin wants to deny every other woman, and every other family, in America." [link] Keith Olbermann unleashed his rage Wednesday night at how the Repubs continue to cash in on 9/11 solemnity~~~ "9/11 has become… 9/11 **with a trademark logo.** "9/11 (**TM**) has sustained a president who long ago should have been dismissed, or impeached. It has kept him and his gang of financial and constitutional **crooks** in office without - literally - any visible means of support. "9/11 (**TM**) has made possible the greatest sleight-of-hand in our nation’s history. "The political party in office at the time of the attacks, at the local, state and national levels, the party which **uniformly** ignored the warnings — and the presidential administration already through twenty percent of its first term and no longer wet behind the ears — have not only thus far escaped any **blame** for the malfeasance and criminal neglect that allowed the attacks to occur, but that presidency and that party, have managed to make it seem as if the **other** political party would be solely and irredeemably responsible for any similar catastrophe in the future." [link] Paul Krugman also wonders at the hypocrisy in this morning's column~~~ "I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again." [link] George Lakoff stepped forward yesterday with the obvious explanation~~~ "In 1980, Richard Wirthlin - Ronald Reagan's chief strategist - made a fateful discovery. In his first poll he discovered that most people didn't like Reagan's positions on the issues, but nevertheless wanted to vote for Reagan. The reason, he figured out, is that voters vote for a president not primarily on the issues, but on five other 'character' factors; values; authenticity; communication and connection; trust; and identity. In the Reagan-Carter and Reagan-Mondale debates, Mondale and Carter were ahead on the issues and lost the debates because the debates were not about the issues, but about those other five character factors. George W. Bush used the same observation in his two races. Gore and Kerry ran on the issues. Bush ran on those five factors. "In the 2008 nomination campaign, Hillary ran on the issues, while Obama ran on those five factors and won. McCain is now running a Reagan-Bush style character-based campaign on the Big Five factors. But Obama has switched to a campaign based 'on the issues,' like Hillary, Gore and Kerry. Obama has reality on his side. And the campaign is assuming that if you just tell people the truth, they will reason to the right conclusion. That's false and they should know better."\ [link] Amy Goodman has written now about the violence she suffered in St. Paul, and intimates similar actions occured in Denver...but I haven't searched out confirmation. [link] Need a laugh? Well, we'll see. Obama and Michael Phelps will share the stage for the season premiere of Saturday Night Live~~~ [link] 12 Sep 2008 @ 19:14 by quinty : La Palin These comments are all true. And the comments preceding Lakoff’s make his observations all the more poignant, since each writer is crying out against the blatant scam. The irrational safely cushions Palin from criticism. And becoming quite naturally appalled by her performance with ABC’s Charles Gibson is brushed off as “liberal hate” and “media bias.” Palin sat there like a high school student facing her teacher. And Gibson looked like an old school master grilling his student. I know, I’ve been there: as the student. And have felt the same way as Palin did. Hoping I could somehow pass the viva voce. Problem is, the student hadn’t done her homework. And hoped to somehow weasel her way past the teacher. Who knew she hadn’t touched her homework but remained too polite to openly confront her. Though the truth was in the air. “War? Oh sure, that’s what great powers do when the bad guys get out of line. We’re good so we put them back in their place. I mean, war is a part of being in NATO. And Georgia is our friend. What’s the Bush Doctrine? They’re all the rules, aren’t they? Like how to behave in gym, no rough housing or loud radios. No goosing the girls. Things like that....” Yet, the media, following the interview, lauded Palin for her “performance.” After all, not to do so would be impolite and “biased.” No one wants to do that. I’m very pessimistic about this election. I think race is going to come out. It may only require three or five percent to tip it over to McCain. It appears to me that Obama’s good nature won’t help or save him in this. There are those on the right who even claim he is “stupid.” Lakoff’s arguments are very astute. It could be some of us just feel the jitters, but the mountain of foolishness out there is piling ever higher. President Palin? The irrational has won out. 13 Sep 2008 @ 15:51 by quinty : John Fund and Bill Maher Anyone see Bill Maher last