Why Being a "Divider" Was Better Strategy Than a "Uniter" & Other Regrets of the Left

I'm almost embarrassed that I didn't put two and two together like Matt Bastard has. Of course, I didn't have the funds that the Rethugs had for research, but this reasoning rings so true in that logical chord in my psyche that anyone not considering his essay seriously will feel like he/she is sleepwalking through the rest of his term. And only one term to be sure. (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

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In late 2000, even as the result of the presidential election was still being contested in court, George W. Bush’s chief pollster Matt Dowd was writing a memo for Rove that would reach a surprising conclusion. Based on a detailed examination of poll data from the previous two decades, Dowd’s memo argued that the percentage of swing voters had shrunk to a tiny fraction of the electorate. Most self-described “independent” voters “are independent in name only” . . . .

Republicans know that investing in polarization, not aisle-crossing bipartisan capitulation, pays dividends — it’s why they haven’t been afraid to break out barely-muted racist dog whistles and fall back on appeals to naked fear of all-powerful government intervention (Death panels! FEMA camps! ACORN!) Rather than moving to the (constantly shifting) centre, which some talking heads have suggested is key to a return from the wilderness, the GOP has instead gone hard right, doing its goddamndest to engage/fire up its conservative base, especially those wayward souls who last year stopped publicly identifying as Republicans and, in some cases, voted for Obama or, more often than not, simply stayed home (and, most importantly, didn’t donate to the RNC). What the GOP is trying to do with their seemingly self-destructive obstruction uber alles strategy is simple: work the base into a free-spending fever pitch while simultaneously demoralizing Democrats and disengaging skeptical independents (an effort aided quite handily by ineffectual leadership in both Congress and the White House, both deeply in thrall with the oracular advice imparted by those self-appointed soothsayers of Byzantine Washington protocol, the DC punditocracy and press).

And should “Obama . . . have seen it coming” like Hendrik Hertzberg says in The New Yorker?

Perhaps it was naïve, and obviously it was optimistic, to hope that once Obama—having been elected by a large and undisputed majority, unlike his two predecessors—took office the nastiness of the assault against him would subside. And so it did, briefly. But as the reality sank in that this temperamentally conservative President intends to make good on his substantively progressive promises, the fury returned, uglier than before and no longer subject to the minimal restraints inherent in a national electoral campaign aimed at persuading a plurality of voters. Lies and fantasies about health-care reform swirled together with lies and fantasies about the chief executive himself.

So much for all the Bush/Chenegang's screams (although they knew they would be found out too late, clever monkeys they) that the French were not being smart when they questioned their response to 9/11, but were "cheese-eating, surrender monkeys." (I really admire Mark Crispin Miller.)

“We’re Number 37!” (France is No. 1)

And why would anyone be surprised that the CIA-implicated would like to shut down the investigation? Was your mouth open wide enough when you read this one?

Seven former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency asked President Obama on Friday to shut down the new Justice Department inquiry into past abuses during interrogations of terrorism suspects, arguing that it “will seriously damage” the nation’s ability to protect itself.

Suzan _______________________

Is the Awarding of Bonuses to the Revealed Criminals at the "Gangster Mega-banks" Psychological Warfare (PsyOps)?

Because it surely seems like it to me (and a few others). Gretchen Morgenson speaks plainly in the pages of Sunday's New York Times, which interestingly enough did absolutely no investigative reporting along these lines when the glamour boys Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan were spinning the golden finance lies leading us to this precipice. Did anyone mention the New York Times' two-tiered reporting system yet? Like when the Times' sultry Judy Miller was leading the country down the primrose path (at the behest of Dick Cheney's man Ahmed Chalabi) to the War On Iraq? Or do we just accept that sometimes the New York Times actually reports straight news? (Or am I making too many connections too quickly?)

“As we are unpeeling what was happening on Wall Street, we may see that Wall Street didn’t find the safety from litigation risk that it hoped to find in securitization,” said Kathleen Engel, a professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. “I think there is potential for liability if borrowers can engage in discovery to see exactly how much the sponsors were shaping the practices of the lenders.” . . . IT is hard not to be dismayed by the fact that two years into our economic crisis so few perpetrators of financial misdeeds have been held accountable for their actions. That so many failed mortgage lenders do not appear to face any legal liability for the role they played in almost blowing up the economy really rankles. They have simply moved on to the next “opportunity.”

And what of the giant institutions that helped finance these monumentally toxic loans, or arranged the securitizations that bundled the loans and sold them to investors? So far, they have argued, fairly successfully, that they operated independently of the original lenders. Therefore, they are not responsible for any questionable loans that were made.

But this argument is growing tougher to defend. Some legal experts point to a number of cases in which plaintiffs contend that firms involved in the securitization process, like trustees hired to oversee the pools of loans backing securities, worked so closely with the lenders that they should face liability as members of a joint venture. And these experts see a rising receptiveness to this argument by some courts.

“As we are unpeeling what was happening on Wall Street, we may see that Wall Street didn’t find the safety from litigation risk that it hoped to find in securitization,” said Kathleen Engel, a professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University. “I think there is potential for liability if borrowers can engage in discovery to see exactly how much the sponsors were shaping the practices of the lenders.”

. . . fighting a foreclosure on their home of 25 years that they say was a result of an abusive and predatory loan made by NovaStar Mortgage Inc. A lender that had been cited by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for improprieties, like widely hiring outside contractors as loan officers, NovaStar ran out of cash in 2007 and is no longer making loans.

Also named as a defendant in the case is the initial trustee of the securitization that contained the Jordans’ loan: JPMorgan Chase. In 2006, the bank transferred its trustee business to Bank of New York Mellon, which is also a defendant in the case. The Jordans are asking that all three defendants pay punitive damages.

