"There is erudition, curiosity and a sense of wonder at work in each issue of Words, UnLtd. The commentaries raise well-reasoned doubts about the Establishment's claims of righteousness. The feature stories answer the longing we have to find beauty in this troubled world. Each issue informs, enriches, deepens and dazzles."

     In The Vultures, we meet a despicable “Goldfinger” who has no trouble robbing the poor,  destitute Africans, to feed the rich—a few of them anyway, and mainly himself, through the usual mechanisms taught in Rove 101. Golden guy intercepts foreign funds targeted toward AIDS medication. The designer wardrobe the president of Zambia gets out of it is a nice boutique aside: shirts, suits, and high heals in quantities Imelda Marcos would envy.

     The good news is that somehow much of the material in all three films is innocuous enough to have attracted the mainstream media—Sixty Minutes, that is. Now if only they would listen to the rest.

     The third segment, Steal Back Your Vote, originally a separate piece, documents that heartbreakingly blatant corruption of one of the first states in this country to adopt optical scanning voting machinery throughout, by way of former Governor Bill Richardson of the tarnished halo. Even with paper ballot backups the discrimination that prevents fair registration, voting, vote counting, and the rest, a microcosm of events that transpired even in Election 2008, blocking at least six million votes, is legend.

     Here, then, is a piece of the Golden Medina that is more than a bit tarnished. But Thank God New Mexico’s three electoral votes were not the decisive factor this time around.

     And now for a brief voyage into not only one of the finest accomplishments in cinema but also in world history. Picture this, the ultimate collision between nature and culture, a black indigenous man in war regalia and face paint standing in front of the tony glass doors of a twenty-first-century predator’s office suite in one of those glitzy skyscrapers that grace the cityscape of Rio.

     What on earth is he doing there? Not exactly a scene out of Emerald Forest. No one would want to go back with him these days because Chevron has so befouled his breathtaking habitat in the Amazon Jungle that when his children try to swim in what looks like ponds they emerge poisoned with gasoline and detritus that kills them and is stunting and disfiguring an entire generation and spreading the Western plague, cancer, throughout his tribal cosmos.

     I am not calling the indigenous people angels per se, except that they have been sainted by these savage plunderers and have sued them successfully. They’ve been forced into the stench of the twenty-first century and reaped the closest to justice it is capable of.

     I call Rumble in the Jungle a cinematic masterpiece. I can’t get it out of my mind. You will be hugely impoverished by not spending the paltry sum it takes to purchase this experience.

     The brilliant environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears in this middle segment.

     Don’t miss it, and the rest is also more than worth the apoplexy we all should feel in this Chevronesque slime pit we all inhabit and, as I mentioned above, miraculously survive each day. I might add that the sleeping pill industry is burgeoning in the midst of this recession. Whether or not to invest in it is another story.

(c)

12 May 2009: Landslide Denied?

For all of the poor and disadvantaged people kept from voting in 2008—6 million at least—the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that some fought back. At least attempted to register themselves and others. WSJ termed that “vote fraud” and headlined it.

     In punishment, ACORN’s vote-registering employees, working at $10 an hour if that, might be denied welfare and food stamps. In a time of recession, sort of like Bernie Madoff being punished, lives ruined in both instances.

     The ACORN people weren’t fudging voter names for crack cocaine. Maybe next week’s rent, or part of it. Maybe some plastic tarp to tape over a broken window.

     A few thousand of them, max, turned in by their employer, ACORN.

     And this is all certainly of prime importance to tycoons. My God, what a drain on the economy when unemployed people are forced into crime to eat and be sheltered1 And they will be punished by tycoons resentful of having to pay more taxes to jail them.

©

10 May 2009: Mothers’ Day: Guns or Roses??!!

In front of the White House today, the black, wrought-iron fences were lined at the bottom with exquisite long-stemmed roses—florists’ roses—in pale lavender, orange, cream with pink tips, but wilting; especially the deep red ones were dropping petals profusely. We had to clean them all up when I got there early this afternoon. Otherwise we’d get arrested for littering.

     I kept some of the more exotic ones—never having seen the pale lavender variety, petal back an antique white. We dumped them on palettes and in garbage bags. Petals lingered beneath the fence. Idealism is not so easily swept up and disposed of.

     Code Pink and others, mostly women, a few brave, outspoken men, were there for peace—that much I knew. We hung out for a bit in front of the executive mansion. I recognized Medea Benjamin and scoped the others. A few seniors, one with a walker on wheels, another in a wheelchair, maybe twenty-five of us altogether. I had brought my camera but worn a deep blue top, of all things, contrasting with the women in pink. I figured they wouldn’t mind. I had expected more of a hybrid group.

     We began a long march on that lovely day to the mall. Four or five women put on box exteriors to become a “peace train.” We got to the goal at the mall, an exhibition of military equipment—artillery outside and smaller stuff in a clump of tents, including toy hand grenades for kids. Then we unrolled a huge, serpentine quilt made of squares sent from around the world.

     Some of the women, who had vigiled at the White House since Saturday, had sewn all those crocheted squares together, intricately enough to form a repeated message of peace in large letters. We unrolled the quilt and held it as we marched around the exhibit singing, “We mothers will not raise our children to kill other mothers’ children!”

     Young men in camouflage fatigues manned the various wheeled and weapon monsters. One or two turned on the ignition and revved the ravenous engines threateningly from behind the chain fence.

     The entrance to the periphery of the exhibit was cordoned off with police tape. One of the police shoved one of our few men away from the entrance twice. A few at the head of the line explained our peaceful mission: to close the exhibit. There was more conversation, no more violence. I followed the others as we then slowly circumvented the space, singing peace songs, chanting “Peace, Salaam, Shalom!” carrying the banner, flashing peace signs, holding our long-stemmed roses high over our heads.

     “Go home and give your mom a kiss!” I waved to one of the GIs, younger than my daughter, blowing him a kiss. “Happy Mothers’ Day!” we called out repeatedly. The men marchers were more antagonistic. It was especially painful to watch youngsters pulled aboard the huge-wheeled jeep-things, beeping the horns, playing with the gear shift. “Child exploitation!” came the response.

     I thought of the 8-year-old Cambodian military of the late 1970s, their cigarette-smoking leader an infant Che Guevara.

     This was one of the scarier activist events I’ve attended—there were so few of us and I admired the bravery of the outspoken. I’ve been to far more than I can count. There was some press coverage. The tall, lanky male leader Eric took many pictures.

     We even witnessed a “dog fight” between him and a veteran Marine, baring his teeth that he had endured macho atrocities so that Eric could be there holding up signs and draft dodging. A middle-aged mom walked by and told them to cut it out—it was Mothers’ Day.

     I next found myself in front of a park bench, joined by a fellow marcher, justifying our presence to two seated women, one a mother of two sons, the other, obese, an adopted mother of a child she had brought here from Kazakhstan—who tried to use her thus “worldly” perspective to tell us we knew nothing about how others out there felt about the United States. How much they loved us.

     I said it was a cinch to go on line and listen to radio casts from here to the Solomon Islands, Siberia, Tierra del Fuego, the Somalian coast.

     “Love us like that 87 percent of the Iraqis who want us out of their country?” I injected at some point.

     She expressed regret for that.

     She said our power was good because look how we’re always the first to disaster scenes with aid. Katrina? Better late than never? Maybe the Thai tsunami anyway. Sometimes. I had no problem with helping victims of disasters.

     I wanted to ask about those sprawling, breathtakingly symmetrical nuke farms in the Midwest. What do we need them all for? “Teeth,” was one answer I received years ago. But you don’t need that many.

     The other woman did most of the talking. Another woman with two young children at the adjacent park bench listened and occasionally joined in, an Iranian dressed in pure white  who later said she wanted peace and had nothing to do with the extremist government there. She said that the U.S. motive for invading Iraq was oil. I said that we had succeeded in that department. Foreign interests there are gushing out all over. Certainly. Not a problem.

     The other seated American woman with the two young sons of course didn’t want to send her children to fight, but she more or less backed her companion, who asserted that those young men had volunteered to go overseas to fight and risk their lives for their country. If they came back with PTSS, that had been their decision. Theirs alone.

     I said that society had something to do with it—you know, What does it mean to be a man? I added that I’d read of severe problems of sexual abuse and harassment of women military stationed with them.

     My companion said that particularly in today’s economy, many of those young men had no alternative way to situate themselves in the world as adults in need of shelter, food, and medical care along with paychecks.

     I supported her from firsthand experience, having once reassured a newly returned Iraq vet that it was okay that his primary motivation for entering the military was not patriotism.

     So we chatted and I thought that these two women were reachable, though the larger one kept accusing us of not seeing the big picture. I turned to her.

     “”What do you want, war or peace?” I asked.

     “What do you mean?” she shot back.

     I repeated my question.

     “Peace,” she said in bewilderment.

     Well, then, let’s work toward it together!”

     My companion was later arrested briefly, for no reason. I stood to the side, having to go to work tomorrow. Then I ambled off to the Metro, a few protesters still taunting a few GIs, my thinking first that they were the wrong ones to argue with, then deciding that great events begin with small groups and that veterans-against-war groups have formed at least twice in the last fifty years.

     Perhaps some of those wilted flowers may bloom again. I took some home, snipped the stems, and put them in a glass vase next to the beautiful fresh ones my daughter sent me yesterday, hoping for some contagion that would symbolically transform the world. A few other of the roses I had given away to homeless people who had admired them.

©

28 April 2009: In Memoriam, John Gideon, 1947-2009

It was the good fortune of the Election Integrity movement to have the reliable account of national and international news condensed on one coherent page every day since 2005. John Gideon's Daily Voting News was so convenient and such a treasure for bloggers with not much time and in need of so much information so quickly.

     From Ireland, which just gave up DREs altogether in favor of paper voting, to small southern towns suffering from tabulation inaccuracies in the single digits, John was on top of it all. Often he’d present several versions of the same story to shed different perspectives and innuendoes, broadening our horizons.

     There was frequently a blog right there and always stimulation, from joy to disgust, and always hope from the quotation always present on the page, the Creekside Declaration, “To encourage citizen ownership of transparent, participatory democracy.”

     John accomplished that and left it as an enduring necessity—as a movement we must stay informed at all times. Someone else must rise in his place—EI will dwindle in strength and sweep without this.

     We have to keep his name and legacy alive—fight the fight, work the work, a unique form of patriotism he made indispensable.

     Thank you, John, from all of us, for doing what you did and showing us how essential it was.

     Brad Friedman, at bradblog.com, as a close friend of John's as well as a colleague, has written a very moving tribute to him. I'm sure that Ellen Theissen, co-founder with him of votersunite.org, will also add one, and those will fill in where I left out--a lot.

©

13 April 2009: Peace unto You

     Unlike the fest-ridden February or March with its green days, April offers us only April Fool’s Day and Tax Day, imminently upon us.

     We are all April fools, allowing more than half the U.S. budget to be spent on military concerns, though Gates is to be commended for trimming some unnecessary war toys from the roster. We spend so much more than other countries on weaponry, it is horrifying.

     Here are the figures I received today from National Peace Action: Currently, U.S. military spending constitutes 48% of the world's total, more than the next 45 countries combined. Domestically, not including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military spending requests for 2009 constitute 54% of the discretionary budget that is voted on by Congress. When including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. military spending jumps to 57% of the discretionary budget.”

     How much of this spending is used to maintain those God-awful nuclear warhead “farms” in the Midwest? There are so many nukes stored so efficiently and geometrically—why? In the worst scenarios, only a few would be needed to destroy reality as we know it. Spread out as they are, these nukes are the ultimate target for massive destruction, the ultimate gamble. I have asked this before: how much of the world’s wealth goes toward the peace economy as opposed to war expenses? The value system is clear in our country.

     And all those nukes can’t scare the world into peace. Two out of three of Bush’s “axis of evil” countries are defiantly developing their own nuclear arsenals. The third has had its limbs cut off. But all the nukes in the world can’t defeat terrorism. And how can we dictate to other countries about building up nuclear arsenals? We’re just, by example, adding to the possibility of nuclear weaponry falling into the wrong hands.

     Ahmadinejad has offered to abandon production of nuclear capability if we discard ours. A rational offer. Not that I'm a member of his fan club. I am so sick of this out-of-proportion, out-of-control behemoth being cornered repeatedly by ingenious “inferiors.” Something is terribly wrong. Others are beginning to stand up and fight back: in Latin America and Africa, for example.

     Starving North Korea is another example, to parodic extremes, of misplaced priorities.

     Peace Action suggests Penny Poll Protests: set up a table in front of your local post office with several jars, labeled with various budgetary options: healthcare, housing, education, the environment, and defense. Then give interested people a fistful of pennies and the opportunity to allocate funding to these categories or whatever categories you decide on. Then, at the end of the day, assemble a bar graph and send it to the “president who listens”: the people’s budgetary priorities.

     What good are nukes up against terrorism which lacks borders? Somali pirates? Surely there’s a way to rebuild the government in Somalia.

     There are ways to accomplish all that needs to be done and to eliminate the extraneous from consideration.

     Is a Peaceable Kingdom possible on Earth? What would we come up with if we all dedicated ourselves to the right priorities?

     As Tax Day approaches, I wonder whether people whose mortgages have been foreclosed still have to pay taxes. For them where is the shelter?

UPDATE 4/17/09: Today's Trenton Times on line reports that "The poll results show that participants want 31 percent of each federal tax dollar spent on education, 28 percent on health care, 20 percent on the environment, 11 percent on housing and 10 percent on the military," according to a Penny Poll taken on Tax Day by the Princeton-based Coalition for Peace Action (CFPA). Actual U.S. budget figures reveal that, according to CFPA, "Health care is about 20 percent of the budget, while education receives only 4 percent of that money and housing accounts for 2 percent."

     CFPA Executive Director Bob Moore added that ""Each poll has consistently shown that taxpayers want more of their hard-earned tax dollars going to education, environment, and health care, and far less to military purposes." Total military spending for the 2009 fiscal year, including the Iraq War, is about $965 billion, or an average of $7,720 per taxpaying household. This is the highest level since World War II."

©

17 March 2009: Politics as Usual?

I am forced out of silence by reading about the latest round in the battle for the Minnesota Senate seat and idly wonder what the exact wording of the oath for office Franken or Coleman may one of these days swear over the Bible, where one can read about any number of power struggles.

     Here is what I found in Google, illustrated, most fittingly, by a photo of Richard Nixon as V.P. swearing in a U.S. senator in 1959: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

     "Against all domestic enemies"? I daresay there are plenty to defend against here—those who are denying the state of Minnesota its crucial voice in a most important governing body. We had a president out of Hollywood once, so what does it matter that a comedian is part of the issue now, when the viewpoints of Rush Limbaugh and Jon Stewart are so dominating the media right now?

     "Without any purpose of evasion"? Can a Republican ever honestly swear that with a straight face? Even some Democrats?

     “So help me God.”

     God help us all.

     Today, courtesy of Politico and News from the Underground, I read that as Minnesota’s state court mulls over a ruling on the latest round of arguments in the seven-week trial, some of the big guys who have soured the first months of Obama’s administration are eying the Big Five to put their guy, Coleman, back into the seat he just lost. Sore losers like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham.

     Big Five as in the Republican Supremes who provided this country with the darkest ruling in the history of the Court on December 12, 2000. That non-precedent-setting mangling of the Fourteenth Amendment that referred to “different methods for counting the ballots [in the Minnesota case, absentee ballots]” as reason for awarding the presidency to Bush.

     A year after the Bush v. Gore decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that if this “one-time” principle were applied universally, every election ever held would be nullified.

     Might the Supreme Court, if it were honest, rule that all Senate decisions passed since January 1, 2009, are null and void because not all 100 senators voted? That’s a question for a Constitutional scholar.

     Of equal interest to me is the prominent mention of Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, on the importance of the precedent set by Bush v. Gore. In 2002 he beat the Democratic opponent, Ron Kirk, in a scenario where, in the populous Dallas County, ES&S brand-new touch-screen voting machines were jumping from the Democratic to the Republican candidate repeatedly, but because of the machines’ lack of transparency, there was no way to know how many votes had been affected.

     So here is another precedent that makes me uneasy.

     When Al Gore stepped back from further court action, the reason he gave was that the American public had been kept in limbo long enough—his motive was patriotic. Does anyone use that term anymore besides progressives and election integrity advocates? “Patriotic.” A fitting term to refer to on St. Patrick’s Day. Somehow the name is cognate with the Latin patria, “country.”

     As long as protracted litigation is the order of the day, I think that the state of Minnesota should sue the entire system for denying them representation in the Senate. Because there’s something really rotten if the people’s choice is evident and their wishes are not being respected.

     Amazing contempt for the people all these GS employees are being paid to serve. Deplorable.

©

4 March 2009: Afterthought

In line with my last two blogs and the beauty contests that so steer political decisions of late, the quintessence of the process may occur in 2012 if the Republicans proceed in their current scramble toward restructuring and recreating themselves, alas still toward the far right.

     It looks like they will offer us a Palin-Limbaugh ticket, Beauty and the Beast. My only other thought is that Obama self-destructively and over-righteously told us Americans that we can vote him out in 2012 if his policies don’t succeed. I’d give him more time, and hope that he strikes a more positive note, at least in that area, as the days pass.

     Better to push that boulder up the hill than sit at the bottom staring in that direction.

     Perhaps we will be able to keep it up there this time.

*****

Other than that, I came upon a poem from a volume by the Alabama Poet Laureate of 1989, Carl P. Morton. I will quote half a poem that really resonates at the moment—it could apply to Barack Obama:

To this watering place

From a Sahara country they come,

In ones and twos and threes,

The camel and onyx and the gazelle

And only an occasional tiger. . . .

A special thanks from the end of the list!!!

©

1 March 2009: Marching On or, History’s a Mystery!

Gruesome subject really, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. There will be a fictionalized recap of it this year in The Untouchables: Capone Rising and another 2009 film My Bloody Valentine. The massacre occurred in Chicago in 1929, oddly the year the stock market tanked, an event far closer to today’s discourse than the Massacre, though the films may change that.

     Always looking to pinpoint exact origins, I refer again, sorry, to the lineup of the holidays in February. There are Phil, Abe, St. Val, Presidents’ Day, and then George—all males. Valentine’s Day is the most feminine of them, regaled with cheap paper hearts and candy. If we associate any icon with it at all besides the heart, it’s the Roman god Cupid.

     In ancient times, love was as powerful as war, personified by Aphrodite and Ares, a married couple according to a scene in Homer’s Odyssey.

     The force of Aphrodite it was that set off the Trojan War, according to myth, which had such telling consequences on mythical posterity, including Aeneas’s founding of Rome and hence the Republic and Empire that followed over the dead bodies of Dido and Carthage, again and again.

     With the wide eyes of the child within that refuses to “grow up,” I assert once again that were Valentine’s Day a more significant event on the calendar, perhaps the world would resemble the Massacre less—witness the drug wars in Mexico now—and the Peaceable Kingdom more. All over the Internet flow adorable photos of dogs and cats nuzzling up, tigers nursing piglets, a hippo bonded with a tortoise, and so on. The dream lives on.

     Hallmark, with its hearts, stuffed animals, and candy, probably didn’t do so well this year. I haven’t checked. There may be all sorts of ramifications of that the people will ignore, including me.

     It is, after all, March 1, a cold and miserable day to precede a windy month that will lead us into spring. Every day of the year is fraught with associations good and bad. We’ve nearly ascended from winter’s latest hot-and-cold assault. Soldier on through this winter in economic history, which will last a lot longer.

****

But thinking back to Presidents’ Day one more time, I recall painfully what I’ve heard more than once, that these days Lincoln would never have been elected since he was so homely. That, and home schooled rather than Ivy League educated. What of Washington? Becoming a general these days is not such a beauty contest, from what little I’ve observed. But Washington bequeathed this country only illegitimate offspring—I knew one, who looked like him, remarkably.

     And  look what a hard time we gave Clinton.

     And don’t forget that the Republican icon of the twentieth century was a handsome Hollywood actor. And then there was Ike, who had a mistress, long before the witch trial that ended the twentieth century. He was so photogenic.

©

P.S.: Sorry the blogs are so seldom these days. I'll be authoring on through the end of April.

20 February 2009: Crack of Dawn Visions and a Book

As a city dweller I am used to being awakened by city noises like trucks with screechy brakes or backing up with their warning beeps on or men in hardhats drilling too early in the morning. But then I usually fall right back to sleep.

     Not this morning. I woke up and began to blog in my head, too lazy to stagger over to my computer. I was thinking about my Valentine’s Day blog, about wars that occur on sacred holidays, as in St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and how in the present world mosques are attacked while people are praying and people are attacked on religious pilgrimages and then there was the Yom Kippur War.

     So then my sleepy thoughts turned to holidays. From my limited Judeo-Christian perspective, I ran through national holidays, Christian holidays, and then Jewish ones, and stopped at the two most sacred ones: Christmas and Yom Kippur. Christmas celebrates the birth of the ultimate wunderkind while Yom Kippur, besides atonement for the past years transgressions, celebrates the sacrifice of another male child which didn’t happen. God did away with human sacrifice and offered a ram instead.

     But in the course of a stern rebuke from a rabbi years ago on Yom Kippur, directed at marginals like me who may or may not attend services once or twice a year, I learned another Yom Kippur biblical association. Or rather, it was hurled at us in contempt.

     Yom Kippur celebrates God’s forgiveness of Moses for throwing down the first tablets of the Ten Commandments in horror when he found the Children of Israel worshipping a golden calf. So the villains are punished and Moses gets a second set of tablets—actually we all got them.

     Now speaking of sins, Jesus came here, son of God, to absorb all of our sins, to permanently redeem us. But I was thinking that way back in the time of Moses, when the Children of Israel were stuck building pyramids for the Egyptians, they were exposed to massive idols. There is need for a tangible God that might have influenced them to ultimately sacrifice all their gold to build the effigy after Moses had been gone so long, the only one among them allowed to commune with the real God.

     And in the Hebrew Old Testament only, not the King James version, while Moses is on Mount Sinai he begs God to make Himself visible. Like Zeus to Semele, God tells Moses he wouldn’t survive the encounter. However, God would reveal his hindquarters, part of Himself.

     So it occurred to me that this portion of anatomy might reveal a bovine form, in which case the Children of Israel were not so off base in building a golden bovine calf down in the desert while they waited.

     Then, centuries later, God took human form as Jesus, for a brief time tangible, and Christians have been building visual representations of Him ever since. The Jewish God I grew up with is so abstract and scary. Abstraction is a form of advancement that comes with growth. In ancient Greece it is said that coinage was the first form of abstraction, a symbol exchanged for material objects that before then were traded. So it took civilization, at least Western civ, some time before abstraction became part of our culture.