night? The weasel lies of John Fund of the Wall Street Journal were memorable and impressive. When one opens the floodgates of imagination one can proceed in any direction. That is the rhetorical gift of those who are footloose and fancy free with the truth. What Sartre very nicely called "bad faith." Oh, so now the "left wing" media cleverly explains what the Bush Doctrine is to Democratic candidates when asking their questions? Fund says they did at the debates and that Gibson cleverly set Palin up for flunking the Bush Doctrine question. Because most real people don't know what the Bush Doctrine is. Sure. Being "regular" is more important than being knowledgeable and competent. So, who cares if a doctor doesn't know where the spleen is? Most regular people don't know either. Never mind the Bush Doctrine is one of the major policy justifications for this war in Iraq. With the exception of Salmon Rushdie (how archaic great writers appear today!) Maher's guests leapt all over Fund over this and the other handy BS he energetically came out with. And, yes, it must have made the "liberals" appear like a pack of howling wolves to the audience on the far right. Fund kept tearing down Maher's "elitism" for decrying Palin's ignorance. Kept shouting that if he kept it up the Democrats would only lose another election. It just shows, doesn’t it, that we can’t win. In Spain they have a nice saying for this: “You can keep hitting me but you’re still a son of a bitch.” This is what we're up against. [link] For the whole thing, or most of it...... [link] [link] [link] 14 Sep 2008 @ 09:33 by jazzolog : Are You An Elitist? SFGate.com Are you an elitist? 18 revealing ways to know for sure By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Friday, September 12, 2008 1. You don't talk like a normal person. Only normal people talk like normal people. Sarah "no questions please, I'm Alaskan" Palin, according to House Minority leader John Boehner, she talks like a normal person... if by "normal" you mean "chillingly antagonistic toward anything resembling progress or political insight or women's civil liberties." 2. According to the GOP, lower-middle-class voters with minimal educations really like it when people who think they can run the most powerful nation on the planet and steer massive military juggernauts and immense economies and affect the destinies of millions, don't actually speak like they have any idea how the hell to do it. Honey, if the Bush years proved anything, it's that the dumber you sound, the more effective you are at leading the country. Into the sewer. Did you know this already? Typical elitist. 3. You are on a first-name basis with the sushi chef at Whole Foods. 4. You have been to Whole Foods. 5. Look at you, Mr. Fancypants, with your snobbish notion that not every piece of furniture in your bedroom must look like it came from the same 1978 Levitz fire sale. 6. The impressive dimensions of the strap-on system in your dresser would make your average Alaskan redneck hockey player scream in horror even as it openly titillated a dozen Republican senators from Colorado Springs to Idaho, though it would probably still get you arrested in Alabama. 7. You know what a strap-on is. In a good way. 8. Barack Obama's oratory power, strength of character, and subtle understanding of complicated issues have actually served to dissolve a venerable portion of the acidic pessimism that's been eating into your very soul for eight solid years, causing you to actually begin to believe that maybe, just maybe, nuanced intellectual acumen and the nearly bankrupt American experiment do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Only elitist snobs know what "venerable" means. Or "acumen." Or "you." 9. When selecting an effective inebriant with which to numb if not completely drown the searing oatmealy dread that rumbles deep in your core after eight years of Bush and which has now been harshly rekindled by the offensive McPalin nightmare, you skip right past the beer and even the wine and go straight for the absinthe. 10. You arrive at a dinner party at the home of a friend-of-a-friend whom you don't know very well. What's the first thing you notice? A) The quality of the stemware, B) the origins of art on the walls, C) the titles of the books lining the shelves, D) The hugeness of the head of the giant dead polar bear whose face you're nearly sitting on. Answering anything but D makes you an elitist snob. Obviously, that's a grizzly, not a polar bear. 11. A "real American" is A) an obese deer hunter/blue-collar millworker with a giant truck and a gentle smile and a thing for origami B) a tattooed yoga-loving urbanite intellectual hipster who loves A.S. Byatt and red meat C) The Muslim chef/mother of three who was born in Fort Wayne and went to Burning Man for the first time this year and dropped Ecstasy and was struck to giggling wonderment by the gorgeous silliness of all existence, D) the nice family of Sikhs living next door, E) What is this, f--ing alphabet day? Enough with the multiple choice already, elitist hippie. 