GOP: The Party of Fear, Loathing, and Mongering

For a few magnificent moments, America seemed awash in good vibes, sunlit vistas, brotherly-sisterly love, dreams being fulfilledk ancient rivalries turning to handshakes, other cheeks being turned, kisses and hugs being given, earth looking forward to peace and change, and peace on a well-balanced albeit agonizingly slow fall towards earth. It was the Obama Moment. The greatest ushering-in of any Presidential Era in living, maybe even historical, memory. But now...

They're back. The Republicans, that is. And with them, fear, fear-mongering, loathing, loathing-mongering, orneriness, orneriness-mongering, backtracking and backtrack-mongering. They stand as one, united, to be something, anything, as long as it represents the Opposers, The Id, Defiance, Rebellion, The Contrarian, and in this case, just saying "NO!" to bailing out an economy they and their cohorts, Bushies all, trashed. They trashed the economy with their voodoo Reaganomics on megalying speed, and now that it's tanking, they say, to the last man and woman, "No Safety Net!"

Why? Because the Republicans have adopted the oxymoronic slogan "Country First, Government Last." Reagan succeeded to instill the Republican Collective Consciousness with this idea that Government=Evil, aka Big Government=Big Evil. Which makes one wonder why Republicans would ever elect one of their own to such a cabal as "Government" in order to actually run it? If it is evil, what does that say about Reagan? He was a part of what? A fishing expedition?

Ah, no, good Republicans enter government in order to supposedly "minimize" it or get rid of it. At least that's the line. The reality is the diametrical opposite. Under Republican leadership, the government has grown so big neither we, nor the combined wealth of the planet, can afford it. Of course, we're not talking about social programs. We're talking about that giant sitting Holy Bear called the Pentagon. And don't forget Homeland Security. IN other words, government has been slowly replaced by military and police functions, which are invading every aspect of life - under Republican leadership, of course. So bailing out an economy that tanked over lies and wars and more lies and more wars and more Ponzi schemes and more lies to coverup the Ponzi schemes that benefit the rich and trash the non-rich --- correcting their mistakes and rehabilitating America from the robbery, waste and con job pulled by Republican leadership and Republican government, that's not on their job description.

In short, Republicans don't do repairs. They only do destruction. So there they are, saying "no" to Obama's gigantic stimulus plan at a time when everyone who knows anything says we must take action fast, and quibbling about minutiae while ignoring their own man-eating Pentagon Bear that we can no longer afford to feed but he's devouring everything in sight anyway. There they are, representing their constituents by guaranteeing they won't find jobs any time soon in the civilian sector. There they are, counting on the Pentagon to do some hiring. Problem is, the Pentagon requires one thing they don't like to talk about - GARGANTUAN, HUGE GOVERNMENT SPENDING. And another thing: WAR. Without war, what's the point? So they want wars to get government spending to keep jobs to do what? What economy?

It seems the whole purpose of the Republican Party is to make government collapse so the people can have what they really want, a choice between anarchy (Individual Choice!) and a police state (Keep America Safe!). They do this by undercutting and deriding the whole purpose of government and the Constitution they are supposedly sworn on Bibles to uphold.

Their modus operandi is twofold:

1. Convince the public that they must be always afraid and "vigilant".

2. Show real or imagined enemies that we've got balls by acting as kickass mean and nasty as possible. At least by refusing things. Especially things that sound good. Things that sound compassionate (bleeding heart! ick!) should be refused. Things that sound peaceful (surrender!) should be refused. Things that sound helpful (liberal wimps!) should be refused. Things that relate to education or health care (socialism!) should be refused.

The GOP is the party of refusal. Why should anyone expect anything else? Let's just hope there's a post-mortem on this. Maybe some real Conservatives will come out of the GOP's well-deserved demise and do something to actually conserve things - like fiscal conservatives trying to rein in the excesses of the rich, like environmental conservatives trying to rein in excesses of the polluters, or even pro-life conservatives trying to rein in excesses of the killing machines let loose by neocons. Now that's a conservatism we can work with. Together, for a long time, and a genuine future. But where is it? Where are the conservatives? Locked up in the lies and betrayals of the GOP.

Time to say to the GOP, RIP.

Corporate Prisons, Slave Labor = Fascist Shift?

Len Hart has this to say about the privatization of the prison system in America under the GOP:

Like many crooked GOP schemes, the fascist corporatization of state prisons makes a slick end run around the Bill of Rights, sets up crony corporations with a guaranteed gravy train at tax payer expense, and ---to sweeten the deal --it provides them with slave labor.

It is no accident that under Gov George W. Bush, Texas beat out Mississippi for 'dead last' in education. As education declines, crime increases. Increasing crime fuels the corporate prison gravy train. Justice has nothing to do with it. It's about warehousing and enslaving people for profit.

What's the danger exactly?

Unless the nation wakes up to what happened in Texas, the nation will enter not just an economic depression but a new dark age, perhaps an end to civilization as we know it. In many ways we already share with the middle ages, a careless disregard for every life. In Texas, the crime rate increased as the prison systems --under Bush Jr --went corporate! As a result, one in 100 Texas residents are in prison, many of them 'corporate' lock ups in which prisoners have no rights. As Texas took the GOP/fascist prison route, education tanked --a recipe for future unemployment, poverty and increased crime.

Note that the GOP gained big in 2000 & '04 with uneducated voters: the "redneck" vote, the Evangelical white vote (which generally favors ideology over reason), and poor white blue-collar workers. It is the GOP's policy to gut social programs that could benefit the poor and middle class, cut taxes for the rich, and thus redistribute wealth upward. This scheme can only have popular appeal among people who can't figure out what it really is - a monstrous ripoff - but who are likely to believe propaganda if it appeals to their emotional "buttons", involving fear, security, tradition, family, country in a sentimental/nostalgic sense, and a desire for independence and freedom without risk and change. Education forms a threat to the size and stability of this GOP-malleable voting bloc, and so it is in the GOP's interest to gut education and make higher-education less and less achievable (read affordable).

And what better way to prevent education than to create a criminal class that work as slaves in incarceration camps that become increasingly impossible to get out of? And by gradually turning prisons over to private industry, whose motive is solely to make a profit, the concept of re-entering society or "correction" becomes not the goal, but the impediment to achievement of wealth. The more prisoners, the more money. And the prisoners also have to pay in two ways: by endless fines and charges, and by free labor. That free labor is actually slave labor, but nobody looks at it that way. It's considered "time served" and "punishment", a zone where rights no longer exist. The uneducated bloc overwhelmingly populate this Incarceration World, and yet they are the most vociferous about punishing the guilty. Naturally, the guilty are charged and convicted on dramatically racist lines.