     And then, in the religious realm, the Word became flesh for some, remained abstract for others like me. And I confess to a Faustian longing not only for a belief in a materialized God but a revelation of scientific reality en masse. What’s going on here anyway? Are we part of some giant’s fingerprint and, if so, how long before reality as we know it gets squished completely?

     So spun my drowsy thoughts early this morning.

*****

I was going to discuss the book I’m working on but will save it for another blog. It’s about an extremely unsexy topic, the history of the Election Integrity (EI) movement from 2000 to 2008.

     But in it you’ll read about the inventor of the perfect voting machine who was killed in a car wreck two weeks after he publicized his finding. Another man was about to tell all about the Ohio 2004 fiasco when his plane crashed two weeks after his first court hearing.

     Then there’s the story of my wrestling match with a cardboard piece of junk billed as a voting machine, priced in the thousands, which not only didn’t work right but also was very difficult if not impossible for handicapped voters to use without help. That was the machine of choice for the county where I lived and remains so to this day, though decisive objection to it has been expressed in the public media many times.

     Then there are lots of facts and my suggestion for a massive class action suit of the American people against the vendors of direct recording electronic voting machines, which have too many times tallied inaccurate vote counts purposely or spontaneously because they’re not built half so competently and securely as their prototype, ATMs. ATMs are just too expensive to be distributed in such large numbers, the vendors told us, even if they would do a far better job at tallying votes accurately.

     After all the money spent on lousy machines and all the time wasted and discarded votes that may have altered election results, all those contraptions that have been junked in favor of better methods, methinks higher-quality machines would have been the best investment yet. Machines as durable and permeable as the gigantic, hundred-year-old lever machines they were meant to replace.

©

14 February 2009: Happy Presidents Phil, Valentine, Lincoln, and Washington Days!

February is ridden with holidays that include one long weekend to subsume two important presidential birthdays. That’s the important one, isn’t it? Time off from work?

     Where would the United States have gone without Presidents Washington and Lincoln? Even with them as part of our history, and throw in Roosevelt, it has been a long haul.

     Phil the groundhog and Valentine the patron saint of good love, well they’re important too, but not worth vacation days according to Congress and all those activists focused elsewhere.

     I can understand that a superstition is a superstition, so that Groundhog’s Day is a midwinter marker, a sigh of relief that the worst is over and the days are now getting longer, that all Phil will do is go back to sleep not caring about any shadows.

     But even more indispensable than Phil, George, Abe, and all the other Presidents put together, is a holiday honoring love. How that got pushed aside to CVS, Hallmark, a few gift shops, and some corny stuffed animals is beyond me.

     Where would we all be without love? Presumably a large majority of us were created in leisure time, so that I suggest we devote more thought to this commercialized toss-off.

     Valentine Day is strictly an American event. I don’t know whether other countries have a Love Day at all.

     And that could explain why so much is wrong with this country and that the wrong values are struggling to turn this democracy into a massive feudal fief composed of a few overlords and an ocean of serfs.

*****

The most celebratory month of the year honors at least two presidents, a groundhog, and love, quite a heap.

     The bicentennial of the greatest president in U.S. history, and one of the greatest thinkers in world history, is a time to celebrate, certainly. Much is being done to honor Lincoln and Darwin, and justifiably so.

     It is also a great time to celebrate not only a new president from Illinois who aspires to emulate this magisterial role model, but also the stimulus package he has successfully shepherded through Congress.

     Not only have we learned that Barack Obama will try to honor his campaign pledges, as much water as the opposition will throw at them, but we have learned exactly what he is up against—the futile feudalists.

     No matter that I’ve read that a quintuple amount of the funds earmarked to restore a functional economy is needed. What we have is what we have, and the presses would certainly run down having to print up five times as much money as is now being invested, through various channels, into this slump.

     No matter that Kellogg-Brown-Root, aka Halliburton, has just been awarded another no-bid contract after being caught any number of times wasting billions of dollars and is now also being sued for another botched job. I figure that’s a shoe being thrown to appease Cheney. After all, Rove has received his second subpoena and Counsel Luskin will be out of town on February 23.

     We have our own road runner now. One here to add to the wild goose chase after bin Laden in Pakistan.

     I could say, dismissively, that’s what happens when evil, instead of good, is pursued. But those words fall flat.

     I’m getting off the subject—and that’s the problem—we all get off the subject when anything so trivial as love is on the table. It’s just one day in the year and I can’t even devote a blog to it. I had to throw in all of February.

     We have to hope that all those stuffed animals and musical greeting cards sell well, to celebrate not only love but the passage of the stimulus package. Lots to celebrate.

     At least for one day, don’t worry about those sourpuss Neocons all banded together to block aid to taxpayers who finance all their glitz and gallivanting.

     Valentine’s Day is for them, too, and I’m sure lots of Neocon valentines are being traded today: lots of candygrams, flowergrams, hearts, and cards.

     Let us use this day to celebrate everything good that is transpiring, the rebirth of hope, the gift of a house to a homeless woman in Florida and the aspiration to shelter all in need of it.

     Would that all the world would focus on this one wonderful, lost, drowned-in-trivia U.S. holiday and agree, and act on the simple truth that was told me by a deaf, blind, retarded boy and a Native American objecting to my anger on behalf of his people:

     Love is the greatest gift of all.

     We love you, Phil, Abe, Charles, George, and St. Val, and as we celebrate you all this month, let’s reconsider St. Valentine’s Day and place it at the top of the entire heap. Way at the top.

©

6 February 2009: Israel–Palestine Peace and the New U.S. Policy

Israeli lawyer and legal counsel for the distinguished think tank Ir Amim Danny Seideman spoke on the future of Israel–Palestine relations with a new U.S. administration in place. He is a known expert on Jerusalem who frequently meets with U.S. diplomats and government officials.

     Sponsors of the occasion were the Middle East Institute, the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and Americans for Peace Now.

     Of course the question on all of our minds is what now, with Israel and Hamas poised in such tension and animosity.

     Things have never been worse there, he began. “We are close to losing the two-state solution.”

     On the oth,er hand, Obama has put together a dream team to formulate and carry out his new policy toward the Muslim world.

     Jerusalem will be divided, he said, though Israelis don’t think this is possible.

     This sharp critic of Israeli policymakers said that there is a surge in settlement in East Jerusalem, a largely Palestinian area. “It’s impossible to negotiate while dictating the outcome with a bulldozer.”

     The United States must engage in the peacemaking process by stopping Israel’s E1 plan, which would seal off East Jerusalem from the West Bank and thereby put an end to the two-state solution. Settlement expansion into Palestinian lands and public domains must stop.

     An Evangelical plan to open a 29-acre theme park, bulldozing Palestinian homes in this process, must be aborted. The new Tolerance Museum must not be built atop a Palestinian cemetery.

     For 1300 years, continued Seideman, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have shared the 1-kilometer area of the Old City, as a religious shrine. Ten incidents over the last century have, however, threatened this mutual tolerance, most lately Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in 2000, which sparked the second intifada. If Jerusalem erupts, the impact will be chain-reactive among the three Abrahamic faiths. “All three religions must feel secure.”

     If this conflict being addressed by politics and diplomacy becomes religious in nature, Armageddon will result. All peace processes will unravel.

     Shifting to a more optimistic aspect of this impasse, Seideman called Obama’s dream team remarkable, “aware of the complexities and humble.” If they can’t accomplish peace, he said that he doesn’t know who can.

     In response to audience questions, Seideman noted that the Israeli public is extremely pessimistic about prospects for peace. He said that hope, now absent, must be restored, and that Obama will be effective in this effort. Although 78 percent of American Jews voted for the new president, they will not figure decisively in peace negotiations.

     Hamas won’t go away, Seideman said. What we’re dealing with is “too much personality and not enough character.”

     And what advice will he give to President Obama? Stop settlement in Palestinian territories, stop radicalization of the Old City, and stop violation of sacred space.

     Obama must engage Middle Eastern faith communities in his negotiations. All parties must come to the issues with humility.

     However, as the past has affirmed, concluded Seideman, a peace agreement won’t be an end solution but rather the beginning of one.

     “The dragon can’t be slain but housebroken. . . . Middle Easterners are simply not Scandinavians.”

©

Taxation with Representation: If Not Now, When?

     Half a million taxpaying U.S. citizens in this country lack voting representation in the U.S. Congress. The issue concerns representation by one person who currently attends House sessions and is allowed to vote at the committee level, Eleanor Holmes Norton. The District of Columbia citizenry refer to her as Congresswoman Norton.

     On January 27, HR 157, which would correct this injustice, was discussed by the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Constitution.

     Because the District’s three electoral votes are always Democratic, the House has already determined that additional representation would be provided to the Republican state of Utah. But this representative would be “at large,” rather than district-based, which would thus grant each Utah congressional district two representatives.

     Analogously, DC Delegate Norton would retain her right to vote at the committee level along with voting as DC representative.

     Wouldn’t redistricting in Utah be more effective, in that it is done throughout the country regularly, mainly motivated by partisan considerations?

     One subcommittee member told his colleagues that he planned to introduce legislation that would relieve District residents of the onus of paying federal income taxes. The motto on DC license plates is “taxation without representation,” a line that former Bush 43 had removed from his “USA 1” tag of his official limousine, a Cadillac, brand-new in 2000 when he took over the presidency from Mr. Clinton.

     It is easy to imagine that the idea of income tax relief elicited enthusiastic applause from the overflow crowd that attended the subcommittee hearing.

     In this particular situation, unlike others, Bush 43 was upholding the U.S. Constitution A member of the audience attending the subcommittee hearing, a professor from George Washington University, noted that HR 147 violated our sacred document, which specifies that “the District is not to be considered a state except in cases related to individual rights such as those enshrined in the Bill of Rights.”

     To avoid Supreme Court involvement and the resulting expenditure of unnecessary time, a constitutional amendment is therefore needed. An alternative, another professor continued, would be retrocession, a move that would relocate the District back into the state of Maryland, where it was until 1790.

     The amendment would require an assenting vote from two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states.

     The companion bill in the Senate to HR 157 was introduced by Sen. Joseph Liebermann on January 6 as S. 160, identical to 157 except that Lieberman would do away with Ms. Norton’s no-longer-necessary function as DC delegate. She would become officially Congresswoman Norton, as DC residents have anticipated.

     The most prominent representative present at the subcommittee hearing, House majority leader Steny Hoyer, recommended bringing HR 157 to the House floor based on the principle that residents of this federal territory are being taxed without representation, period. Here he is referring back to our Constitution’s predecessor, the Declaration of Independence.

     Certainly, HR 157 is not the first bill introduced in Congress to allow federal representation to the District. However, with such a complete Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, it is understandable that this latest attempt was introduced in the House a scant week after President Obama was inaugurated.

Source: Election Online Reports

(c) 

30 January 2009: A SCHIP off the Old Rock

     I got through!! I finally got through and wasn’t kept on hold for a very long time. . . . I got through to the White House, to a bland voice I could hardly hear who promised to give my message to the president.

     My message was that I was happy to hear that SCHIP was passed by the Senate this morning.

     But that I was equally disgusted to hear that the national health care legislation has been tabled until next year at the earliest. Here is the link where I got the good news two days ago: bad news!.

     I guess that if the president’s own kids were without health insurance he might be acting more quickly. That was one rationale given by the antiwar people for why Congress was not more opposed to the Iraq invasion. None of their kids was over there.

     Hell, the Republicans don’t want nationalized health care, but what else is new?

     And for this land of plenty, even in a time of depression, to allow families to go without health care because they have other priorities like food and rent, is worse than disgraceful. It is heinous, intolerable.

     I have expensive insurance, but at least I have it. I am so ashamed of this country.

     Obama will travel the world to vast acclaim. This journey begins next month.

     But it seems to me, how absurd, that before a new president of the United States worries about the suffering of a few 9/11 suspects and even others, mostly not Americans, who are wrongfully imprisoned, he should look closer to home.

     There are street people within blocks of the White House suffering through an awful winter. One of their main shelters was closed down recently and abruptly.

     These people don’t have health care.

     These people and millions of others are being tortured by the U.S. government also. And they pay taxes.

     Where’s the change?

     Guantanamo and other prisons will be closed within a year, probably. That was the first fine decision to emanate from the new White House.

     Progressives appeased. Good move.

     But look homeward, Angel, not to Wall St. to descry their $35,000 toilets and billions in bonuses.

     Look homeward and save the people who put you into office.

©

28 January 2008: Dreams in the Dearth of Winter

     I am trying to figure out why all these drop-dead wonderful movies are coming out. I don’t have the time to see them all and feel frustrated. They are all Hollywood movies, and we all know that foreign films are better and that I hardly ever lift that curtain of excellence to view the real art, the depth, that not-so-easily analyzed perfection.

     However, the trend right now is to keep whatever flimsy funds there are within our borders, so in a way I’m being patriotic by slipping off to the cinema for discount matinees.

     Shall I drop everything and “hot turkey” my complete list of must-sees?

     I have already taken two excellent films and found curious parallels between them at the fundamental level—that is, The Reader and Doubt. Do you suppose that I might bring Laredo and Frost-Nixon into this loop, along with The Strange Case of Benjamin Buttonin?

     I do not plan to. I am not a publish-or-perish academic whose livelihood depends on this level of critical ingenuity. I am a work-or-perish freelancer.

     I also plan to write a bestseller, bringing the public into the fold of my latest apocalypse. But I’m not betting on that either.

     I have handed my basic thread to an academic who might inform me today to fuggedabudit because I’m wrong. Chill, hot springs—that sort of thing.

     I can take it.

*****

     And that brings me to the real apocalypse occurring less than 5 miles away from this desk and simultaneously throughout the world.

     Obama has been in office for nine days and things are happening.

     That noose of righteous punishment is hanging closer to Rove’s neck.

     Guantánamo will be closed.

     Russia’s defensive retreat into cold war behavior is slowing down.

     Iran’s distinguished president called Obama to congratulate him after the Inauguration.

     Obama’s latest stimulus package targets the growing number of recession victims, which bothers the Republicans.

     Obama’s plans to clean up the environment and stop global warming within ten years worry the automobile moguls—still moguls based on the victims’ forced generosity.

     Obama’s efforts to accomplish twenty-first-century post-partisanship have so far not convinced the targeted “intelligent” Republicans. What will happen once they can’t spend $35,000 on a toilet seat? $450,000 on a Caribbean retreat to celebrate their latest bailout?

     We’re not here referring to the Halliburton price tag in Iraq of $25 per sectioned styrofoam cafeteria plate, after all.

     I don’t get it.

     I don’t get the bottom line that crack-addicted, uneducated indigent populations are supposed to get straight and run off to a computerized university and work nights because some middle-class social worker is sent into the inner city to visit them with a pile of forms. Or even if she doesn’t, because that outreach costs hard-earned taxpayer money.

*****

     Worries about hard-earned money bring me back to the question whether I should spend some of mine to go see blockbusters like Laredo, Frost-Nixon, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

     Why bother with Nixonian memories when the apocalyptic accomplishments of the late sixties are more relevant?

     Why bother with a Western when our cowboy has just returned to his Wild West, cutting brush instead of lives with his scythe?

     And why go to a movie about renaissance when a real one is on the horizon and we may not have to dream of it much longer?

     Let Obama’s new directions be more than Hemingway’s “short happy life,” what with his Democratic Congress ready to combat expanding poverty, disease, and illiteracy here and abroad.

     One bottom line he should borrow from the Neocons: forge ahead with your dreams and let nothing stand in your way, even when the other party has won a majority in Congress. Even when the only ones benefitting from your policies constitute 99.5 percent of the citizenry. That’s the American way, isn’t it? Whether or not the fate of the nation and the world may depend on Lieberman’s vote and McCain’s maverick whim leading him our way.

     Waking up into the Obama dream is a slow recovery from a terminal illness.

     Let nothing obstruct this dream.

©

21 January 2009: The Jumbotron, or Hope Needs Feathers

Jumbotron: crowds of epic and unprecedented proportions, from jumbo, “extremely large,” and tron, “suffix denoting an instrument.”

     A neologism is born out of milestones. Jumbotron saw the light yesterday to describe the unprecedented crowds at the inauguration of Barack Obama as 44^th president of the United States and Joe Biden as vice president.

     At the media level, viewers outnumbered the record, made by the audiences of the Super Bowl.

     The crowds, estimated at above 2 million, packed the environs of our nation’s capitol and the adjacent mall. There was breathing room but little else beyond that space, the people’s space, fully .007, or .7 percent, of the entire U.S. population.

     Never has the District experienced such hordes—I heard of no incidence of violence or other loss of self-control, though bottlenecks lasted more than an hour and crowds were forced to endure long hikes and temperatures hovering around 25 degrees. One woman was seriously injured by a Metro train.

     The sun shown as an omen of hope above the collective tribulations of the spectators, who received the opportunity to, and did boo Bush, another event that never before occurred at a presidential inauguration in this country.

     Cheney, the arch decider, was appropriately confined to a wheelchair, in ironic contrast to his iron control over this country’s misfortunes for so long.

     In contrast to the crowds, who cheered every chance they could, Obama’s speech, following the awkward oath of office, was measured and restrained, like that of an ambitious, inexperienced but strong youth eying a set of 300-pound barbells.

     Imagery was minimal—that of the reassuring hand reaching out to the inimical fist standing out from a speech in sharp contrast to the jubilant and eloquent cheerleading that describes his inspiring campaign rhetoric.

     Now we’re here, but here is a large and polluted swamp, freezing and overcrowded, dusted with a hostile opposition temporarily quelled. The cameras visited Bush’s responses to such realistic pronouncements frequently. The now ex-president, predicted to be among the two or three worst in history, attempted to keep a straight face, probably thinking about the brush he would hack down in Crawford now that he was finished hacking at the foundations of freedom and universal ideals here and abroad.

     So January 20, 2009, was a day of contrasts, too---the millions up against the one ("e pluribus unum, "out of many, one"), the cold air versus the warmth of fellowship and hope—one will, countless goals.

     Although I live in the District, I stayed home and watched the proceedings via feed and conventional tv, lacking tickets though I am a distant relative by marriage of both Diane Feinstein and Shaun Donovan, the new secretary of HUD. But we’re all related, after all.

     I stayed home not wanting to walk so far to the mall, not having the grit to arrive at the entrance gates at midnight, marveling at those who did. Washington can be as cold in winter as it is hot in the summer.

     I stayed home wondering if “Yes, we can” came along too late, where economists anticipate more plunging of stocks on Wall Street, a national debt in excess of our GDP, trillions replacing billions in everyday financial forecasts, a new, strong generation of wrath ignited by the recent devastation of Gaza, strong corporate lobbies that will inevitably block or heavily dilute the domestic changes the Obama campaign promised. . . .

     Can means “have the ability to.” In other words, it implies an anticipated but not yet fulfilled action or passion.

     And so, shivering within the walls of a well-heated but poorly insulated apartment, all I can anticipate is possibility, all I can anticipate is help for those 2 million here yesterday and all they represented back home, all I can foresee for a long time coming is hope, the bottom of the barrel of evils and tribulations that remains once the others have flown out.

     Here it is not winged, that “thing with feathers.” It is that canned oxygen we are now hooked up to. Will we weather the cold and the pollution? Will freedom survive?

     As Obama said yesterday, believe it or not, that is up to all of us.

©

19 January 2009: The Hub Heats Up

Here we are at the center of the world’s eye, streets milling with joyous grassroots citizens come to celebrate their success, even as emails pour in from David Plouffe and others about the ongoing efforts needed to continue the victory for as long as we can.

     It’s not like the olden days, those “Happy Days Are Here Again” days. Even as we celebrate, Wednesday looms ahead. Mardi Gras, Tuesday, preceding Lent, and we must continue to give up TV time and work instead for our future now that it’s been handed back to us—our democracy if we can keep it. How perilously close we came to losing it. I was sure we had already lost it.

     Then came that eleventh-hour miracle: Karl Rove’s prediction that came through, only he predicted a victory and Obama received a thinly veiled, overwhelming landslide.

     Yesterday: a concert at Lincoln Memorial. An estimated million in the crowds, some of whom made it into the concert territory while the rest of us fanned out around the Washington Monument, placated with large speakers on poles that transmitted the sounds half-heartedly.

     What a roster of performers: Springsteen, Seeger, Biyoncé, Stevie Wonder, Queen Latifa, Aretha Franklin, Tom Hanks. . . .

     Lincoln’s seated grandeur looked out over all of us above rock, soul, country, patriotism. If any events could summon back a soul, surely he was there, waiting for more than eloquence and celebration, waiting for the travail that comes next, that he knew so well, and hoping we’ll do what it takes to keep his words and dreams alive.

     I snapped crowd shots, which I love—faces I’ll never see again but feel kindred to always—we of one soul come together. With my filmmaker friend and his cameraman (see photos below), I wove through the crowds interviewing, conversing, smiling, discovering, “from the redwood forests to the gulfstream waters. . . .” Pete Seeger could hardly dictate verses to us, his voice is so worn out, but he did, as his grandson’s strong voice and skillful guitar assured that the torch has been passed, and how wonderful that Seeger lived long enough to be able to sing these words as truth rather than simply music and nostalgia.

     We met a woman from Kenya who had flown over with Obama’s grandmother.

     We encountered a cluster of signs protesting abortion and “homosex,” as gay lovers kissed passionately before them. No one could ruin the day.

     We met America.

*****

Exhausted, we traipsed out again today, the district even more crowded, to do more filming of this “long time coming” that Aretha had regaled us with. Right at Dupont Circle, where I live, a cluster of rallies and live exhibits protested Obama’s decision to look forward and not waste time over the past.

     There are crimes to castigate, for the sake of our future, that no administration dare reiterate, was the impassioned cry from the speakers on the north side of the park. At the south was a 30-foot-high inflated parodic image of Bush, and pairs of shoes provided to throw at “him.” He sported the lengthened nose of Pinocchio.

     Code Pink members danced the “Can-Can-Can.” Undignified, unserious, but such an attention-getting contradiction.

     Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman passed us to say hi. The filmmakers interviewed progressive activist David Swanson (see photo below). They mingled with attendees young and old and found out why they were there and what they were thinking. No two answers were the same, though they all smiled.

     The opposition for the large part allowed our pageant. There’s a lot of backstage work for them that I hope doesn’t get done. Can’t the music lure them in? Can’t the restoration of The People’s President convince them?

     But after all, dissent is the lifeblood of democracy. Our dissent triumphed by a rat’s hair, Rove’s backstage antics curtailed.

*****

Later, a thick line to the Newseum wrapped around the block. Tourists were visible at the top on a balcony of a path around that floor. The museum daily features front pages from all over the world, including the United States. We were not allowed in as press, except for the cameraman. So we snoozed in exhaustion in the waiting area that offered no other free distractions. Sleep. So much noise last night from the bar next door that will be open all night tonight for visitors unable to find hotel space or, at least, affordable hotel space.