12. You find it profoundly unfair that, while cretinous Fox News charlatans get to sling "elitist" at anyone of nuanced or open-minded intellect who happens to care about the world, the media refuses to pick up "Karl Rove's toe cheese" as a clever counter-epithet. 13. The hammer with which you often consider striking yourself in the face when listening to Bush speak or when observing McCain's creepy grin or hearing Palin's embarrassing answers to simple questions of policy has never actually been put to use for any "real" work, and has only ever really been used to tap down a few loose nails on the deck of your Martha's Vineyard summer cottage or tighten some planks in the fetish dungeon. 14. You prefer spirituality to religion, fluid self-determinism to Biblical dogma, premium sake to sacramental wine, devising new sins instead of merely indulging the old ones, swallowing instead of spitting, back door to front, Shakti to Mary, and floating instead of kneeling. 15. You speak a foreign language. This implies you might understand something of the world, have an interest in a culture other than your own, or have perhaps even traveled to some exotic foreign land that isn't Texas or New Jersey or Hawaii, a place where they like weird cheeses and don't fear gay people and ride bicycles to the opera. 16. You recognize and appreciate more than 50 percent of the references and enjoy at least a quarter of the featured profiles in the New York Times Arts section. Also, you read the New York Times. Also, you read. 17. You are, for some godforsaken reason, absolutely convinced all the way down to your most profound sense of what is divine and truthful in this strangled world that violence and bloodshed are rarely the answer, that the irrefutable spiritual laws of the universe confirm that like attracts like and even at a quantum level there is a profound pull toward a divine, benevolent dynamic equilibrium, and therefore constructing a malicious national policy of torture and surveillance and pre-emptive aggression merely shames the better nature of the human animal and invites a particularly violent energy into the national bloodstream and poisons the human heart as it creates nothing but more turmoil and unrest and hate in the world. Man, only an elitist jerk would tolerate a ridiculous run-on sentence like that. 18. Your most treasured pieces of writing don't feature Muggles, Hobbits, glossy centerfolds of Dale Earnhardt Jr., dogs named Marley, or an angry and omnipotent patriarch who demands unquestioning subservience and strict adherence to often cruel, arbitrary laws of behavior from on high, who forsakeths thou for months and years at a time and never writes or calls and then suddenly reappears without warning only to rain down hellfire and frogs and locusts and totally inconvenient plagues on everyone, and never even apologizes. And then you're supposed to feel all guilty? For like, 2,000 years? Whatever. © 2008 Hearst Communications Inc. [link] 15 Sep 2008 @ 09:10 by jazzolog : An Elitist Father Repents I'm grateful again to Nausicaa for finding this extraordinary "letter" by columnist Marc Cooper. It's beginning to show up at other sites on the Net, but I imagine she saw it first last week at [link] ~~~ From: Nausicaa To: jazzolog@peoplepc.com Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2008 4:37 PM Nausicaa has left a new comment on your post "Election '08: You Make Me Feel So Young!": When is the last time you’ve seen a president of the United States who just paid off his loan debt? But, again, maybe I’m out of touch. ---Michelle Obama (April 15, 2008) What Michelle Obama told the Democratic National Convention in Denver, "that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do, that you treat people with dignity and respect," is one of the corner stones of what the American Dream is about... Marc Cooper's "Letter to My Daughter" says it all: You'll Never Be Vice President: A Letter to My Daughter, the Community Organizer Daughter Dearest, It is with great pain and a certain measure of shame that I write you this note. Having grown up in the '60s and watched, sometimes at glaringly close range, the emergence of the women's liberation movement, I had always harbored great dreams and aspirations for you. But as I listened to Governor Sarah Palin address the nation the other night, I had to confess that — as your father — I have clearly failed. Honey, you will never be able to achieve the greatness of being nominated for vice president of the United States. Forget about it. And for this sad reality, I accept all blame. 