craigcline

End Game

From today's http://www.salon.com

Turnout will be key
With so many new registrations this year, the prospects for Kerry look good, despite intense efforts to suppress African-American, Hispanic and Democratic voters.

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By Sidney Blumenthal

Oct. 20, 2004 | Passing almost without notice earlier this month, the public release of the official staff report prepared by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission on "The Civil Rights Record of the George W. Bush Administration," whose submission is required by federal law, was blocked by the Republican commissioners. Nonetheless, it was posted on the commission's Web site. "This report," the site states, "finds that President Bush has neither exhibited leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor taken actions that matched his words."

Indeed, Bush cut funding to the six major programs devoted to ensuring civil rights. The initiative he presents as the heart of his "compassionate conservatism," his "faith-based" program, actually opens the door to new forms of discrimination. "Ironically," notes the report, "the initiative permits employment discrimination by allowing religious organizations to deny equal employment opportunity while accepting public funding."

Bush has held the Civil Rights Commission in contempt since its June 2001 report on "Election Practices in Florida During the 2000 Campaign." Then, it concluded: "The Commission's findings make one thing clear: widespread voter disenfranchisement -- not the dead-heat contest -- was the extraordinary feature in the Florida election ... The disenfranchisement of Florida's voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of black voters."

This year, vast efforts to mobilize or suppress African-American, Hispanic and Democratic voters have already reached a greater level of intensity than in any modern campaign. In Ohio, for example, Republicans attempted to toss out new Democratic registrations, claiming they were written on the wrong weight of paper, a gambit overruled by a federal court.

From Pennsylvania to Arizona to Nevada, a Republican consulting firm is being paid to discourage new Democratic voters from getting on the rolls. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has more than 10,000 lawyers deployed to defend against voter suppression, 2,000 stationed like the Union Army in Florida; and civil rights groups are sending out more than 6,000 lawyers. It is not just that Bush vs. Gore remains an open wound and that Bush's legitimacy has never been settled; it is that the battle over voting rights and participation, democracy itself, is being fought again. It is of more than cursory interest to those now in the field that the line from Bush vs. Gore runs to the early political career of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, who began building his Republican credentials in the 1950s by physically intimidating Hispanic voters at polling places in Arizona.

Since 2002, when Republicans exploited terrorism to besmirch the patriotism of Democrats in the midterm elections, what can only be called a new Democratic Party alongside traditional constituencies has been summoned into existence by extra-party groups. More than 100,000 activists are tramping through the precincts. In Ohio alone, more than 300,000 new Democratic voters have been added, more than a 3-to-1 increase over Republican registrants, Cecile Richards, director of America Votes, told me. These registrations of literally millions of new voters did not just happen, they were organized -- and that same organization is aiming at Election Day.

The polls, nearly all showing a dead-even race, are fundamentally flawed in that they mostly fail to account for all these new voters, who have no past records. Also, they do not measure those for whom a cellphone is their principal phone -- 6 percent of the population now, concentrated among younger people, who appear to show an unusual interest in voting and will vote Democratic by a margin of 2.5-to-1.

The Democracy Corps poll, however, accounts for newly registered voters. Stanley Greenberg, Bill Clinton's pollster in his 1992 campaign and Tony Blair's, conducts the poll's research. Four months ago, Greenberg told me, the newly registered made up only 1 percent of the sample. One month ago, they comprised 4 percent. Now, in the poll completed on Oct. 18, they are at 7 percent and rising. And they will vote for Kerry over Bush by 61 to 37 percent.

Moreover, Bush's job approval has now fallen to 47 in this poll (others have it at 44); presidents below 50 lose without exception. Bush has not campaigned in Ohio for an extraordinary stretch of three weeks, though he plans to stop there once this week. Unemployment continues to rise in the state. "There is no other explanation for his absence," says Greenberg, "other than his numbers go down when he's there. His position on jobs is implausible."

Democracy Corps' research shows that best-case arguments for either candidate shift no voters, not even 1 percent. They are locked in. (Democracy Corps has the contest at 50 to 47 percent for Kerry.) The deciding factor therefore will be turnout -- the higher the turnout, the larger the vote for Democrats.

Since Sept. 11 infused Bush with a mission, he has evoked hovering angels, crusades, duels, mushroom clouds, evildoers, shades of a universe of death. Bush's imagery induces a dynamic of paralysis before the threat and fervor in embrace of his absolute reassurance and power. Dread without end requires faith without limit.