Texas is particularly egregious on this, and represents a microcosm for everything that's wrong with the GOP's stance on crime and punishment.

Texas is called the gulag state for good reasons. Certainly, justice in Texas is applied inequitably. Minorities --primarily black and Hispanic --are disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system but under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system.

Black people represent only 12% of the Texas population but comprise 44% of the total incarcerated population. Whites make up about 58% of Texas' total population, but only 30% of the prison and jail population.

These statistics are terrifying:

...by year's end 1999, there were 706,600 Texans in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day. In a state with 14 million adults, this meant that 5% of adult Texans, or 1 out of every 20, are under some form of criminal justice supervision. The scale of what is happening in Texas is so huge, it is difficult to contrast the size of its criminal justice systems to the other states' systems it dwarfs:

• There are more Texans under criminal justice control than the entire populations of some states, including Vermont, Wyoming and Alaska.
• If Texas was a nation separate from the United States, it would have the world's highest incarceration rate--significantly higher than the United States (682), and Russia (685) which has 1 million prisoners, the world's third biggest prison system. Texas' incarceration rate is also higher than China (115), which has the world's second largest prison population (1.4 million prisoners).
• While one out of every 20 Texas adults is under some form of criminal justice control, one out of 3 young black men (29% of the black male population between 21 and 29) are in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day.
• One out of every four adult black men in Texas is under some form of criminal justice supervision.
• Blacks in Texas are incarcerated at a rate seven times greater than whites. While there are 555 whites behind bars for every 100,000 in the Texas population, there are an astonishing 3862 African Americans behind bars for every 100,000 in the state. This is nearly 63% higher than the national incarceration rate for blacks of 2366 per 100,000.
• If Texas' black incarceration rate was applied to the United States, the number of blacks behind bars on a national level would increase by half a million. There are currently an estimated 824,900 African Americans in prison and jail in the US The new figure, 1,346,370, would increase the number of African Americans incarcerated in the US by 63%.

And of course, when these African Americans are serving the prison corporations from the inside as free slave labor, what happened to the Emancipation Proclamation?

Let's hope Obama does something to guide us out of this GOP rut.

Brave Anti-War Military Mom Attacked at Palin Rally

Wait, wait! By "attacked", I mean treated with steady hostility until "sheriffs" could whisk her out of the area as stealthily as possible - even though she had a ticket, and all she was doing was holding up a sign that said "Troops Home Now" and wearing a protest T-Shirt. But what's stunning in this story is the level of hostility towards free speech.

What constitution do these guys hold their alliegiance to? Blackwater USA?

Pat Alviso tells her story in her own words here, and the following is just an excerpt:

Today I decided that I needed to see the great communicator Sarah Palin in person at the giant Home Depot Stadium in Carson, and voice my opposition to the many public statements she has made recently about supporting the troops. The implication here is that she is, in effect, ready to abandon our troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, supporting the troops means you leave them there. No need to have a reason. You see, my Marine son, Beto, has already done two tours in Iraq and is about to be deployed for his third. This is why I found it particularly offensive when she said at the debate that we just can't fly the "white flag of surrender".

And so I felt compelled to brave a sea of red, right-wing, Palin worshipping republicans who were sure to throw me out of the arena. I was able to get a ticket from a passerby who didn't want to use her ticket. I had not planned to get into the event, but it seemed that destiny was calling, so dutifully covered up my Military Families Speak Out T-shirt and joined the flag waving crowd entering the Home Depot Stadium. After all, if my son can just buck up and go out for another tour, I can do this.

While waiting for Sarah, she overheard some nasty conversations that set the tone:

A guy behind me was actually trying to impress his friends by joking that he tried to run over those Obama people on the way in, but didn't, and said if he had, he would have put the car in reverse and run over them twice. I cringed. Then I felt sad because a guy was sitting next to me with his two pre-teen girls. The girls looked at their daddy and waited for his response. The dad laughed at the car joke and so they echoed his laugh. They waited, but got the signal.

Once they catch sight of her sign and pink T-Shirt, the crowd gets ugly.

I couldn't stand it. I just couldn't let her use her son's name again to justify this war. She would be sure to mention that because her son got the orders to go to Iraq, just like mine did , that it's patriotic to keep sending them. That's it. That's the only reason to continue the war- because they are already there. The lesson for them is say nothing, let the senseless slaughter go on indefinitely or your don't support the troops.

That was it for me. The crowd got quiet. I held my sign up and took off my outer sweatshirt. I was surprised how long it took for them to catch up with me. About two applause lengths. My neighbors started asking me to put down the sign. I did off and on, but when others put their signs up, mine went up too. Then two staffers in the red shirts and brown khakis trod past the dear old lady and put their sign over mine and a man, also a staffer, sat in my seat. I couldn't sit back down. One person grabbed my "Troops Home Now" sign, and tore part of it. Then the crowd started turning on me like a McCarthy party on a commie. The rest of the sign got ripped out of my hands and someone hit me with a red pom pom! Two quite older men started yelling at me to leave. One kept screaming right in my ear , "USA", trying to hurt my ear. Then the seat stealing staffer asked me if I had a ticket. I told him I had one. When he asked me to give it to him, I went to get it from my purse and then thought better and said , " No, I have one all right, but you took my seat and they took my sign and you will take my ticket. Besides, I am not doing anything disruptive!"

This wasn't gonna be good.

More folks screamed for me to go, making more noise and fuss than I ever could. Even the sweet old lady turned on me. "Get her out of her. I don't want her here", she said in her new-found authoritative voice. Finally, Mutt , (or was if Jeff?) showed up asking me to leave or they would get the sheriffs. Once again I reminded them that I wasn't doing anything wrong. The man, the daddy of the pre-teens, told them to leave me alone and that I was entitled to my opinion and he just wanted to hear Palin. But no, the sheriffs came.

What is it about Republicans that makes them so angry about the First Amendment?

Then again, this is a "pep rally", as we used to say in the 60's. It's like cheerleading for the wrong team at a sports game. The response is the same. And protesting at a rally like that isn't going to change anyone's team - let alone their mind.

Beware the GOP Voter Fraud Machine

With Obama leading in the polls, it seems almost counterintuitive to worry about GOP voter tampering, but after the Florida debaucle in the Bush vs. Gore race in 2000, not to mention similar incidents in Ohio in the Bush vs. Kerry race in 2004, and with lots of meddling already in the works - or out of the works, as the case may be - we really need to be sure that every vote is counted.