     The Metro employees are judicious about guiding the out-of-towners through the turnstyles, through the complicated ticket purchasing process, onto trains, promising that tomorrow, despite the hundreds of thousands, the millions Metro will absorb, Metro will transport, not strangle. We’ll all be alive though tired on Wednesday, with stories aplenty about the nice people we were squashed and suffocated against en route to the ceremonies, back from them, streets filled with us, cars standing still, police barricades ubiquitous against this rally of all rallies, the rally all others back through the last eight years were begging for and now hope they’ve attained.

*****

     I am ecstatic that democracy has been given another chance. But my optimism is cautious. I just can’t celebrate with too much abandon. After all, it’s the ornate icing. I’m waiting for more, anxious for Lent. Let’s hope for no Katrinas. No more Katrinas. And pray that the present disastrous wreck of our country and the world can be brought back to shape and form.

     The spirits of Abe Lincoln and MLK are being anointed with hope. I’m praying. Cherishing this time of hope and wanting the mood to last forever as we plow onward. We’ve recovered before.

     And here we go again.

©

12 January 2009: Two Heavy Flix: A Minimalist Review with a Twist

Last weekend it was my privileged indulgence to go to the E Street Cinema two days in a row. I saw both Doubt and The Reader.

     No wonder I am feeling zonked today.

     I assume you are familiar with the plotlines:

     Doubt is about a Catholic church/school in the grips of a would-be scandal. The relationship between a charismatic priest and a troubled young student becomes the immediate focus and remains center stage while the school principal and the priest engage in a subtle battle that escalates into a screaming match.

     The implicit has developed into the explicit in completely euphemistic terms, perhaps the film’s greatest accomplishment.

     The nun prevails. The priest leaves.

     She has accused him of sexually exploiting the troubled student. She is sure about this accusation until, after the priest leaves she experiences doubt and bursts into tears, as if a concrete wall could cry. Here it does. Adamantine turns into oatmeal.

     But I think the ending, reverse Pieta pose reveals that same relationship between the priest and the troubled boy: platonic, Christian (as it were) love.

***** 

     The Reader is about a beautiful, lonely woman in her twenties, illiterate, who rescues an ill teenager vomiting in the dirty tunnel that fronts her modest apartment.

     He recovers, comes to thank her, and soon after she initiates him into eros.

     A lifelong relationship evolves. She loves being read to, so he reads to her. She leaves him to his teenage friends and he misses her dreadfully. Then, as a law student, he finds her on trial for working as a guard for the Nazis during World War II. She is sentenced to lifelong imprisonment that ends up lasting twenty years. He sends her endless tapes to listen to.

     What he doesn’t figure out until the trial is that she is illiterate. She chooses to serve twenty years in jail rather than admit this to the judge and jury.

     In prison she teaches herself to read and write.

     At the end of her time in prison, he comes to see her, to the ruins of the wonderful summer they spent together.

     He offers the friendless 66 year old a job and a place to live. He cannot love an ex-Nazi and that is all she really wants--love.

     He comes for her a week later and finds out that she hung herself.

***** 

     Are these films comparable? Both center around extremely strong women who end up helpless.

     One is about heavy sensuality and the other about repressed sexuality.

     One co-stars a virgin boy and the other a mellow middle-aged priest.

     Both center around tragic love relationships, one platonic (presumably), the other erotic.

     Both feature Christian love: in Doubt it is apparent between the priest and troubled youth as well as the principal and her protege; in The Reader it is given by the sensual woman to the ill teenager at their first encounter.

     One ends with doubt, the other a decisive resolution.

     Both films are dominated by a pair of opposites: in Doubt the lively and sensuous (presumably abstinent) priest versus the frigid widow-turned-nun. In The Reader the illiterate, sensual woman stands in contrast to the learned, virgin teenage boy.

***** 

     When I decided to see both movies, I did not intend to find such fundamental parallels. Nor did they strike me until I began to write this review.

     I suppose any two Hollywood melodramas are comparable, but it is interesting to figure out how.

     Are the producers testing the public, having purposely planned the simultaneous screenings?

     If so, now you know so that you can avoid surprise and confusion when confronted on the street by someone with a microphone.

     So reread this carefully.

***** 

     I wonder if there is myth to background the two structures.

     I’ll worry about that tomorrow.

     Because right now, frankly, I don’t give a damn.

     I’m going to see an epic-length film about Che Guevara next weekend.

     Then comes the Inauguration.

     Maybe that will inspire a better blog.

©

8 January 2009: Treading on Excruciating Ground

     As ignorant as I am about what’s really going on in the Middle East, I try to imagine the horror of frequent sirens warning people in south Israel to take cover. Worse than that are atrocities like having your homes bulldozed and the enemy occupying random places in your homeland and this place filled with enemy checkpoints so that it takes hours to get anywhere beyond your village, if you succeed at all.

     The Palestinian death toll this time around is horrendous, especially when we add to this number the sum of lives ruined and the number of those that were civilian casualties.

     The enemy of the enemy is, in this case, Hamas.

     The enemy, Israel, I am told, wants peaceful coexistence with its neighbors and recognition of its land as a sovereign entity, with all that this implies, including adherence to international law and the Geneva Conventions.

     Hamas’s intention is to regain this entire land and for people three generations back to regain the properties taken from them in 1948. Many people believe in this ideal. I can respect them as I respect those Jews who believe that Israel is their homeland from ancient times, believe that what the Bible tells us is true. Jerusalem is sacred to all three of the Abrahamic religions. And it has been argued that whereas Jerusalem it the number one holy city for the Jews, it is number three to the Muslims, after Mecca and Medina.

     But Hamas will not abandon its goals. They sacrifice countless lives, both theirs and Israelis’, toward this goal, as the Israelis sacrifice lives to attain their goal.

     It will not even be enough if Israel restores its land to the 1967 borders.

     The battle, as I see it, will be endless.

     Small groups of Israelis and Palestinians resist this and meet together to figure out how to make peace. The number of these groups and their numbers are growing. But what can they do in the face of extremism? Great milestones begin with small groups. The goal may take generations, but then again, in response, the number of extremists may grow.

     So, in my mind, the best we can hope for, realistically, is lack of war in between wars, with all the tensions and misunderstandings this implies.

     Resorting to my limited knowledge of history, I am searching for parallels.

     But what I find is that countries are born out of violence, with the exception of Liberia, whose people have suffered from violent extremism since the country’s nonviolent birth.

     Consider how the United States achieved sovereignty and greatness by destroying countloess numbers, and whole tribes, of Native Americans.

****

     I belong to an interfaith group of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. We are harmonious and friendly. We meet at the Washington Friends Meeting.

     But one of the ladies—they are all ladies—informed me that no Muslims were involved in 9/11. I was startled and answered nothing.

     My belief is that Muslims were pawns for Bush’s need for an apocalyptic event to implement the Neoconservative agenda of invading Iraq and ultimately other strategic lands in the Middle East, including Iran, to further their power grab and greed. I guess I can be described by that hideous term conspiracy theorist, but history may prove that I am right. Bin Laden was all too happy to take credit for 9/11. The Neoconservatives were all too complicit in flying bin Laden’s family members out of this country in violation of the prohibition against flying during the days following 9/11.

     But I answered none of this to my Muslim friend. We just occupy different dimensions of reality and I didn’t want to seem unpatriotic, even though they are so accepting of our differences, because beyond everything else, most of us are parents and all of us love food and our children and value the nuclear family and so on. We are all human and occupying the same planet. We all want peace.

     The Neoconservatives, many of them, are just being too nice, about Obama’s victory, in my opinion. Were they expressing their true feelings, they would be sour grapes, I’m sure. I’m also sure that Mr. Rove is directing future strategies of a postponed agenda, but I hope I’m wrong. They are as unyielding as Hamas.

     Ultimately, perhaps hostilities in the Middle East will end when there is nothing more to fight about, when the Holy Land becomes nothing more than a wasteland pockmarked with craters and otherwise in ruins.

     Zionism will have to regroup and seek out another haven to stave off the horrors of anti-Semitism. The United States will have to seek another outpost in the Middle East.

     But I’m assuming a future continuous with reality today. Who knows what will evolve? Will we live happily ever after? I just don’t think that human nature will allow for this outcome. We need to lose the violence gene, but I don’t think that point of evolution is possible, given the premise that, as Vachel Lindsay once wrote, “Violence is the sire of all the world’s values.” Note the term sire, implying that most of it emanates from masculine humans. Violence is the language used to solve problems, most of them.

     There are stunning exceptions, but few compared to the number of wars fought in human history. Violence has been our language since the days of the cavepeople.

****

     I am the daughter and granddaughter of Zionists. My grandfathers worked side by side with Theodore Herzl and Golda Meir, who stayed at my grandparents’ apartment once. So I was brought up as a Zionist.

     In my adult life I have become neutral, in the sense that innocent suffering is an abomination, whatever the identity of the victims.

     I want peace. I want communication. But where the two realities occupy different dimensions, I wonder how we will ever achieve these goals.

     But I think to myself, for what it’s worth, that any Holocaust victim would have gladly traded his/her life with Palestinian refugees. One group was denied their original goals and, in the worst case, were killed in some proportion of their whole; many others were confined to prison camps.

     But to be dragged from your home to certain, violent extermination with the goal of destroying your entire ethnic group is even worse. 

     I will be asked why innocent Arabs had to die to achieve the goal of a Jewish homeland. In my dimension, the reality I am told and have witnessed from audeo recordings, is that David ben Gurion exhorted the Palestinians to coexist with the Jewish settlers in peace. But this was not an option. Or better, this was a rejected option. Territoriality is an imperative shared by many levels of animate species. We can’t buck it.

     I know that a different reality is accepted and believed by many.

     Human nature gets in the way of so many ideals we conceive around the dinner table if not elsewhere.

     I hope I can be regarded, after this blog is read, as wanting peace above all, as wanting paradise on earth, a ridiculous aspiration given reality. I want the violence of extremism to perish. As I wrote above, human nature as it is just won’t achieve this.

     Reality offers time as the only solution. And intermittent spaces of nonwar, as I wrote above.

     I will work for peace as we work toward other ideals such as perfection in many forms, if not absolute perfection.

     I haven’t asked my activist colleagues whether they think absolute peace is possible. But we have to believe this at some level, concentrating on specific geographical or ideological terrains.

     Throughout the world, there will always be extremists and always peacemakers. But I believe that this reality issues forth from human nature, the ultimate premise homo sapiens will never transcend. Not so sapientes (“wise” in the nominative plural) are we. I propose that we describe homo with a more accurate adjective. But off hand, I can think of nothing but pejoratives, so I’ll leave this question to another blog.

©

31 December 2008: Has It All Been Said?

As I skim over the media terrain—the Internet anyway—I find that every category of event related to 2008 has been amply dissected, from sports to entertainment to politics to fashion. Can Baby New Year afford his/her diaper and bath this year? Nothing designer-y anyway.

     Baby New Year may wear as an emblem a dollar sign crossed out, or two small bowls, one empty and one overflowing with bullion. The empty one will be labeled “Main St.” and the full one will be labeled, of course, “Wall St.,” but there will be a hole in the bottom. As bullion runs out, more rains into the bowl from, miraculously, the empty bowl.

     But I’m not a cartoonist.

     And the old year, 2008, what will it wear? The costume of the Grim Reaper? But am I sure I want to “ring out the old”?

     What is in store for 2009? Further downward spiraling of the economy? A trillion new dollars printed up? Ten trillion?

     Will China, with its tanking economy, stop buying U.S. Savings Bonds?

     Will India and Pakistan go to war? Who will fire the first shot? Who the last?

     As the Obama administration takes out the broom and dustpan, will it have to order up an industrial-sized vacuum instead? And find that it needs far more? And not find what it needs?

     Will Israel obliterate Gaza altogether and still be bombed at its southern border, miraculously?

     Will the infrastructure in Iraq be improved, a debt the U.S. has reneged on, now that there’s a new government, which it says should take over Halliburton’s assignment for now? If that’s the case, the Iraqis will accomplish in one day what Cheney’s friends couldn’t in four years, though draining the treasury by the billion each month.   

     Will the U.S. catch bin Laden? Not!!!

     Will the U.S. spend more billions chasing him and sacrificing hundreds of its military in that process? Maybe.

     Will the U.S. defeat the Taliban navigating, with its instruments, a terrain that only the natives can understand? Not, but billions more will be wasted, rest assured.

     Will the drug wars on the Mexican borders cease?

     Will the stone walls being constructed along the border achieve their purpose?

     What is its purpose? The U.S. economy is stabilized (stabilized?) by Mexican money also. Does a country build stone boundaries along the border of an ally? Not!!

     What will become of the illegal immigrants? I don’t think they’ll evaporate in 2009. They still want to come here, to send home paper dollars that may no longer be legal tender by the end of 2009.

     Will Bush and Cheney receive punishment for their heinous crimes, for shredding the Constitution and Geneva Conventions? Again, billions would be spent while our mainstream media, totally infatuated with yellow publicity, will focus on nothing else, as with the impeachment hearings of 1999?

     Will the U.S. have universal health care? Will Teddy Kennedy be alive? Will Caroline Kennedy inherit his senatorial torch?

     Will the bread lines of the 1930s recur, so that great artists can produce more photography and other imaging?

     Indeed, there is lots to look forward to, or maybe, better, anticipate, I say to myself, standing at the top of a metaphorical hill, like Moses, only seeing below no land of milk and honey. Instead I may see Guernica or the like, and be permitted to live on.

     That Moses is actually Obama, not I.

     Most awful of all, will we look back nostalgically to the Bush II years even as we blame him for this cesspool he’s left as his legacy? Even as we, the second and third and fourth estates, descend into further ruin while the haves and have mores buy cheaper champagne and sell one or two of their many lavish estates?

     Don’t be so quick to throw a shoe at 2008. It’s given us this powerful reality and metaphor, one of the highlights of the year. It’s given us Obama & co., a political triumph the Election Integrity movement can celebrate along with most others.

     It rescued us from the even worse ruin that McCain would certainly have oozed.

     The first black president was elected, so that MLK must be resting in peace instead of rolling over in his grave.  But probably now.

     It showed us that Americans have more intelligence than is normally credited to them. That they are not 100 percent self-destructive.

     It may not be too late for some amount of economic recovery, some amount of increasing taxes on the rich, some amount of more widespread health benefits.

     But let me assure you, the devil is more likely to be struck by lightning than for such amelioration to even begin in 2009. I hope I’m wrong.

     May we jump to 2010? Write off 2009 altogether? 2010 may witness some turnaround.

     Baby New Year may have progeria.

     I am not usually so pessimistic, am I? Not quite.

     Think about it: Obama won. Let everything this implies become evident soon. May such “everything” be realized in a positive and beneficial manner.

     And think about this: there may no longer be a first estate if “everything” comes about because Obama won and kept his promises.

     Happy New Year. May it somehow, miraculously, be the greatest year ever for the largest amount of the human race possible.

©

28 December 2008: Sweet Little Buttercup She!

We had so much fun and adulation and glamour and downright jealousy that brief Camelot moment when the JFKs graced the White House.

     Tragically, only one out of those four lives today.

     I am all in favor of Caroline’s staying out of range, to arrest the morbid curse that plagues the Kennedys.

     Instead, with the news that her children pushed her into supporting Obama, Caroline emerged in her middle-aged radiance, with a grown-up voice and some amount of personality, to support Barack along with her Uncle Ted. It was touching even when I supported Edwards during the primary season, until he dropped out and someone lifted the curtains on his other self, alas. Human, all too human, aren’t we all?

     Now Barack has been elected; I don’t know how much of that victory is attributable to Caroline’s support, but yesterday she announced officially her interest in stepping into Hillary Clinton’s shoes when Hill takes her oath of SoS.

     S.O.S.! We have been aware of Caroline’s interest for about a month. She granted an interview to an obscure local TV station yesterday and is not anxious for more. She has addressed crowds and taken Al Sharpton to lunch. I assume she paid. He looked dumbfounded in all photography taken of the two, sort of an oxymoron, sort of.

     A debutante and a leftist minister, the former of whom could probably rebalance the entire economy with her bank account, one of them, which she isn’t too anxious to exhibit to the famished-for-celebrity public.

     But the real parallel is between her and Barack: two years in the Senate and whoosh! Up like an astronaut! Maybe. A friend joked about the Kennedy-Palin race in 2012.

     Which makes me wonder whether her children really pushed her into the charmed public eye. Oh, that wardrobe. Oh, the jewelry. Subdued, but oh. Perfect hair, done only once a day. Does she?

     For her own good, I wish she’d vanish behind that perfectly manicured row of high hedges and winding blacktop that led to some sort of mansion the public never saw.  Become again that glamorous hidden enigma hoarding privacy. Príh-vih-see?

     Is there a congressional district for the Upper East Side that might be more appropriate?

     One doesn’t go from mowing the lawn to leading a suburban corporation in one step, does one, whatever the last name, however much volunteer work and wealth donated to Nyew Yahk?

     Enough. Don’t mean to roast too long. She is, after all, a liberal, a Kennedy liberal, and that’s better than some alternatives. But we all got impatient with the poli sci 101 that Bush flunked so miserably. We don’t need an apprentice senator from Nyew Yahk, do we?

     I loved the parodies of the Kennedys such as Mad magazine’s: 1) “Deah, Caroline just made a funny. She said that when the Republicans die they go to the elephants’ burial ground.”

     2) The H.M.S. Pinafore parody in the title above.

     Buttercups are far better off on sprawling, meticulously groomed, green-to-death front lawns of mansions.

     The new Camelot will last longer by at least a year, let’s hope, inshallah, but be far less fun than the first one. Stay in our memories, dahling, as that little blonde girl on her pony Macaroni that lit up the front page of Life so long ago.

     “What child wouldn’t want to be Caroline Kennedy?” continued that front page caption.

     Keep that dream alive, Caroline.

©

13 December 2008: Current Events and Non-Events

I’ve been away from my blogging desk--the one with the lousy PC that takes so long to boot up that my blogs are always almost out of date, as non-current as some progressive Web sites that I read. I don’t usually read regressive ones, however.

     Sorry about the wit. Maybe I should stop here? But I have been reading and have a bit of feedback to what current events we are dished out and am happily pleased that Lou Dobbs, the reactionary Independent, even agrees with me sometimes.

     What I’m thinking about specifically, however, is the two remnant Senate elections—in Georgia and Minnesota.

     Georgia because Saxby Chambliss was re-elected after some complicated processes (two) and I can’t help but remember that, under very questionable circumstances, he got into office in the first place by unseating the heroic Max Cleland, a liberal Democrat more heroic than even John McCain (a mixed blessing on his houses), in that he sacrificed three of his limbs to his country and still had the guts and idealism to seek office and win it.

     Only in the realm of politics, that rank cesspool, would anyone run against such a disabled hero. It could just be that, in addition to those questionable voting machines, Max Cleland had more trouble getting around to campaign than Chambliss did. His name is so way southern. His campaign told so many lies about Cleland. Reminds me of the deposing of another Democratic Member of Congress, Cynthia McKinney, most recently the Green Party’s presidential candidate.

     Now to Minnesota. Bring on the clowns. We really need a comedian in the Senate. Why Al Franken wasn’t elected to the Senate by a landslide I can’t figure out. The latest stage of the impasse resembles Florida 2000 in that his opponent, Norm Coleman, has referred the issue of counting wrongly discarded absentee ballots to the state supreme court. He doesn’t want them counted, the way that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t want the Florida recount to proceed and got their way and got their Bush. Remember the Alamo? You know, the rewritten version where the Mexicans lost and the Texas side won?

     I voted absentee again in the presidential election, distrustful of both touchscreen and optical scanning machines, and was told that my vote had even less of a chance of being counted than did the others. But I persisted in using a handwritten paper ballot. The District elected Obama with or without my vote. Surprise, surprise, by nearly 100 percent. I dwell in the most liberal almost-state in the union.

     And now for the economy. Wasn’t it AIG that had a party that cost $400,000 after receiving a sizeable bailout? Now Citibank is receiving charity from us, and the Bank of America, which recently bought out my very own savings bank, is also teetering. And the beat goes on.

     It is a privilege to help those more fortunate than I am, I once remarked.

     Seems to me, silly me, that we the people should be bailed out with government funds, which consist partly of empty paper but mostly of our own tax money. Is it too much to ask that we be bailed out with our own money? How absurd can things get? How many tony cocktail parties and yacht extravaganzas will we pay for while our homes and possessions are being auctioned off by the very banks that bankrupted us?  

     Here is yet another truism: Barack Obama owes his victory to one judge in Ohio—Federal Judge Solomon Oliver (what a name attached to such an important decision!), the one who ruled against Carl Rove’s henchman Mike Connell, the computer whiz who had so much to do with the Ohio electoral fiasco in 2004. Connell was about to press the magic button to elect the temperamental button pusher McCain. You know, that button that is connected to the plethora of voting machines spread across the country by those Republican cronies/voting machine factories Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia. The details are here.

     The judge stayed that criminal hand. We all of us owe a huge debt to Solomon Oliver, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and the Velvet Revolution attorneys who worked so hard to introduce the case and keep it alive. Democracy would not otherwise have survived.

     Solomon Oliver, who saved democracy at the eleventh hour, the day before Election Day.

     November 4, 2008, will go down in history for many reasons, but let us proclaim it Solomon Oliver Day.

     You go, Judge!!

©

7 December 2008: U.S. Peace Memorial

I am commemorating Pearl Harbor Day by describing a project alive since 2005: a museum of peace, a memorial, whose purpose is described at www.uspeacememorial.org:

     "The US Peace Memorial will make it clear to Americans that opposing war is honorable and socially acceptable, and that our nation has a long history of patriotic citizens who have opposed wars. . . .  A national monument to peacemakers can change our cultural mindset so that it will no longer be acceptable to label those who speak out against war as un-American, antimilitary, traitorous, or unpatriotic.  We hope the memorial will decrease the barriers that citizens must overcome before they speak out against a war.”

     Dr. Michael Knox of the University of South Florida was a featured speaker Friday night at the Washington Friends Meeting. With an impressive and extensive record as a peace activist, the project’s executive director aims to complete the memorial on a piece of ground along the mall, once congressional approval is obtained and once three different commissions at the district level approve the project as a whole and are satisfied that all appropriate requirements are met, including maintenance of the pyramid-shaped structure in aeternam. The target date for completion of the project is 2010. Twenty million dollars is the targeted amount of money this 501(C)(3) organization needs to complete the structure.

     Meanwhile the web page will serve as a virtual form of the ambitious but certainly not braggadocio project.