Yet suddenly Bush found himself on the defensive when the New York Times reported on the closed gathering of his campaign contributors in which he revealed his radical program for his second term -- complete right-wing capture of the Supreme Court, privatizing Social Security, turning over national land to the oil companies, more tax cuts. Of course, Kerry was prompted to raise these issues. And Bush whined that Kerry was practicing "the politics of fear," relying on "old-time scare tactics." The next day, Dick Cheney, vicar of doom, projected terrorists exploding nuclear weapons within the United States, events darker than Sept. 11 -- "not just 3,000" dead, but hundreds of thousands -- and offered Bush as our savior from looming apocalypse.

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear," wrote Edmund Burke. But not even the eve of destruction will stifle turnout.

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About the writer
Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London. Join Sid Blumethal along with Ann Richards, David Talbot and others on the Salon Cruise.

Right wing Lies

The right wingers that have captured the Republican Party would like nothing better than a right wing dictatorship with Christianity the one and only approved state religion - in short, the mirror image of the Taliban in Afghanistan. This is what scares me, and why I can't support Bush's Republican party. Until the Republicans come to their senses and bring moderates back into positions of power then I can never support them and will resist them with all of my being.

------------------------------------------

Feel the Hate

September 3, 2004
By PAUL KRUGMAN

"I don't know where George Soros gets his money," one man
said. "I don't know where - if it comes from overseas or
from drug groups or where it comes from." George Soros,
another declared, "wants to spend $75 million defeating
George W. Bush because Soros wants to legalize heroin."
After all, a third said, Mr. Soros "is a self-admitted
atheist; he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive the
Holocaust."

They aren't LaRouchies - they're Republicans.

The
suggestion that Mr. Soros, who has spent billions promoting
democracy around the world, is in the pay of drug cartels
came from Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, whom
the Constitution puts two heartbeats from the presidency.
After standing by his remarks for several days, Mr. Hastert
finally claimed that he was talking about how Mr. Soros
spends his money, not where he gets it.

The claim that Mr. Soros's political spending is driven by
his desire to legalize heroin came from Newt Gingrich. And
the bit about the Holocaust came from Tony Blankley,
editorial page editor of The Washington Times, which has
become the administration's de facto house organ.

For many months we've been warned by tut-tutting
commentators about the evils of irrational "Bush hatred."
Pundits eagerly scanned the Democratic convention for the
disease; some invented examples when they failed to find
it. Then they waited eagerly for outrageous behavior by
demonstrators in New York, only to be disappointed again.

There was plenty of hatred in Manhattan, but it was inside,
not outside, Madison Square Garden.

Barack Obama, who gave the Democratic keynote address,
delivered a message of uplift and hope. Zell Miller, who
gave the Republican keynote, declared that political
opposition is treason: "Now, at the same time young
Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains
of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made
weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring
down our commander in chief." And the crowd roared its
approval.

Why are the Republicans so angry? One reason is that they
have nothing positive to run on (during the first three
days, Mr. Bush was mentioned far less often than John
Kerry).

The promised economic boom hasn't materialized, Iraq is a
bloody quagmire, and Osama bin Laden has gone from "dead or
alive" to he-who-must-not-be-named.

Another reason, I'm sure, is a guilty conscience. At some
level the people at that convention know that their
designated hero is a man who never in his life took a risk
or made a sacrifice for his country, and that they are
impugning the patriotism of men who have.

That's why Band-Aids with Purple Hearts on them, mocking
Mr. Kerry's war wounds and medals, have been such a hit
with conventioneers, and why senior politicians are
attracted to wild conspiracy theories about Mr. Soros.

It's also why Mr. Hastert, who knows how little the Bush
administration has done to protect New York and help it
rebuild, has accused the city of an "unseemly scramble" for
cash after 9/11. Nothing makes you hate people as much as
knowing in your heart that you are in the wrong and they
are in the right.

But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the
people at that convention, for all their flag-waving, hate
America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they
fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and
complexity.

The convention opened with an invocation by Sheri Dew, a
Mormon publisher and activist. Early rumors were that the
invocation would be given by Jerry Falwell, who suggested
just after 9/11 that the attack was God's punishment for
the activities of the A.C.L.U. and People for the American
Way, among others. But Ms. Dew is no more moderate: earlier
this year she likened opposition to gay marriage to
opposition to Hitler.

The party made sure to put social moderates like Rudy
Giuliani in front of the cameras. But in private events,
the story was different. For example, Senator Sam Brownback
of Kansas told Republicans that we are in a "culture war"
and urged a reduction in the separation of church and
state.

Mr. Bush, it's now clear, intends to run a campaign based
on fear. And for me, at least, it's working: thinking about
what these people will do if they solidify their grip on
power makes me very, very afraid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/opinion/03krugman.html?ex=1095235250&ei=1&en=28e6451b50eb158d

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Compan

Patriotically Incorrect

Patriotically Incorrect

Talking Points Memo

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

gillmor on kinsley on bush and the greedheads of the republican fascist oligarchy

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Rich Wage Class War on Poor and Middle Class

The Party Line

The War & Peace Letter is very much in keeping with the spirit of this blog. I read it daily. I suggest you do so as well. My wife and I had a discussion about the impact of our increasingly corporatized and homogenized media on the American political landscape after having noticed a number of our Progressive and liberal friends saying "ya know, maybe Bush isn't so bad after all." I'm afraid people won't get it till the economy is in ruins and we're under attack by the whole world for our imperialist foreign policy.....