Remember, polls are not votes. There's been calculated to be a 6-point vulnerability spread for Obama due to closet racists, those people who won't vote for a black man no matter what, and who won't admit it in the open or in the polls. That means he has to be 6 points ahead in the polls to be sure of just breaking even. Sounds like the same old racist thing repeated again - an African-American has to have superpowers to be considered among the ranks of the "normal", and even then racists will be racists.

Bearing that in mind, no one should be complacent. The McCain/Palin ticket still have hope, albeit waning, and their supporters will still come out and vote for them. But the GOP has another strategy, and that is denying votes to those most likely to vote Democratic: the poor, non-white, urban, even certain sectors of the elderly... in other words, all the folks who might have "identification" problems, such as lack of drivers' licenses or other similar issues. These are precisely the people the GOP is targeting in their numerous requests for "verification" in swing states.

This is still the GOP which literally harassed and intimidated voters in the last 2 elections in order to "elect" the current President, the "beloved" W, to office. That selection actually was made by Supreme Court order in 2000, an historical year in denying an entire state, Florida, its right to have all its votes counted properly. And they are endlessly seeking ways to intimidate voters this year, now by various schemes touted as "anti-fraud" investigations - but in fact, little more than schemes to deny votes by identification confusion, a confusion far more likely to happen to Democratic-leaning voters.

According to this report,

You know it’s going to be a heated election when a state attorney general sues his own state agency for not cracking down on voter fraud. But that’s just what’s happened in Wisconsin. It’s indicative of the kinds of legal challenges now being brought in hotly contested states around the country. The outcomes of those challenges will decide whose votes get counted and whose don’t — and in a race as close as this one, that could make all the difference.

In each case, Republicans claim voter fraud is rampant and the government has to crack down on it. Democrats, meanwhile, argue it’s rare – and far less of a problem than intimidation and harassment of voters at the polls.

Fortunately, their attempt in Ohio was struck down, but more attempts are in the works:

In Wisconsin, Atty. Gen. J.B. Van Hollen – a Republican and the state co-chair of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign — has sued the state’s Government Accountability Board, a non-partisan group of former state judges responsible for implementing the election laws. Van Hollen insists that the board’s failure to require that the identifying information which voters used to register matches the information contained in a new statewide voter database is a violation of the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.

This Act has served as a pretext for the GOP's latest attempt at vote manipulation, guised as "fraud prevention". That veneer won't hold, though.

The federal law requires states to create a computerized statewide voter registration list that contains the name and identifying information of every legally registered voter. It does not, however, require that information on already-registered voters match the information in the new database.

For good reason. Personal data often doesn’t match — not due to any voter fraud, but because voters used a married or hyphenated name or nickname; or because of typographical errors by state workers entering the information into the database.

As a result, the handful of states that have mandated matching have found themselves facing a logistical nightmare. In Washington state, between 16 percent and 30 percent of registered voters in each county did not match the state database. In Florida, some 20,000 voters were denied or delayed in voting on that basis in 2006. Both ended up getting sued for making the match mandatory and so disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters.

Yet the GOP pushes on. Even though this is just "legalized" harassment, or shall we say, white-collar harassment. Oh, those elite Republicans.

“To immediately require that every voter registered since January 2006 be matched against the state database,” Kevin Kennedy, the board’s director and general counsel wrote to Van Hollen in August, “could lead to mass confusion at the polls.”

Require the impossible, then enforce it - to hell with the consequences. But this time, hopefully, it won't work. As for their bogus claims that fraud could occur,

“It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls,” the Brennan Center for Justice concluded, after conducting a comprehensive study last year.

Meanwhile, the Brennan Center’s studies show that rules like the one Wisconsin’s attorney general is advocating disenfranchise thousands of people – most often the poor, elderly and minorities.

In Florida, for example, where the Brennan Center sued the state on behalf of the state’s NAACP, studies showed that black voters made up 13 percent of all registration applicants, but were 26 percent of all matching problems. Similarly, Latinos were 15 percent of the total voting population, and 39 percent of those blocked; while white voters were 66 percent of the voter applicant pool, but only 17 percent of those whose applications didn’t match.

“The law inevitably leads to higher and heavier burdens being placed on less affluent voters and voters of color,” said Adam Skaggs, counsel for the Brennan Center. “So more of those voters will have their votes not counted in November. And as we saw in 2000, it can take only a couple hundred voters to make the difference in the election.”

So in fact these tactics amount to fraud disguised as anti-fraud. Just as "compassionate Conservatism" was expedience disguised as compassion, and the war in Iraq was aggression-occupation disguised as rescue-liberation. And supply-side economics was spend-n-borrow disguised as thrift-n-save; get-rich-schemes for the rich disguised as job-creation for the rest-of-us.

“Voter fraud is a huge canard,” said Robert Atkins, a partner at Paul Weiss Rifkind & Garrison who is working with the Brennan Center on the case against Florida. “There’s a long history of systemic attempts to rip off elections. There’s no evidence to support individual efforts of voter fraud. It’s a sham.”

Indeed, until 2007, the Justice Dept. policy was not even to investigate claims of individual voter fraud, on the grounds that it has “only a minimal impact on the integrity of the voting process.”

That policy was changed by the Bush administration to allow prosecution of individuals at the prosecutor’s discretion. Congressional hearings later revealed that some of the U.S. attorneys fired under Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales were targeted due to their failure to prosecute claims of voter fraud urged by Republicans in their districts.

Oh, so it's the same Bush lie machine that's behind all this, and some idiots are still believing in it. And we all have to watch out.

Democrats are concerned. “Based on what we saw in Florida in 2000, and Ohio in 2004, we expect Republicans to spend a lot of time in highly Democratic precincts and use the HAVA test to challenge voters,” said Wineke. “Every time there’s a challenge, it slows the train down. All the people standing in line behind this individual are going to stand in line even longer. And not everybody can stand in line three or four hours to vote.”

“It’s not that we want to have people vote that shouldn’t be voting,” Wineke continued. “We just don’t want people who are eligible to vote unable to vote because of partisan mischief.”

So it's only fitting that the GOP's tactic to bring back the lies and fraud that have brought down America to its lowest point should be - their typical M.O. - fraud crusading as its own enemy.

And if that fails, watch for roadblocks in a neighborhood near you. And be ready to fight for that right to vote - it's our duty to protect that right for each other.