     The memorial will consist of a registry of all peace activists from Mahatma Gandhi to someone like me—whoever has contributed to peace action at any level—all role models of inspiration and hope. Its walls will be inscribed with significant quotations relevant to peace. It will offer educational outreach, including speakers, to the public.

     Throughout the country there are a few locations devoted to peace, but all are at the local level. The Peace Monument in Washington DC, also called the Naval Museum, pays tribute to heroes of the Civil War who were in the US Navy.

     As for the stunning monument built with the museum, "Sculptor Franklin Simmons first created this piece for Annapolis. It was erected here in 1878, and is sometimes referred to as the ‘Naval Monument.’ Standing on top of the monument are two figures - Grief is weeping against the shoulder of History. Below Grief and History, standing on the base of Maine blue granite, is Victory facing The Mall, and Peace, facing the Capitol.” (quotation from the monument’s webpage here.)

     One might think that the huge plethora of war monuments around the world might disabuse the public of the value of militarism as a solution to conflicts large and small, but they rather glorify, largely, military heroism and achievements, bravery in the face of rank violence.

     When I suggested to board member Dr. Lucy Bradley-Springer, nurse, educator, and Vietnam-era veteran,  that the most effective peace outreach might be an iMax film depicting graphically horrendous front-line battles in action, she said that the movie Saving Private Ryan accomplishes this in its opening scenes.

     Films about post-traumatic stress disorder already exist—these too might work, bundled with blood-curdling battle scenes, effectively within a peace monument. Again, though, these suggestions are inappropriate according to the suggested components of the memorial.

     Ultimately, I think there are other priorities: How do we effectively resort to diplomacy in the Pakistan miasma and reach out diplomatically to al Qaeda and the Taliban? How can we possibly send more troops into that impossible landscape after the Vietnam experience when the other landscape is even less navigable for those non-native to the region? How can we send troops to war-threatened India without first resorting to other preventive means, even with the Bush administration still in control?

     And once our limited military is diverted from Iraq, what will happen there, when terrorism jumps around elusively like pop-up pegs?

     I know that I’m asking impossible questions. But religions have been praying for peace even as they resort continuously to war—even Buddhists, in Thailand most lately.

     Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which forbids war (except defensive) and nuclear weaponry, is one outstanding example of the goals of the Peace Memorial. Add Gandhi and MLK, among a few others, and the Quaker religion.

     I’d suggest a film, Peace, as a possible temporary focus for the project, along with the wise decision to exist virtually for now.

     In a time of peace or, more realistically, the absence of war, we can memorialize peace and its heroic advocates. We can teach the difference between peace and absence of war.

     For now, alas, there is violence to efface by some miracle, and war. Whatever we can do to alleviate these horrors takes precedence--whatever we can do to build peace. Then we’ll really deserve to memorialize ourselves as well as our predecessors.

     Happy (?) Pearl Harbor Day.

©

21 November 2008: A Chat with Destiny

Well, if you haven't noticed, the President-Elect did not take my advice about whom to hire for his key support positions. I still can't get around his consideration to retain Gates as Secretary of Defense, but that's certainly an indication that he is not considering Dennis Kucinich for that position. Perhaps, if he is truly Miracle Man, he will create a Department of Peace and appoint Kucinich to head that. Dream on.

     Having noted in my last blog that Obama would be treading slop in this cesspool of an international scenario, I will expand the imagery back to antiquity, when the famous Greek philosopher Empedokles, in an effort to prove his divinity, which he advertised wherever he went, jumped into Mt. Aetna, that fuming volcano. Nobody ever heard of him again; however, one of his sandals remained at the point from which he jumped. Obama is diving into such a volcano, but if more than a shoe survives, we can relax. Yes, he could, we will affirm.

     My central plea this time around, with what little I know about running the world's most powerful nation, is that countless additional lives not be sacrificed to Osama bin Laden. We laud ourselves about having advanced beyond our distant forbears, but I guarantee that the rite of human sacrifice is alive and well.

     Because once that leader is slain by the Enemy, a quantity of wrath will be aroused the likes of which is unfathomable.

     There is the infamous #2 guy, al Zaqiri, who's been at it for years to rise up as the next Bastion of Evil.

     Consider also that there are al Qaeda cells all over the world. Together they could kindle an unprecedented wildfire.

     As I surfed the Web for thoughts this morning, I read that al Qaeda wanted McCain to win the recent election, "because of his stupidity and his policies"; last time around, however, Kerry was the favorite because he was soft on war.

     And McCain, that savant, referred recently to Pakistan as bordering on Iraq. And he's been to both places.

     We have heard nothing that I know of about Sarah Palin since that interview last week of her in her kitchen making dinner. Maybe pardoning a turkey yesterday--an omen of all the turkeys Bush plans to pardon before his term is completed?

     And who am I to ask how a quagmire like the one on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan can be resolved?

     I resorted to what theory I know and recalled that in the 80s the US was allied with both bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, gifting both with weaponry, and in the 90s there was a flirtation with the Taliban that was quickly broken off, but not before we had endowed them with arms also.

     Question is, is there some sort of crisis or enemy that would envelope interests such disparate societies might share? What sort of monster might that be? Invasion by resuscitated dinosaurs and wooly mammoths? Russia seeking to become a superpower, a USSR again? That worked back in the 80s, with wide-reaching consequences, the end of a cold war that had existed all of my life up to then. Stranger things have happened.

     Which enemy is more threatening--the present one or USSR redux?

     I'm sure that experts have better ideas.

     It occurs to me also that we share other basic traits with the Enemy: we all love our children and food. We both value family. As far as the humans they are willing to sacrifice, the numbers pale compared to the military we've lost in Iraq alone.

     Outrageous thing to say, I know.

     We can't impose sanctions on a group spread throughout the world.

     Peace advocates say that we need to reach toward understanding before resorting to arms, the solution of so much throughout history.

     Understanding the impoverished multitudes they represent or claim they do. Understanding their atrocities and disgusting treatment of women. Understanding how they can attack the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, killing innocent people and changing the world that existed before then. The threat of their violence rules so much of our lives, has negated so much we took for granted, just like those hideous fumes that erased the achingly blue sky on 9/11.

     Germany is now an ally and Japan's constitution outlaws a military or any type of warfare, an amazing exemplar the rest of the world ignores. We associate electronic gizmos and automobiles with Japan. That article of their constitution pertaining to peace is now being threatened. We were informed of that by a Hibakusha, Mr. Saito, who survived the Hiroshima blast though within a meter of the epicenter. He travels around now seeking support to keep that sacred text enforced.

     If Germany and Japan have evolved so much, history would indicate that this amazing reversal can happen again.

     Evolve so that a strongly liberal Democratic candidate for president won't shun an entire religious group because of the 9/11 association. Even though his father was a Muslim. Of course he couldn't emphasize that in the present climate.

     But if another cataclysm occurs, so that an Israel will no longer be necessary, so much will follow, including a whole new set of issues a strengthened populace will combat with more wisdom than violence, a populace now steered by a universal declaration of peace, similar to that article of the Japanese constitution.

     I admit that I've used the examples of Germany and Japan as a bridge to an ideal society. But perhaps this time we can avoid the violence ingredient. Considering what we share over what alienates us.

     In Washington, DC, members of all three Abrahamic faiths gather together to discuss and communicate, in small groups usually, with the hope that we are creating something large, a world where an Israel need no longer exist, where all concrete walls become a bad memory.

     In a film shown at the Washington Friends Meeting two weeks ago, set in Nigeria, Muslims are warring with Christians, with massive bloodshed until their two charismatic leaders decide to climb over the rubble and become allies, to climb over ancestral hatred. They succeed, at least in the short term. The film shows members of the two religions embracing even as they remember slain siblings, parents, and children, slain friends.

     At the end the imam and the pastor tell viewers that they are friends not because they want to be but because they have to be. The antagonism has risen above religion or has forced out principles the two religions share--love of peace. 

    Can this miracle self-propagate beyond Nigeria to all warring factions? Can a reconciliation between two relatively small groups spread like al Qaeda cells, ruled not by negatives but by principles we all revere, at the abstract level at least?

     Globalization can figure positively in this arena.

15 November 2008: Another Week to Remember

This week has been action-packed. The G-20 conference took place across the street from where I work, in the Buildings Museum. Down the street in the other direction, Obama’s transition team is constructing the future of the world.

     There were white tents pitched around the massive museum building, reminiscent of the horse show that took place at the Verizon Arena, across from the Buildings Museum. White tents in both instances. Only in the latter venue I’m sure a splendid repast was being prepared and wondered how much all those candied hummingbirds’ wings were costing us taxpayers.

     From what I’ve read, tongue-in-cheek accounts, the group was mapping out ways to avoid this economic fiasco in the future. They will meet again after Obama takes office. But the group has decided against unbridled free trade, that government intervention is needed. Bush disagrees, from what I read yesterday. His remarks today were canned. At least no malapropisms.

     I’ve been meaning to share with you two letters to the New York Times that I composed in reaction to some of last Sunday’s op eds. I will try to furnish some background in both instances, as well as I can remember it.

     First, I reacted to Nick Kristof’s column rejoicing about Obama’s victory as an intellectual. If only Adlai Stevenson were alive and of sound mind!:

"Regarding Mr. Kristof's expectation of a renaissance of the intellect, I think, alas, that it will take longer than 4 or even 8 years to undo damage that has been sinuously infecting our culture since the early seventies when a Supreme Court Justice wrote a manifesto that included dumbing down the populace as a way for conservatism to trump brains. It's been downhill ever since, to the point that a vice presidential candidate can exhibit such blatant ignorance and maintain her small following nonetheless, though the outcome of the senatorial race in Alaska that she plans to enter might infect that state with further terminal ignorance that may spread as her kindled ambition persists beyond this initial disappointment. She's won other elections, after all.

"So when we hearken back to the sixties as still alive, we must remember that brief, shining moment in recent history when educated, intellectual students had their say at the national level. I recently reread the Port Huron Statement, and SDS's principles strike me not only as moderate but as insightful as present-day actions and thoughts among progressives, who are about eight years ahead of the rest of us in terms of foresigntedness and lightyears away in terms of intellect. To think the SDSers were ever considered radical!.

"All the while that small minority of us intellectuals enjoy splendid oratory at the 9th-grade level, who knows what will be occurring down under, where Ann Coulter and her elves will be fighting this trend that contradicts their agenda? Remember how much time the Clintons spent testifying to grand juries? At taxpayer expense?

"We must remain vigilant and rigorously fight the war against the intellect. It's so easy to sit back and let others keep democracy alive. That's precisely what lost it for us in 2000 if not sooner.

"So roll up your sleeves. Democracy is such hard work and I'm so tired. There's so much we must continue doing. Roll up your sleeves!"

     The second letter responded to Frank Rich’s analysis of the elements that led to Obama’s victory. As a neo-Suffragette, I wrote the following:

"As awed as I am by Frank Rich's writing, he, like other experts, does not acknowledge a fundamental miracle of Obama's victory: that somehow we overshot all of the Republican roadblocks traditional to elections at least since 2000: electronic machine rigging and dysfunction, discarding paper ballots, requiring provisional ballots wrongly and then discarding them when no one's looking, racist intimidation tactics, requiring identification that eliminates many impoverished citizens, caging, which excludes our own military whose addresses become Iraq and hence disqualify them from voting, other expatriate votes--the list goes on. Mr. Rich may read about these major obstacles to democracy, which put Bush into the White House twice, at any number of progressive websites--bradblog, news from the underground, John Gideon's website, and others.

"Carl Rove predicted a Democratic victory after one of his henchmen was cornered in an Ohio court (http://www.rovecybergate.com) . That occurred less than a week before Election Day.

"Heads up, Frank. Even the media were reporting on the corruption that you don't mention--it was that bad."

     Had enough? Neither letter was printed. Who me, sour grapes at a time like this? I am as happy as you are, but trying to be realistic. Please don’t forget that neither MLK nor Gandhi would have invaded Afghanistan to hunt for bin Laden. Maybe he’ll change his mind.

(c)

6 November 2008:  Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition or, The Augean Stables of America

First of all, let us now praise the Lord for the miracle wrought very late last Tuesday. What I predicted was needed, happened. A tidal wave of people stormed the polls and even with all the corrupt contrivances of the right wing of the G.O.P., we managed to squeak through, via electoral votes if not much of a numerical advantage.

     The numbers were there, just swallowed whole or vaporized or intimidated or otherwise abused. I have no doubt about that. The volume of the true popular vote for Obama is undoubtedly astronomical, enough to send Sarah Palin back to consignment shopping for good. Moreover, he ran a brilliant campaign, working the electoral system for all it's worth.

     But now let us turn to the future and offer some advice to the President Elect, who is, after all, a graduate of Columbia and, ahem, Harvard. But I promise you he is intelligent and I feel very optimistic about our future, having given up on it altogether during the last eight miserable years.

     It is a strange feeling, optimism. I don’t know what to do with it other than continue with my life, my heart skipping a beat each time I realize that democracy has a future and that once again it will not be a curse overseas to admit I am American. Wow, I will travel again without claiming to be a Canadian or Brit.

     Rahm Immanuel is a great choice for Chief of Staff, but I hope Barack does not surround himself with locals the way Jimmy Carter did. Oligarchy is just not the way to go, but, as we know, Lincoln’s spirit is worth all of us put together and then some.

     Did you notice how, toward the end of his acceptance speech, Barack punctuated his sentences most evocatively with “Yes, we can,” like a musical refrain. What an exquisite, spontaneous orator he is. But why did he mumble those words? I nearly rolled over with ecstasy, but at the same time, could those three words actually have been mumbled?

     Perhaps the reason is that once this beacon of everything wonderful about this country ascends with his beautiful family into the White House, he, at least, will fall into a cesspool over his head and have to tread slop with nary a side to hold onto, having chosen the centrist route to appeal to so much of the population.

     For this reason, since experts like McGeorge Bundy and Henry Kissinger, both (cf. G. W. Bush) Harvard grads, and even Ramsey Clark have failed us, we must look elsewhere for leadership for the new administration. Novus ordo nascit!!

     In this process, we will of course draw on the noble precedents set by previous occupants of the Oval Office. As a part-time, unpaid journalist, with all of the darts to fling at the incompetent press that a stereotypical Progressive like me expects to fling, here is my suggestion for Press Secretary: the lovely Latina cashier in the cafeteria of the building where I work. She is friendly, garrulous, at ease with herself and the world. Everyone loves her. She speaks a perfect English—truly bilingual—and performs her job well.

     Marta will need decidedly less of a crash course in reality beyond her domain than did Sarah Palin, for example. She has worked in D.C. and is, moreover, a competent teacher of Spanish, helping me with the garbled small talk I attempt in her native language.

     When confronted by the Hard Ball Chris Mouthyews plays and asked, for instance, what to do about the Middle East, she might answer, “They’re all crazy over there and things have gotten much worse lately because of Bush.”

     If they persist, knuckleheads, throwing knuckleballs, she can refer to me, the other Marta, her assistant (freelance, of course).

     “I will read up on that,” I’ll answer. “And consult with the President, who is presently in Tahiti with his family on a two-week vacation, so that he can rest in the aftermath of a cold he caught while delivering his inaugural address in the blisteringly cold—and windy—January weather than can characterize the District.”

     “This in itself,” I will continue, “captures the centrism that will be the cornerstone of the Obama administration.”

     And now, on the sly, a la Tina Fay on SNL, I will confide in you that, in the previous paragraph, I have drawn on precedents established by, respectively, George W. Bush, Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, and Willliam Henry Harrison, though Obama will survive, used to those subzero and windy Chicago winters.

     Shall I continue, more predictably? Jesse Jackson for U.N. ambassador, Hillary for HHS, Al Gore for EPA, Michelle as U.S. attorney who will not be fired illegally.

     Danny Schechter will have a special assignment—fronting for all of Barack’s speaking engagements overseas, whispering to his interpreter of languages unknown to the President what the President really means to say while Danny’s assistant, George H. W. Bush, shakes his head in sad dismay.

     There again we go center—from Jackson to Hillary to Bush Sr.

     Oh, and one more suggestion: Dennis Kucinich as Secretary of Defense, who will promptly end all military engagements and morph his department into one of Peace instead.

     Maybe the next President can give me the full-time job of sneaking in those policies pertinent to the Progressive Persuasion.

     “Ask not what you can do for your country,” I will say to my fellow Americans. “But, since the middle and lower classes have suffered so badly for so long, ask what the .5 percent, the billionaires who attempted to steal the world, can do for us.”

©

4 November 2008

The People 

United

Will Never Be Defeated!!!

     Love, Marta

29 October 2008: Guest Blog:"I Didn't Vote For Obama" by Kentucky Scott

     I am grateful to Marc Tolo, Vice Chair of the Delaware Valley Coalition for Peace Action, for sending me the message that follows.

"I Didn't Vote for Obama," by Kentucky Scott

     "I'm a middle-class white guy living in Jacksonville, Florida.

     I've got a wife and two kids. Because the kids had no school today, I took a vacation day from work, and took the kids downtown to vote.

     Fifty-nine minutes later, two smiling children and I proudly sported "I Voted" stickers. But I didn't vote for Obama. I voted for my ancestors, who believed in the promise of this country and came with nothing as immigrants. I voted for my parents who taught in the public schools for decades.

     I voted for Steve, an acquaintance of mine from Kentucky, killed by an IED two years ago in Iraq. I voted for Shawn, another who's been to Iraq twice, and Afghanistan once, and who'll be going back to Afghanistan again soon -- and whose family earned eleven bucks a month too much to qualify for food stamps when the war started. I voted for April, the only African-American girl in my school -- it was years before it occurred to me how different her experience of our school must have been.

     I voted for my college friends who are Christian, Jewish, Mormon, and yes -- Muslim. I voted for my grandfathers, who worked hard in factories and died young. I voted for the plumber who worked on my house, because I want him to get a tax break. I voted for four little angels from Birmingham.

     I voted for a bunch of dead white men  who, although personally flawed, were willing to pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, and used a time of great crisis to expand freedom rather than suspend it.

     I voted for all those people  and more, and I voted for all of you, too. But mostly, I voted selfishly: I voted for two little kids; one who has ballet in an hour, and one who has baseball practice at the same time. I voted for a world where they can be  confident that their government will represent the best that is in this country, and that will in turn demand the best of them.

     I voted for a government that will be respected in the world. I voted for an economy that will reward work above guile. I voted for everything I believe in.

     Sure, I filled in the circle next to the name Obama, but it wasn't him I was voting for--it was every single one of us, and those I love most of all."

29 October 2008: Parable for the Undecided

Earlier this week, it rained. It rained in two places: one where A was to speak, and the other, where B was to speak. A canceled the engagement and went to another venue--a warm and dry auditorium. B put on a rain slicker and kept the engagement. He did not leave his audience disappointed. They stood in the rain to hear him as he weathered the conditions offered to him and delivered his message with radiance and hope.

     What can we learn from this scenario? A fled from the bad weather, leaving his audience behind and moving on to the next one. He couldn't take the cold so got out of the refrigerator. He's too old for the bad weather and besides that is obviously a fair-weather friend.

     B, on the other hand, keeps his appointment, able to bear the cold and rain and not wanting to disappoint people waiting for him in that lousy weather. He stays with them as scheduled. He is not visibly affected but stands tall and strong. He's there with them, whatever the conditions are.

     Which of these two would you select for the most difficult job in the world?

     GoBAMA!!!

     QED.

(c)

27 October 2007

BOYCOTT AMAZON!! THEY ARE THIEVES! THEIR SOFTWARE IS FAULTY!

Imagine this scenario: A mother decides to buy her daughter a Christmas present. So, to save some money, she finds the gift on Amazon.com, a set of 2 CDs, The Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall.

     Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

     Unless you’re shopping at amazon.com.

     I placed an order for a total of $18 at most and the next thing I knew $65.91 was yanked out of my checking account.

     Their machinery was flawed.

     Instead of a set of 2 CDs, my order was totaled as the 2 I had ordered, another set of 2 I didn’t want (but, wow, had looked at), and a book I had purchased from them last year.

     Wait, that’s two sets of the 2 disks, not just one of each.

     Well, Amazon, we’re all hurting and don’t owe you the time of day.

     Wait until millions of people read about your greed and stupidity.

     I tried to correct the order but nothing worked.

     I was glad I had given them my checking account number only once because, boy, after I spoke with a guy in India who promised me a refund . . .

     I received an email from Amazon confirming my order of a book about Sarah Palin’s Prada wardrobe.

     So I sent a few emails and received two back confirming that I would receive a refund. Two emails promised that, within 24-48 hours.

     So far, four days later, there is evidence only of their withdrawal, nothing in the credit column.

     $64.91—that’s more than three times the amount of money I most justifiably intended to pay.

     The package of unwanted merchandise is here, unopened, sitting on my desk while I, silly I, await a refund.

     I have already threatened them. Still no cigar. So I guess I’ll have to seek out a wider audience for this horror story: YOU.

     Stay away from Amazon.

     I promise every word I have written is true.

     God help me that they still have my checking account number.

     God help all of us that businesses like this exist, bilking people every day.

     Well, as far as the Season of Giving is concerned, I do hope that you’ll go elsewhere for your holiday cheer.

26 October 2008: Canvassing by Phone and Other Hang-ups

“Hi, this is Marta Steele. I’m calling on behalf of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Do we have your support? If so, please vote and be sure your friends do even if you have to drag them out by their heels. I appreciate your support and let’s hope the good guy gets into the White House.”

     My voice is hoarse from making calls for more than an hour. In Philly they were most receptive; in Virginia, much less so, even where the area code is 703, that part of the state that borders the district and is supposed to be so liberal.

     I told the Philadelphians, one of whom offered to volunteer, that their votes were crucial even if they know their city always votes Democrat. The reason they should be sure to vote is that the rest of their state swings, though the unemployed workers are surely having second thoughts.

     I spoke with one Republican voter who is going to vote for Obama and asked me if he could vote for him even though he is a registered Republican. I said sure. There was one undecided voter who didn’t have time to talk and I heard a child griping in the background. I hope the Obama people get back to her.

     I have phone banked one other time this year. I have freelancing on weekends but still should have joined earlier. The mechanics in Arlington, Virginia, are extraordinary. They have figured out that voters in the nearby suburb of Glebe are largely Democratic but tend not to vote at all. So there’s a challenge.

     They are coming out in droves there to help. I figured that if I can phone from home there will be fewer distractions than in Arlington, which numbers among its constituents Terry McAuliffe and his huge mansion and guest house and—believe it—Susan Eisenhower.

     I know, this blog would have been much more interesting if I’d gone there—believe that too.

     I have to say, if McCain’s running mate is a Josephine Six Pack, she should be more worried about those many other Joes who can hardly afford their six packs anymore.

     She isn’t.

     If Bomb-Bomb and Bimbo win, or are selected anyway, my daughter plans to migrate to Europe and more power to her. A Darwinian masterpiece, she has friends all over the world.

