In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon faced each other in front of television cameras to debate, for the first time, issues important to voters. The outcome may have been determined more by Nixon's five o'clock shadow and awkward, nervous demeanor than by the content of the debates. The medium's message was that Nixon had the appearance of a used car salesman and Kennedy that of a charming, witty and trustworthy candidate.
Despite the manipulative, ostensibly superficial character of the medium, debates potentially can serve as the most probative, revealing, heuristic and discursive mechanism to distinguish the leaders from each other in terms of policies and leadership qualities. Shallow and manipulative paid advertising and itinerant, ubiquitous handshaking are irredeemably incapable of creating well-informed voters.
Unfortunately, the debates fail to meet the above expectations for a number of reasons but one, in particular, violates the basic principles of a fair, equitable and efficacious election process by excluding legitimate leadership candidates from the debates thus denying them visibility and credibility.
In very simple terms, the Democrats and Republicans exercise complete control over the debates including place, timing, participation, format, questioners and frequently the questions to be posed to the candidates. There is something fundamentally undemocratic about the two leading parties, both financed by corporate money, making critical decisions about the elections that will clearly serve their own interests.
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Write to MSNBC: Replacing Keith & Chris with David Gregory is Swapping one Bias for Another
Free Speech Be Damned: MSNBC cans Olbermann and Matthews for elections '08
According to WaPo:
MSNBC is removing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as the anchors of live political events, bowing to growing criticism that they are too opinionated to be seen as neutral in the heat of the presidential campaign.
So much for free speech.
At MSNBC (and every other mainstream media outlet for that matter), you're "free to speak" only if you say what they want you to say or conversely don't say what they don't want you to say.
Otherwise, they politely but firmly show you the door...
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by Karen Kwiatkowski
A retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues for MilitaryWeek.com
We now have Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin. If you are a voter, you will be thinking: "There are some great things and some awful things about both tickets, so how do I know which team will be best for the country?"
In case you missed it – the country is filled with 300 plus million people, many of whom are deeply in debt. Before they can even start to pay off that debt, they work 113 days each year to pay off their local, state and federal taxes. This legal plunder supplements local, state and national borrowing which has produced a kind of snowballing catastrophe, bankrupting municipalities and cities across the country, and creating a nation that owes an astounding $100 trillion dollars that it has little intention and less capability of paying back.
That’s pretty overwhelming. But there’s more! This same nation lays claim to an unsustainable military empire, and in pursuit of easy living and glory has warped its national culture and economy into an ungodly union of Spartan machismo and Bismarckian pre-fascism.
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Bush cancels, GOP weighs shorter convention
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — President Bush, Vice President Cheney and prominent governors decided on Sunday to skip the Republican National Convention, and the party considered shortening its big four-day event as Hurricane Gustav approached the Gulf Coast with potentially devastating strength.
The convention, a marquee event meant to send presidential candidate Dick Cheney into the fall campaign with a burst of energy and good feeling, already was becoming overwhelmed by alarming news of the hurricane just three years after deadly Katrina struck New Orleans.
GOP officials were in round-the-clock meetings and tracking the path of the storm, trying to determine how to complete the official business of nominating McCain while also being sensitive to the thousands of people fleeing the Gulf Coast — more than 1,000 miles down the Mississippi from St. Paul.
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Related
'Scientific American' Blasts E-Voting
Vendors are Undermining the Structure of U.S. Elections
A VotersUnite report on the current situation
and how to reclaim elections — in 2008 and beyond.
by Ellen Theisen, Co-Director, VotersUnite.Org
August 18, 2008 Read the report (pdf)
As we approach the 2008 general election, the structure of elections in the United States — once reliant on local representatives accountable to the public — has become almost wholly dependent on large corporations, which are not accountable to the public. Most local officials charged with running elections are now unable to administer elections without the equipment, services, and trade-secret software of a small number of corporations.[1]
August 21, 2008
Lou Dobbs - private companies running voting
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ELLEN THEISEN, VOTERSUNITE.ORG: Elections should be accountable to the people and run by public officials who are selected by the people to run them. So when that's handed over to private vendors, these public elections are no longer public.
The Razorcake Interview:
"Vote theft: class war by other means”
For Razorcake.org by Chris Pepus
Monday, August 11, 2008
We need to learn the issues. People are unarmed. That is, people know that they’re getting shafted, but they don’t really know exactly how.