“We contend that the trustee has direct liability on the theory that even though they were not sitting at the loan closing table, they were involved in the securitization and profited from it,” said Sarah E. Bolling, a lawyer in the Home Defense Program at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society who represents the Jordans.

“The prospectus had been written before the loan was closed. If this loan was not going to be assigned to a trust, it would not have been made.”

IN their legal briefs, the trustees have made the traditional argument that their relationship with NovaStar was not a joint venture and that they are not responsible for any problems with the Jordans’ loan.

A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment on the case but said that because the bank was no longer the trustee, it was not directly involved in the litigation. A spokesman for Bank of New York Mellon also declined to comment.

Doesn't seem like it could be much clearer, so where are these borrowers who "can engage in discovery to see exactly how much the sponsors were shaping the practices of the lenders?" I'm awaiting their entrance.

Mark Crispin Miller (my secret love) fills us in on whatever's missing from today's puzzle. (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

A few short months ago Goldman Sachs was deemed too big to fail, and allowed to sink its fangs into the public vein. Not only did it receive direct assistance from lowly tax-payers like you and I, the gaggle of Goldman alumni that run the Treasury Department and implemented the Troubled Asset Relief Program funneled tens of billions to insurance giant AIG to assure that it could cover about 13 billion in Goldman’s losses. Goldman paid back the TARP loans — because caps on executive pay are a form of socialism, of course — but is still making hay on the public dime, specifically on the sale of $28 billion worth of subsidized debt courtesy of the FDIC.

But today, as the New York Times put it, “up and down Wall Street, analysts and traders are buzzing” about the fact that Goldman is reporting “blowout profits” to the tune of $3.4 billion in the 2nd quarter. In a masterful bit of understatement, the Washington Post notes that “the New York investment bank profited from turmoil in the financial markets, the absence of former rivals and the continued support of the federal government.”

It’s good for Goldman’s shareholders and great for its traders — according to the WaPo, “Goldman said it set aside $6.65 billion for employee compensation in the second quarter.” But for everyone else? Not so much.

And not only because of the costs borne by the public, not only for the moral hazard this kind of crony capitalism represents, not just for the unfairness inherent in the pervasive reverse socialism we’re seeing these days, but also because of the lessons that support has left unlearned. Protected from the fallout of their bad bets, Wall Street’s casinos are open for business again. Just this week, Bloomberg reported that Morgan Stanley was trotting out another “Collateralized Debt Obligation” backed by shaky loans that’s again getting a AAA rating (if you have no idea what that means, see my piece from last October titled, “How Wall Street’s Scam Artists Turned Home Mortgages Into Economic WMDs”).

Read more.

If you can stand it. Suzan

"Raving Christianist" and Others "Cleaned Up As Market Crashed"

All secrets revealed here. Especially the secret about why the Democrats are voting like Rethuglicans on almost everything that affects (and will affect much, much more in the future) you negatively (but them positively) financially. And if you think these thugs were smart enough to play the market so precisely on their own, I've got several bridges in Brooklyn to sell you cheap. This essay also reminds me of the transaction transferring ownership of the WTC in the July preceding that fateful September to a Mr. Larry Silverstein. Do you wish you had friends this lucky? (How many more coincidences can we stand?) Mark Crispin Martin reports that (emphasis marks added - Ed.):

Members of the House Financial Services Committee, who are supposed to oversee the banking industry, each seem to have made a bundle as the market tanked, by snapping up, or dumping, bank stocks.

One of them, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, is a raving Christianist whose “re-election” in 2006 was evidently stolen (from John Russell), like that year’s “wins” by other Florida Republicans, including Tom Feeney (who “beat” Clint Curtis) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (who “beat” Frank Gonzalez).

Those outcomes were contested by the “losers,” who canvassed their respective districts, and thereby found that the official vote counts were completely off, by margins large enough to have “elected” their Republican opponents.

(Curtis led that effort, knowing, as he did, that the Republicans in Florida were routinely rigging vote-counts electronically – as he knew all too well, since Feeney had, two years before, asked him to help develop a computer program for that very purpose. For more, please click here; and for a terrifying documentary about it all, see Patty Sharaf’s Murder, Spies and Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story.)

So what did those three “losers” do with their statistical proof of Bushevik election fraud? They took it to the House Administration Committee, now in Democratic hands – and that committee unanimously voted not to look at the evidence. And that was that.

Why do I (re)tell this story here? Because both parties are corrupt – as the article below makes clear. For it wasn’t only the extremist Brown-Waite who made a bundle off of bank stocks while the market crashed. As the blog below informs us, that surreptitious rip-off was a perfectly bipartisan affair.

So how can we expect the Democrats (or most of them) to give a s**t about the dire state of our voting system, when it served to put them in their very lucrative positions?

Members of U.S. House Financial

Services Committee snapped up or dumped bank stocks as bottom fell out of market

A representative for Rep. Charlie Wilson said the congressman leaves day-to-day investment decisions to a money manager.

Members of Congress were chasing profits while making policy

WASHINGTON — As financial markets tumbled and the government worked to stave off panic by pumping billions of dollars into banks last fall, several members of Congress who oversee the banking industry were grabbing up or dumping bank stocks.

Anticipating bargains or profits or just trying to unload before the bottom fell out, these members of the House Financial Services Committee or brokers on their behalf were buying and selling stocks including Bank of America and Citigroup — some of the very corporations their committee would later rap for greed, a Plain Dealer examination of congressional stock market transactions shows.