'Twas I who steered you wrong. Here you are, almost 25, with what your mother and I believed was a solid education behind you, and yet you are nothing but a common community organizer. Yes, the labor union you work for represents nearly 2 million service workers — about three times the population of Alaska. But, alas, as Governor Palin pointed out, you have no real responsibilities. By helping janitors, security guards, nursing aides and orderlies gain a living wage, paid health care insurance and a retirement fund, you have only robbed them of the personal initiative to go out there and make something better of themselves. You have rendered them feebly dependent on Big Labor and tax-and-spend Big Government — and all in their own crass self-interest in survival. I'm not sure when I helped nudge you on to such a mistaken road. Probably sometime while you were attending that government-run high school in which we enrolled you. You could have joined the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, as Ms. Palin did. Instead, I pushed you to become a columnist on the school paper. You could have spent your afternoons becoming the local barracuda on the courts. But, nope, your mom and I indulged your trivial passions for staging and directing the plays of Shakespeare. You could have competed to be Miss Woodland Hills or even Miss Congenial California, but — no — there were your mom and dad encouraging you to finish writing your first play. Sorry. From there, the mistakes only multiplied. Instead of letting you wait until the responsible age of 44 before letting you secure a passport, we strained our family budget and squandered who knows how many thousands by putting you on countless Flights to Nowhere: New York, Washington, New Orleans, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Santiago, Mexico City. And to what end? So you could return home — as the huggable Mayor Giuliani so neatly put it — some sort of "cosmopolitan"? Exposure to so many foreign ideas (like the notion of spending an idle afternoon reading a book in a café instead of learning to field-dress a moose) only contaminated you, rendering you insensitive and contemptuous to the day-to-day needs of bowling league members in Michigan's Macomb County. Worse, you returned from those European jaunts a brainwashed follower of the elite, angry, left media. By the 12th grade, all the warning signs were there. I'd walk into your room at 1 in the morning and catch you with a flashlight under the covers, reading the book pages of The Atlantic. Why didn't I nip this all in the bud and buy you a well-oiled Remington 12-gauge so you could plink the coyotes south of Ventura Boulevard? The real disaster came, of course, in college. Four straight years wasted at UCLA, when you could have been following the course of the governor, sampling five different schools in six years. You were reading Orwell. By then she was practicing doublespeak. You were studying public policy, by then she was figuring out how to win the 909 votes she needed to become mayor of Wasilla. You were inclined to donate $100 to the ACLU. She was way ahead of you, sweetie, as she calculated how to avoid the ACLU when she made her inquiries into pruning the local library of un-American and anti-Christian propaganda. She was on her way up and you, dear child, were dead-ended in the silly task of trying to organize seven hospitals back to back. It's not healthy to dwell on so many regrets, I know. And as I said, this is mostly the fault of your parents. While you are the victim of these reckless choices, your mom and I, nevertheless, pay a heavy price. If we had only been sage enough to bar you from sex-ed class and contraceptives and instead had let you rely on abstinence and prayer, there was an even chance you could have been pregnant by age 17. You'd have a joyous 7-year-old child right now to help you get through your 10-hour workday. The father might have married you. And we'd have a lovely grandchild who a mere decade from now could produce us a great-grandchild and we would all still be young enough to go snowmobiling together — the next time it snows in Woodland Hills. Ah, but better not to dwell on the negative. Make the best of the little we have given you, and grant us your understanding and forgiveness. And don't despair too much. Remember, when McCain-Palin come to power, real change is gonna come, and we'll all be better off. Love, Dad Posted by Nausicaa to jazzoLOG at 4:37 PM 15 Sep 2008 @ 19:21 by Quinty @68.9.133.5 : McCain has been courting the moron vote for several weeks now. I think it really got under way when he put out that ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britaney (sp?) Spears. Considering McCain's health issues he should have been more mindful of the country when choosing a running mate. The choice of Palin indicates recklessness, and a lack of concern for the nation's well being. And it also displays contempt for the intelligence of the voters..... We are all on edge (much to the right's delight) because this cynicism may work. Will the Palin bubble remain inflated another two months? Here's something a friend sent out quite recently..... The nomination of Sarah Palin as VP makes this assessment below even more important, even if this is only a qualified medical opinion based on released records.l Begin forwarded message: An interesting letter, below.