Dems, Do Like Obama: Ignore Palin Entirely

The moment Sarah Palin walked into the presidential race, everything went haywire. That's precisely her purpose: to confuse, distract, rile up, titillate, and exasperate the American public to the point that they might just, in one mindless moment at the polls, vote for John McCain/Sarah Palin. All we need, right? in a political campaign is more pitbulls - described loosely as animals bred to fight to the death, mindlessly, on "guts" alone. Killer instinct. They may be nice on one side, but don't press them...they don't need minds, they need revenge. Sarah Palin's not all that, but she tries real, real hard, which is in some ways worse.

John McCain's actual message is a repeat of George Bush's message. Insofar as he is a "Maverick", it's really only an image thing, not a substance thing. At best, it means he'll gamble more often. As in "...Maverick is his name...luck is his companion, gambling is his game..." And if that's "best" in times like this with the economy melting down like a terminated cyborg, what's worst?

So with a message - "tax breaks for the rich, tough breaks for the rest" - that doesn't resonate, and with a delivery style that resembles that of a depressed person, he needs someone so manic, so mindless, that all messages, all issues get sucked into some crazy vortex.

That's Sarah Palin.

Unless we ignore her. Completely. Not a single damn word. No comment. Let her rant, rave, be cutesy, folksy, show off her incontrovertible ignorance and incompetence for the job she's trying to be a shaky heartbeat from. She makes that point.

I believe there are enough intelligent people who understand she's not going to help the economy, the war in Iraq, the bloated Pentagon, the healthcare system, or even, for that matter, Joe the Plumber. She's only going to help poll numbers for John McCain if enough white guys like her legs. And that has nothing to do with helping women, most of whom are for Obama on issues. I agree with John Cusack who said,

McCain won't just be more of the same -- it will be worse than Bush-Cheney -- using the disasters of the past eight years and the actual crises we face to double down on the American Enterprise/Heritage Foundation vision of government that desires, as Grover Norquist said, to shrink government until "we can drown it in a bathtub."

I would recommend a return visit to the groundbreaking Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.

McCain, who said he knows nothing about economics, will surely hand over the reins to the Friedmanites and neoconservatives who have sent the country on a path to ruin. Anyone looking at his team could tell you that. Palin and the interests she represents are even further to the right.

Now, no one in their right mind -- including reasonable independents and Republicans -- wants to double down on neocon ideology, but here comes the "maverick" and his economic advisers to use the crises we face to implement more "change" and "reform" to the system by privatizing everything in sight. Is this what the American people want? When they are aware of it, the answer is always no. It's the same bullshit re-branded.

Great point, Kusack! McCain is a neocon in fake "Maverick" clothing, and needs to be exposed. Palin is being used as a sexy "libertarian" draw, but in reality doesn't have the slightest idea what's going on, let alone what she would do about it.

Ruin the government you are purporting to run and turn it over to privatization frenzy, creating a shadow government of private corporate rule. That's the whole idea.

So let's brand bust this maverick gibberish but understand the coded language that belies their true mission... we should take them at the true meaning of their words.

Not just more of the same -- worse than the same. Times of crisis are great opportunities to implement the radical agendas we usually reject.

Even conservatives, true conservatives, don't wish death to America. By "less government", do we mean the Department of Homeland Security or surveillance of regular Americans? Or being "served" by Blackwater? Let's gut taxes so we don't "spend" in fixing crumbling infrastructure or health care or education or even alternative energy? So where's the money for the Republicans' beloved war supposed to come from, if most of the budget is tanked in bailing out the robber barons you didn't want to "spend" a dime regulating or at least holding accountable for their actions? Is that the Republican "take" on, say, the morals of the ten commandments?

Obama is no extremist or even particularly "liberal", as painted falsely by the lying McCain/Palin team. But McCain and Palin ARE extremist, right-wing extremist, and America can't endure another year of this trash, let alone four. So let's all ignore the much-hyped story of Palintology and vote by conscience ... for the children who'll have to live with our decision.

GOP Election Fraud? GOP Tries to Dump New Voters in Swing States

Apparently if they can't win the old-fashioned, legal way, they're going to try Plan B: the illegal, fraudulent, vote-bashing way. Now the Republican Party is trying to remove thousands of new voters from rolls in swing states - of course, knowing that new voters are likely to be Obama/Democrat voters.

In this NYT article, this pattern is described:

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

Although the Times article refrains from blaming the GOP, it acknowledges

Because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening or trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers.

As for the M.O.,

The six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio seem to be improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters.

In Ohio, as this dkos diary brought out:

600,000 people in Ohio could possibly lose their right to vote just so the GOP can "insure the integrity of the voting system." Just like the Clear Skies Act (which reduced air pollution controls) and the Patriot Act (which undermined the Constitution), we can always be sure that whatever Republicans are claiming to do, they are really doing the exact opposite.

I couldn't find the story on Talking Points Memo where it was supposed to have come from, but here is a quote from the diary:

The full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld a lower court ruling that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must use other government records to check thousands of new voters for registration fraud.

A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit had disagreed last week, but the full court's ruling overturns that decision.

Ohio Republicans had sued Brunner, a Democrat. Her spokesman had no immediate comment Tuesday.

About 666,000 Ohioans have registered to vote since January, with many doing so before the contested Democratic primary election last March between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Since then, Ohio Republicans have filed a series of challenges to the registrations and Brunner's administration of election rules. They have helped voters file lawsuits against local boards of election over registration rules, absentee ballot requests and a weeklong period that allowed registration and voting on the same day.

Brunner previously said there was no way to set up the system with such speed.

Last week, a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit had sided with Brunner, but after hearing an appeal the full panel sided with the GOP and U.S. District Judge George C. Smith in Columbus. Smith had ordered Brunner to develop a way to verify voter registration information and make it available to local election boards.

If true, this needs looking into. No voter should be denied his/her vote on either side. To be a democracy, we need fair and honest elections.

Is Sarah Palin Right for Toughest Job On Planet?

With the economy in tatters, the war in Iraq surging towards how-to-get-out-without-looking-like-fools - not to mention the Aftermath, the carnage of a destroyed nation, and foreign policy run by the Pentagon at multi-trillion-dollar "guaranteed" funding, is Sarah Palin the one we want in charge?

This quote may be old news, but it's worth repeating. With the impossibly complex decisions facing the next U.S. president, who really would want Sarah Palin in a position to possibly be that person? Then, would the country by run by committee? And who would set the agenda? It would have to be someone who was never elected - a Cheney-like, shadowy back-room sort of advisor, or set of advisors. Is that really democracy?

