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Voter IDs

The story claiming requiring voter ID's is a Republican plot to steal elections is a real joke. The history of stolen elections is a long proud tradition of Democrats going back to 1960 where legions of the dead voting for Kennedy in Cook county gave him Illinois and the presidency and is beyond dispute. The 2000 and 2004 election had Democrats voting in New York and Florida, and Democrat leaders urging illegals to register so please be balanced when you push these fairy tales of yours. The Democrats are masters of voter fraud and stolen elections.

Frank Fawcett
Cameron Park Ca.

Obama’s clarifying win: the fly on the wall is the wall

Barack Obama’s triumph on May 6 was a victory over a wall that pretends to be a fly on the wall.

For a long time, the nation’s body politic has been shoved up against that wall -- known as the news media.

Despite all its cracks and gaps, what cements the wall is mostly a series of repetition compulsion disorders. Whether the media perseveration is on Pastor Wright, the words "bitter" and "cling," or an absent flag lapel-pin, the wall’s surfaces are more rigid when they’re less relevant to common human needs and shared dreams.

"We’ve already seen it," Obama said during his victory speech in North Carolina, "the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn’t agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along."

And how, they’ve played along. From the front pages of "quality" dailies to the reportage of NPR’s drive-time news to the blather-driven handicapping on cable television, the ways that media structures have functioned in recent

Burma not thankful for U.S. warships offering cyclone aid

BANGKOK, Thailand -- When Burma's biggest enemy the United States offered to send emergency cyclone relief, it probably sounded like North Korea wanting to send its warships and troops to New Orleans to rescue people in the aftermath of Katrina.

Imagine North Korea simultaneously trumpeting their purported benevolence with public insults against Washington for not warning Americans, or providing them with escape routes, before Hurricane Katrina hit the coast.

To complete the comparison, this through-the-looking-glass North Korea would also be successfully strangling the U.S. with harsh international economic sanctions, fueling widespread unemployment, a shattered banking system and other woes for most Americans in a failed bid to change Washington's policies.

Little wonder why Burma, a xenophobic Southeast Asian country also known as Myanmar, recoiled in silence when Washington said it just wants to help.

Then the Pentagon offered to send its nearby USS Kitty Hawk and USS Nimitz to Burma's cyclone-stricken Irrawaddy River delta.

Coups & superstitions

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Coup-crazy Thailand is spooked about another possible putsch, after Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej condemned a fortune teller who met the frustrated leader of the 2006 coup.

The prime minister expressed outrage that the influential fortune teller, Varin Buaviratlert, also reportedly predicted Mr. Samak's government was going to be overthrown.

Many Thais are easily frightened by the specter of the supernatural in this deeply superstitious, Southeast Asian Buddhist country, which freely incorporates Hindu and animist beliefs.

Thais frequently perform elaborate rituals to improve their luck against perceived dangers from ghosts, bad karma, unlucky feng shui, wrong-sounding family names, the birth of a baby, curses, and a slew of other real and imagined phenomenon.

Their social insecurity has been worsened by nearly 20 coups, and attempted coups, since the 1932.

The prime minister's current coup fears, and the soothsayer's predictions, are shaking the confidence of some people while boosting the hopes of others -- and attracting sarcastic barbs.

Cyclone help for Irrawaddy Delta survivors

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Wounded and terrified survivors waited for help on Tuesday, picking through flimsy bamboo, thatch and wooden wreckage in villages flattened by Cyclone Nargis, which Burma's military regime said killed more than 22,000 people on the exposed Irrawaddy River delta.

International and local relief agencies, medical teams, food convoys and clearance teams grappled with paperwork, debris-covered roads, swollen rivers and a lack of telecommunications, unable to reach most victims along Burma's worst-hit southern coast.

Punishing winds and horizontal sheets of rain, lifted from the warm Bay of Bengal, caused death and destruction in a diagonal path across the delta after hitting the coast at noon on Saturday and shoving northeast past Bogalay town toward the port of Rangoon 12 hours later.

The weakening storm has since crept further northeast across mountainous terrain on the Burma-Thailand border, but survivors stuck on the delta are now in danger of disease, hunger and neglect.

Rights without "identifcation"

For nearly 200 years Americans could exercise their enumerated constitutional right to buy a firearm without ID. How many of you New World Order Useful Idiot Corporatist Ass Whores pretending to be "progressive" will stand up for THAT right?

Robert O'Rourke
Los Angeles

Stimulus check

BUY A HAND-SIGNED, 11x14 PRINT OF THIS CARTOON

Comment on column

Dear Free Press Editors,

I just read Jason Miller's essay called Jesus Knows a Camel... dated 4/7/08. I can't argue with any of it but his statement that Israel is a murderous state. I am a left wing liberal but I am pro-Israel. I have read many smears of Israel on left wing sites. I don't know why it is but people who smear Israel on the left obviously are ignorant of the history and context of what's been going on there since 1948. I suggest that you don't have your writers write about issues when they don't know the history. Stick to what you know. Leave Israel to the experts. It is so complicated that if one just reads the newspaper these days and that makes them think they actually understand the issues--it's not possible. It will take a lot more study. Newspapers do an abysmal job of covering Israel. They always leave out half the story.

There is so much background information that is needed to really understand. So stop blaming the victim. You may think you get it, but you obviously don't if you let that sort of commentary on your site.

The Arab world has used the Palestinians as a political football

About the voting law

I think that congress should change the voting right law where as if you change over parties, in order to effect who gets elected because of what a drug addict talk show host said, then there should be a law that says, if you change over to another party, then you cannot change back for two years, and that you have to vote in the general election for the party that you have chosen.

Thank you
Jerry

Trip report by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan

Rosalynn, Jeff, and I arrived in Israel Sunday, 4/13/08, after a very exciting and successful election monitoring mission in Nepal (see prior trip report). Since Israel had declined to approve a previously planned visit by three of us Elders (Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson, and me), I expected a similar negative reaction when I substituted this trip on behalf of The Carter Center. Sure enough, all my requests to meet with ministers of the government were publicly rejected and, more seriously, three requests from our Secret Service detail to work with Israeli security were rejected. This was our first experience of this kind in more than 125 foreign nations we've visited since leaving the White House. (After several news stories on this subject, when we returned to Israel, Shin Bet security met us at the airport and worked with us.)

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