ï¿∏ Ethical question: How do we take into consideration someone's age and health?ï¿∏ The analogy with airline pilots is relevant, I think. Dear Colleagues and Friends, John McCain is a 72 year old man with recurrent melanoma, hyperlipidemia, degenerative joint disease, and recurrent difficulty with certain efforts at recall. These are the limited facts the American people have had access to. Over 1000 pages of medical records were shown to selected journalists for 3 hours with less than 48 hours of notice. The only medically trained journalist was Sanjey Gupta, MD from CNN. This is the extent to which the American people have been informed. While I am certainly sensitive to the confidential nature of medical records given the anxiety expressed by many of my patients regarding the risk of lost coverage or lost jobs in this current health economic climate, there are certain exceptions for disclosure regarding public safety. As John McCain knows, a pilots records are comprehensively available for review by a certifying agency (the FAA, I believe) to insure the fitness of the pilot and the safety of passengers and the public at-large. In the election of the President of the United States of America, that certifying body is the American electorate. A recurrence of metastatic malignant melanoma would essentially destroy John McCain's capacity as the Chief Executive and the American People have yet to receive a full accounting of the facts regarding his actuarial risk. If he has had regional metastasis, his risk could be 30% or greater for distant metastasis to the brain, bone, and lung. As you all know, melanoma is one of the most insidious, pernicious, and aggressive malignancies our patients must deal with and that we attempt somewhat pathetically to control with interferon, interleukins, and dismally active and terribly toxic chemotherapeutic regimens. In addition, we lack the simple data to sensibly evaluate his cardiovascular risk as we would any septuagenerian in our exam rooms. John McCain should be held accountable by the american people and its agents, the free press, to release without restriction the entirety of his medical records. Any hesitation to do so would clearly imply that there are significant medical concerns about his ability to fulfill the duties of the President. Sincerely, Michael D. Fratkin, MD Internal Medicine Hospice and Palliative Medicine Eureka, California Please distribute this letter widely. 16 Sep 2008 @ 10:18 by jazzolog : Direct From Anchorage The much-anticipated (by me) 3-hour town meeting on the Ed Schultz show yesterday, rebroadcast from Alaska, didn't add much to what we already know about the Republican ticket. It certainly was interesting to hear a variety of personalities from up there though, providing confirmation the Paul Bunyan stereotype doesn't capture all Alaskans. Of greatest new concern, I believe, was information about Troopergate provided by either an attorney, staff person or legislator directly involved in the investigation. What he wanted us to know is that Troopergate was initiated by Republican representatives and had at least pledged cooperation from Governor Palin. However, he charges, since the McCain campaign entered the picture, all that has changed. Republican lawyers are taking the investigation out of legislative hands, which promised results toward the end of next month, and given it to some kind of employment commission up there which will not conclude its work until well after the election. The man said also the campaign is spinning the whole thing to make it look like a "Democrat witchhunt" after Palin. Apparently that Fox' characterization of it, while CNN is reporting Troopergate has become "tainted" and that's why Palin no long will cooperate. At any rate, it's unclear what "punishment" Palin would face if guilty of misuse of power. The typical story of the development is here~~~ [link] and John Nichols from The Nation wrote something up the other day~~~ [link] I might mention, particularly for readers in the Athens area, the transmission of the Schultz program on 770 AM WAIS was positively ghastly here. I don't think I've ever heard 3 hours of airtime, even from smalltown radio, where the volume was turned up so loud that much of the broadcast was distorted beyond any possiblity of intelligibility. I don't know if they have a robot take over there in the afternoon or if the rebroadcast came in that way. I'm eager to learn. 