CNN's Jack Cafferty commented: "If John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72-year-old's heartbeat away from being president of the United States. And if that doesn't scare the hell out of you, it should… I'm 65 and have been covering politics...for a long time. That is one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen for someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this country." (A commenter on Cafferty's blog wrote that he felt "sorry and embarrassed for Sarah" because "McCain has sucked her into an 'opportunity' akin to a sub-prime mortgage situation on a house she cannot afford.")

Our problems need more than spunk, more than enthusiasm, more than supply-side cheerleading. Doesn't any Republican see the use of the human mind?

Messagee to Congress: Don't Let Bush Get Away With This!

The headline blares from the New York Times:

Administration Is Seeking $700 Billion for Wall Street

What was that again?
Yes, the worst Administration in US history is now asking for 700 BILLION DOLLARS TO BAIL OUT WALL STREET1

The proposal, not quite three pages long, was stunning for its stark simplicity. It would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt.

And by way of excuse, Bush says

“I will tell our citizens and continue to remind them that the risk of doing nothing far outweighs the risk of the package, and that, over time, we’re going to get a lot of the money back.”

Yeah, right. I'm sure. And this means we can watch the dollar come tumbling down, not to mention the potential for admission of wrongdoing by greedy speculators, let alone the neocons for pushing rampant speculation as the ultimate moral high ground. Didn't we hear that government was the Great Satan?

So how come we now have to pray to the Great Satan to bail out those Wall Street angels who were there saving us from government and its evil democratic regulations?

Democratic leaders have pledged to approve a bill but say it must also include tangible help for ordinary Americans in the form of an economic stimulus package.

Yes, let's give the taxpayers a rebate too. The winner in all this? The people who profit from materials provided to the US mint? Money engravers? Doesn't this whole thing smack of counterfeiting somehow?

Did somebody say it's because of deregulation? Or maybe because of the trillions going to the War Without End Amen? Whatever it is, it's courtesy of the Grand Ole Party, inherited by the forked-tongue-speaking John McCain.

GOP Legacy: Financial Meltdown, Not Trickle Down

Years ago I wandered into a Georgia grocery store run by two twin men in their 70's with a fondness for milk - and wisdom. Bush I was president then, and we got to talking politics. He told me that throughout his life, he noticed a clear repeated pattern: whenever the Republicans were in power, they ruined the economy and started wars. Any wars, even little wars (like Reagan's invasion of Grenada), but they had to start wars. He said that's basically what the Republicans were all about.

Now we have the Republican agenda taken to its logical extreme: war without end Amen (the GWOT with its "fronts" in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere), and Total Economic Meltdown.

Not only have some of the biggest banks gone bad, oil prices become an issue, and the housing market gone bad, but the stock market made its worst decline in years, and most analysts are saying this is the worst thing to happen since the Great Depression.

Not just "internet rumors", no...everybody who knows. Take Bloomberg, for example:

In the biggest reshaping of the financial industry since the Great Depression, two of Wall Street's most storied firms, Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., headed toward extinction.

But to most people, what is a "reshaping of the financial industry"? What does it mean that

``The tectonic plates beneath the world financial system are shifting, and there is going to be a new financial world order that will be born of this,'' said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Capital Group Inc., the Jersey City, New Jersey-based brokerage that handles about $1 trillion worth of stock transactions a quarter. ``It's an ugly and painful process.''

?????

What is this "new financial world order"? Ugly and painful to whom?

Lehman, which employed 25,935 people at the end of August in 61 offices around the world, had a balance sheet totaling $786 billion as recently as February.

What will happen to those 25,935 people? And $786 billion can't just evaporate. Can it?

But where does the pain spread beyond Wall Street hotshots? Main street and the middle class are now in this boat since the Republicans' touted mixing of speculative stock market investments with retirement funds, pictured as a "free-market" bonanza a la Reaganomics gone futuristic, made 401K's a form of universal retirement security. It was the GOP dream of replacing the government with big corporations and Big Business. And it is a total disaster. Witness, oh world, the debacle.

The GOP attacks the US economy on multiple fronts: attempting to gut their sole source of adequate revenue, taxes, from their largest source, the rich and powerful including corporations; spending uncounted - and I mean black budgeted - treasure on wars and war equipment to the point of bankrupting the government; and rampant deregulation, trusting businesses to regulate themselves, pushing it with the glorification of greed and the denigration of compassion.

In short, the GOP
- Guts revenue from the wealthy, called "cutting taxes" (but only for the rich)
- Spends heavily on wars without accountability
- Deregulates all sectors of business and industry, leading to abuse
- Privatizes what should be accountable public services

Note the features of these policies:
- Lack of accountability, especially for the rich/powerful
- Faith-based "belief" in the moral authority of greed and self-serving
- War on compassion as somehow morally objectionable, a "free lunch"

The net result of these policies for the economy?
- Unregulated businesses can't make the hard realistic choices
- The big swallow the small - even in the bailout and aftermath of the debacle
- Smaller investors, small business owners, employees are crushed
- There's a culture of continual increase without balance or realism
- Without balance, there's collapse

The results are in:

The industry convulsions that started last year have already eliminated Bear Stearns Cos., forced into a cut-price sale to JPMorgan Chase & Co. with government support in March. A week ago, the U.S. Treasury placed mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, guaranteeing their widely held debt securities while all but erasing their equity value.

American International Group Inc., once the world's largest insurer, is struggling to raise cash to avoid a credit-rating downgrade that could cripple its business. AIG shares fell as much as 52 percent in New York Stock Exchange composite trading today and were down $5.49, or 45 percent, to $6.65 at 10:50 a.m.

The five New York-based securities firms that dominated Wall Street have been reduced to two: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley. While both firms are scheduled to report a drop in third-quarter earnings this year, their business has remained profitable throughout 2008 -- unlike Lehman and Merrill. As concerns swirled about their futures, Goldman's stock dropped as much as 7.9 percent and Morgan Stanley's fell as much as 13 percent in New York Stock Exchange composite trading today.

That's the problem with the "free market", and even more so with greed. Values can't just keep rising indefinitely. If this is the ABC of logic, why didn't anyone act on it? Because this is GOP-driven faith-based investing. Housing will always go up, they say. Based on what? That real estate is Jesus. It will wash away our sins.

``I've been on Wall Street for many years, and I've never seen a weekend like this one,'' said Michael Holland, 64, chairman and founder of New York-based Holland & Co. ``We are unwinding what has been years of silliness in the financial markets, and the silliness is being vaporized as we speak, unfortunately with the stock price of a number of companies involved in it.''

