Elections

The Fix is In – Again!
Ernest Partridge | The Crisis Papers

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.

By Dave Lindorff

The introduction to John McCain at the Republican National Convention last night was all about family values. There was the paean to his mother and father, the touching story of his and Cindy’s adoption of a baby girl from India, and then there was Cindy herself, who was the focus of much of a gauzy introductory film on McCain, and who also did the introductory speech, and who brought all the kids up on stage with her at the end.

Biden Rips Bush Administration

As reported by Jonathan Karl of ABCNews.com:

"In an Obama-Biden administration, we will not have an attorney general who blatantly breaks the law," Biden said at a town-hall meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida, his voice at times drowned out by applause. "We will not have a president who doesn't understand the Constitution. And I will not be a vice-president who thinks he's not part of any of the three branches of government."

Biden ripped the Bush administration for wasting a chance to unite the nation in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

"George Bush and his administration are going to be judged harshly by history," said the Delaware lawmaker. "Not for the mistakes they made, but for the opportunities to unite America and the world they squandered." ...noting that the next administration might appoint as many as three new justices.

"The single most important domestic decision that a president gets to make on his own or her own is the Supreme Court," he said.

Looking to the future but with one eye on the past, Biden also promised that an Obama-Biden government would go through Bush administration data with "a fine-toothed comb" and pursue criminal charges if necessary.

By Dave Lindorff

Now that we’ve had a chance to see Sarah Palin and to hear her speak—or at least read the big rolling white block letters on the teleprompter in front of her—we can see that she’s prone to telling whoppers.

Now we know politicians as a group have a propensity to embellish the truth—particularly when describing their opponents or themselves—and even to lie outright, but Palin does it so well, she’s like a George Bush with reading and pronunciation skills.

In her acceptance speech last night, Palin told a whole string of lies. My favorite was talking about little Trig, her latest offspring, who was born with Down syndrome. Looking right out into the camera, she told the parents of America with special needs children that if she and John McCain win in November, “You’ll have an advocate in Washington.”

Movements and Elections — You Can Ignore Politics, but Politics Won’t Ignore You
By Brandon Madsen | SocialistAlternative.org

Given how the corporate media presents elections as one big personality contest, and corrupt politicians lie and cheat to get ahead, it’s not surprising that many working-class people have become fed up with elections.

By Dave Lindorff

Sarah Palin and I may not have much in common, but we do share an early history of bloodlust.

We both got guns before we were teenagers. According to a report in the British Times newspaper, Palin took a shotgun at age 10, crawled through the grass in back of her house with it, took aim at a bunny “and blew its furry little head off.”

For my part, I got my parents to let me buy a single-shot .22 rifle when I turned 12, and proceeded to go out in the woods, alone and with friends, to shoot at targets, trees, and the occasional animal. A crack shot, I remember picking off what I thought was a dove perched at the top of a tree a good 200 yards away. I nailed it, but when I went to the base of the tree, what I discovered was a dead robin. Oh well.

Obama’s Zionist Wannabe Veep
By Robert Weitzel

“If I were a Jew, I would be a Zionist. I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.”- Senator Joseph Biden

Considering the last eight years and the current (viable) options, I’ll admit to wanting Barak Obama in the White House in January. Undoubtedly, more people around the world will have a better chance of surviving the next four years with his finger on—or rather off—the button. However . . .

For all of Obama’s campaign promises of “change,” his choice of Joseph Biden as his running mate sends a clear signal to Israel’s lobby in Washington and its right-wing government in Jerusalem that for the next four years there will be no change in the United States’ unconditional support or its annual $6 billion in direct and indirect aid.

Predictably, neither will there be a change in the hopelessness and the impotent rage of the Arabs suffering under a U.S.-supported Zionist ideology in Palestine.

Senator Biden is the ardently pro-Israel chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. He is a 36-year veteran politician whose specialty is foreign policy. When he told a reporter from the Jewish cable network, Shalom TV, that he is a Zionist, he knew the implications of that admission for the Palestinians, the entirety of the Arab world, and America’s global “war on terror.”

'Stealing America': Voting-fraud documentary
Michael Ordoña | SFGate.com

The numbers don't add up.

$3.8 billion: The initial Help America Vote Act allocation that California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen said "pushed many counties into buying electronic systems that ... were not properly reviewed or tested."
Images
A scene from the documentary "Stealing America: Vote by V...Dorothy Fadiman, director of the documentary "Stealing Am... View Larger Images

18,000: Votes that did not register in a 2006 Sarasota County, Fla., local election using touch-screen machines, in a Democratic stronghold that the Republican challenger won by 368 votes.