The American press corps has finally begun to report on illegal activities of the Bush administration. However, the subject of election theft remains largely ignored. In recent years, the Republican Party has used an array of tactics to subtract votes from opposing candidates. These include sending defective voting machines to strongly Democratic precincts and removing low-income and minority voters from electoral rolls.
Reporter Greg Palast has been covering this issue since 2000, when he revealed that Florida officials ensured the election of George W. Bush by illegally suppressing the African-American and Democratic vote. (Learn more about that subject here.) In this interview, I asked Palast about his reports on the GOP’s dirty electoral tricks since 2000 and the possibility that the ’08 election will be stolen. He explained how the Help America Vote Act actually helps crooked Republicans and he previewed his upcoming broadcasts and publications, which will include a free guide with tips for safeguarding your vote.
–Chris Pepus
Vote Fraud 2008: See the Movie
Ernest Partridge, Co-Editor
The Crisis Papers
August 12, 2008
Better get used to the idea: John McCain will probably be the next President of the United States.
The fix is in, as it has been in every election since 2000.
This follows from two overarching facts that the corporate media will not report, and the Democrats choose to ignore:
1. The ruling oligarchy can not allow a reformist Democrat to occupy the White House.
2. They have the means to prevent it, as they did in 2000, in 2004, and as they might do again in 2008.
All other aspects of this “election” – issues, personalities, media blitzes – are secondary and perhaps even irrelevant.
The Stakes
What “oligarchy”? It’s the “military-industrial complex” that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about in 1961, now expanded into a “military-industrial-academic-media-congTo be sure, the super-rich (and getting richer) include a few progressive individuals such as Warren Buffet and George Soros, but they are the “mavericks.” However, by and large, the “hyper-rich” (David Kay Johnson’s term), own, operate and control America.inc.
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Georgia war only a neocon election ploy?
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
by Stephen Lendman
After the Soviet Union's 1991 dissolution, Georgia's South Ossetia province broke away and declared its independence. So far it remains undiplomatically recognized by UN member states. It's been traditionally allied with Russia and wishes to reunite with Northern Ossetes in the North Ossetia-Alania Russian republic. Nothing so far is in prospect, but Russia appears receptive to the idea. And for Abkhazia as well, Georgia's other breakaway province. The conflict also has implications for Transdniestria, the small independent Russian-majority part of Moldova bordering Ukraine, and for Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.
Tensions arose and conflict broke out in late 1991. It resulted in a 1992 ceasefire to avoid a major confrontation with Russia, but things remained unsettled. Moscow maintains a military presence in the province as well as in Abkhazia and exerts considerable political and economic influence. Throughout the 1990s, intermittent conflict erupted but nothing on the order of early August 7 when Georgia acted with aggression against the S. Ossetian capital, Tskninvali.
Russiatoday.com reported the early timeline:
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August 11, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Help Our Veterans Vote
By SUSAN BYSIEWICZ
Hartford
WHAT is the secretary of Veterans Affairs thinking? On May 5, the department led by James B. Peake issued a directive that bans nonpartisan voter registration drives at federally financed nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and shelters for homeless veterans. As a result, too many of our most patriotic American citizens — our injured and ill military veterans — may not be able to vote this November.
I have witnessed the enforcement of this policy. On June 30, I visited the Veterans Affairs Hospital in West Haven, Conn., to distribute information on the state’s new voting machines and to register veterans to vote. I was not allowed inside the hospital.
Outside on the sidewalk, I met Martin O’Nieal, a 92-year-old man who lost a leg while fighting the Nazis in the mountains of Northern Italy during the harsh winter of 1944. Mr. O’Nieal has been a resident of the hospital since 2007. He wanted to vote last year, but he told me that there was no information about how to register to vote at the hospital and the nurses could not answer his questions about how or where to cast a ballot.
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NYT Rips Voting Machine Bill
Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
An election reform bill (S. 3212) sponsored by Democratic California Senator Dianne Feinsten and Republican Senator Robert Bennett of Utah was panned by the New York Times this morning in an editorial. The Times says election reform is indeed necessary, but not in the form put forth in this bill. Here’s a quick look at the Times’ POV:
Voters cannot trust the totals reported by electronic voting machines; they are too prone to glitches and too easy to hack. In the last few years, concerned citizens have persuaded states to pass bills requiring electronic voting machines to use paper ballots or produce voter-verifiable paper records of every vote. More than half of the states now have such laws.