But is it just "silliness" being vaporized, or billions of dollars? And whose money is this? Whose property? Am I living in one piece of this debacle? Probably, yes.

In fact, this AP report indicates that the repercussions are much greater than anyone can really grasp:

Banks are not the only ones struggling in the growing financial crisis. The fund established to insure their deposits is also feeling the pinch, and the taxpayer may be the lender of last resort.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., whose insurance fund has slipped below the minimum target level set by Congress, could be forced to tap tax dollars through a Treasury Department loan if Washington Mutual Inc., the nation's largest thrift, or another struggling rival fails, economists and industry analysts said Tuesday.

Treasury has already come to the rescue of several corporate victims of the housing and credit crunches. The government took over mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and helped finance the sale of investment bank Bear Stearns to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Eleven federally insured banks and thrifts have failed this year, including Pasadena, Calif.-based IndyMac Bank, by far the largest shut down by regulators.

Additional failures of large banks or savings and loans companies seem likely, and that could overwhelm the FDIC's insurance fund, said Brian Bethune, U.S. economist at consulting firm Global Insight.

"We've got a ... retail bank run forming in this country," said Christopher Whalen, senior vice president and managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics.

Now hold on a second. What does that mean? It means the banks are making a run on the federal government and on the FDIC itself. Yes, it's not people making a run on banks. It's the banks making a run on their sole guarantor, the FDIC. What would America be without the FDIC?

A Washington Mutual failure would dwarf the largest bank collapse in U.S. history — Continental Illinois National Bank in 1984, with $33.6 billion in assets.

By comparison, WaMu and its subsidiaries had assets of $309.73 billion as of June 30 and IndyMac had $32 billion when it shut down.

And where does WaMu go when their assets are deemed "junk"? The Fed.

Arthur Murton, director of the FDIC's insurance and research division, said that when large institutions have failed in recent years, the hit to the fund has been about 5 to 10 percent of the company's assets.

Or, failing that, Daddy Warbucks... I mean, the Department of Treasury.

If the FDIC doesn't have enough cash to cover the initial costs of a bank or thrift failure, one option would be short-term loans from the Treasury. That last happened in 1991-92, during the last part of the savings and loan crisis, when the FDIC borrowed $15.1 billion from the Treasury and repaid it with interest about a year later.

But nobody asks, what if Daddy Warbucks is actually Daddy WarSpender? What if the Treasury Department can't take all the pressure?

Think about it for a second. Greed. Deregulation. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Then the "Supply Side" itself starts to collapse. Who's going to shore them up? The People?? They're the first to go. We always say, "Don't worry. The FDIC guarantees all." It's faith-based Republican economics. The FDIC is now Jesus. The FDIC will save us. But what if the FDIC itself can't save us?

Then we turn, at long last, to the Grandaddy of them all, the GOP's Great Satan: The Federal Government. But the businesses whose taxes were gutted to make way for their greed and profit have no more profits. Without profits, their tax revenues will be even less. And without revenues, the Federal Government will go bankrupt. And if the Federal Government goes bankrupt, we face the following:

We lose the war in Iraq and head home, 'cause we can't afford to be there.
We lose the war in Afghanistan, 'cause we can't afford to be there either.
We lose the war on terror, because we haven't yet figured out what the hell it is, let alone afford it.
We lose our status in the world, because we will have major problems with all the countries financially entangled with our affairs.

Oh, and on the home front? Our "homeland" will have a lot more crime, thanks to poverty, a lot less justice, thanks to "Homeland Security", and a lot more homelessness, thanks to ... "trickle down" housing crisis.

All those things hyped by the GOP will be lost. Because the Great Satan is not government corruption, but corruption itself is the Great Satan, and no corporation or powerful entity or nation, for that matter, is immune. Corruption starts with immunity to compassion. It holds nothing sacred but self-interest. And self-interest, as we are beginning, hopefully, to see, is blind, and ultimately self-defeating.

Or was it only the GOP? The Clinton years saw a lot of the same policies and deregulation. Some say,

This is not about Republican or Democratic policies, but systemic bipartisan deregulation. Only a quick bout of sweeping and decisive regulation can fix what's broken.

The New Deal's Glass-Steagall Act essentially put federal regulation in control of greed, by "saying" to the banking industry:

"If you want to raise capital through speculative investors at home or overseas -- fine. But as an investment bank, you don't get our backing and you don't get to mix it up with citizens' lives or use their capital to fund your trading activities."

McCain is still pandering to the disastrous notion of tax cuts being a panacea for all financial ills. It never worked before, and it will only make things worse. At least Barack Obama is using his mind. And note that the New Deal was a Democratic idea. It basically saved America from the brink. Now we are again on the brink. Why doesn't anybody feel it? Or maybe they will...

And if they don't, and put the GOP back at the helm, it will give a chance for the rest of the world to "inherit the earth." The ultimate GOP legacy seems to be the destruction of all their stated goals.

Slavery Alive and Well at Prison Plantations in South - Right Now!

As if it weren't enough that America, under the guiding hand of George W. Bush, is opening more prisons for both criminals and civil "offenders" (aka immigrants sans papers - ooooh, dangerous...) than ever before, or torturing "detainees" openly and without remorse for the first time in America's history, or maintaining prison ships, island prisons (Gitmo, Diego Garcia), we now have slave labor at former slave plantations in the south! Yes, that's right, slaves in plantations are back!

On an expanse of 18,000 acres of farmland, 59 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, long rows of men, mostly African-American, till the fields under the hot Louisiana sun. The men pick cotton, wheat, soybeans and corn. They work for pennies, literally. Armed guards, mostly white, ride up and down the rows on horseback, keeping watch. At the end of a long workweek, a bad disciplinary report from a guard - whether true or false - could mean a weekend toiling in the fields. The farm is called Angola, after the homeland of the slaves who first worked its soil.

This scene is not a glimpse of plantation days long gone by. It's the present-day reality of thousands of prisoners at the maximum security Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola. The block of land on which the prison sits is a composite of several slave plantations, bought up in the decades following the Civil War. Acre-wise, it is the largest prison in the United States. Eighty percent of its prisoners are African-American.

"Angola is disturbing every time I go there," Tory Pegram, who coordinates the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3, told Truthout. "It's not even really a metaphor for slavery. Slavery is what's going on."

Mwalimu Johnson, who spent 15 years as a prisoner at the penitentiary and now works as executive secretary of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, concurred.

"I would truthfully say that Angola prison is a sophisticated plantation," Johnson told Truthout. "'Cotton is King' still applies when it come to Angola."

