Eventually

We got one

Full spectrum dominance

What President from McKinley on has ever repudiated the principals contained in "Project for a New American Century"? Our present wars are not mistakes. They are all a part of full spectrum dominance; a classy phrase for "We own the world" as Chomsky likes to say. Come on, Harvey, we the people are just spectators. History repeatedly shows that public opinion has very little influence on the making of foreign policy. It's all a faint move to show the Left that Obama is one of us. He will add 34,000 troops after the new year. Why do you think he didn't go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki? It would look absurd even to our whore press a President who pays homage to the victims of the bombings while escalating the wars. Hey, didn't Truman say that he didn't lose a minutes sleep dropping the bombs? In other words, our Presidents lose something once they take office. It's called humanity.

KSM and MSM

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate "mainstream" media make quite a pair. We're hearing a very "balanced" debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?

We're not hearing that trying criminals for the crime of 9-11 ought to have been what we did years ago, rather than waging wars in response to a crime. We're not discussing the possibility that had alleged 9-11 criminals been tried years ago rather than being imprisoned and tortured together with hundreds of innocents depicted as subhuman monsters, the "war on terror" might have been replaced with simply the wars on Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis. What effect might that have had on Americans' willingness to surrender their Bill of Rights? We aren't hearing about that.

They should get a union

"If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union. It's that simple. We need to stand up to the business lobby and pass the Employee Free Choice Act. That's why I've been fighting for it in the Senate and that's why I'll make it the law of the land when I'm president of the United States." --Barack Obama

Nobody is making it the law of the land. Nobody is fighting for it. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) has drifted down to the bottom of the AFL-CIO's website, buried beneath good economic proposals which, however, do nothing to build a labor movement. EFCA is not to be found anywhere on the front page of Change to Win's website at all. The media's not smearing EFCA with U.S. Chamber of Commerce lies anymore. Congress and the White House are silent. Any escalation of pressure on senators from union members has never materialized, the polite letter-writing campaigns having drifted away rather than ramping up into pickets or sit-ins.

On voter registration, the Columbus Dispatch gets it right, almost

Is election reform brewing in the Buckeye State? In an extensive and well-argued editorial the Dispatch made the case for the integration of key state government databases into a statewide electronic voter registration system under the control of the Secretary of State’s office, as proposed in pending legislation.

Ohio’s voter registration databases are in disarray. In the 2008 presidential election, many voters found their right to vote challenged in Ohio because of discrepancies in state and federal databases. For example, under Social Security I am listed as Robert John Fitrakis, but on my driver’s license it’s Robert J. Fitrakis. On the voting rolls I’m Robert Fitrakis. If the states would integrate their databases and establish a single form for voter registration, bizarre challenges over middle initials and names may become a thing of the past.

2008 Ohio Election Protection Report

2008 Ohio Election Protection Report
by
Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism
Election Integrity
The Green Party of Ohio

Presented December 2, 2008 at the Ohio Secretary of State Elections Summit

Introduction

The November Presidential election was a historic landslide victory for Barack Obama. A closer election would have magnified the many troubling aspects of our election systems, despite the improvements made by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

The Ohio Green Party, Election Integrity, and the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism deployed a team of observers, exit pollsters, and Video the Vote volunteers throughout Ohio counties on Election Day. Observers monitored the opening of precincts, activities throughout the day, and the closing of polls. Other observers spent election night watching the activities at county Board of Elections (BOE) offices. Exit pollsters surveyed voters leaving the polls and videographers were on hand to videotape the day’s happenings.

For Obama it's one (term) if by war, two if by peace

As the world awaits Barack Obama's decision on Afghanistan, a lethal myth has spread. It says that standing up to the military will doom him to be a single-term president.

The "one if by peace" myth comes most recently from Garry Wills in the New York Review of Books. Wills mourns that Obama would commit political suicide by pulling out of both Iraq and Afghanistan because "the charges from various quarters would be toxic---that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure."

Against all that, says Wills, "he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate."

Coming from an astute observer like Wills, this is a stunning analysis---and dead wrong.

In fact, the only way Obama can begin to think about getting re-elected is to leave the Afghan quagmire and do the same from Iraq.

The key phrase here is "the quarters where such charges would originate."

Come together right now

If you have an interest in grassroots organizing, international alliance building, the peace movement, the labor movement, the conversion of the U.S. economy from weapons to human needs, the preservation of life on earth (come on, admit it), the weaponization of space, or the autobiographical insights of smart and determined people, then I cannot more strongly recommend that you get a copy of "Come Together Right Now: Organizing Stories from a Fading Empire," by my friend and ally Bruce Gagnon.

Isolated incident

Moving forward from the latest massacre, three narratives — well, one of them is no more than the familiar, all-purpose shrug of experts, puzzled over yet another “isolated incident” — are vying to explain what happened and set the direction of our future.

Is Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged killer of 13 people at Fort Hood last week, A) a Muslim terrorist; B) a solitary guy who snapped; or C) a broken healer and victim of the misbegotten war on terror?

While the reality may be more complex than we can imagine, and ultimately unknowable — and while national grief demands, at the very least, a refusal to jump to quick, convenient conclusions and politicize the tragedy — no healing at all can happen without a simultaneous groping for understanding. Let our explanations, I pray, go deeper than the suspect’s surname. And let them honor the facts of the matter.

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