Financial disclosure records show that some of these Financial Services Committee members, including Ohio Rep. Charlie Wilson, made bank stock trades on the same day the banks were getting a government bailout from a program Congress approved. The transactions may not have been illegal or against congressional rules, but securities attorneys and congressional watchdog groups say they raise flags about the appearance of conflicts of interest. Read more.

Please. Suzan _____________

Illiteracy in High Places? Not Forgetting (or Noticing) A Thing

Good Night Irene. We might as well lull ourselves to sleep every night to this classic as we lurch toward the next wave of bankster bailouts. It's almost too easy these days to find excellent sources of intelligently derived economic information that seem to have escaped the smarty pants (I'm looking at you, Rahm - yeah, and Tim, too) in the Obama administration (or not), so you have to admit that somehow people are not really trying to figure out what is taking place daily (in every evening's news!) affecting their future economic well being. Today's essay by Mark Crispin Miller commenting on Michael Collins' exposé of the Democratic Rethuglicans (okay, that's my title, but read it and determine where I'm going wrong) provides a very pointed case. (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

The banks continue to take trillions from the Treasury but Congress couldn’t pass a simple bill to save the homes of 1.7 million families. They forgot to cap outrageous credit card interest rates in the so called “credit card bill of rights.” We’re getting into a new “empire” groove in Afghanistan. There’s no new 911 investigation and the election system is still out of control. It’s all one party, The Money Party. Who do they think they’re kidding? Time for truth . . . . One party created the current disaster. The other has embraced the broadest parameters of the policies that created the disasters that voters want fixed — wealth transfers to the ultra rich while the vast majority gets just about nothing plus mindless, counterproductive fantasies of empire through war.

The two parties and the elitists who look down their noses on the overwhelming majority of citizens assume that the people will simply tolerate the creation of a catastrophe by one party and the perpetuation of that grave injustice to citizens by the other. When you’re broke, you know it. When you’re out of work, you know it. When there are no jobs, you know it. And when the country continues to fight overseas but does nothing to protect economic security at home, you know it.

Ex-Reagan Treasury official Paul Craig Roberts is just about around the bend this week as he tries to wake up the populace to what is happening to the US dollar. He says he thinks there is "illiteracy in high places," but I've got my doubts. There is nothing wrong with this man's ability to perceive economic truths (now, anyway), and I really enjoyed (darkly, of course) his mentioning of Geithner's Chinese audience laughing out loud at his (Geithner's, of course) ignorance. Those Chinese. What must they be thinking of us? (Emphasis marks and some editing added - Ed.)

If a person lives long enough, he can watch everyone forget everything they learned. Everyone includes Federal Reserve Chairmen, economists, Bank of America “strategists,” and even Bloomberg.com. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke thinks he can hold down US long-term interest rates by purchasing mortgage bonds and US Treasuries. Sixty years ago the Federal Reserve understood that this was an impossible feat. After an acrimonious public dispute with the US Treasury, in 1951 the Federal Reserve forced an “Accord” on the government that eliminated the Fed’s obligation to monetize Treasury debt in order to hold down long-term interest rates. John Snyder wanted to protect World War II bond purchasers by preventing any rise in interest rates, which would mean a decline in the price of the bonds. The Fed understood that monetizing the debt to hold down interest rates meant loss of control over the money supply. The policy of suppressing interest rates could only work until the financial markets anticipated rising inflation and bid down the bond prices.

If the Fed responded by buying more Treasuries, the money supply and inflation would rise faster. Since Fed Chairman Bernanke announced his plan to purchase $1 trillion in mortgage and Treasury bonds in order to help the housing market with low interest rates, interest rates have risen. When will the Fed remember that printing money does not lower long-term interest rates? According to Bloomberg (June 3), Bank of America strategists are recommending that investors buy Fannie Mae bonds because the rise in interest rates means the Fed will ramp up its purchases in order to prevent rising interest rates from adversely impacting the struggling housing market. When will financial gurus remember that printing money does not lower interest rates? Treasury Secretary Geithner is another economic incompetent. He told China that he stood for a “strong dollar,” but that China should let its currency appreciate relative to the dollar, which, of course, would mean a weaker dollar. He simultaneously told China that their investments in US Treasury bonds were safe. His Chinese university audience, being economically literate, laughed at Geithner. It apparently did not dawn on the US Treasury Secretary that if Chinese money is rising in value relative to the US dollar, the value of Chinese investments in dollar-denominated US Treasury bonds is falling. Congressional Democrats are proving themselves to be as stupid as the Republicans. According to the Associated Press, the Democrats have reached agreement to appropriate another $100 billion to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of the year. What are the Democrats thinking? The federal budget for this year is already 50% in the red. Why add another $100 billion to the red ink, which has to be monetized, thus causing inflation, higher interest rates, and a weaker dollar. The red ink that Washington is generating is a far greater threat to Americans than any foreign “enemies.” The hubris is extraordinary. A bankrupt government that has to send its Treasury Secretary begging to China thinks it can spend limitless amounts in a futile effort to control the culture, mores, and political system of distant Afghanistan.

Nope. It's really not that hard to keep up. Doing something about it, on the other hand, is tougher. But what are we waiting for? Suzan ___________________

North Carolina Turns (Tar Heel) BLUE!