18 Sep 2008 @ 09:19 by jazzolog : Am I Registered To Vote? To the Ohio Secretary of State: I visited the Athens County Board of Elections yesterday. In my hand were postcards mailed recently by the Board to my wife and me. The cards are reminders about Election Day, polling location, and the photo ID requirement. The worker there seemed completely aware the cards were addressed incorrectly. She knew that mail showing both our residential address AND our post office box kicks out of the automatic sorters of the United States Postal Service. She also knew when that happens, postal workers regularly return the mail to sender rather than correct the address by hand to show only the post office box. In this particular case the post office person, perhaps knowing its importance, circled the PO box and sent it on to us. The Board spokesperson explained that for some reason their printer had produced the notices that way. Since the Board had sent the work late to the printer, someone decided to mail them out anyway. She also was aware that if notices are returned by the Post Office to boards of election, voters can be taken off the registration rolls or their votes challenged at the polls. She said she "would hope" the Board will re-address correctly any returned cards and mail them out again. She declared she had no idea whether this situation for PO box holders prevails only in Athens County, or might be statewide...and beyond. Sincerely, Richard Carlson 4744 Rhoric Road Athens, OH 45701 (but don't try to send mail here) 18 Sep 2008 @ 17:53 by Quinty @68.9.133.5 : Ye gods..... and then there's Florida, and Michigan, and Pennsylvania and...... 20 Sep 2008 @ 10:15 by jazzolog : More Voter Registration Problems Still much work to do on this developing story. Replies have come in from around the country with similar stories. BradBlog also has picked it up and working on it. [link] He's also got this Florida story that's making the rounds, and which showed up Thursday at jazzoLOG [link] Anonymous said... Letters returned as undeliverable can be compiled into "challenge lists" of unverifiable addresses and can be used to challenge voters' eligibility during early voting or on Election Day. The vote suppression technique is known as "vote caging." Steve Bousquet just reported that a new pitch for John McCain's presidential campaign aimed at older Democratic voters in Florida is causing complaints by Democrats and concern by elections officials. The piece, paid for by the Republican National Committee and authorized by McCain, tells voters it is seeking to double-check their "unconfirmed" party affiliations while asking for money. A letter signed by McCain tells the Democrats: "We have you registered as a Republican." "I was a little bit shocked and a little bit surprised," said recipient Bill Smith, 81, of Tampa, who calls himself a lifelong Democrat and has been registered at his current address since 2000. The retired plant engineer is one of about a dozen senior citizens that Democratic Party leaders identified as recipients, all of them longtime Democrats. The RNC declined to discuss the mailer, which Democrats said has landed in five counties: Duval, Hillsborough, Collier, Miami-Dade and Escambia. "This is simply a fundraising piece," said spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson, adding in an e-mail it was not "worth writing about." Two top Florida elections officials, both Republicans, faulted the GOP mailing, calling it "confusing" and "unfortunate" because of a potential to undermine voter confidence by making them question the accuracy of their registrations. "It is unfortunate, because it does put a lot of doubt in people's minds," said Secretary of State Kurt Browning, the state's top elections official. After his office received dozens of calls, Duval County Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland issued a media alert that his office had nothing to do with it. "They were upset folks and they were very concerned," said Holland, a Republican. "They mainly said their party (listing) was different than it was." Some Democrats suspect a motive beyond raising money. The first-class GOP mailing has a "Do not forward" instruction on the envelope, meaning they will be returned to the GOP if a recipient has had mail forwarded, perhaps to a summer address, or has moved. Letters returned as undeliverable can be compiled into "challenge lists" of unverifiable addresses and can be used to challenge voters' eligibility during early voting or on Election Day. The vote suppression technique is known as "vote caging." "That postcard is a little disconcerting," said letter-recipient Steve Hemping of