     What will I do? Follow her? I’ve considered that, if she’ll have me.

     I blogged a few weeks ago, in my Ballad of the Ballot, about all the roadblocks the McCain people have erected against the People’s Choice, so I don’t need to repeat myself. EVEN the mainstream press is reporting this in headlines. After two selections, they’re catching on. Two at least, the one in 2006 having actually reflected the people’s will in many instances.

     So am I a great seer for having climbed onto the Palast bandwagon in 2001? Wish I could have done more. What strikes me is how little credit he has received for his tremendous courage in speaking out at the end of October 2000. A pitiful few listened.

     I began to follow him around, residing at the time within New Jersey Transit (oh, grief) distance from Gotham City. I like to think that with all my writing I helped make him famous. I hope so. I published at the time at www.votermarch.org, whose owner, Lou Posner, was among those insightful activists who stood outside the Supreme Court building after the 2000 selection had occurred, protesting.

     Then I wrote for the distinguished site www.legitgov.org, mainly reporting on efforts to protest, if not end the Iraq war.

     Then I started my own site www.wordsunltd.com.

     But I don’t mean to get off track. What amazes me is that the other superhero we adulated at the time, Vincent Bugliosi, is now donating his splendid skills to efforts to impeach Bush. He’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. I refuse to see the movie W, though it will become an archive and is being released at a most timely moment.

     But Oliver Stone chose the wrong subject. He should have focused on Bomb-Bomb and Bimbo and their abysmal performance in college, among other traits that curse the future of this country if they are selected. There is an email circulating now comparing the two B’s with Obama, but will that reach the undecideds or only the choir?

     I will freelance more today and make more calls to Virginia and other swing states. Most calls are answered by voicemail messages, but the campaign is insightful enough to have allowed us to leave messages where they didn’t use to. If we sway one voter, each of us, we may be helping the cause.

     If we save one life, we save a million? We are trying to save many more souls.

     If Obama wins despite the deluge of corruption, I will dance in the streets in DC, where in the last election 90 percent of voters went for the Democratic candidates.

     It occurred in 2006. Did they let us win just to make some room in a Congress that could not accomplish much because we didn’t have a useful majority in the Senate? Idea being that they’ll let the Dems win in what amounts to an off year just to prove that in off years or any year the other party can win though these days it rarely does.

     All my bags aren’t quite packed; I’m not quite ready to go, preferring the dancing in the street option.

     But who, even the corruption machine, can block a tidal wave of opposition? Can any levee be sufficiently high and strong? Even if the McCaindidates spend all their billions on it?

     Pray that the good prevails.

©

20 October 2008: Weighing Possible Outcomes This November 4

NYU Law’s Brennan Center for Justice sent representatives today to the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to inform the press of their findings about the pre-election conditions that may make or break the people’s choice for president.

     To a packed room, Executive Director Michael Waldman, a former speechwriter during the Clinton years, addressed us, supplemented by Wendy Weiser, who directs the Brennan Center's work on voting rights and elections; Larry Norden, project director for the Voting Technology Assessment Project; and Jonah Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections in the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law’s Voting Rights Project. These experts fielded the many audience questions for which a good amount of time was set aside after Waldman’s brief presentation, which included PowerPoint slides that will be available at the Web site brennancenter.org. (Information there is updated several times a day.)

     Walden first presented the three major barriers to an accurate vote count: 1) no match-no vote; 2) voter purges, and 3) partisan voter challenges.

     As many know, mostly “insiders,” the first mentioned barrier could eliminate and  disenfranchise countless registered voters. Born of the Help America Vote Act that was passed in 2002, heavily influenced by superheroes such as Bob Ney and Jack Abramoff, HAVA mandates state-level voter rolls. Activated differently by each county, according to who is manning the polls, a mere typo can prevent a vote. No match-no vote, meant to purge various categories of voter from the rolls, mandates that the exact voter name must be listed on separate databases, including Social Security lists and registration lists.

     I have illustrated this before. I may be Joan Public on one list and Joan Q. Public on another and if so, there goes my vote.

     If I have a hard-to-spell ethnic name, from González to Wurtzelbacher, chances are good that misspellings will occur, even if I have gained instant fame as Joe the Plumber.

     In Ohio, that bugaboo of 2004, 260,000 more voters have registered than in 2004. Of these 100,000 were eliminated by various interpretations, many of them questionable, of HAVA. Litigation has traveled from the Federal Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court and then back to Ohio. In litigation also was the misspelling of a name on the same sheet of paper as Myhal and Mihal, which eliminated another voter who took the case to court.

     Florida is accorded the highest prize for mismatching, with Latino names, among the minorities, most likely to be misspelled (and consider all the Cuban-American Republicans in Miami this may affect!).

     No match-no vote could impact hundreds of thousands of votes.

     Thirteen million voters have been taken off the rolls in the last few years. Voter purging was conceived, supposedly, to eliminate dead voters from the lists and, indeed, dead people have been known to vote in presidential elections before.

     But the process lacks transparency and occurs behind closed doors. The lists are riddled with errors and open to documented partisan abuse. In Mississippi voters were purged in the primaries; in Georgia 700 “felons” were kept from voting though they’d never served time in prison. In Louisiana, displacement caused by Katrina occasioned much confusion and opportunities for abuse, in that people forced out of the state faced many barriers, including sheer distance. But here there was a partial solution. Displaced Katrina voters were allowed to return and vote in their former precincts.  In Colorado the Secretary of State admitted that 2,454 voters were illegally purged.

     In a notorious and well-publicized case, Kevin Fury, about to go overseas to serve his country in the military, was told he couldn’t vote for this reason.

     Home foreclosures in Michigan and Indiana, leaving the victims without official addresses, have also eliminated qualified voters from the polls. In Michigan Senator Barack Obama was able to litigate to prevent challenges to foreclosure victims.

     Moreover, the deadline for purging lists honestly or otherwise, officially ninety days prior to Election Day, has passed, but the practice persists.

     The third major barrier to fair elections, especially at the presidential level, is partisan voter challenges on Election Day. A voter may stand in line in the rain for two hours and then be told that he or she is not on the registration list. Actual situations have occurred in which, in a room serving four precincts, the eliminated voter might be in the wrong precinct line; the correct line may be a few feet away, but no one informs him or her about this oversight..

     The solution in such cases?  Provisional ballots, which Waldman called “a partial and inadequate solution.”

     A provisional ballot allows a challenged voter to fill out a special category of paper ballot which may or may not be counted. Officials are supposed to verify the voter’s integrity in such instances—that Joe the Plumber is indeed Joe and no one else and that he is entitled to vote, and his voted should therefore be counted. Shamefully often, these votes are simply thrown out or otherwise declared invalid. Provisional voting holds up long lines with the required red tape.

     In the case of long lines, emergency paper ballots should be provided. Sometimes in their absence voters are given provisional ballots from an ample supply of those and told that the vote will be counted as a regular ballot. But what if it isn’t? What if a staff member finds a pile of provisional votes and mistakenly or otherwise discards them, unaware or feigning unawareness that they are actual votes?

     What can we do to combat these three major barriers and the other ploys or mishaps that threaten democracy to the extent that the people’s choice is forced to concede, as has occurred in 2000 and 2004?

     What can we do? In the expected case of more voters showing up than a precinct can accommodate, emergency paper ballots should be on hand. Where this is disputed, and in the event of other barriers to voting, victims can call 1-866-ourvote to locate the nearest trained volunteer who either helps out or refers the frustrated voter to volunteer attorneys who will do what they can.  In 2006, 25 thousand calls were fielded. There are now 750 call centers nationwide. How to publicize this resource? One hundred fifty election protection partners have collaborated to get the news out at the state, local, and national level. Media outlets will also be provided this information and, it is hoped, disperse it effectively.

     Another option to combat a challenge situation is to contact the local judge of elections or fill out a provisional ballot and hope for the best.

     Local voters must be aware of the challenged events. Each precinct should have an adequate supply of emergency paper ballots. Because so many voting facilities will not be able to accommodate the record (in recent years) turnouts expected, there should be droves of emergency ballots. I certainly expect a tidal wave in this area. I expect a close election because of unethical tampering, masking a record-breaking Democratic sweep, that will be disputed as long as McCain can protract the process—far longer than did the statesmanly Al Gore.

     he long-term solution, according to a task force led by former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, to this worst of all systems among the “developed “world’s democracies, is universal voter registration. This decision would immediately add 50 million voters to the lists. Fewer last-minute challenges would occur or be possible.

     The good news, delivered actually before the bad news, is that the most recent state primaries occurred without major incidents; the states have made progress in knowing how to use electronic voting machines; and the vote count surged in the last primaries—in twelve states the rolls added more than 12 million new voters.

     List data were used among Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina in an attempt to match same names across state lines and then eliminate such suspect voters. Bob Smith in one state will be eliminated because there is a Bob Smith registered in the neighboring state.

     The information that follows was gleaned from the many audience questions answered.

     Paperless voting persists in 24 states, though paper voting may coexist in some counties. The problem with paperless voting is that recounts and audits are impossible. The machines will return paper lists that match the initial results exactly. If a paperless machine breaks down, as has occurred countless times for a range of reasons, voters are forced to wait for a technician sent by the vendor to arrive. Said technician, distributed one to a county, may take a while to show up. In some isolated cases emergency paper ballots are provided.

     Regarding the so-called epochal scandal caused by voter fraud abetted by ACORN, the event was called microscopic compared to the millions of other mishaps that have become so blatant in the last two presidential elections in particular. The Brennan Center found that an American is more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud.

     Recall that in 2006, when ACORN scoured the country for voter fraud and found a pitiful dearth, several U.S. attorneys were fired for trumped-up reasons that occasioned a widely publicized scandal forcing Attorney General Anthony González to resign.

     Last week the Brennan Center published the report Is America Ready? which includes a statistical map indicating readiness state by state.

     New registrants, absentee or otherwise, will be required to prove their identities by means of a federal form of identification—a driver’s license of federal i.d., or a utility bill.

     After Election Day, or Days, or months, the focus must turn to a more modern system, which Senator Hillary Clinton and the late Member of Congress Stephanie Tubbs-Jones worked on.. Newly elected secretaries of state must focus on improving the system. Moving to universal registration will solve many problems. (North Dakota allows walk-in voting; not registration is required.) A student may be automatically registered when he or she reaches age 18, or even before than, in high school. In other democracies the burden of registration is on the government rather than the citizens.

     Pre-election litigation has spiked and will continue until Election Day.

     Provisional ballots, if they exist at all, must be more than “placebo voting.”

     More names exist on different lists than the total number of registered voters.

     DISCLAIMER: Much of the above information was familiar to me. However, the reprentatives of the Center kindly supplied us with a plethora of beautifully organized and presented material which I did not have time to peruse before writing this. Had I had the time, I would have been able to embellish this with accurate statistics and more detail. But I have to freelance now, after half a day of work, attending the event, and spending three hours writing this up! Thank you for your forebearance. All errors that appear in the above text are undoubtedly my own

14 October 2008

Before We Jump for Joy Too Long, Sour Grapes Proclaims the October Surprise Has Stealthily Occurred amid Our Euphoria

(written in haste during my lunch break)

Here is the network/structure of what I can see happening before November 4. First of all, why did McCain, in the midst of low polls and boos against his bimbo, say he has us where he wants us to be--splashing around in euphoria that Barack will probably win(?) so that we don't realize that the October Surprise has lethally occurred behind our backs.

     The surprise is composed of Bush's renewal of diplomacy with N. Korea, taking it off the axis of evil list. We have also been marionettes of Rove's manipulation of the economy, which, here in the midst of October, is suddenly, seemingly on the mend, having claimed lives and destinies of precisely the people Obama resonates to, those who are going to vote for him en masse.

     Say I, prophet of doom, Bush emerges as a functional socialist, nationalizing banks a la Hugo Chavez--huelga, Bush, Che Bush!!

     They'll stand together for cheers by the end of October, planning what will happen after the McCain victory: amassing the National Guards, bringing them back from Iraq to the cheers of us lib'rals, and so on.

     My scenario, prophet of doom, optimist though I try to be.

     Maybe the voting machines will work this time because so many of us have been taken off of the voter rolls that it won't matter if the machines work or not.

     Then we'll take to the streets and the National Guard will be all prepared with riot gear purchased with taxpayer money.

     Hope I'm wrong and don't seem like too much of a left-wing ranter.

     Meanwhile, keep on working hard for Obama!

In solidarity, Marta

12 October 2008: Endangered Species and What We Can Do

While Sarah Palin in her snow-leopard coat and grizzly bear Davy Crockett hat sows the Gospel of Id far and wide and McCain is fanning the flames of assassination and racism, it has occurred to me that the last and greatest hope for humankind’s existence as we know it to continue, we should, pace WWF and its ilk, do nothing bu work for Barack Obama until every vote for him is counted, and there will be millions, enough to startle even Warren Buffet.

     Obama’s system for preserving the most endangered species of all, us, is exquisite. I am so impressed by the networking—instead of killing ourselves with canvassing (funny, I’ve seen no canvassers at Dupont Circle lately), we receive lists of Moveon members in swing states. We can be fairly sure that they will be friendly and not hang up on us since they’re moveon people. And the kids are doing it like a cyclone-blizzard, God bless’em, as the Adversary would say, you betcha (that’s old by now—sorry).

     And like his system, he is rising as McCain falls. He is calm, like Neptune rising from a tranquil sea to comfort Venus. “Life will go on, Root of it all. And I’ll make sure it does. Trust me.”

     So let us move on to better days by working with Moveon. I see no overlap as there was in 2004, with members of the Democratic party duplicating efforts of Moveon to the extent that stalwart liberals were threatening to boycott the polls if they received one more phone call.

     That’s when I knocked on their doors. One with a sign that read “Republicans for Kerry.” Another where the man said I’ve had enough of you. So I said o.k. and walked out and he ran after me pleadingly to say that he couldn’t stand the concept of abortion, especially in the third term of pregnancy. ‘Nuff said. He was a nice guy.

     Then there was a loudmouth who opened her door (why open it if she wanted no part of us?) to announce loudly her allegiance to the anti-choice persuasion. Only she called it pro-life. Not yet a DC Dem, still part of the swinging swing state of PA, I asked her how many crack babies from DC she wanted to adopt. She said she would and slammed the door. Down the block a younger woman threatened to unleash her twin pit bulls on me—they were running around salivating. But she at the same time seemed curiously supportive. For this reason I sort of walked alongside her silently. The pit bulls remained restrained from my middle-aged flesh.

     Then at the foot of her driveway she yelled, “This is a stinking lousy world we live in!!!” Obviously a mouthpiece for her neighbor. So I did not send the adoption agency over to interview her. She probably owns a gun.

     Listen to just one more. We knocked on the friendly door of a UPI reporter who said she could take no sides because of her job. A large cockatoo sat on her shoulder listening eagerly. So I turned to him and asked him if he was for Kerry. The bird squawked loudly and nodded his head vigorously several times.

     I asked the woman if she had taught him that. No, was her answer.

     Other anecdotes there are to tell and I admit I’ve done little for the Obama camp per se, in that I work so hard for a living. Weekends too.

     But as the days pass, so my conviction grows that it’s Obama or the highway to extinction for all of us.

     Please help. Please go to barackobama.com and volunteer for a list of liberals. Let your fingers do the walking. Get those knees jerking.

     And by the way, what would be wrong if an Arab-American did run for president? And what if Obama were a Muslim?

     Our world is sick and dying. More than a theory. Get out there. We need you.

©

30 September 2008: Secrets Revealed, History as We Know It Corrected

Just about everything I learned from textbooks has been challenged since the remote era of my childhood and early adulthood—sometimes with conviction accompanied by seemingly incontestable, scientific support. And sometimes they are as right as the premises and cannons of the early twenty-first century allow them to be.

     As an editor, I ask questions constantly, of others and myself and lately, of course, of google, that fount of instant gratification.

     I also have a wild imagination beyond the guise of an everyday production editor who sits hunched over a windowless desk from nine to five in a cubicle.

     It is fascinating the way lives intersect in such quarters. Not half so bad as descriptions might depict. Oh, my God, I hope she goes off that antibiotic. Oh Lord, is that guy on the other side of the wall alive? Why does that guy across the way burp so much? Our CVSs are so full of over-the-counter remedies, anecdotal commercials so replete with cures. Why does the lady down the hall laugh so much? It’s good for the health, though. I have laughed myself silly lately, a propos of a Jon Stewart video my daughter emailed to me. I can’t stop laughing. It’s a great defense against what’s going on on Wall St., in addition to the prospect of the very definition of a bimbo being given a shot at the most powerful position in the world. Thursday the whole world will be watching, the whole world will be laughing. I said to a friend that the most frightful thing of all is that her performance will probably have little to do with whether or not she's elected with McShame

     But what I really want to talk about is the way editors are maligned so often, so stereotyped as expressionless, frowning geeks with ice picks for pens and paper shredders for minds.

     Truly I view myself as a help to writers—so that they can communicate their ideas most clearly, so that their visuals don’t contradict what they write surrounding them, and so on. I also don’t mind being acknowledged in the front matter. Some acknowledgments have rocked my soul, but that’s getting off track also.

     We work so darned hard. We squint at subscripts of subscripts, superscripts of superscripts, some of these so small that magnification of 150 still reveals them as blurs. And in return, we get that infamous paean from Jacques Barzun, the product of his lousy experiences. I’ve written on that. Go down to the editing link at the bottom of this page and click on it.

     There are rotten apples in every barrel. Look at the present, eight-year-long nightmare masquerading as a leader of the greatest democracy in history.

     Well, I shall counter that assault with my own outrageous view into nineteenth-century American history. Focus in even closer on one of the idols of all time, Abraham Lincoln. Did you know that he had an editor, a secret editor? Never named, never thanked, a hidden member of his staff?

     She is one of my forebears, Edith Eleutheria Steele. I have her crumbly memoirs on a closet shelf. I have had them laminated.

     She sat on the train with Lincoln on his way to Gettysburg as he hastily scrawled his first draft of that immortal address. She has preserved that draft for me. Google the liquid, limpid, heart-stopping Gettysburg address and then eyeball Lincoln’s first draft and thank God, especially you students of rhetoric, that Edith Steele was around to red pencil it.

"87 or so years ago after we offed the Limeys with some help from the Frogs, we established our own sovereign municipality, the bottom line of which was that we’re all equal, though, as it always happens, some are better off, those with money. Now grounds are being soaked with blood for a change and who knows how long this little suburb of England can hold out against those bigots.

"At the latest place that’s blood-soaked—history is so blood-soaked, but here we are, at this particular Gettysburg address.

"Oh, God, those young men. What can we tell their families?

"What can we do for them? Words are useless, as they say in classical literature, once a word leaves your mouth it flies away and never returns, so be careful what you say.

"So instead of building more useless statues, let’s decide on diplomacy with those idiotic julep-drinkers and then this municipality will probably survive longer, lots longer than the pigeons that are ubiquitous, that have enough statues to roost on anyway."

     Don’t get me wrong. The couple, platonic of course, interacted to arrive at that final draft, Edith counseling him that he’d put listeners to sleep starting with a lifeless, numerical dependent clause. At least elevate it somehow to get people’s attention in this so violated rustic locale, she told him.

     And lose the slang, she said. And give those poor soldiers more than passing credit. And don’t call the French frogs and so on. Without them there might have been no U.S. of A. at all, let alone Freedom Fries. And lose the pigeon imagery.

     And trains moved slowly in those days, so that, emblazoned on another business-sized envelope, of a quality of paper you could die for, came about the actual, brief but so immortal speech we still weep over and hold in our hearts to this day.

©

28 September 2008: Economy 101

The first thing I’d like to say today is that I received only a B- in Econ. 101 in college, so feel free to stop reading after this first sentence. My teacher was sweet, pretty, and lively, sort of like a hostess of College Bowl. Bouncy, into it.

     I sat there grimly, assimilated the concept of supply and demand, which just made common sense. Period. After not studying much, I stayed up all the night before the exam cramming. Then I received that grade—not bad. The professor had come to dinner at my dorm once and maybe I learned all that I needed to that evening. Or maybe she just liked me. I left it at that. I was a nice kid. Screwed up but nice. I knew I was cute but got away with that.

     To get back to the economy, I have always perceived of it as this gigantic amoeba, this monster, sort of like that rubber vomit you can get at joke stores only a lot bigger. It follows some rules to some extent—which I’ve experienced first-hand from friends who predicted this bust to deaf ears or plugged-up ears. Joe Stiglitz even goes with the bottom line of what’s going on now—but I heard him ever so briefly on Lou Dobbs’s evening news, because Football-head kept interrupting him, so it was hard to pick up on even that. Joe had nothing to say beyond what I read and heard. I expected more.

     I think we’re all in the same boat. By we, I guess I mean those in a position to observe, hoping it won’t happen to us, whatever is going on. Bewildered by this gigantic piggy bank for pigs (I came up with that just a half hour ago and hence this blog), thanking God that it wasn’t us who were foreclosed on, marveling at the government’s lack of concern despite gentle prodding from some brave Democrats and more than that from farther-lefts.

     The solution, to charitably throw nearly a trillion bucks into that caldron called Wall St., with a few nods to the rest of us. Not the answer. We need a trickle-up economy. Those guys are rich enough as is. Can you imagine, can you possibly imagine, what would have happened had that check been written to the rest of us? A chicken in every pot. Universal health care. An end to poverty. Hope for the middle class, the lower and middle middle class and those even poorer, because those in the upper middle class will probably be ok.

     Imagine what changes would occur. Imagine how quickly the economy would recover. I mean, like a flash, a bat out of hell (literally).

     I mean, we wouldn’t just jump up and down and head to the nearest casino, would we? We wouldn’t plunder Neiman Marcus, would we? Quit our jobs and retire and become the image of decadence, the traditional view of why the Roman Empire collapsed?

     Demand for supply would sharply increase. QED. Bingo.

     It would not be gambling to reverse the payee of that check. I promise you that that’s the answer, trickle up. Has it ever in history been tried? Pardon my ignorance, but I would guess that the high end of “civilization” have always had their way. Except for the life savers tossed to victims of the great depression. And FDR, who had to be prodded into action, grandee that he was. Except for the present situation in the European countries and Canada, who provide free health care. That makes such a difference.

     But there are .5 percent swine even there, the banks there that will lap up part of the feast being served here.  

     Last week, last week I believe it was, a president of one of those behemoth towers that tanked, who had occupied that slot for a lifetime of three weeks, received an $18 million exit package. How many of our lives would that change? How many dreams fulfill?

     Thanks for reading this. Your input and corrections and other reactions are most welcome. Tell me whether or not the salvation that occurred during the great depression could be seen as trickle-up economy? The rich did stay rich. I will research more on this topic.