As I will be answering telephones with the League of Women Voters volunteers at the Board of Elections in Greensboro in Guilford county today, I will not have the chance to respond too quickly to breaking events. So, if anything really nasty happens (paraphrasing Alice Roosevelt's advice), email me (or call me if you have my number). I'll be happy to credit you as the source of any reliable scandal info. And there's plenty around already - and it's early! If you still don't know where or when or what you need to bring to vote, please go here (it's all covered!):

VOTER INFORMATION

I've been calling North Carolina B L U E for several weeks, but with 2.6 million votes (over 40% of the registered voters) having already been cast during early voting (last Sunday was the first Sunday polls were ever open here due to voter demand!), and no new voter registrations allowed today, it's a done deal. "As" North Carolina "goes, so goes the union" (paraphrasing the maxim from Lincoln's time about Pennsylvania (which is already reliably blue) being the bellwether state). Liddy (wife of Bob) Dole (who has spent less than 30 days in each of the last years in N.C.) is so desperate at this moment in her losing Senate campaign that she has been running last-minute ads stating that Kay Hagen, her Presbyterian Sunday-school-teaching opponent, has promised to take "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance (which had it added in 1954 at the height of the frightened, bigoted responses to the controversy over school desegregation) and supports - wait for it - atheists, and even took campaign contributions from them - like that's something no one in a free-speech/free-association-loving country could legally (ethically?) do. Kay, a six-term state senator, responded immediately by calling Dole on her lies, which caused Dole to run a further ad which then stated that Hagen's judgment was questionable because of her friendship with those atheists (remember, this is a Sunday school teacher!), and added a further lie that Hagen had voted to give illegal immigrants drivers licenses (which she didn't). Something smells funny here as this is an odd charge to throw into the mix at the last minute in a state with a large Hispanic population. Will wonders never . . . okay, maybe this year the bad ones will. Oh yes, the two Charlotte millionaire Republican candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor are also slated to go down in the blue onslaught at the polls. Since I'll be busy wo-manning the phones with my compatriots, please keep on eye out for me as Greg Palast, Cynthia Boaz, Ange-Marie Hancock, David McCuan, Mark Crispin Miller and Michael Nagler caution us to temper our glee in this "long time coming" victory over the forces of darkness with knowledge of the trouble that is to be expected because the regular Rethuglican tricks are in place and will be rearing their ugly heads at every opportunity. And it's well documented. Palast paints a frightening picture of how the Rethugli-Con tricksters can pervert the votes in the following states:

It's November 5 and the nation is in shock. Media blame it on the "Bradley effect": Americans supposedly turned into Klansmen inside the voting booth, and Barack Obama turned up with 6 million votes less than calculated from the exit polls. Florida came in for McCain and so did Indiana. Colorado, despite the Democrats' Rocky Mountain high after the Denver convention, stayed surprisingly Red. New Mexico, a state where Anglos are a minority, went McCain by 300 votes, as did Virginia. Swing state Colorado. Before this election, two Republican secretaries of state purged 19.4 percent of the entire voter roll. One in five voters. Pfft! Swing state New Mexico. One in nine voters in this year's Democratic caucus found their names missing from the state-provided voter registries. And not just any voters. County by county, the number of voters disappeared was in direct proportion to the nonwhite population. Gore won the state by 366 votes; Kerry lost it by only 5,900. Despite reassurances that all has been fixed for Tuesday, Democrats lost from the list in February told me they're still "disappeared" from the lists this week. Swing state Indiana. In this year's primary, ten nuns were turned away from the polls because of the state's new voter ID law. They had drivers' licenses, but being in their 80s and 90s, they'd let their licenses expire. Cute. But what isn't cute is this: 566,000 registered voters in that state don't have the ID required to vote. Most are racial minorities, the very elderly and first-time voters; that is, Obama voters. Twenty-three other states have new, vote-snatching ID requirements. Swing state Florida. Despite a lawsuit battle waged by the Brennan Center for Justice, the state's Republican apparatchiks are attempting to block the votes of 85,000 new registrants, forcing them to pass through a new "verification" process. Funny thing: verification applies only to those who signed up in voter drives (mostly black), but not to voters registering at motor vehicle offices (mostly white). And so on through swing states controlled by Republican secretaries of state.

Last Friday, a federal court judge in Cleveland, Ohio, ordered:

Michael Connell, an information-technology consultant to the McCain '08 campaign, to give a deposition in a court proceeding. Mr. Connell, whose firm, GovTech Solutions, built Ohio's 2004 election results computer network, was in a position to have knowledge about the alleged manipulation of electronic voting results in that presidential contest (a technique known as "flipping") in order to switch the winner in Ohio from Sen. John Kerry to President Bush. The deposition is scheduled to take place today, November 3, one day before the 2008 general election. Connell is a former associate of Karl Rove, who is believed by those familiar with the events in question to have engaged in witness intimidation to prevent testimony about what happened in Ohio in 2004. They also believe that IT companies associated with the Republican Party have redeveloped the capacity to manipulate electronic voting results in Tuesday's election, both within Ohio and outside, including Pennsylvania and other key battleground states such as Colorado and New Mexico. One such firm, Triad GSI, is managing voter registration databases in 55 of Ohio's 88 counties and is hosting 25 of those databases. All this has led to speculation that the McCain campaign's insistence that they can win Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other states, despite being (in some places, significantly) behind in most of the polls, could be prompted by having been informed about planned cyber interference with electronic voting results. The reality is that a successful cyber attack only requires a few skilled IT experts with an in-depth understanding of digital security. Election returns in many states are presently emailed from local databases for statewide consolidation, without even the standard safeguards routinely used by banks and corporations. In other words, voting data can be relatively easily hacked. The lawsuit in Ohio is being pursued as a violation of voting rights laws, and it claims that Connell witnessed a "kingpin" cyber attack on electronic voting results in several Ohio counties, the consequence of which was to give the 2004 national election to Bush (had Kerry won Ohio, he would have won the election). Serious statistical anomalies in several Ohio counties' election returns, as well as a shocking disconnect between exit polls and actual results in '04 in Ohio, have never been explained. Despite being urged by his running mate John Edwards to do so, Kerry declined to take legal action in Ohio. The suspicions by some Democratic operatives about impending Republican interference with electronic voting in 2008 have been further fueled by the sustained bellicosity of Republican spokespeople about voter registration errors by ACORN, believing that exaggerations of the ACORN problem have been encouraged by those involved in the Republicans' own covert e-voting fraud in order to distract the media from recent news about the possibility of this far graver threat to the integrity of American elections. The general news media are doing a serious disservice to the cause of vigilance about honest elections by having, so far, neglected the case involving one of the McCain campaign's consultants on digital technology. It would be a travesty of historic proportions if Sen. Barack Obama won the national popular vote for president by a large margin, but lost the Electoral College narrowly because of electronic voting manipulation in two or three states. . . . There is ample cause for general alarm and for the measures we've recommended, in what has emerged from the ongoing court action in Ohio. If evidence of electronic-voting manipulation follows the election tomorrow, it must be pursued regardless of who wins. And if the campaigns involved do not challenge the results where this evidence emerges, or if local and state authorities do not cooperate to resolve these questions, it is certain that a tidal wave of protest will develop. Nonviolent resistance was used successfully by African-Americans to win their civil rights in the 1960s, and earlier by American women to win the right to vote. Millions would not hesitate to use it again, if there is evidence of a stolen presidential election. The first Democratic president, Thomas Jefferson, said that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." The failure of the Bush administration to permit systematic reform of this nation's elections infrastructure so as to make it impossible for these manipulations to occur is bad enough. Even worse would be to refuse to take seriously the possibility that these abuses could alter or adulterate the results of what may well be the most important presidential election of our lifetimes. For more information on electronic voter interference and the above-cited legal action see: The Bradblog The Velvet Revolution E Pluribus Media Alternet Computer World Harpers New York Times Dkosopedia

Tikkun emails us:

Prayers Before Going to Vote Monday, November 03 2008 Meditation or Prayer Before Going to Vote by Michael Lerner Thank You, the Power of Healing and Transformation in the Universe, that Your energy has moved through human beings in the past and inspired them to create democratic institutions that would give me and others this wonderful opportunity to participate in shaping our world. I know that the outcome of this election will have consequences for all six billion people on the planet, and that if democratic norms were to be fully established that they too would be able to participate in shaping the decisions about how the world's resources should best be used. So I hereby take it upon myself to vote in a way that is sensitive to the needs of all the people of the planet, not just to those who are blessed to live in the richest and most powerful society. I recognize and affirm the unity of all being, and the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all people with each other and with the well-being of the planet itself. As I approach this holy act, I recommit myself to the message revealed to the prophets and sages of old: that our highest task on earth is to bring more love and kindness, generosity and sanctity into the world, and that to do so we must vigorously pursue a world of justice and peace and avoid violence and hurting others directly or indirectly. May my votes actually contribute to these results. Please give strength to those for whom I vote. If they are elected, let them actually contribute to achieving a world of greater peace, justice and love. If they are not elected, let my vote be one of the factors that contributes to empowering them to play a positive role in continuing their efforts for peace, justice and love, so that they represent my intentions and so that they do not personally fall back into despair or into personal opportunism and forget that they have the task of vigorously articulating the aspirations of those who were seeking through voting for them to bring more caring and more generosity into the world. Give me the wisdom to understand those who do not vote in the way that I do. I already know that most people on this planet share with me the desire for a world of peace, justice, loving-kindness and caring. So it is hard for me to understand why they don't support the candidates who I see representing those values. Please give me the wisdom to understand the complex psychological, social and political factors that could take fundamentally decent human beings and lead them into paths that may, I believe, lead to a world exactly the opposite of what they really want. And let that understanding empower me to be more compassionate in the way that I think and talk about those with whom I disagree, and more intelligent in finding ways to reach them, speak to their goodness, and bring them through my love and compassion for them to be able to see a better path to achieve the goals that they share with me. From this point forward, I commit myself to seeing the good in all others, and to finding the decency and generosity in those who disagree with me, and to keep that in front of my consciousness even as I continue to disagree with the paths that they have chosen - and let that understanding give me even greater energy to act for the causes of social justice and peace. Meanwhile, let me also have compassion for the leaders of movements and candidates for office whom I do support - let me not judge them for their personal failings, for the ways that they are not in their PRIVATE LIVES the fullest possible embodiments of the ideals that they articulate. Yet let me simultaneously have the energy and commitment to hold them accountable in their PUBLIC ACTS to working even harder for social justice and peace and ecological sanity. I know that my vote is only one little part of the whole, and nevertheless I will not belittle what I am doing today in going to vote. But neither will I use this vote as a way of excusing myself from doing more. I commit myself to putting more of my time and more of my energy and more of my money into activities explicitly aimed at tikkun olam, the healing and transformation of our planet. Please let me be witness to a dramatic surge of the world's energies toward love, justice, peace, nonviolence, spiritual awakening, and ecological sanity - quickly and in my lifetime, and let it be so. Amen. Shalom. Salaam. Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with us! Rabbi Michael Lerner Tikkun Community

Have you voted yet? Suzan

North Carolina Has "Jumped the Shark"