Dear Friends:

When you turn on your radio, do you feel like you're in another land,
listening to government-sponsored radio? Do you feel like you're
eavesdropping on a meeting of the Republican Party's? To Ian Masters of
KPFK-FM, this "marriage between a government and its volunteer information
ministry has been consecrated by the blessed victory of "Operation Iraqi
Freedom."
___________________________________

Media Monopolies Have Muzzled Dissent

By Ian Masters, Ian Masters is the host of "Background Briefing" on KPFK-FM
(90.7) in Los Angeles.

If information is the oxygen of democracy, the United States has just been
gassed, not by weapons of mass destruction but by a weapon of mass
distraction.

With George W. Bush basking in glorious ratings and Fox News climbing in
the ratings, we may be moving toward a coronation instead of a reelection
in 2004. It was, after all, Rupert Murdoch's unilateral anointment of Bush
as the winner in the early hours of the morning after the undecided 2000
election that led Al Gore to foolishly concede, because he and the other
networks believed what they saw on Fox Television.

Now the marriage between a government and its volunteer information
ministry has been consecrated by the blessed victory of "Operation Iraqi
Freedom," the geopolitical equivalent of an O.J. meets "Joe Millionaire"
wrapped in the flag.

Totalitarian regimes don't tolerate any distinction between journalism and
propaganda, but in most democracies it is unprecedented for the free press
to abandon Joseph Pulitzer for the methods of Joseph Goebbels.

How did a born-again, family-values administration get in bed with a
purveyor of misogyny and mayhem, trash and titillation? The common thread,
for all the public piety, has to be the late Lee Atwater, who was friend,
mentor and role model to George W., Karl Rove and Roger Ailes, the head
hound in the Fox pound of junkyard attack-dog journalism.

This undemocratic confluence of politics and propaganda has long been in
the making as corporate media have been incrementally empowered while
public influence, input and "interest" have been eliminated.

The transformation of active citizens into passive consumers was enabled by
the Federal Communications Commission under Ronald Reagan's Mark Fowler,
who declared "the perception of broadcasters as community trustees should
be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants."

Welcome to America, Mr. Murdoch: You can buy the airwaves and, who knows,
some day the presidency.

TV's Fox could not get away with its shameless shilling for the White House
if the Fairness Doctrine were still in place, and radio's Clear Channel
monopoly would not be able to impose wall-to-wall Limbaugh, Hannity and
Savage, etc., on the public if broadcasters were accountable to public
opinion rather than the dictates of plutocrats.

How could it be that in the land of the free and the home of the brave
Americans are afraid of opinions? Where are the Tom Paines, the Mark
Twains, the Menckens, the Ida Tarbells?

Dissent has not gone away; it has just been marginalized by monopolies and
relegated to the interstices of the Internet.

But the hammer is about to drop on the Internet too. The head of the FCC,
Michael Powell, wants to give away what's left of the store to the
broadband cable and satellite providers and make them gatekeepers or
tollbooths on the information highway.

It used to be that the Internet was accessed via a common carrier, the
phone company, but as technology has moved forward, these new unregulated
media monopolies have increasing control over the information pipeline.
Without regulation, they have the ability to choose what content they
provide.

Two FCC commissioners want to delay this hand-over and encourage public
debate, but the public is largely unaware of what is at stake.

Obviously you can't expect the Limbaughs, O'Reillys and their bosses or
their president in the White House to give them talking points on
preserving diversity of opinion while there is a tax cut to sell.

So speak up, America: It's your country, they're your airwaves. Maybe you
can pursue the American dream while you are asleep, but it will be too late
to reclaim your country's freedom when you wake up.

--Ian Masters, host of "Background Briefing" on KPFK-FM (90.7) in Los
Angeles.
______________________________

In peace,

Otoño
________________________________

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Can't Always Get What You Want

Karlin Lillington considers the possibility that the rescue of Jessica Lynch was staged by US soldiers.[Scripting News]

Facism, Texas Style

Dan Gillmor on Molly Ivins - What Planet are Texans From?

The thing that bums me out the most is that, as Gillmor says, what's happening in Texas may happen across the country if Aermcians don't wake up to the fact that it is facism masquerading as patriotism, and meaness masquerading as conservatism. Molly Ivan's column is one of the most frightening and depressing, things I've read about our future yet.