Angola is not alone. Sixteen percent of Louisiana prisoners are compelled to perform farm labor, as are 17 percent of Texas prisoners and a full 40 percent of Arkansas prisoners, according to the 2002 Corrections Yearbook, compiled by the Criminal Justice Institute. They are paid little to nothing for planting and picking the same crops harvested by slaves 150 years ago.

In Louisiana, prisoner-slaves pick cotton for a whopping 4 cents an hour. That's right, it's 2008 and yes... 4 cents an hour. How did they arrive at this figure?

Many prison farms, Angola included, have gruesome post-bellum histories. In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, Angola made news with a host of assaults - and killings - of inmates by guards. In 1952, a group of Angola prisoners found their work conditions so oppressive that they resorted to cutting their Achilles' tendons in protest. At Mississippi's Parchman Farm, another plantation-to-prison convert, prisoners were routinely subjected to near-death whippings and even shootings for the first half of the 20th century. Cummins Farm, in Arkansas, sported a "prison hospital" that doubled as a torture chamber until a federal investigation exposed it in 1970. And Texas's Jester State Prison Farm, formerly Harlem Prison Farm, garnered its claim to fame from eight prisoners who suffocated to death after being sealed into a tiny cell and abandoned by guards.

But this stuff is gone now, right? Well, not exactly...

Since a wave of activism forced prison farm brutalities into the spotlight in the 1970s, some reforms have taken place: At Angola, for example, prison violence has been significantly reduced. But to a large extent, the official stories have been repackaged. State correctional departments now portray prison farm labor as educational or vocational opportunities, as opposed to involuntary servitude. The Alabama Department of Corrections web site, for example, states that its "Agriculture Program" "allows inmates to be trained in work habits and allows them to develop marketable skills in the areas of: Farming, Animal Husbandry, Vegetable, meat, and milk processing."

According to Angola's web site, "massive reform" has transformed the prison into a "stable, safe and constitutional" environment. A host of new faith-based programs at Angola have gotten a lot of media play, including features in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor.

Cathy Fontenot, Angola's assistant warden, told Truthout that the penitentiary is now widely known as an "innovative and progressive prison."

"The warden says it takes good food, good medicine, good prayin' and good playin' to have a good prison," Fontenot said, referring to the head warden, Burl Cain. "Angola has all these."

However, the makeover has been markedly incomplete, according to prisoners and their advocates.

"Most of the changes are cosmetic," said Johnson, who was released from Angola in 1992 and, in his new capacity as a prison rights advocate, stays in contact with Angola prisoners. "In the conventional plantations, slaves were given just enough food, clothing and shelter to be a financial asset to the owner. The same is true for the Louisiana prison system."

Wages for agricultural and industrial prison labor are still almost nonexistent compared with the federal minimum wage. Angola prisoners are paid anywhere from four to twenty cents per hour, according to Fontenot. Agricultural laborers fall on the lowest end of the pay scale.

What's more, prisoners may keep only half the money they make, according to Johnson, who notes that the other half is placed in an account for prisoners to use to "set themselves up" after they're released.

Besides the fact that two cents an hour may not accumulate much of a start-up fund, there is one glaring peculiarity about this arrangement: due to some of the harshest sentencing practices in the country, most Angola prisoners are never released. Ninety-seven percent will die in prison, according to Fontenot.

(Ironically, the "progressive" label may well apply to Angola, relative to some locations: In Texas, Arkansas and Georgia, most prison farms pay nothing at all.)

Angola prisoners technically work eight-hour days. However, since extra work can be mandated as a punishment for "bad behavior," hours may pile up well over that limit, former prisoner Robert King told Truthout.

Did they just say 2 cents an hour??? Right now? Where is the outrage?
And yes, we just heard 97% of Angola prisoners die in prison. What kind of justice system is this? Yes, this is America, now, and nobody even has the slightest idea.

"Prisoners worked out in the field, sometimes 17 hours straight, rain or shine," remembered King, who spent 29 years in solitary confinement at Angola, until he was released in 2001 after proving his innocence of the crime for which he was incarcerated.

It's common for Angola prisoners to work 65 hours a week after disciplinary reports have been filed, according to Johnson. Yet, those reports don't necessarily indicate that a prisoner has violated any rules. Johnson describes guards writing out reports well before the weekend, fabricating incident citations, then filling in prisoners' names on Friday, sometimes at random. Those prisoners would then spend their weekend in the cotton fields.

Although mechanical cotton pickers are almost universally used on modern-day farms, Angola prisoners must harvest by hand, echoing the exact ritual that characterized the plantation before emancipation.

According to King, these practices are undergirded by entrenched notions of race-based authority.

"Guards talked to prisoners like slaves," King told Truthout. "They'd tell you the officer was always right, no matter what."

Is this not slavery? Or shall we re-define slavery like the GOP and Dick Cheney redefined torture??

During the 1970s, prisoners were routinely beaten or "dungeonized" without cause, King said. Now, guards' power abuses are more expertly concealed, but they persist, fed by racist assumptions, according to King.

Johnson described some of the white guards burning crosses on prison lawns.

Much of this overt racism stems from the way the basic system - and even the basic population - of Angola and its environs have remained static since the days of slavery, according to Pegram. After the plantation was converted to a prison, former plantation overseers and their descendants kept their general roles, becoming prison officials and guards. This white overseer community, called B-Line, is located on the farm's grounds, both close to the prisoners and completely separate from them. In addition to their prison labor, Angola's inmates do free work for B-Line residents, from cutting their grass to trimming their hair to cleaning up Prison View Golf Course, the only course in the country where players can watch prisoners laboring as they golf.

Let's run by that one again: watching black prisoners/slaves work at hard labor while the "white folks" can take time off from their golf games to watch??? Is this amusement for modern racists?

Michael Moore made a mistake on Larry King when he said no one will not vote for Barack Obama because he is black. Obviously, he did not hear about those white golfin' & watchin' the slaves folks.

Another landmark of the town, the Angola Prison Museum, is also run by multi-generation Angola residents. The museum exhibits "Old Sparky," the solid oak electric chair used for executions at Angola until 1991. Visitors can purchase shirts that read, "Angola: A Gated Community."

Despite its antebellum MO, Angola's labor system does not break the law. In fact, it is explicitly authorized by the Constitution. The 13th Amendment, which prohibits forced labor, contains a caveat. It reads, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States."