     Now let’s review the imagery, the mixed metaphors, the invectives I have hurled at the upper, way upper crust, if you’re still reading this.

     Rubber vomit, piggy bank for pigs, caldron, feast, lap up (some continuity evident here), behemoth towers (there we go again, somewhere else). The rest are clichés.

     So what?

     As Danny Schechter wished for his daughter Sarah, in the dedication of his latest book on this subject and why it happened, Plunder, I wish you all a debt-free future.

     PS: After I took that exam, before I knew whether I had passed or not, I picked up that ten-ton textbook by Paul Samuelson and threw it against the wall with as much force as I could muster after a sleepless night.

©

27 September 2008: Two Epistles: One to Obama, the Other to Moore

Dear Barack Obama,

You have my unflinching support and I was proud of your performance last night at the first debate. You're the one with the brains, most clearly. McCain has a lot of experience being a right-wing conservative. But you must relax more. I understand that foreign policy is not your trump card but it will be.
I look forward to your performing even better in the future debates and know you have it in you to cream that guy. He's the hot-headed one, so don't let him force you to play that role.

Onward and upward!!

Dear Michael Moore,

I was very excited about your free online flick, Slacker Uprising and dove into it enthusiastically, even on a weeknight when my time is so precious.

I am surprised to have to say that I was disappointed. I learned very little. You are usually a font of creativity, ingenuity, insight, and inspiration. But this film was an ego-trip. I got what I paid for.

We all know you’re a folksy guy in a flannel shirt whom we all look to as an elevated mouthpiece for all that’s wrong in this country and the world. We know how popular you are and appreciate your countrywide campaign and your highlighting a sector of our population who need to be dragged out by their feet to vote, though at the same time they may have had good reason to stay home, at least from the last two elections.

In the premise of your film, the intro, you ignore a problem equally as exigent as the 100 million slackers. Your premise was that the Republicans won the last two elections because not enough people came out to vote. You ignore the tainted voting system that keeps propelling Neocons into office. And you ignore that at your peril and at the peril of our democracy, -whatever is left of it—harmless people like me who rave and rant on the Internet? But there are far more outspoken and widely heard heroes who are still allowed onto airplanes.

Here’s what I learned—that the slackers are not the sort of people I had envisioned—the kind of people the Republicans work so hard to keep from voting. Or I hadn’t thought enough to realize that I know some slackers, people who aren’t smart enough to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Bush won neither of the last two elections. You must understand that.

All that footage you wasted on a lengthy film could have been expressed in about two sentences on your Website or even in a mass emailing. Because you keep filming the same scene over and over again: you up against massive audiences loving or hating you or both. The venue doesn’t matter and, as far as I went into the film, that was the point that varied from scene to scene.

Of course, I did not watch the second half, so don’t consider this an overall review, just a review of the first half. Maybe it gets better from there.

Keep up the good work. You’re a genius, but don’t rest on your laurels. And so I say to you “More, Moore,” and lots better.

As ever,

You Know Who.

17 September 2008: Ballade of the Ballot

I tried to tune in to Voice of the Voters this evening but had trouble taking notes because I’m nursing a broken hand and keyboarding is far easier. There were also acoustical problems related to communicating to Hawaii via phone. Hawaii voting issues were the main theme tonight.

     In that I had set aside time to tune in, I went to John Gideon’s Web page instead—he’s also regularly featured on VoV. There were several “national”-level pieces and I learned a lot.

     Mainly that they expect a mess in November and that they will have. Especially if the presidential tallies are close, from which, oh Lord, save us.

     There’s a mess now. The main problem is . . .  take your choice, there are so many. Ever since “they” clamped down on the voter rolls—year 2000 was of course the first I ever became aware of this, huge numbers of people have been denied their constitutional right to vote, most of them poor, minority, Democratic, or all of the above and lacking the means to assert themselves—a$$ert themselves?

     So there’s that and problems with registration because John Q. Public will have a hard time voting if he happens to be John Q. Public, Jr., on one database and John Public on another and so on. The concept mushrooms, depending on how common the name is. And if John has moved from one state to another and still wants to vote, God help him.

     If John has any record as a felon, all together now, “God help him!”

     If John is a college student who wants to vote on campus, GHH!

     If he is a first-time registrant (statistically more likely to vote Democratic)—let’s say it again, GHH!!

     Now certain states require id’s from voters, and there are certain ones that are accepted and others not. Georgia and Indiana have the strictest laws. Trust me that once again it will be harder for poor people to gain legal entrance into the polls than the vocal minority, those porcine porcelain grandees.

     The i.d. law was concocted on the premise that voter fraud is a severe problem. I mean, in Indiana, I believe that in the last four or more years there were at least two instances of it.

     Election fraud is what’s sticking this country, poor old country, wherever it hurts and leaves a lasting scar—that streaming, screaming blood that can’t speak for themselves, undereducated, underinformed, working 24/7 to subsist, taxed to the ceiling—did I mention that people whose homes have been foreclosed have lost their legal address, so guess what, GHT—God help them. Some people are trying to.

     One-third of the nation will be voting on DREs—that’s progress, so from a technological standpoint as many as 66 percent of the votes will be tangible. Now, take two-thirds of the U.S. voting-age population, subtract 100 million who don’t register, so take 2/3 of one half and you get one third of the voting-aged population in this country. Now subtract all those souls whom we’ve eliminated by the other facts listed above and what do you get?

     Several rich people, several educated people, both categories able to speak up for themselves.

     Now add some back, since despite themselves DREs hand in some votes and some of these are accurate.

     But subtract some since votes are known to jump to the candidate the machine is programmed to favor and some more . . . Wait a minute, let’s go somewhere else.

     How many of the few voters left will go Independent and stay that way, voting for Ralph Nader or Bob Barr or writing in Ron Paul or Howdy Doody? There are those in every election but this year, since Lou Dobbs has fetishized Independent politics, more people are feeling free to stay undecided and waiting to be pandered to or otherwise convinced . . Theirs is the power, in the swing states: Pennsylvania (the pits this year, the nadir), Ohio and Florida as usual, New Mexico, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Virginia,  Colorado, and New Mexico--more states than ever. And allow North Dakota some credit for not requiring voter registration and Oklahoma for having nothing to do with vendor interactions and interference on Election Day if not throughout the year. And those places in Oregon and Washington State that vote by mail successfully.

 . . .

     And if you happen to be an expatriate or a military or a vet hospitalized in a veteran facility or both of the latter two,

     God help them, God help John Q.,

     And, Lord have mercy, God help us too!

     Oh, and don’t forget caging. That overlaps with some of the above with some life of its own.

     Then there’s intimidation and other phenoms I will categorize as Republicanisms, like leafleting or phoning misinformation to you know who.

     Then there are inadequately trained poll workers, inadequately trained voters, lost paper ballots, kidnapped paper ballots, bad weather, police intimidation of you know who.

     There’s no ending this with a rhyme—sorry.

     There’s no ending this, period, this list.

     But there is a dream to end all of it.

     And then, for no partisan reasons at all

     But only the fact that the people have asserted their will,

     Democracy will move back into the White House

     When a Democrat moves in.

     The oval office, that is, the one on PA Avenue, the one in the West Wing not on tv,

     The sacred torch

     Of liberty.

     Arlo Guthrie. I didn’t realize I’d end with you and Kate Smith.

     God rest her soul.

©

10 September 2008: Uncounted Counts at Least 100 Viewers in Silver Spring: The Spirit Reigns

What does election integrity (EI) have to do with 9/11, which occurs tomorrow—would that we could wipe that atrocity off of our calendars for good.

     Had Al Gore assumed the presidency he won, there’s a good chance 9/11 would be just another day of the year. Al Gore would have listened when they warned him instead of vacationing for a long month.

     EI does, however, have even more to do with next November. There are more Democrats than Republicans registered at this point, so how could the polls be so close? How many Democrats plan to vote for a team that contradicts everything it stands for? Maybe Joe Lieberman and a few Hillary fans, the latter of which I think we can woo back.

     The implications for some are that the election is being fixed . . . again.

     But meanwhile, prepare to “get pissed off” again, as XM Radio’s veteran commentator Bob Edwards told the audience last night at the AFI Silver Theatre, a haven for independent documentaries in Silver Spring, Maryland,.

     Prepare to get pissed off because of a screening of Uncounted in a real theater, a one-evening sponsorship. The movie is meant to agitate. I reviewed it a month ago at alternet as well as opednews (not to mention wordsunltd.com).

     But re-viewing it was still a treat, especially with the panel that followed, moderated by Bob Edwards. He had a different question for each one: the film’s Emmy award-winning producer, David Earnhardt, who’s been touring the country himself as well as sparking independent showings by selling the DVD wherever he goes. Then there was PDA Board Chair Mimi Kennedy, formerly the tv star who played Dharma’s mom in the sitcom Dharma and Greg and now, rechanneling her talents, a most outspoken and effective progressive activist.

     Bob Fitrakis, the well-known attorney, progressive activist, and co-author of four books on EI was there, along with Matt Siegel, founder and executive director of Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE), to represent the college generation so inspired to materialize as voters by Barack Obama.

     Rebecca Wilson, co-chair of the EI organization SaveOurVotes Maryland, was the fifth panelist, inspiring and articulate as she spelled out what her state had accomplished and what we can all do to continue the Fight toward Fairness.

     Edwards asked David Earnhardt how the idea for the film occurred to him. The answer was that election 2000 jarred him, putting him on alert for election 2004, when the number of touchscreen voting machines had doubled and many of the same problems that enabled the prior coup d’état resurfaced, even more malignantly if that was possible.

     Grateful he was that some journalists like Edwards “kept the story alive,” stimulating vigilance rather than alienation, giving up. “The Democrats need to bring it out there,” he continued, “not fear it.” Think of all those Ohioans who stayed in line in the most indigent areas or oppressed college campuses. Think of that pouring rain. The spirit reigns. How can we give it reins? As bad a wordplay as I’ve spat out, perhaps it can become a slogan. I freely donate it.

     Why is EI so important? Edwards next asked Mimi Kennedy.

     She said that without democracy we’d lose our voices—we’re perilously close to that now, a state she named cilliteracy. Computers are allowed to count our vote. “HAVA wired us for fraud.” The Iraq War wouldn’t have happened if election 2000 had been conducted fairly.   

     “Did George W. Bush steal America’s 2004 election?” Edwards asked Bob Fitrakis. An election attorney election night 2004, Fitrakis said that his first clue was that fewer voting machines were supplied than for the preceding primary. Gehanna County, where six hundred some citizens had voted, reported 4,255 votes for Bush, which Fitrakis called “massive voter thuggery.”

     Thanks to progressive organizations like Velvet Revolution, Brad Friedman’s bradblog, and Free Press, the public election apparatus is still in place, however tenuously, with people like Bob Ney and Jack Abramoff to allow for-profit companies to control our votes.

     Regarding the plight of youthful voters, Matt Siegel noted how many college students voted in the primaries, a group written off by politicians that has become a vital force this year. So many problems assail them on their campuses; the too few voting machines supplied, proof required that they are voting on campuses legally (otherwise they are given provisional ballots, one-third of which were discarded in 2004); and the huge roadblock of voter identification.

     He said that at the last hearing on this issue held in the Senate on the 10^th, there was criticism of the long lines of adamant and persistent voters in teeming Ohio as well as elsewhere.

     Siegel expects that a large percent of young voters lack the driver’s license, passport, utility bill, or bank statement accepted as viable identification at the polls. Student IDs are not accepted as proof of identification in many states. Now that they have finally found a candidate who inspires them . . .

     The way to be sure that your vote goes uncounted is not to vote, said Rebecca Wilson, last but certainly not least. Maryland had electronic voting machines before HAVA and Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University, one of the first outspoken critics of this jarring system, found Diebold (now Premier Election Solutions [solutions??]) source code on line.

     Five years later, but better than never, said the spirited Wilson. Maryland voted to eliminate all of its electronic machines (paperless, as in direct recording, or DREs) by 2010. Think small when you think about voting: the focal unit is the county, with some state input (and HAVA as the fiery dragon to fight off?). Maryland EI advocates are hoping also to pass audit legislation.

     Election judges are badly needed. A national movement has formed, Pollworkers for Democracy. She predicts long lines in Maryland because of the touchscreen machines, so few for so many and most voters show up at the same time, before or after work hours. Emergency paper ballots are supplied by some states up against this problem, but in Maryland this happens only if all machines in a polling place malfunction. Save Our Votes is working for a better Plan B, she said.

     The weapons against the rampant corruption are voter outreach and education and two hotlines to call if and when problems present themselves on Election Day.

     During the Q&A session that followed, more people lined up than could be heard. The first questioner was an election judge in Maryland who reiterated that Diebold, rather than the citizenry, runs elections. We must take back control.

     There are not a lot of punitive convictions, said Earnhardt, though improprieties were caught on tape and screened in the EI movie Hacking Democracy shown on HBO in 2006, exposing the skullduggery of the voting machine industry over a three-year period. We need more aggressive punishment, he said. There are many different ways to hack the machines and the methods leave no footprints.

     “Computers and elections don’t work well together.”

     Diebold has recently admitted that its uploading program, GEMS, has never functioned well—and what impact has that wreaked on recent U.S., if not world history?

     In a recent lawsuit in Ohio against Diebold, agented by the enlightened new SoS Jennifer Brunner abetted by Steve Spoonamore, a prominent Republican and cyber security expert, one issue is that all the votes dropped were cast by Democrats.

     Addressing Earnhardt’s issue, Mimi Kennedy said that the principle “innocent until proved guilty” has in this particular scenario blocked more direct action and abets all the protracted litigation and discontent that justice is just not being accomplished.

     Another questioner brought up the issue of vote caging, a sinister device “invented” in 2004 by Tim Griffin (former U.S. attorney, Republican, and Rove protégé). In a nutshell,the process involves sending out letters to registered voters guaranteed not to reside at their registered addresses, so that the letters are returned “undeliverable.” In Ohio alone, six hundred thousand of these were sent out. Such victims who turn up to vote in their accustomed polling places are turned away or given provisional ballots.

     Said Siegel, this occurs also in college communities, where letters are sent to dorm addresses rather than to the post office boxes where students receive their mail. A law against vote caging has been introduced in Congress. Fitrakis added that between 2001 and 2004 24.93 percent of Cleveland voters were purged from records—a scandal born in Florida in 2000 with the infamous list of alleged felons that kept so many blacks and minorities from voting.

     The film’s largest point, said another questioner, is to prove that rampant corruption is flourishing. Exit polling has been ineffective, he said. Instead, one out of every ten votes cast should be on paper, a method similar to exit polling but more tangible (provided this process is not somehow corrupted—let me count the ways, but there are too many).

     The issue concerns all of us, said Earnhardt. Everyone wants every citizen to have the right to vote. The cause can pull us together. We must share the issue, by means of Uncounted inter alia. Don’t wait for the media. Grassroots activism is necessary, the heartbeat of democracy.

4        September 2008: No, They Can’t!! or How About McCain’s Pain in the U.S.!!”

I haven’t blogged for a while, for which I apologize in case you missed me. I am reeling from the formidable introduction of Sarah Palin to the world last night.

     In about ten minutes Cindy McCain will open her sateen lips and address us, another first, more or less.

     I am reeling as I wonder when in history, if ever, an incumbent president did not attend his own party’s presidential convention, on purpose. (Forget Cheney—he’s over in Central Asia making trouble.)

     It just blinds me that a party that has made such a mess of our country and the world in the last eight years can so easily dispense with the protagonists and ask for another shot (literally?) at destroying the world even more. The Arctic Circle is melting as they chant “Drill, baby, drill!”

     Twenty-five percent of Iraq veterans are homeless while they cheer for our troops. You can be sure that Palin’s  and McCain’s sons and nephew will not be homeless when they return, if they return.

     While they thank God for Lieberman, victims in Iraq are praying to God for a life. With a snap of the little senator’s little fingers, how many lives might be saved?

     While they agree that change is needed, they specify renewable energy as in nuclear power and “clean” coal. And, uh, maybe some fuel cells and wind power, they trail off. To drill in the dying ocean, to pollute and warm its waters further . . .

     Palin offers the world Alaska’s oil and natural gas and takes credit for the pipeline.

     While Palin preaches abstinence in schools, her own daughter is pregnant out of wedlock. She has recently given birth to a child with a sort of illness that can easily lead to a life of misery. (Compare the sorrow of the institutionalized Rosemary Kennedy.) That child was the youngest person in the hall in the twin cities—as if a culmination of all that’s gone wrong with the world because of the Grand Old Party that is really over, really.

     I do not mean to insult handicapped populations. My brother is severely handicapped and leads a life of misery. But life is precious, they are right, the GOP—

     So why endless, preemptive warfare? That’s been asked before.

     Less government? That bureaucracy has never swelled larger than under the Bushocracy.

     Think about it: a convention where the names of their two highest powers are barely spoken. Before I shut off the tv in revulsion, McCain paid brief homage to the Bushes and left out Cheney entirely.

     He paid brief homage to Obama (not Biden, with whom he shares a lot more). Using his trope “America first,” he soon accused the Democrats of putting their country “second.”

     A few protesters were allowed in. One was prevented from running down to him in hysterics, unarmed as far as I could see. He referred to such gestures as static interfering with his message as the crowds chanted “USAA!!”

     That’s how he views suffering—as static interfering with the self-started mentality: easy to do when you’re thriving off the flesh and blood of the daughter of one of the few lucky ones.

     How can you create growth, jobs, and prosperity by lowering taxes on the wealthy even further, Rudy? By pressing on in warfare that drains this country’s resources and leaves little behind and binds us more tightly to the mercy of countries as close to enemies as friends of the America he “puts first”?

     And how, Sarah Palin, self-described pit bull with lipstick (recall Cheney’s image of the pig with lipstick), can you flout the Washington, DC, establishment you aspire to join? How, Sarah Palin, is McCain a maverick now, except from the essential values of the country he claims to love? How is McCain a maverick to snub one man with whom he's voted in concert on 90 percent of issues in the Senate? If he's that sort of friend to Bush, how will this short-tempered fool treat "America first"?

     Will you bring perpetual winter to the White House? Nuclear winter?

     While the McCains adopted one Indian child, have they sent any aid to the flood victims?

     While they preach crossing over the aisles, reaching out to Independents, how they marginalize, how they parody.

     I AM that woman who began a run down (read: down) to the podium in rage and was forcefully ushered out. So are all of us who will not allow four more years of the same sort of torture McCain willingly endured in Vietnam. The difference is that he escaped and is subconsciously willing those years to us while he wines and dines his few cronies, a captive who learned torture from his captors. . .

     Shall I go on? He’s still speaking. May God silence his intent and truly bless America and all of us in that process.

     God bless America, and good night.

PS: God has blessed us. I just read at Underground News that protesters are disrupting McCain's speech.

Free for All

(as in “no fee,” inter alia)

a feature documentary about Ohio 2004 and 2006 written by John Wellington Ennis

review by Marta Steele

I am a critic. It is my job to analyze and communicate my findings as clearly as possible. I have just watched the feature documentary Free for All, first accessible at www.freeforall.com on July 4 of this year. It is too long—on September 9 they will stream a shorter version. It preaches to the choir--no one but insiders will recognize the names and faces that stutter throughout the film at a dizzying pace. Identification of these EI laureates would have enhanced this effort to reach beyond the choir. Few will even recognize Greg Palast, one of the leitmotifs who’s been at election protection since the 2000 horror and was the first to cry wolf, but not like the little boy—there really is a wolf.

     Free for All tries not to preach to the choir by two- and three-word summaries of each defilement of Ohio 2004 and 2006, written onto Post-its and pinned onto the bulletin board in the bedroom of the thirty-something narrator and protagonist, who calls himself “just some dude”—a Candide, Simplicissimus, what have you.

     What have we? A masterpiece.

     The underlying question is not whodunit or even what we can do about it. The underlying question is what is the truth? The dude, who doubles as the film’s creator, John Wellington Ennis, an accomplished filmmaker and Anyman Californian before he becomes Everyman, first hears about the 2004 debacle in the state that has determined the outcome of every Republican presidential victory in history, the Buckeye State (bug-eye?), Ohio—an uneasy mixture of rural and suburban Republicans and inner-city Democrats. Dude travels to Ohio to get to the bottom of it, to find that particular truth.

     The plot centers around the activities of 2004’s answer to Katherine Harris in 2000—a combination of head of the Bush reelection campaign and secretary of state, hence head of elections, in Ohio (Harris, as we but not the majority of our compatriots know, played this role in Florida in 2000, handing over the election to the state’s governor’s brother, George W. Bush).

     In the process of examining Blackwell’s myriad violations of human rights through the lens of our ultimate right, the vote, much becomes apparent that transcends this little man.

     As mentioned above, the film attempts to simplify the condoned violations by means of two- and three-word summaries. We can’t find the truth, says the film—it’s an inaccessible platonic form—but we can strive toward it by assembling the closest thing we can reach, and that’s facts. What is a fact? Everything is recounted through points of view. But that’s the best we can do, so let’s do it.

     Ohio 2004. The focus of the November election that will choose the president of the United States—how could we let Florida 2000 happen again? In Ohio we needed no Supreme Court, since Kerry conceded the next day, like Gore, only stuck to it (he even sent in a task force of attorneys thereafter, mainly in response to let-down constituents, but that’s another story. The attorneys found nothing amiss.)

     The footage is amazing. The music right on—we need more music.

     Quickly the paradox becomes apparent that while Ohio 2004 and Florida 2000 were allowed to happen here, the Bush administration roared when it happened in Ukraine, when exit polls contradicted tabulated results, and after huge street demonstrations for days, the Ukrainians got their man into office through a recount.

     First we have to get mad, frightfully mad. Here’s how: Rumsfeld caught in his boldfaced lies, Bush making a joke out of the vain search for WMD in Iraq.

     From RFK Jr.’s entry into our fray late in the battle till we get to his source, the world’s finest investigative reporter (only one?), Greg Palast, first shot riding in a cab with the dude. It’s like football, he explains. People cheat if they can get away with it.

     The lead-in is overlong, a skillful combination of animation and straight action.

     Enter Bob Fitrakis, attorney, author (another dissector of Ohio 2004), and activist, to say that the board of elections is bipartisan, but if all decisions ascend to the secretary of state, who in 2004 was Blackwell, how can they be bipartisan? Blackwell the leftist advocate of voters rights in college before he slid to the inverse, notoriously (we find out later).

     Well, contrary to the conclusion of Kerry’s lawyers that nothing went amiss in Ohio 2004, a report released by Congressman John Conyers (currently head of the House Judiciary Committee) concluded that countless irregularities and illegal behaviors generated from Blackwell’s office or the shenanigans of his ally, the president of then-Diebold, Wally O’Dell, who promised the election to Bush (as did Jeb in Florida in 2000)

     What precisely did Blackwell do? He had registration forms printed on 80-pound paper and for a time, as long as he could get away with it, ruled that no other registration forms were valid, thus eliminating thousands from the voter rolls—an eccentric and, as far as I know, unprecedented piece of misplaced ingenuity.