Naples, chairman of the Collier County Democratic Party and a state party official. "You don't know if they're going to use it to challenge somebody's right to vote." The letter asks recipients to note changes on an "RNC File Card" and return it to the party by Sept. 26. The card shows a nine-digit "voter ID" number, but the supervisor of elections in Jacksonville's Duval County said the numbers are wrong and do not match the state's voter database. Hillsborough Democratic Party Chairman Michael Steinberg said it makes no sense for Republicans to question the party affiliations of Democratic voters. "I don't understand their logic," he said. Allegations of Republican vote caging in predominantly black Jacksonville precincts in the 2004 presidential election surfaced last year in testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Steve Bousquet can be reached at bousquet@sptimes.com or (850) 224-7263. jazzolog said... Steve Bousquet is the St. Petersburg Times' Tallahassee bureau chief. He joined the Times in 2001 after 17 years at the Miami Herald, where he held a variety of positions including Tallahassee bureau chief, and he previously was a reporter at TV stations in Miami and Providence, R.I. He has a B.A. in journalism from the University of Rhode Island and M.A. in history from Florida State University. He was a contributor to two editions of The Almanac of Florida Politics and to The Miami Herald Report: Democracy Held Hostage, an account of the 2000 presidential recount in Florida. The story Anonymous was kind enough to post is showing up at many sites now fortunately, and can be sourced in its original form on Tuesday here~~~ [link] 21 Sep 2008 @ 09:34 by jazzolog : Only One Reference To Moose-olini You may be delighted McCain's VP pick isn't in the headlines much this morning---as she travels to an earth-shaking foreign policy meeting with Henry Kissinger. The big question: will he be able to control himself? But the one opinion column about her is a dandy! In a brilliant essay in this morning's Philadelphia Inquirer, an essay GoogleNews is featuring prominently, Mark Bowden goes after Palin's mocking of Obama about detainees~~~ "But it was in that much-heralded speech at the Republican convention that Palin tossed off a line I found more disturbing than anything unearthed about her since. It got a predictably enthusiastic response from the keyed-up partisan crowd. 'Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America,' said Palin, and then, referring to Barack Obama, quipped: 'He's worried that someone won't read them their rights.' "Quite apart from the cheap distortion of Obama's position, typical of most campaign rhetoric, this is a classic lynch-mob line. It is the taunt of the drunken lout in the cowboy movie who confronts a sheriff barring the prison door - He wants to give 'im a trial? It is the precise sentiment that Atticus Finch so memorably sets himself against in Harper Lee's masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird, when he agrees to defend a supposedly indefensible black man charged with rape (falsely, as it turns out)." [link] Speaking of spreading democracy around the world, Harold Pinter's name is at the top of an open letter in yesterday's UK Guardian, about the latest US black ops in Central America~~~ "On September 10 President Evo Morales of Bolivia declared the US ambassador persona non grata. On September 11 (the 35th anniversary of the military overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile) the president of Venezuela asked the US ambassador there to leave the country. President Hugo Chávez believed he was facing the possibility of an imminent coup d'etat in which he said the US administration were involved. President Morales believed that his government was facing serious destabilisation which was also being fomented by the US. A third country, Paraguay, announced 10 days previously that it had detected a conspiracy involving military officers and opposition politicians. "Latin America now faces its most serious crisis since the reintroduction of democracy at the end of the 20th century. The plot against democracy in Venezuela centred on a conspiracy, revealed in telephone conversations between senior military officers broadcast on national television, to assassinate the democratically elected head of state. In Bolivia, the separatist prefects of the five eastern and southern departments have begun a campaign of violence and economic sabotage designed to destabilise the democratic regime. "These events show unequivocally who defends democracy and who threatens it today. We are appalled by the failure of much of the international media to provide accurate and proportionate coverage of these events. All democrats throughout should rally to defend democracy in Lat |
31 Aug 2008 @ 12:48, by Richard Carlson