There is still a need for a federal law, so voting is reliable in every state. A good law would require that every vote in a federal election produce a voter-verifiable paper record, and it would mandate that the paper records be the official ballots. It would impose careful standards for how these paper ballots must be “audited,” to verify that the tallies on the electronic machines are correct.
Presidential Campaign Website
July 28th
July 28th
By 8:00 AM I was on the capitol steps greeting the stuffed shirts arriving for work. Slightly less stuffy than the folks in Madison, the Augustinian’s actually took time to comment on their annoyance that a ‘street’ person had the gall to campaign for our nation’s top office. “You’re a disgrace; You’re pathetic; Get out of my way,” summarized the typical responses. Only one shirt took time to speak with me. He asked if I was on ballot in any state. I told him I wasn’t, that I was a write in candidate. At this point a capitol police officer approached me and asked me to leave the premises. I refused, citing I was in conversation and that I was a citizen of the United States standing on public land.
“Spare me the legalities, bub. Get your ass out of here, you’re harassing important people.”
I told the officer that the only way I am leaving is with his assistance. At this point the person I was talking with slipped away. The cop again warned me to leave or he would arrest me. I baited him by telling him that my name is Robert and I’m running for president.
As he started speaking, I turned and introduced myself to a pair climbing the capitol steps and asked them for their vote.
At this point the officer handcuffed me and read me my Miranda rights.
Johann Hari: The hard cash that wins the vice-presidency
Monday, 28 July 2008
The Barack'n'Roll jet has returned to the United States, and it's just one hundred days until we know how the tour tee-shirt will end: Kabul, Baghdad, Berlin, London ... the White House? Now we are poised for their next move: the unveiling of the Veeps. In the next fortnight, John McCain and Obama will pick their number two, the man or woman who will take the keys if they take a bullet. While the debate has mostly been a personality-obsessed tide of tedium, if we blow off the froth we can find hints about the future of US politics – and the world.
The Republican hunt for a Vice-President has focused on one word: money. Panicked conservative commentators and senators have urged McCain to find a super-rich man to bolt on to the ticket, fast. Why? Because he could "invest" tens of millions of his own cash in the campaign – and persuade his friends to do the same. George W Bush's former chief speechwriter David Frum says megabucks Mitt Romney is the current favourite for Republican number two. It seems the Reagan-Clinton-Bush years have made Big Money so central to the US political system that, in Frum's words, "the Pluto-Vice Presidency" is back.
The last time the top 1 per cent owned a tottering 50 per cent of America's stocks, Charles W Fairbanks was put on to the Republican ticket simply because of his towering wallet. It was normal then. Plutocracy was so integral to the political system that it was standard practice to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency just because you were super-rich and prepared to spend, spend, spend to protect your interests. Enter Mitt Romney, stage right.
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* Story | Alaska's Gov. Palin apologizes as state's top cop resigns
By Lisa Demer | Anchorage Daily News
He's the governor's ex-brother-in-law, and his job as an Alaska State Trooper is drawing scrutiny in a way rarely seen except in cases of killings by officers.
Legislators are seriously considering hiring an independent investigator to examine whether Gov. Sarah Palin, her aides or her husband pressured commanders to fire Trooper Mike Wooten, and whether she then fired the state's top cop when Wooten stayed on the job. Palin denies anything like that happened.
All that aside, what kind of trooper is Mike Wooten?
The picture painted by the Palins is pretty bad. The trooper brass isn't saying one way or another, citing personnel rules that protect his files. Union leaders defend him as a dedicated trooper who was already punished for his mistakes.
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Bad Ballot Design Results in Staggering Numbers of Lost Votes
International Herald Tribune
Influx of voters expected to test new technology in U.S. election
By Ian Urbina
Monday, July 21, 2008
With millions of new voters heading to the polls this November and many states introducing new voting technologies, election officials and voting monitors say they fear the combination is likely to create long lines, stressed-out poll workers and late tallies on Election Day.
At least 11 American states will use new voting equipment as the nation shifts away from touch-screen machines and to the paper ballots of optical scanners, which will be used by more than 55 percent of voters.
About half of all voters will use machines unlike the ones they used in the last presidential election, experts say, and more than half of the states will use new statewide databases to verify voter registration.