     He confused voters about locations of polls, shuffled precincts, located three to four precinct tables in one room so that myriad others had to fill out provisional ballots when their correct precinct comprised another line of voters in the room.

     Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones makes a brief appearance to wonder why Blackwell claims to be happy to see her at a public hearing when she reminds him that he refused to shake her hand before the hearing.

     According to Jennifer Brunner, secretary of state from 2006 onward, Blackwell dishonored his office. She promised a fair election in 2008.

     The controversial CNN “Independent” duo Lou Dobbs and Kitty Pilgrim stay on screen long enough to mention the votes that jumped from Kerry’s name to Bush’s on the Diebold screens. If a voter persisted, the screen would go blank, claiming “no vote status.”

     There is so much more. A visit to Diebold headquarters revealed, at least and at most, that Diebold was pronounced dee-bold and not dye-bold. Their motto, later quoted by the Dude, was “We won’t rest.” If I was given a no-bid contract of $100 million, I wouldn’t rest either, would you? That’s not all. Blackwell owned 170 shares of Diebold stock.

     In Miami [Ohio] County, Dude found out about jammed paper rolls in the DREs. Why did such monstrosities still exist in 2006? Brunner made them illegal after she took office

     Added Fitrakis, such no-bid practitioners usually go to jail rather than lead the nation. Who, Bush? No, another B, black-well so instrumental in installing a white-sick into another four-year disaster.

     Brad Friedman, famous blogger and journalist, added some consolation: other brands of machine are no better. Privatized contracts, injects Palast. Sound familiar? Halliburton? Or is it KBR? Or is it Blackwater?

     Blackwell hired the webhosts who had publicized Swiftboat Veterans for Truth on line.

     Mark Crispin Miller reported the instance when a Diebold operative showed up at one polling location to “fix” the machinery and once done, warned the election officials not to turn off the computer connected to the tabulators; the same sort of hacking occurred in all 44 counties in Ohio. When whistle-blower Sherole Eaton, deputy director of elections in Hocking County, dared to protest, Blackwell had her fired.

     Whence came these machines anyway? A bill written by a drunk criminal who happened to be a congressman in Ohio at the time, Bob Ney, bribed by another “designer” crook, Abramoff. One upshot of the law HAVA (Help America Vote Act), created in the wake of Florida 2000 to counteract the destructive punch card machines, was the provisional ballots, for all those voters who can’t prove their qualifications, whose votes are counted last if at all.

     Caging lists, victimizing black voters and military and homeless, are the brainchild of Carl Rove, whose prior profession was direct mailing. These lists involved willful deception and intimidation—phonebanks calling blacks with lies, threats not to vote or else be arrested for unpaid parking tickets or unpaid child support.

     “Every time I hear the word election, I reach for my wallet,” remarks Palast soon after.

     Rumors were circulated of massive Democratic vote fraud when in fact, in the whole state four cases occurred in the last eight years.

     Requirements of voter i.d. are in place, but it is unclear what counts—not a passport, nor a Social Security card—but then again requirements vary from county to county

     According to Mark Crispin Miller, Republicans spun the evidence provided by exit polls to claim that too many Democrats were questioned and not enough Republicans; maybe there were more Democrats out that day, he suggests—the turnout was unprecedented. The more voters there are, the more likely a Democrat is to win.

     In another scene, the public is blocked by police from entering the building where a gubernatorial debate between Blackwell and Strickland, the Democratic candidate, is in progress.

     Says Palast, the indy media are all that we have to counter the violations, with him dubiously holding the scepter

     Enter an animated personified ballot to sing its own ballad--as long as there have been elections, there’s been corruption—it’s a free for all, it raps, invoking the title of the movie from one perspective (but we all aren’t free till the vote becomes a process grounded in ethics.)

     Then along come the dude’s Post-its to knock down the ballot.

     Most effective in this structure-selfconscious film.

     Dude weighs all the Post-it evidence, and decides that one solution is citizen journalism; joins the film’s creator John Ennis; puts American Blackout on YouTube, which put it on front page, drawing hundreds of thousands of hits, enough to attract the likes of Wolf Blitzer (CNN) to document this effective weapon against those wolves.

     Deciding that “video the vote” is the answer, Dude went to the Columbus polls, up at 5:30 to video: and amid all the same violations found in 2004, entered an October surprise (in addition to Britney’s divorce): Strickland won. There were just too many Democratic voters to confound all of Blackwell’s devices; it was then, too, that the conscientious Jennifer Brunner was elected to replace Blackwell in his former role and fight the incumbent corruption.

     Taking up the ballade, Brad Friedman relates that the victory party for 30 new Democratic members of Congress came to a halt when it was realized that 40 to 50 had actually won--out of 3 million, 1 million provisional votes had been shunted. And we know who votes provisionally.

     And there will be so many swing states in 2008; voters should be prepared for the onslaught and not be intimidated, adds Mark Crispin Miller.

     The film ends as it began, with a colorful review of the full regalia of July 4, a celebration of the electoral process, for which so many lives were sacrificed. You can either jump into the parade or stand on the sidelines

     Take up the former Diebold’s motto not to rest. The real Independence Day is Election day; it’s up to us to keep on spreading the word: If democr isn’t free for all, then it isn’t free for me. I’ll do my best. What are you going to do?

     Get out your cameras, not your handkerchiefs.

          Free for All’s producer, Richard Rey Pérez also produced Unprecedented (a privilege it was for me to review that film too, about the Florida 2000 disaster)

     Another list can supplement the Post-its: the pantheon of activists who appear:

Greg Palast

Mark Crispin Miller

Brad Friedman

Bob Fitrakis

Al Gore

Bill Clinton

Stephanie Tubbs Jones

Jennifer Brunner

All us others

     Yet another list can emerge from this film: various definitions of the truth. To find out what they are, tune in for free at www.freeforall.com.

PS: An email from News from the Underground now reports that Rove plans to pull similar shenanigans in Ohio in 2008. Let’s tell him that the election will fall on a Thursday this year but, as we all hope, it will not fall this fall.

and PPS: According to NFTU, Bob Ney was just released from prison.

3 August 2008: Hollywood’s Answer to Stealing America, Swing Vote

Unconcerned with the notorious mechanical irregularities that guarantee the questionability of any election results in this country, Hollywood has nonetheless produced a powerful statement with the film Swing Vote.

     The high-budget, cardinal point is that every vote counts. Another point is that, as John Adams stated, we must all remain educated so that our electoral decisions will be carefully thought out and consistent with our ideals and aspirations.

     A further strong point is the utter hypocrisy of the political process, and the voting integrity movement is thrown a morsel when, at the beginning of the film, the Republican operative orders the deployment of several tall blonds to harass some Democratic voters  trying to exercise their democratic rights.

     Kevin Costner plays a middle-aged Joe Six Pack down on his luck, in the custody of his precocious daughter, played by Madeline Carroll, who rules the action from beginning to end, pulling her father out of bed to go to work and take her to school in the morning and, by the end of the film, educating him to moderate a presidential debate held exclusively to win his vote ten days after Election Day.

     The whole world, the whole press, is focused on a tiny, deadbeat town in New Mexico, and beyond that on the vote of Costner, which will determine the outcome of a presidential election stalled at a dead tie. The future of the world boils down to one “below average,” as he describes himself, unemployed loser.

     Why a single vote ten days after Election Day? Molly attempted to get him to vote and when he doesn’t show, she sneaks in to vote for him, but a custodian disconnects the touchscreen machine while she is voting, so she must sneak out without accomplishing her goal, except that she has the stub of the card used to initiate the voting process. That ultimately identifies “Bud” as The voter; the movie turns to us and demands that no one ever consider his or her vote useless again.

     There is comedy, satire, and pathos as the American public showers the highly publicized Bud with problems that would sink an Atlas: Why, in the richest nation in the world, are people working multiple jobs and still living in poverty, unable to afford medical care for their families? Just as the world focuses in on Bud, so, at the presidential debate held in his honor, he focuses in on one letter that expresses such anguish.

     Ultimately Bud justifies this nudge from the world to put on a suit and give life a chance, though it is hard to believe that in one night a man with a fifth-grade education, even tutored by several experts, can all of a sudden become the outspoken Democrat he has been, deep down, all of his adult life. Casual remarks here and there throughout the film corroborate this logical affiliation. Presumably, at the end of the film, life will come together and treat Bud like a man rather than a cracker.

     A cast including a host of media celebrities such as Chris Matthews, Arianna Huffington, Larry King, and James Carville helps comprise this mammoth alarm clock. Nathan Lane and Kelsey Grammer play effective supporting roles, among other luminaries.

     Molly remains alarmingly sane throughout, her father’s parent, seeing through the bribery and manipulation, values intact—ruling the action, an individual smarter than the president, by his own admission.

     When 55 percent of the country will vote on optical scanners this November, and when New Mexico is known to have switched over to optical scanners statewide several years ago, the movie loses some credibility. Moreover, the portrayal of the underbelly of politics is far too kind even when stood on its head. Both candidates remain likeable, on first-name terms with Bud who, as his real name is revealed toward the end of the film slips into this new mode, himself, at least for the time being and presumably longer, Ernest.

©

2 August 2008: Stealing the Exigent, Word by Word

Not yet having seen Gloria Fadiman’s Stealing America: Vote by Vote yet, a documentary on the sorry scene that supposedly expresses the people’s will, “voting,” I read two lousy reviews. One is in Variety magazine, but the other, in the New York Times, utterly glib, antagonized me enough to devote a blog to it and perhaps glorify the critic by quoting him to my modest public.

     What is a documentary for? To entertain? I rest my case. Nathan Lee seems to think so. He is looking for “cinematic savoir faire.” In the case of documentaries, just as with television or radio, the main way in which information, or infotainment, is imparted is by way of talking heads interspersed with film clips to illustrate their points.

     The reason I haven’t seen Stealing America is that it suffers from limited engagements and hence won’t come to DC until the end of this month. But there are many other fine documentaries criticizing our highly faulty electoral system, and they mix talking heads with illustrative film clips. And I’m sure there are many other independent documentaries I don’t know about, but they contribute to history, sometimes from a progressive viewpoint, and if the medium endures, future generations will have much more information than textbooks and msm will impart.

     A parallel occurs to me: that handful of brave members of Congress who introduced articles of impeachment against Bush last week. At least history may know that a few had the courage to try to punish what is, in fact, beyond punishment: multiple and devil-may-care violations of the Constitution, beyond the beyond-belief abuse of executive privilege and condoned torture and annihilation of human lives and subsistences and happiness.

     Here is a summary of Nathan Lee’s brief and dismissive review published in yesterday’s Times:

 Stealing America: Vote by Vote” might have been this year’s most alarming and patriotic documentary if it weren’t so shoddy and dull. Remember all those complaints about “An Inconvenient Truth” playing like an aggrandized PowerPoint presentation? “Stealing America,” by comparison, barely qualifies as a glorified Google search. The filmmaker, Dorothy Fadiman, would argue that that’s exactly the point. In reporting on the suspicious circumstances of recent elections, she relies on information gathered by bloggers, local newspapers and personal testimony as opposed to the “mainstream media” — those TV networks and national newspapers, which supposedly ignored or dismissed evidence of electoral malfeasance. Ah, “supposedly”! There I go being a tool of the hegemonic MSM. — Nathan Lee, The New York Times

     Here is the response I wrote to the editor:

 To the Editor: I have just read Nathan Lee's dump on Stealing America: Vote by Vote. ,” Someone should tell him that documentaries are about their subject, not "cinematic savoir faire." Quakers aren't concerned with New York chic when it comes to clothing, but they sure accomplish a lot.
There's a nice, sexy song about election integrity, "If you want to be a voter, don't go to Sarasota," at www.voiceofthevoters.org, where Nathan Lee can receive his "call to arms," if that's what he needs to propel him. Please note that at the top of your readers' movie choices is a satire on the chaotic scene of voting in America these days, Swing Vote.
"A call to arms, then: Let us reform our glitch-ridden electoral system."

Don't be so glib about the glitches, Nate. They determine your future as well as ours.

     I should have added that most documentaries don't enjoy Hollywood budgets.

©

24 July 2008: The Good, the Bad, and the Unbelievable

Hurrah to VoV and CVI for moving forward toward November now, Wednesday evening proclaiming a new series, “The Good, the Bad, and the Unbelievable.” The focus will be our fifty states and what of each of the three descriptions above best characterizes the state of their election protection system.

     As if being rewarded for large strides in the areas of wind and solar power, Texas was the very first state represented in this series that this evening explored three states. Texas? Things aren’t too good there in our department. This largely rural state suffers from a dearth of finances for health and education and other human concerns. The stingy legislature meets every two years. At its next meeting in 2009, the election protection people will push for opscans in this DRE-dominated state.

     There is a new secretary of state in Texas, but the state government is largely uninterested in voters’ concerns. The drive is for back-up paper ballots to be made available to voters in case the DREs break down. But nothing has yet been accomplished in that area.

     There is no audit law in Texas, as if a genuine audit were possible with DREs, even in close elections, unless one of the candidates challenges the results.

     Yet another factor impeding the veracity of results is the “sleepover” phenomenon. Machines are kept in the homes of poll workers, who bring them to the polls on election day. The machines are secured with seals no wider than tape.

     Many of the 254 counties in Texas must import the vendors to operate their machines, especially in rural areas.

     The unbelievable? Two lawsuits in which the NAACP is involved have been successful. The issue is the constitutionality of DREs. The Texas constitution mandates privacy at the polls. One lawsuit has survived three hearings and the other is now in a circuit court of appeals.

     Among the three machine brands owned in the state, Hart, Premier, and ES&S, Harts won’t allow for “emphasis voting,” that is, crossing party lines for a given candidate. So another project is to get that company to enable its software to accommodate voters’ inalienable rights.

     Turning closer to the Corridor, the next guest, featured for the first time last February, was Jeremy Epstein of the Verifiable Voting Coalition of Virginia (VVCVA.org). Here the scenario is more encouraging: there is a new board of elections, good legislators, audit legislation, and a ban on purchasing DREs.

     So there is something good in Virginia; however, the recession has taken its tolls on the Dominion State’s finances and the legislature meets a mere sixty days in even years and thirty in odd years.

     The strict recount law allows recounts only after finalization of the results. It is also hard to obtain a recount. In the last election, 80 percent of the state voted on paperless DREs and in 2008 65 percent of the citizenry will, so that no meaningful audit will be possible.

     Noted Mary Ann Gould, founder and head of CVI along with Ruth Matheny, Virginia, long a red state, has in the last few years moved toward the left, electing a Democratic governor and senator and possibly a second Democratic senator in November, both senators named Warner but unrelated.

     One can always hope for accurate results, even where the attorney general of the state was elected by extremely narrow margins in 2005 and 2007. Moreover, Virginia is not a “no-excuse” state, allowing anyone to vote by mail as other states do.

     More good news, though, is that Virginia has short ballots. This year the categories will be president, senator, representatives, and little more—very few municipal issues. Fairfax County, Virginia’s answer to Manhattan, will be voting on opscans. Fully 1/7 of the population of the state resides in this suburb of our Nation’s Capital.

     John Gideon occupied the next segment of the program. He reported that seventeen counties out of Pennsylvania’s sixty-seven now vote on opscans, the populous Centre County the most recent addition. Another newsworthy item already reported on is that the Department of Veteran Affairs bans voter registration on its grounds. Twenty states and nine senators signed on to legislation that demands assisting veterans, not disenfranchising them.

     The happiest in terms of election protection among last evening’s states was Connecticut, closest to the blue Corridor. Luther Weeks, executive director of the organization Connecticut Voters Count.org first presented the good news that a paper trail law was passed in 2005. The entire state votes on opscans, and an audit bill was passed in 2007. The new machinery also saved the state money.

     --At this point the reflex of Hurricane Dolly drowned out the radio, pummeling my building with a downpour and thunder. I listened as well as I could.—

     The Connecticut activists say that the state’s audit system is insufficient, unreliable, and ineffective. They want a transparent paper count, and action in cases where machine results differ with the paper ballot tally. They also want an independent audit board. Audits are not allowed until fifteen days after the election.

     Added Mary Ann, on election night the paper ballots sit in boxes in corners while the machine count is accepted. Moreover, districts that have recounts are not allowed to have audits. Other state systems excel Connecticut in this area, most notably Minnesota, said Weeks.

     Connecticut’s best asset, in our context, is its voter activists, who opposed their secretary of state in innovating opscans rather than DREs with their HAVA funding. Only twelve out of thirty-four audits were free of violations in the last election, due to incompetent counters unconcerned with discrepancies between machine and paper totals.

     The University of Connecticut has programs to test memory cards, less than half of which performed well in pre-election testing.

     Two callers occupied the remaining few minutes of VoV. In answer to one of them complaining about not enough pre-election activity, Luther said that not much can be done. He suggested improvements in the audit procedures and memory cards and getting citizens more concerned with the audit process.

     And responding to Mary Ann, he said that validity of the results won’t differ significantly from the lever-machine days, when all mechanical difficulties were dealt with in back rooms.

     Said one caller, the opscans aren’t mature enough to provide an accurate count. Said the other, a credible audit system is key, and this won’t happen anytime soon, certainly not before November 2008.

     Three states out of fifty, or 6 percent of our union, spoke out Wednesday night. Ultimately the outlook is glum so far. The overriding question, concerning all the states, or at least urban areas, is whether enough machines will be made available to the huge amount of voters expected in November, based on the greatly increased voter turnout for the presidential primaries.

     Will there be enough machines in Cleveland? Manhattan (stuck with its nearly useless Sequoias)? New Jersey bulging at the seams? Florida?

     Will everyone vote who wants to vote? Even if this outcome miraculously occurs, will the vote count be accurate? A true expression of democracy, in which the will of the people prevails, nonetheless seems unavoidable. The landslide for Obama will be expressed as a slight victory, but uncontended because we all know the scenario, a replay of 2006 only with more people involved and hence more problems inevitable.

     Much spleen will be apparent, if not hysteria. The people have had it, I think, and believe far more in Obama than they did in Kerry. So short of a police state, short of a fascist overthrow, I am quite sure that the Democrats will inherit the mess and drown in it, even if they win more of a majority in the Senate.

     There is too much to clean up, too much to undo. But we’ll set about this Augean task once back where we belong. And before we’re done, if ever this is possible, a program like Wednesday’s edition of VoV will leave listeners in a better mood, more encouraged, closer to the democracy they want, and so on—therein, my friends, lie the greatest challenges of all. “So on” envelopes the unbelievable, the unpredictable. And so on . . . to other states and other fates.

©

23 July 2008: I Wa$ There

There was a long line wrapped around the Capital Hilton this morning, mere blocks from the White House and right next door to the Washington Post, which has refused to report the most newsworthy event in the city. Instead headlines focus on Robert Novak’s hit-and-run incident in his 2003 black Chevy Corvette convertible. He got off with a $50 fine and remarked how glad he was that his homeless victim hadn’t died.

     I’m falling into the same trap. What was that line about? Well the most the Post did was confined to one or two columns. I just checked it and failing any story, I googled the event and found Mary Kane’s brief account in the Washington Independent, “Restructurings Burn the Midnight Oil.”

     Lenders are writing, too, about those lines. They are people fighting foreclosures, being helped, if they are lucky enough to reach the front of the line after hours that rival the those spent by determined voters during presidential elections in Ohio in 2004. NACA, the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, is furnishing free counselors by the hundred to scan, on brand-new HP machines, the documents of these victims, email them to lenders, who agreed to work with them, in that interest rates are so far down that mortgages should reflect this reality instead of cannibalizing the very ground our economy stands on, the people who work for a living.

     The Capital Hilton hosted the event, courtesy of NACA, and scores of people in NACA insignia attire, including bright yellow T-shirts with large sharks emblazoned on both front and back (signifying the loan sharks on their way to other waters—who knows where? "Sharks, beware!" warns the shirt) sat behind tables, behind scanners, helping people who came from as far as Florida and waited sometimes more than a day for help.

     Help they received, one man having lowered his monthly payment, just for example, from more than $2,000 to $1,220. He was ecstatic, encouraging those still waiting, telling his story to them, walking back into hope. The event was named Restoring the Dream of a House. But as the five days of the event progressed, more and more people showed up. As it ends today, rioting is feared from those who have waited long and not been served.

     Because the media are ignoring this news, I sit at Dupont Circle wondering what is going on a few miles away and determined to stretch the four corners of the media until I find out.

     I was there several times with a journalist friend who came here from New York for all five days. The people waiting wouldn’t meet my eyes. What good was I? Mothers sat on the floor with children in their lap; the entire spectrum of American society was represented, from poor blacks to, I am told, upper-class scions who know they can trust the counselors as opposed to others.

     I would trust the counselors. They have that twenty-four/seven brand of weariness that encompasses everything an individual might endure. Some of them are obese. Some look like prosperous attorneys. Some attorneys are standing in the lines.

     “There but for fortune,” I think, a mortgage-less renter who just paid off her credit card accounts, wondering how safe my savings are now, wondering how soon I may be in one of those lines. At least I earn enough to live my life and write in my spare time (oxygen).

     I read that those people turned away from the Hilton might alter their paths toward churches that have offered space to continue the program. Where should they come, if not Washington? The president of NACA, Bruce Marks, was quite disagreeable as he led a posse of those who couldn’t readjust their mortgages into the Senate chambers to speak with the likes of Christopher Dodds, but Bruce so ruffled feathers that the senior senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, refused any visitations.

     What might those visits have accomplished under the aegis of more of a diplomat? “They brought attention to the severe plight of a substantial portion of the people,” said my friend.

     From Wall Street to Main Street? I might ask, quoting my friend again and marveling at the strength and impact of NACA. The Independent reporter opined that NACA should be in charge of our economy. It’s way past time to lose our tempers, one and all.

©

20 July 2008: More Than a JFK Wannabe, or “Al Gore Rhythm”

I know that Al Gore’s famous challenge to his fellow Americans to achieve 100 percent renewable energy usage in ten years is now old news. But does anyone know that he began his speech by quoting Woody Allen to the either/or effect that we can be down in the dumps or else self-immolate (something like that, anyway)?

     I offer a summary from someone who was there, braving the crowds waiting outside the huge DAR Memorial auditorium on D Street not far from the heart of DC and our country.

     Greeting the various dignitaries present, including Sen. Bernie Sanders and his own wife and daughters, Gore told us that the environment is a nonpartisan issue, that the board of the sponsoring organization, Alliance for Climate Protection, comprised four Democrats, four Republicans, and one Independent.