Negative 16,022: Votes counted for Al Gore on a Diebold tabulator in Volusia County, Fla., in 2000.

Zero: The number of proven instances of election fraud involving electronic voting machines, according to industry spokespeople.

by Linda Milazzo

The above video, courtesy of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and videographer, Jeffrey Thompson, is one of the first behind-the-scenes views of the extreme dedication and depth of organization of CODEPINK, which like most PEACE and social justice groups, is comprised mainly of volunteers who work ceaselessly and selflessly to restore this nation to the rule of law and principles of freedom upon which it was built.

No One Should Have to Stand in Line for 10 Hours to Vote
By ADAM COHEN | NYTimes.com

Everyone complains that young people don’t vote, but consider the experience of students at Kenyon College in Ohio in the 2004 election. Officials in Knox County, Ohio, provided just two voting machines for the school’s 1,300 voters. Some students waited in line for 10 hours, and the last bleary-eyed voter did not cast a ballot until nearly 4 a.m.

Appearing with other member of the Congressional Black Caucus at the Democratic National Convention tonight for a moving tribute to their recently deceased colleague Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers brings the issue of fair elections and election integrity to the convention.

IndependentMovement.Org - Building a Movement to Revitalize American Democracy

We're building a movement of voters to take on the partisan and special interest politics in America. We want this movement to be more than just "angry outsiders". We want to use our political leverage wherever possible to make a real difference in the country.

That's why we’re working both inside and outside the political parties (who still dominate American politics) with a view towards opening up the political process to all Americans.

By Dave Lindorff

There are many reasons why most Americans should be turned off by Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s last-minute choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

She’s an evangelical Christian who believes in creationism and thinks this fantasy belongs in the school science curriculum alongside evolution. She’s opposed to the right to abortion. She thinks global warming is not a proven phenomenon. She favors drilling for oil in the Arctic Refuge and damn the environmental consequences. This supposedly family-centered “hockey mom “is happy about sending her 18-year-old son off to war in Iraq, even as Iraq is trying to shoo us out of the country and even as the president is tacitly admitting that the whole thing is a bust by agreeing to a timetable for withdrawal.

Sovereignty and Globalization
Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations

The world’s 190-plus states now co-exist with a larger number of powerful non-sovereign and at least partly (and often largely) independent actors, ranging from corporations to non-government organisations (NGOs), from terrorist groups to drug cartels, from regional and global institutions to banks and private equity funds. The sovereign state is influenced by them (for better and for worse) as much as it is able to influence them. The near monopoly of power once enjoyed by sovereign entities is being eroded.

About the Movie

By Dave Lindorff

Sen. Barack Obama scored big in the Invesco Stadium last night with an acceptance speech that managed to do everything that the political operatives, pundits and critics had argued he’d have to do: It was at once impassioned, full of actual policy plans, and aggressive in its attack on John McCain, his Republican opponent for the presidency.

But the speech also raises some important questions. Biggest among these was Obama’s continued insistence that he will expand the military and, instead of bringing the troops home from Iraq, will shift at least some of them to Afghanistan where he’s calling for an escalation of a war that seems doomed to failure. The expansion of the military that he is proposing, furthermore, would be unrelated to the Afghanistan conflict, and is of a more long-term nature, suggesting that Obama is envisioning even more future conflicts.

An Appeal to Presidential Nominee Barack Obama
Nick Egnatz | NW Indiana Veterans For Peace

While I am certainly not looking forward to a John McCain Administration, I have serious reservations that a Barack Obama Administration will offer the fundamental change necessary to end the concept of American Empire and Exceptionalism. Said concept is rooted in the belief that God somehow has showered the United States with additional blessings that other nations have not received and that U.S., as the savior of the world, has the duty and right to project our military and economic might across the globe as we see fit, without regard to international law or common morality.

Obama has recently said that we need to redeploy our troops from Iraq so that we can send more of them to Afghanistan and better concentrate on the 'War on Terror.'

By Dave Lindorff

One of the sorrier legacies of eight years of Bush and Cheney in the White House has been the conflation of the terms “National Security” and “Foreign Policy” by both Republicans and Democrats.

Granted that the history of US foreign policy in the world has been heavily larded with wars, many of them at America’s instigation. It is nonetheless true that foreign policy is much bigger and more far reaching than just what has come to be known as “national security” issues.

In Bush-speak, national security come to mean having big guns, lots of heavily armed troops, cruise missiles, nuclear weapons, naval armadas and a bully’s willingness to use these weapons on a whim, with no thought of consequences.