Yes, I know you've been told that North Carolina is a red state, and that although the race has tightened recently, it still could be an easy win that the Rethugli-Cons will take without breaking much of a sweat due to the prevalence of the Charlie Black-run Jesse Helms mob that still wields major clout throughout the area. But . . . I've got some news for you. You better think (again)! I'm predicting that North Carolina "jumped the shark*," three weeks before the election, and it won't even be close. Remember the shark that Fonzie jumped and why it was important enough to coin a phrase meaning something that has passed its peak? I may be stretching the definition a little (okay, I am (it's a cute video!)), but I don't believe North Carolina will return to unwitting allegiance to the Repugni-Cons' fold in the immediate future. I'm writing today to alert you about the effort being made by the organizations that have banded together throughout North Carolina to campaign en masse for Obama (my membership to MoveOn.org is finally paying off!). So many organizations, so little time. I've had a visit every few days by people from different organizations "just making sure" that I'm "registered and know where and when" I "may vote," and "if I'm not registered, not to worry, because North Carolina let's you register and vote at the same time up to the Saturday (November 1) before election day (November 4)." Oh yes, and one more rather impressive news flash: Liddy Dole is being sent back to D.C. . . . to live with her husband without the title Senator before her name (and a lot less of the gold in her campaign chest if her recent "desperation" ad campaign is any sign)! North Carolina five-term state Senator Kay Hagen is kicking some Repugno-they-can't-*ss with her ads of the two old-timers who trade Liddy barbs with one saying she's "92 - votes with Bush 92% of the time" and the other saying "No, she's 93 - she is rated 93rd in effectiveness in the Senate." Cute. Deadly. So, North Carolina's red period is over: a result of a change in demographics leaving a voting populace who are no longer fooled by the Rethugli-Con.

Jumping the shark is a colloquialism used by TV critics and fans to denote that point in a TV show or movie series' history where the plot veers off into absurd story lines or out-of-the-ordinary characterizations, undergoing too many changes to retain the original appeal of the series. Shows that have "jumped the shark" are typically deemed to have passed their peak.

And the North Carolina Rephewni-Con days will soon be in the past. Please take a look at the problems inherent in this election that were so intelligently dissected by Mark Crispin Miller on Bill Moyers Journal earlier this evening as they discussed the standards for voter verification. Topics discussed were: "interfering with registration drives," "caging voters," "vote suppression" and a huge menu of extremely ingenious devices to try to make the turnout small (Rethug inspired), and, of course, "election fraud" by companies like Diebold with close ties to the Rethugs. We learn that "touchscreens are the worst" and that "optical scanners are just as insecure as the paperless machines;" that "oversight is lax to nonexistent" and that the "capacity for stealing elections today is infinitely greater than it has ever been." There is extensive treatment of the fraudulent Acorn nonscandal, and Mark personally vouches that Acorn has been quite scrupulous about the verification procedures accorded to its voter registration. Also of note is that as of 2007, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted only 120 cases of voter fraud, so who would interpret that as a great problem? Right. The DOJ (Bush/Cheney-infected). The latest breaking news is the investigation by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Greg Palast released today in Rolling Stone that if the Democrats expect to win the election they must win "by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering."

Block the Vote Rolling Stone (#1064) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Greg Palast Don’t worry about Mickey Mouse or ACORN stealing the election. According to an investigative report out today in Rolling Stone magazine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, after a year-long investigation, reveal a systematic program of "GOP vote tampering" on a massive scale. - Republican Secretaries of State of swing-state Colorado have quietly purged one in six names from their voter rolls. Over several months, the GOP politicos in Colorado stonewalled every attempt by Rolling Stone to get an answer to the massive purge - 10 times the average state's rate of removal. - While Obama dreams of riding to the White House on a wave of new voters, more then 2.7 million have had their registrations REJECTED under new procedures signed into law by George Bush. Kennedy, a voting rights lawyer, charges this is a resurgence of 'Jim Crow' tactics to wrongly block Black and Hispanic voters. - A fired US prosecutor levels new charges - accusing leaders of his own party, Republicans, with criminal acts in an attempt to block legal voters as 'fraudulent.' - Digging through government records, the Kennedy-Palast team discovered that, in 2004, a GOP scheme called "caging” ultimately took away the rights of 1.1 million voters. The Rolling Stone duo predict that, this November 4, it will be far worse. There's more: - Since the last presidential race, "States used dubious 'list management' rules to scrub at least 10 million voters from their rolls." Among those was Paul Maez of Las Vegas, New Mexico - a victim of an unreported but devastating purge of voters in that state that left as many as one in nine Democrats without a vote. For Maez, the state's purging his registration was particularly shocking - he's the County Elections supervisor. The Kennedy-Palast revelations go far beyond the sum of questionably purged voters recently reported by the New York Times. "Republican operatives - the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics," report Kennedy and Palast, under the cover of fighting fraudulent voting, are "systematically disenfranchis[ing] Democrats." The investigators level a deadly serious charge: "If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat McCain at the polls - they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering." (Note - Kennedy and Palast are releasing, simultaneously with the Rolling Stone investigative report what they call, the vote-theft 'antidote': a 24-page full-color comic book, Steal Back Your Vote, which can be downloaded or obtained in print from their non-partisan website, Steal Back Your Vote.) (For updates and video reports, go to Rolling Stone, Greg Palast and Steal Back Your Vote.)

So Go Vote NOW! (And report any suspicious activity to your polling officials.) Remember, "How North Carolina goes, so goes the nation!" (Yes, I know it's coining a new phrase, but who'd a thunk it before now? Suzan

Get Ready for the Show - Scarahy Rides Again!

Is Scarahy allowed out alone yet? I can hardly wait to see how the MSM plays Biden's reactions to her mindless chattering, making the less-prepared candidate (once again) out to be the greater politician. Like they did with Bush . . . and Reagan . . . and Bush. It's bound to be quite a show (for morons at least). And just for amusement before the big crash arrives (obesiance must be paid to Mark Crispin Miller for creating one of the most informative and fun blogs in the ether): click here for Turdblossom's "Insider's Guide" (to "swinging" elections)!