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GOP cancels state convention; panel to pick Nevada national delegates
By ANJEANETTE DAMON
adamon@rgj.com
The Nevada Republican Party decided Thursday not to reconvene its scuttled state convention this month, claiming it couldn't generate enough interest to reach a legal quorum to elect delegates to the national convention in St. Paul, Minn.
Instead, the party's executive board, in a private conference call July 25, would decide who from Nevada will attend the Republican National Convention to formally nominate U.S. Sen. John McCain.
The state party abruptly ended its state convention in April to head off a delegation of Ron Paul supporters who had captured control of the proceedings and appeared on track to elect a majority slate to the Sept. 1-4 national convention.
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Robert aka dirty bum
July 16th
July 16th
I awoke atop the picnic table, the morning was humid, the heat not yet building but strongly hinting at its arrival. I knew I had at least one vote from Michigan, maybe five. I smiled at the irony, the democrats discounted Michigan in their primaries, and now the Dirty Bum Party is leaving as the state as fast as it entered. I may have to work my way back. When my roadie woke, she suggested we take a hopscotch tour of the Michigan-Indiana-Ohio border.
After breaking down camp, we stopped at the local greasy spoon for breakfast. Before coffee was served, she immediately gave into her female instincts and asked about my past. Over breakfast she asked questions and I skillfully avoided direct answers.
“The only things you need to know are this: I’m thirty-two times two plus a few. I have eight ex-wives and I’m running for president.” The answer was akin to name, rank, and serial number.
Robert aka dirty bum
July 16th
July 16th
I awoke atop the picnic table, the morning was humid, the heat not yet building but strongly hinting at its arrival. I knew I had at least one vote from Michigan, maybe five. I smiled at the irony, the democrats discounted Michigan in their primaries, and now the Dirty Bum Party is leaving as the state as fast as it entered. I may have to work my way back. When my roadie woke, she suggested we take a hopscotch tour of the Michigan-Indiana-Ohio border.
After breaking down camp, we stopped at the local greasy spoon for breakfast. Before coffee was served, she immediately gave into her female instincts and asked about my past. Over breakfast she asked questions and I skillfully avoided direct answers.
“The only things you need to know are this: I’m thirty-two times two plus a few. I have eight ex-wives and I’m running for president.” The answer was akin to name, rank, and serial number.
And even though a lot of these discussions end up with evidence that dismisses the theory, as the election season heats up, there will no doubt be more of a racial undertone (whether it is blatant or not), and as long as poll samples are intentionally skewed to help McCain, or likely Obama voters are being excluded from the polling samples - there will be more focus on the so-called “closeness” of this race.
A few months back, I wrote a diary titled “They just have to make it close enough to steal”, and this point bears repeating over and over and over.....and over until the election.
Pay-to-play lobbyist Stephen P. Payne makes Jack Abramoff look like a piker
The Sunday Times caught politically-connected lobbyist Stephen Payne on tape suggesting that a $250,000 donation George W. Bush presidential library could help secure access to senior administration officials.
Perhaps even more incredible is the Worldwide Strategic Partners brochure that ran with the expose. [Download payne.pdf]
Here's what WSP claims to have done for Azerbaijan, verbatim, from the last page of the brochure, emphases added:
Voter law threatens to cloud elections
Monday, 14 July 2008
Michael Collins: Election Fraud and Tyranny: Part 1
Michael Collins
"Scoop" Independent News
Washington, D.C.
Mark Crispin Miller's new book, "Loser Take All," identifies and analyzes election fraud, the foundation of extremist power in the United States since 2000. Manipulated elections have enabled everything we've experienced from the Iraq war to the current economic meltdown. None of that would have been possible without the ongoing series of "surprise" wins for extremists and their enablers following the outright theft of the 2000 presidential election.
Miller illustrates his overarching analysis with a collection of carefully chosen essays. They map the rise of what key figures on the right and left refer to as tyrannical rule by the Bush - Cheney administration. Through a sequence of critical elections from 2000 on, Miller shows the particular outrages in each that enabled the retention and expansion of power. In doing so, he defines the basis for our current troubles.
A Sequence of Outrages
"Loser Take All" is organized sequentially beginning with the critical election of 2000 through 2006. In addition, we're given predictions of anticipated problems in 2008. Just part of what we learn is how: Gore lost Florida 2000 even before election day; key Georgia voting machines were modified before the stunning losses by Gov. Barnes and Sen. Cleland in 2002; and, Bush won 2004 in the big cities, if you believe the national exit poll. Part 1 of this series covers the 2000,...
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