That clause has a history of being manipulated, according to Fordham Law Professor Robert Kaczorowski, who has written extensively on civil rights and the Constitution. Directly after the 13th Amendment was enacted, it began to be utilized to justify slavery-like practices, according to Kaczorowski. Throughout the South, former slaves were arrested for trivial crimes (vagrancy, for example), fined, and imprisoned when they could not pay their fines. Then, landowners could supply the fine in exchange for the prisoner's labor, essentially perpetuating slavery.

Although such close reproductions of private enslavement were phased out, the 13th Amendment still permits involuntary servitude.

"Prisoners can be forced to work for the government against their will, and this is true in every state," Kaczorowski told Truthout.

Ah, so this is the new weapon used, especially by the GOP but not exclusively by them, to oppress and remove the rights of Americans these days: commit a crime, or be convicted of one, and you lose all rights, even the right not to be enslaved. And, not coincidentally, African Americans are by far the most likely to be forced into this type of slave labor.

In recent years, activists have begun to focus on the 13th Amendment's exception for prisoners, according to Pegram. African-Americans are disproportionately incarcerated; one in three black men has been in prison at some point in his life. Therefore, African-Americans are much more likely to be subject to involuntary servitude.

"I would have more faith in that amendment if it weren't so clear that our criminal justice system is racially biased in a really obvious way," Pegram said.

Prison activists like Johnson believe that ultimately, permanently changing the status quo at places like Angola may mean changing the Constitution - amending the 13th Amendment to abolish involuntary servitude for all.

"I don't have any illusions that this is a simple process," Johnson said. "Many people are apathetic about what happens in prisons. It would be very difficult, but I would not suggest it would be impossible."

Even without a constitutional overhaul, some states have done away with prison farms of their own accord. In Connecticut, where the farms were prevalent before the 1970s, the farms have been phased out, partially due to the perceived slavery connection. "Many black inmates viewed farm work under these circumstances as too close to slavery to want to participate," according to a 1995 report to the Connecticut General Assembly.

For now, though, the prison farm is alive and well in Louisiana. And at Angola, many prisoners can expect to be buried on the land they till. Two cemeteries, Point Lookout 1 and 2, lie on the prison grounds. No one knows exactly how many prisoners are interred in the former, since, after a flood washed away the first Angola cemetery in 1927, the bodies were reburied in a large common grave.

Point Lookout 1 is now full, and with the vast majority of Angola's prisoners destined to die in prison, Point Lookout 2 is well on its way, according to King.

"Angola is pretty huge," King said. "They've got a lot of land to bury a lot of prisoners."

No one knows how many of the prisoners kept in involuntary servitude at Angola are innocent. But at least one who has proven his innocence in court, overturning his conviction, is still behind bars.

Where's the outcry? Where's the outrage? Where's the media? Busy in Hollywood, where supposedly the money is. Or... is it just where they feel safe?

GOP Convention a Lie-Fest Unchallenged by Media

The Republican Party's "strategy" is blatant lying about the Other Party and its Candidate, having nothing of its own to offer except the failed "concepts" of giving tax breaks to the rich, euphemistically referred to as "business" - note: neither "small" nor "big" - and pouring what's left - the lifeblood of the middle class - into overseas military adventures that benefit a few war profiteers in the upper crust of Republicandom and spill the blood of countless people for whom they care, apparently, more about as places to drape flags when they die and can be "praised for their sacrifice" than their actual life-problems.

The lies about Obama are grotesque, obvious, and need to be attacked, because nobody in the media is apparently interested in truth enough to do it.

Lie #1, from Bush-speechwriter-mouthpiece Sarah Palin:

"There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the state senate."

Oh yeah? What about this:

Here are three numbers every Obama supporter needs to know by heart:

820 and 427 and 152

820 is the number of 4laws Obama sponsored in the Illinois State Senate.
427 is the current count of the number of bills Obama has co-sponsored in the U.S. Senate.
152 is the most recent tally of the number of bills that Senator Obama has authored.
You can see his current legislative record here. Three of them, including S. 3558 ("A bill to provide for enhanced food-borne illness surveillance and food safety capacity") were moved upon just last week.

Actually, it's not hard to find bills by Obama that qualify both as major, and as reforms. As Andrew Sullivan points out:

...it seems extremely weird that she should believe that Obama's record is a total zero.

At her first press conference, why not ask her why she said that Obama has never passed a single reform, when he passed the 2007 Ethics Reform, described by many as the most sweeping package of its kind since Watergate. Of course, she doesn't know. She was given this speech. But she should be asked to respond to the question of why she said something patently untrue to the entire country.

As for Obama's community organizer experience, which Palin dismissed as being comparable to her stint as mayor of Wasilla, AK, check this out:

Governor Palin, Senator McCain and the whole RNC should be ashamed of themselves. They call themselves Christians and having high moral standards, but then they slam Senator Obama for not having executive experience when he was community organizing as the original Director of Developing Communities Project. For those of you who don't know what the project is, go here: Barack Obama not only grew the DCP from himself as the sole person to 13 total employees in his three years there, he also increased revenue from $70,000 annually to $400,000 annually. The area he served has well over 100,000 people. He did this all at the age of 22 while Governor Pailin was still a teenager.

The DCP is alive and well today with 32 employees and directors. It provides literacy assistance to the poor, anti-drug education to the young, and leadership training for young women as well as helping to empower the people of the South Side of Chicago to take control over their lives. Besides their children, has either Senator McCain or Governor Palin started something from scratch and built it into something independent of themselves. In three years from age 22 to 25 Senator Obama did something that most business leaders only dream of: created a self-sustaining entity, did it with the support of the community, for the benefit of all involved and that is alive and well after 23 years.

And say, did anyone mention the impressive feat of grassroots organizing that brought Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States? That alone shows leadership skills - the sort of skill needed in a democracy, not an autocracy - that makes John McCain, he of many "across the aisle" years, look inexperienced.

Speaking of which, how about this:

Go to http://thomas.loc.gov and "Browse Bills By Sponsors" in the middle of the page - from there, you can see the bills currently in congress sponsored by each member. In this tally, could you guess who has more bills sponsored - Obama or McSame?

The count is 129 - 38. Obama wins AGAIN!

Uygur: What if Bristol Palin Was Black?

Christian-right leaders and conservative stalwarts have praised the decision of Bristol Palin, the daughter of Governor Sarah Palin, to carry her child to term. She is 17 and conceived this child out of wedlock. Now imagine she wasn't the daughter of a prominent Republican politician but an average person. Now imagine she was black.
What do you think conservatives would have to say about her? "Typical, urban youth with no sense of responsibility raised with loose morals who plans to depend on the state to take care of her child." You know it. It's not within dispute. That's exactly what they would say.

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