The Tyranny Inherent in Election Fraud (Parts 1 & 2)

Michael Collins (catch that name!) has performed an immense public service in making two essays on "the tyrannical rule by the Bush-Cheney administration" available to us at Scoop Independent News (and Truthout.org) entitled Election Fraud and Tyranny: Parts 1 and 2. The depictions of outright vote changing (stealing) will have you running for the exits to report it to the authorities! He also gives us a new book to read in Mark Crispin Miller's Loser Take All (and other sources), which "identifies and analyzes election fraud, the foundation of extremist power in the United States since 2000." (Emphasis marks are mine.) __________________________________________

Election Fraud and Tyranny: Part 1 Monday 14 July 2008 Michael Collins Scoop News Florida scrubbed 91,000 legitimate voters from the voter rolls while disputes about hanging chads on ballots dominated the news coverage. Washington, D.C. - Mark Crispin Miller's new book, "Loser Take All," identifies and analyzes election fraud, the foundation of extremist power in the United States since 2000. Manipulated elections have enabled everything we've experienced from the Iraq war to the current economic meltdown. None of that would have been possible without the ongoing series of "surprise" wins for extremists and their enablers following the outright theft of the 2000 presidential election. Miller illustrates his overarching analysis with a collection of carefully chosen essays. They map the rise of what key figures on the right and left refer to as tyrannical rule by the Bush - Cheney administration. Through a sequence of critical elections from 2000 on, Miller shows the particular outrages in each that enabled the retention and expansion of power. In doing so, he defines the basis for our current troubles. A Sequence of Outrages Loser Take All is organized sequentially beginning with the critical election of 2000 through 2006. In addition, we're given predictions of anticipated problems in 2008. Just part of what we learn is how: Gore lost Florida 2000 even before election day; key Georgia voting machines were modified before the stunning losses by Gov. Barnes and Sen. Cleland in 2002; and, Bush won 2004 in the big cities, if you believe the national exit poll. Part 1 of this series covers the 2000, 2002, and 2004 federal elections. 2000 Air and Land Assault Florida 2000 The Bush ascendancy and the tragedies that followed began with the "shock and awe" of a combined air and land assault worthy of our greatest generals. There were no weapons or troops involved just public officials, various bureaucracies, party operatives, and "the machines." Lance Dehaven-Smith outlines the cooperation between Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Catherine Harris and the national Republican campaign starting well before the election. A database vendor, DBT, was charged with purging felons from the rolls of Florida voters. Like many states, Florida felons were effectively denied the vote for life. The task consisted of matching felon lists from Florida and other states, most prominently Texas, with names on Florida's registration rolls. The standards used to match registered voters with the combined list of felons were so loose nearly 91,000 legitimate voters were wrongly eliminated as registered voters. When they showed up to vote, they were told to go home. Before and during the process, the Florida Department of Elections was warned by DBT that the criteria was producing "false positives" - voters tagged as felons who were not true matches with the felons on the lists used. After the lists were distributed to county boards of elections, several election administrators offered serious warnings about inaccuracies. Nothing was done to correct the errors. The removal of tens of thousands of legitimate voters from Florida's election rolls before the election sealed candidate Al Gore's fate. More than half of those excluded were minority voters, predominantly black. Given the turnout rates and Gore's huge advantage with black voters, nearly 9 to 1 in Florida, a clean election would have given Al Gore the presidency in 2000. David B. Moore describes the "air" war against democracy in 2000. The critical moment in the public perception of the campaign came when Fox News called the election in Bush's favor. It didn't matter that Gore won the popular vote. That was not "hot news." What did matter was that Fox declared Bush the winner prematurely. Wasn't there some sophisticated polling analysis to justify this call? Only if you consider this phrase science: "Jebbie says we got it. Jebbie says we got it." That's what John Ellis, head of the Fox decision team, told his crew shortly after 2:00 am. Why would Fox be getting such an odd message from the Governor of Florida, Jeb ("Jebbie") Bush? Because Ellis was his first cousin. Fox made the call based on Gov. "Jebbie" and created a perceived advantage for Bush that remained unchanged even after Fox withdrew its irresponsible election call two hours later. For the entire election, Gore had been on the defensive as a result of a media tear down that betrayed news reader and network loyalties to their corporate pay masters. It was the perfect lie to accompany the imperfect crime. Moore and Dehaven-Smith offer much more in their well written essays, required reading for anyone who wants to know how election 2000 began the process of mindless war and torture and domestic neglect. 2002 Surprise Attack Barnes, Cleland and Their Stunning "Losses" Robert Kennedy Jr. tells the compelling story of the 2002 Georgia election where two popular incumbents, with solid leads four days before the election, lost in stunning reversals. Click here for table showing different percentage lead and actual votes tallied. How could two popular incumbents, in the same state, with leads like these, both experience rarely seen reversals? Under pressure due to uncounted votes in the 2000 election, the Georgia Secretary of State virtually turned over the election to the state's touch screen e-voting vendor, Diebold. Chris Hood was a Diebold technical consultant who bravely reported that he and others applied a software "patch" to Diebold voting machines just before the election. This patch was so important that the president of Diebold, Bob Urosevich delivered it in person to Diebold technical personnel in Georgia. State law required that any changes to e-voting machines be cleared by the state. This was not done. When questions were raised after these highly improbable election results, Urosevich claimed the patch simply changed the clock on the voting machines, a claim deemed not serious by whistle blower Hood. The state failed to mount a thorough investigation and the Democrats were largely silent. This bold move in the Georgia elections was a major alarm that was ignored and dismissed by the press and Democratic leadership. The Beginning of the End for Don Siegelman There was another 2002 outrage that also failed to gain the attention of the national media and federal authorities. Larisa Alexandrovna and James H. Gundlach provide the narrative and analytic proof that incumbent Democratic Governor Don Siegelman's 2002 election night win was, in fact, just that. On election eve, state wide results showed that Siegelman taking a narrow victory in a hard fought campaign. That wasn't good enough for heavily Republican Baldwin County. Election officials there recounted the votes in the very early morning after Election Day. The wee hours recount reduced Siegelman's Baldwin County total from 19,000 to 12, 000 votes, just enough to give the Republican challenger a 3,000 vote victory. Gundlach efficiently deconstructs the improbable election and turns it into a case study of high probability election fraud. 2004 Sealing Our Fate Bush Wins it in the Big Cities Miller reveals a more sophisticated election theft in 2004 I wrote the chapter, "Election 2004: The Urban Legend" (by Michael Collins, see disclosure*) based on research by Internet poster " anaxarchos " who discovered some remarkable anomalies in the final exit poll for 2004: Bush won reelection in the nation's "big cities" (500,000 > pop.). The national exit poll is sponsored by the Media Consortium consisting of the Associated Press ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and CNN. It provides the acknowledged source of national data on who voted, where, and why. There was great controversy generated by the unintentional release of a late Election Day exit poll showing Kerry winning by 3%. The official version, released the day after the election had Bush winning by 3%. We examined the official exit poll and discovered data that casts serious doubt on the claimed vote totals. According to the official version of the exit poll: 2004 was not a red versus blue election, as reported. The rural sector in 2000 was 23% of the total vote but in 2004, it was just 16%. Bush total votes were down by two million in 2004 compared to 2000 in that segment. Bush lost significant ground in red states in 2004 and started the election in the hole. Bush made spectacular gains in "big cities" (pop. 500,000 or greater) going from 26% to 39% of the total votes in that segment. According to the official exit poll, he picked up these gains largely with the help of four million white big city voters, ghosts so to speak, who rose from their graves and other hiding places to hand the election to Bush. According to the official exit poll, the Bush big city magic took place amidst a 66% increase in big city voter turnout compared to a more modest 16% national turnout increase using reported vote totals. There was no 66% increase in big city turnout. Actual big city vote totals, available election eve or shortly thereafter, show big city turnout slightly below the national average. The exit poll's 66% turnout increase and the four million white ghosts were the only way to make the poll agree with the election results, neither of which was accurate. According to the official exits, Bush became the first president to be re-elected while both losing significant ground in his base and, at the same time, making it up in hostile territory, the nation's big cities. The same people who gave us this mess did the exit polling for the 2008 primaries and will conduct the 2008 national exit poll in November. Electronic Ballot Box Stuffing On a more pragmatic level, Miller includes two chapters that define how things were done at the state and local level. Activist John R. Brakey was so shocked at what he saw on Election Day 2004, he began gathering extensive data. The more he saw, the more he was convinced that there was systematic election manipulation in Arizona's Legislative District 27 located in Pima County, Arizona. When the distinguished research physicist David L. Griscom came on the scene, he had more than enough data to demonstrate the specific techniques that switched votes from Kerry to Bush. The model on "how to stuff an electronic ballot box" is sufficiently detailed for application across the nation in case anyone in the government is interested. Credence for The Griscom-Brakey findings was just provided by recent events in Pima County. Making Nevada Safe for Touch Screens 2004 also featured the state of Nevada as a demonstration project to legitimize the now totally discredited touch screen voting devices. Brad Friedman and Michael Richardson tell us how touch screens were introduced to Nevada with claims of accuracy and federal certification, when neither claim applied. This is a cautionary tale repeated across the country in the era of elections outsourced to vendors and unelected bureaucrats. Ironically, in the gaming capitol of the world, the voting machines were not nearly as secure as the slots. "Mission Accomplished" By Nov. 2, 2004, the mission of returning the extremists to power and retaining their agenda was complete. The process of distortions began with the smears of Kerry by the "swift boaters," Bush partisans who mounted a relentless campaign against Sen. John F. Kerry. This wasn't new. Marginal groups attacking candidates are common in our elections. Full cooperation by the mainstream media with the vicious attacks was a first. The worst elements of partisan politics were willingly incorporated into the national dialog by the network talking heads and the shouting cable clones. And they treated it as business as usual instead of an unfair but devastating attack on the core character issue of Sen. Kerry's campaign, his service to the nation. At the same time, the 2004 reporting of the networks and press consistently ignored the obvious signs of looming election disasters around the country. Coverage of the partisan set up in Ohio for an Election Day melt down was inadequate. Little attention was paid to the biased Department of Justice handling of voting and civil rights violations. And, of course, there had been no correction whatsoever of the problems of Florida 2000, which were characterized by 175,000 spoiled ballots, largely in minority precincts. When it came time to vote on Nov. 2, 2004, the forces working for a perpetuation of illegitimate power swung into action and sealed our fate without even bothering to consult us. We were guaranteed four more years of decline and debasement, all enabled through election fraud on a scale never seen. It became the new business as usual with a bonus of more war, more torture, and a yet to be delivered economic melt down that would affect us all. Miller's latest effort bears witness to his ability to inspire others to investigation and action after looking into the abyss of extremist corruption that he has observed so well in the past. He provides an elegant framework for the collection of essays with his ongoing commentary forming the articles into a persuasive whole. If you want to understand how the tragedy of the last eight years began and developed into the current crisis, this book is one of your key resources. For Part 2, click here.

Suzan _______________________________________