     Big changes are exigent; the survival of our country is at risk—the survival of human civilization actually. Many things are going wrong simultaneously, he said: the economy, oil inflation, the subprime crisis and foreclosure epidemic, the future of our banks, the descent of the automotive industry giant GM

     There is a 75 percent chance that the Polar Ice Cap will disappear this summer, which will jeopardize Greenland. We must also consider the implications for our national security as hundreds of thousands of refugees demand sanctuary into unthreatened terrains.

     Were we to lose access to foreign oil, an “energy tsunami” would result. There is war in Iraq and Afghanistan; the inequitable distribution of wealth is worsening, and there are wildfires all over the world. For every one percent increase, the amount of lightening that goes off increases by 10 percent, and lightning is the primary cause of wildfires, kindling acres of thirsty underbrush in a flash.

     The solutions we offer are outdated and separate, worsening other crises. The common thread is over-dependence on carbon-based fuels. The dramatic increase in Chinese oil consumption is another sort of wildfire that must be curtailed. Scientists and other experts say that the real solution to these multiple crises, to control the deterioration of the climate, to rebalance the economy, and guarantee national security is not war.

     At present we have enough solar and wind energy sources in the western part of the United States to meet one year of this country’s needs, including all the electricity we will use. The use of geothermal energy to produce electrical energy holds additional promise, said the politician-turned Nobel laureate.

     We need a new start, a bold new strategy to repower the United States: 100 percent use of electric power and carbon-free fuels within ten years, an entirely achievable goal. While the price of oil skyrockets along with demand, in the case of demand for green energy, prices fall.

     Consider that earlier it was determined that when the price of oil rose to $35 per barrel, the expense of converting to alternative energy sources would be justified.

     We have entrepreneurs to bring about the needed changes. New sources of energy are free forever. The number of green-collar jobs will grow proportionately.

     Those who defend the status quo ignore the inevitability of the demises of carbon fuel sources, including coal. If our exigent needs are not addressed in ten years, the planet will never recover from the ongoing damage we are allowing to happen. Our economy cannot take ten more years of environmental abuse, rising oil prices, and rising troop deployment.

     Think back to the miracles wrought by the Marshall Plan, Social Security, interstate highways. Remember the 1961 inaugural address in which JFK promised this country a man on the moon within ten years—and the promise was kept, a “giant step for humanity.”

     We can overcome the obstacles; the grid is as yet insufficient to connect the various sources of alternative energy to those who need it.

     Switching to plug-in electric cars is part of the solution. We must also recognize those toilers in constant danger, coal miners, and restore them to the light of day. We must tax what we earn, not what we burn.

     We must rejoin the international community, cap our carbon dioxide emissions. Politics these days rewards special interests and takes token, baby steps toward the correct solutions—not drilling for oil in new places, not showering the Middle East with our fortunes with the hope that prices will go down.

     We suffer from the highest oil prices in history and the greatest profits ever enjoyed by oil companies.

     Driving electric-powered cars will cost the equivalent of one dollar per gallon of gasoline. Have we lost our appetite for bold policy solutions? Special interests are in our way. People are interested in bold approaches to solving problems, changes at the international level.

     This country must move first—in our own interests. We must call on every political candidate at every level to act beyond empty rhetoric. We must act now. This is a generational moment. Join the We Campaign to change not light bulbs but laws.

     We need new leadership. On July 16, 1969, humankind first landed on the moon. Gore himself witnessed the launch of the moon rocket; he will never forget the deafening noise and subsequently watching Neil Armstrong change the history of the human race.

     Now is the time for our next journey of exploration—that giant leap within the next ten years that is needed to save the world.

“Peace Economy”

Workshop Led by Rev. Bob Moore at

50^th Annual Peace Action Congress

July 18-20, 2008

This hourlong workshop was framed around positives: limiting the war budget to 4 percent of our GDP, canceling the military’s “credit card,” dismantling the empire psychology and cutting down to fifty military bases worldwide; Congress should pass demilitarized budgets; between now and November efforts should focus on disseminating peace-voter information and materials; and above all preemptive . . . peace spending.

     No spending on nuclear weaponry should be emphasized as a goal; “build bridges, not walls” should replace the apartheid mindset; replace military spending with green energy funding.

     We should stress to the public that we’re really not that “unsafe” and eliminate the fear that dominates our mentality—more a function of the Bushocracy than reality.

     Twenty-six schools can be built for the price of one cruise missile.

     Mention was made of Al Gore’s recent challenge to achieve 100 percent renewable energy in ten years;

     In short, the conclusion may be summed up as money for the people, not for war and oil.

     Plenty more were offered: Fifty million more people are impoverished than previously counted. For the $720 million spent daily on war, we could build eight-four hospitals or provide fifty thousand college scholarships.

     In Vermont one goal is to legalize the use of industrial gray hemp as a source of alternative energy: for fabric, paper, and oil that burns more cleanly than carbon-based fuels; switchgrass and sugarcane can also power cars cleanly; using corn for fuel interferes with the food supply.

     The example of “build schools, not bombs” to combat terrorism was exemplified by the project of Greg Mortenson which began in Pakistan and has spread to Afghanistan—not only by information provided by Nicholas Kristof (coincidentally less than a week after Marta Steele published a review of Three Cups of Tea [an autobiography of Mortenson] at opednews.com). Mortenson is building schools for the neglected people in out-of-the-way settlements who are educationally deprived and a prime target for terrorist brainwashing.

     Instead such people learn that there is at least one good American in the world and that education opens doors to new worlds and new global perspectives that lead toward peace and civilization rather than destructive violence. His specific focus is girls because he believes that his all-Muslim targeted populations are most heavily influenced by their women despite their supposed inferior status. Stories like this can build hope and spur action.

     We need a new slogan to replace AFSC’s “War is not the answer.” No ideas were immediately forthcoming, but an additional positive challenge was presented.

     Our is the power, more than others’, to make the world safer.

     We are in the deepest economic crisis since the days of Herbert Hoover’s presidency. It is imperative that we trade in our status as King of WMDs and Nukes when we rank 47^th in the world in longevity and 26^th in infant mortality.

     A peace economy is the positive to combat these shameful numbers, and the way back to our status as exemplifer rather than pariah in the global context. How about “Make Peace Not War,” as the new slogan, harkening back to the sixties and all the positives emphasized and accomplished then, that remain to perpetuate?

4 July 2008: Two Shrubs and an Everest

Three Cups of Tea (Penguin, 2006) is a must-read for those who have given up on idealists accomplishing anything more in this Bush-driven world, where the next presidential nomination promises to become Bush v. Bush.

     A veteran mountain climber, Greg Mortenson attempted the toughest peak in the world, K2, less high but rougher and more dangerous than Everest. After a valiant battle, he emerged half dead into a tiny village in Baltistan that no one had ever heard of, Korphe, where the God-forsaken, illiterate Muslims brought him back to life with gentle TLC and all the food and shelter they could spare.

     Mortenson was to encounter far more challenging projects than mountain climbing. Large, craggy, young, he found out quickly about the wisdom of the aged, illiterate village dwellers and in his gratitude promised the people he would return and build a school for their children, who were reduced to writing in the dirt with sticks. The people were used to such promises and bid him hale and farewell when he regained his health.

     Mortenson returned, procured building materials with one of the villagers, but stumbled up against another wall: first he would have to build a bridge before the school could be constructed. It all happened eventually. He had particular hope for the young village girls and concentrated efforts on them as well as the boys. All the people he worked with were Muslims.

     The day one young lady returned to him, his first student, was a proud one for Mortenson. She had started out in his first school in Korphe and then graduated from a higher-level school in a close-by city accessible only by dirt roads on high mountain passes, The girl burst in on a roomful of men most assertively, telling Mortenson about her ultimate plans, to receive more education and go higher than working as a local healthcare provider. Mortenson himself was a nurse.

     Eventually encountering the perfect wife who supported his every endeavor and bore him two children, the latter named for the Khyber Pass, Mortenson began to live a complete life. Yet he was so absorbed by his drive to educate the indigent, an effective antidote to the flourishing hostility of the widespread madrassas, that when he returned to the family home in Boseman, Montana, he would soon pace around in his basement office and fly away to fundraise or back to the farthest reaches of Pakistan. Like the Doctors without Borders, he was concerned with the God-forsaken dwellers in places no one ever went.

     Working with a pittance of finance, Mortenson built his simple structures as widely as he could. If he ever thought his work would be done, the mountain climbed, he changed his mind after imprisonment in Waziristan, where he was held him hostage for days before the people released him and then showered him with contributions for his schools. The rule he had broken was not to find a sponsoring war lord before entering the territory.

     Wealth finally came to him after Parade magazine discovered him and publicized his efforts. Suddenly he had $1 million in funds. More schools followed, along with better-paid staffs but also with a new mountain to climb--the education of the God forsaken in Afghanistan.

     How can the task of educating the God-forsaken ever end? Mortenson is still at it. He has been considered for a Nobel prize--all his accomplishments the result of not summiting what then seemed to be the ultimate challenge. He could have tried again, but he found another mountain whose summit is eternally around the next steep, spiraling mounting road, and the next.

+++++

As for those two bushes at the base of the towering mount, their roots run deep toward Hades and deeper. They used to be distinctive but are looking more and more alike lately.

     One is McCain, the other, most surprisingly, is Obama. Since the day he for all intents secured the Democratic nomination and grabbed the quickest photo op that he could with Hillary Clinton, the consummate centrist who is now beginning to look left of him, he has surprised his Progressive supporters daily. The first glimmer was his expressed support for NAFTA; following close upon that was his support of the FISA compromise in Congress and now, most lately, he is starting to flop about his position on exiting Iraq. The sixteen-month “magic number” is still invoked, along with a pledge to follow his generals in whatever they decide.

     Sick semper? The tyrants are running amok in our midst. Democrats.com, strong supporters, now suggests that its readers put their Obama donations “in escrow” until such time as Barack returns to his senses and  Progressive roots—to those of us [not me] who supported him so completely from the time when he first surfaced as a great white hope.

+++++

Well, there are idealists who disappoint and a few who know no nonsense and keep fighting the fight peacefully. Education is freeing the people Mortenson is helping even as it has taught Obama to prevaricate not so eloquently most lately, the ultimate pol and little else. One by one the bricks of his Progressive facade will crumble. What next? Hillary waits in the wings. At least she’s the devil we know.

©

29 June 2008: There But for Fortune II

Picture a young woman in the early 1970s getting off a plane in Los Angeles in the wee hours of the dawn, having saved money by taking an “owly bird.” The ride was luxurious—she may have been the sole passenger and felt like Onassis on that jumbo jet.

     But the airport was a different story, deserted but for a few depressing laggards sitting around. She went into the ladies’ room, not knowing what to do until 5 a.m., when the first bus to Westwood would come along.

     She came out of the bathroom and lit up a cigarette, a heavy smoker at the time. Then she began to gag uncontrollably. A man came up to her and watched her gag. “Are you lost?” he asked. She felt ridiculous. “No!” she said without further explanation, her pride wounded. He looked at her full of pity.

     The bus finally came.

     The homeless people in the District of Columbia can’t just hop a bus out of their condition, on to an opulent university that looks more like a country club.

     That is the closest experience I can think of in my sheltered life that reminds me of homelessness—nowhere to go until the bus comes.

     It’s coming in D.C., though—a project to end homelessness, sponsored by Mayor Adrian Fenty. A young professional who works for the Health and Human Resources Services department of the District government, Laura Zeilinger, described the program in detail to a room full of Washington Friends Meeting members and attendees. The program is modeled on successful counterparts in other large cities (more than 50), especially New York. It addresses all aspects of homelessness uncritically—not just the absence of food and shelter.

     It makes housing available to all homeless people, including those who are mentally ill, alcoholics, substance abusers, or all of the above. It will provide education in basic living skills, counseling, rehabilitation, detoxification, all without a hitch. They will have more than the humiliating, overcrowded shelters and soup kitchens they frequent now, where the employees, earning low salaries, do not treat them well. The aim of the program is not only to end homelessness but also to prevent it, catching the root causes before the damage runs its course, adding to the number of street people..

     The program will provide six thousand affordable housing units, including emergency units for evicted families, and when they can, giving them enough money to retain their leases—such funding will be provided once a year.

     There will be 500 units for chronically homeless families and the rest for individuals, the rent will be fully paid if the tenants need this. Such permanent housing can last for at least forty years.

     Another goal of the program is to address the root causes of homelessness, which differ with each individual or family, and customize their programs appropriately.

     The program cannot support those displaced by foreclosures, because rescuing them—that is, keeping them where they are--would require funding it does not have.

     The goal is to house four hundred of those most needy by October 1. Genderwise, the ratio here is 65 percent men to 35 percent women, we were told, because families tend to feel more protective of the "weaker sex."

     Said Laura, she and her colleagues go out on the streets between 4 and 7 a.m. to find homeless people and talk with them. Most are receptive and polite, she said. In addition, all of us should treat homeless people with respect, making eye contact and greeting them rather than pretending they’re not there. I feel so foolish mired in my own problems, passing by homeless people pushing shopping carts that contain all their possessions.

     What does God care about the neuroses of a middle-aged princess compared to those of a starving child in Darfur or a homeless person with nowhere warm to sleep in the winter? The miracle is that God loves all of us, I find. Suffering is suffering.

     Though homeless people fear and loathe the District police, who frequently re-locate them, another goal is to reduce the number of calls to 9-11 made by street people in trouble, calls that cost D.C. more in the long run than addressing the needs these calls express.   

     The program also reaches out to refugees from disaster scenarios like Katrina and the recent flooding in the Midwest.

     Working with the Washington Interfaith Network, the program will receive $60.8 million in New Funds for Affordable Housing Citywide and $50 million in land value to finance the development of new, affordable housing units. The federal government also responds to applications for assistance and contributes further to making the District what Mayor Fenty anticipates will become a “City of Opportunity.”

©

15 June 2008: Uncounted, a Film by David Earnhardt et al.

As a veteran voting rights activist, I learned little new from watching this magisterial history of the horrendous corruption injected into our electoral system since the rise of the Neocons in 2000, by way of Jebb Bush and Katherine Harris in Florida, among many others.

     But I appreciated the review and am anxious to spread the word around to the large percentage of people in this country unaware that a large percentage of their votes in the last eight years haven’t been counted or, in many cases, been counted backward to subtract from the totals of the candidates they favored.

     David Earnhardt’s expertise in choosing the right moments in the last eight years to highlight served another purpose in my life: it rekindled my anger and inspired me to keep fighting the fight.

     Though it occurs to me that half of the population in this country refuse to vote, so disaffected they are with the system or so uninformed of their rights. They may be further scared away from participating in such a corrupted process.

     I don’t meet such people too often but when I do, urge them to register. The film medium may reach out to them better than the printed word, so that all in all we accomplish more by getting the word out than remaining silent as our rights slip away

     Earnhardt’s film reviews the highlights of the last eight years and finds one of the constants, despite the nonpartisanship of the election rights movement: the Republican party is connected with the corruption, by way of large donations to their candidates by the large voting machine manufacturers, by way of the Republicans in power who have aided and abetted the ethical violations that have handed the Bushocracy the White House twice, unfairly.

     The Supreme Court absconding with the right of the Florida Supreme Court to determine how to handle the conflicts in their state that postponed the election result in 2000; the double role of Katherine Harris as Florida’s secretary of state and head of the committee to elect Bush; the complicity of Bush’s brother, Governor Jebb, who promised his state’s vote to “W.”

     The rush to purchase the disastrous electronic touch-screen and push-button “DRE”’s that were so easy to corrupt and manipulate in countless ways, including “vote hopping” from Democratic to Republican candidates by way of manipulating the proprietary coding [read: no one could check the programming to be sure that it was functioning reliably].

     The purposeful racism leveled against third-world citizens bound by large percentages to the Democratic party and therefore kept away from the polls by intimidation, misinformation, manipulation of paperwork, denial of rights on flimsy grounds, purposefully undersupplying to precincts where they voted, or supplying dysfunctional machines in stark contrast to the treatment of affluent communities bound to vote for Republicans.

     The control of the key battleground state of Ohio in 2004 by Kenneth Blackwell, also both secretary of state and leader of the committee to re-elect Bush; the long lines at the polls in pouring rain that forced many with limited amounts of time to leave without voting—those who persevered were forced to wait as long as 16 hours. The faking of a terrorist scare at another precinct. All that and much more crippled our rights in 2004.

     Diebold is the case in point Earnhardt uses to exemplify what has gone wrong in this country since 2004 (activist groups have formed since then to fight the corruption; more on this below). A large and powerful, Republican-connected manufacturer of paperless DREs, Diebold is responsible for dispersing dysfunctional machines in huge quantities—machines that have been proved hackable in less than a minute. The key to the programming so resembles a luggage key that anyone can open a blackbox in that short a time and infect the machine to produce votes for the candidate of choice.

     The mainstream press ignored this fiasco for as long as it could. Grassroots activists and then iconoclastic and brave journalists first began the publicity push. First the establishment corporates dismissed the activists’ claims and then finally took up the proliferation, but never soon enough to affect results and never to the degree needed.

     The film features heroes of the election integrity movement, including pioneers like Bev Harris, the few equally brave Members of Congress who dared speak out—John Conyers and Cynthia McKinney the earliest. The syndicated columnist Robert Koehler of the Chicago Tribune joined the fight early on. Then of course, the pantheon of others who arose from the grassroots are quoted, along with the courageous whistle blowers who sacrificed their careers to fight the corrupt behemoth.

     The earliest canary in the coal mine, Greg Palast, who exposed the list of illegally purged voters wrongly identified as felons, in Florida, is missing from the pantheon, though other pioneers who stood in front of the Supreme Court in mid-December are briefly photo’ed on that day they awaited the decision of the Supreme Court on who would next occupy the White House.

     Among the persistent activists quoted are Mary Beth Kuznik of central Pennsylvania, attorney Lowell Finley now of California, author Andrew Gumbel, New York activist Teresa Hommel, author Bob Fitrakis, blogger and speaker Brad Friedman, martyr Athan Gibbs, who started Tru-Vote, now up and running after ceasing operations after Gibbs’s death, Clint Curtis, Ed Felten of Princeton, Bruce Funk of Utah, Christine Jennings of Sarasota 2006 fame, and Jonathan Simon.

     Just as John Conyers’s slow, weary articulation serves as ground base to the film, a theme running throughout is the outrageous and chronic disconnect between exit polls and machine tallies. And there is much more to watch and learn.

     What can we do? Contact our representatives who must run for re-election every two years; say no to DREs, an area where we are making progress; volunteer to be a poll observer or worker- a job where the median age of employees is currently 72; write letters to the periodical editors local and national, lobby, and pass this film around.

     Where’s the outrage? We can, Barack Obama might say were he among us in this fight. Use of optical scanners, low-tech electronic voting machines that produce paper ballots, and revival of paper bllots are spreading. We’re succeeding but never has the need been more urgent to never stop. Election 2008 is upon us and it is up to us to keep our democracy functional and not go the way of places where notorious corruption for years has kept the wrong people in office.

     One citizen-one ballot must remain to perpetuate this historic experiment we call democracy, an age of enlightenment in history that must endure. Individuals have to take that step, says Bev Harris as the film ends and our part continues, strengthened, our outrage rekindled, our mission defined once again. Democracy: love it or lose it!

©

15 June 2008: Otto J. Nussbaum

I had a father until 1993, named Otto, which embarrassed me a bit, until I realized that when my mother called him “Ott” frequently, that’s what Penelope probably called her Odysseus, when he was home.

     Dad wasn’t home too often, always flying around on business, giving speeches, participating in seminars and conferences, holding offices including president. A socialist in his youth, he later became a Zionist—his father had taken a term off from university to work in the office of Theodor Herzl.

     Fleeing the Nazis, my father came here before the “final solution” in the late 1930s; he had been born in Budapest, raised in Vienna, and schooled in Moscow. There, once he graduated and told the Russians he did not intend to stay, he was given 48 hours to pack and leave. He never went back there, though once, at a conference in Prague, he ran into a professor from Russia and they had an emotional reunion.

     Losing family in the Holocaust, my father was determined to save his immediate family. A wealthy relative in England bribed the Nazis to free his father from Dachau, where he had been imprisoned doing hard labor for three months. My grandfather, who had been taken to Dachau on Krystallnacht, emerged a shadow of his former self, wrist tattooed efficiently with a row of blue numbers, and smoked himself to death thereafter, dying in 1960 after working sporadically as a bridge engineer.

     My father paid to bring over his father, mother, and one sister. The other, a medical student, immigrated to London where she worked for several years as a governess.

     Like my aunt, refusing help from well-established relatives, my father worked as a hospital orderly in New York City until he found a company in Trenton, NJ, who hired him as their chief engineer. He worked there for twenty years and to this day the family who owned that company are close friends with my family—those who are still living.

     From that humble beginning, he acquired 29 patents, including one for inventing the familiar ventilating infrastructure that releases both heat and air conditioning through the same outlet.

     He supported his parents until they died. He spoke French, Hungarian, Russian, German, and English—the last to a point where he was always correcting our grammar and New Jersey dialects at the dinner table. Because of this remarkable knowledge, he worked as a translator for the United Nations (on paper documents) and was sent to Warsaw, Poland, in 1960 for two months to serve as a technical assistant. He received a further offer to work in Santiago, Chile, for a year, but his employers wouldn’t give him that long a sabbatical.

     My father was one of the first to realize the promise of PCs and solar energy when their earliest incarnations emerged. So in the early 1980s in Huntsville, Alabama, we took lukewarm showers and were given home lessons in WordStar on the first word-processing software on Radio Shack mini-computers. He tried to teach me programming also, but I just wanted the word processing to input a novel I was working on.

     My father was no socialite—my mother attended to that end of things. On my wedding weekend, with our home thronging with fascinating guests from as far off as South Africa, my father rode around his home on his tractor mowing the lawn.

     But he was a humanitarian and idealist in some ways, hiring a black engineer, with whom he worked in his home office in the 1950s, and taught us all to respect him as my father’s colleague in an era that frowned upon that level of integration. When asked why he chose that iconoclastic route, my father said that the gentleman had simply presented him with the most qualified credentials. He too, had suffered from discrimination. He told us never to feel too secure anywhere as Jews, that all of his friends had turned against him in Vienna; my aunt lost her fiancé whom she had met in medical school. Years later they had a reunion in Vienna, so that she could experience closure with that era of her life.

     My father had found his picture in an issue of Der Speigel while riding a trolley car in Austria—thus having engineered the reunion.

     He’s been gone for fifteen years. He would have rolled his eyes around as we “mice” began to play after his severe abstemiousness had departed from our midst. We all began to travel the world.

     But my father had left a financial legacy guaranteeing that all of us would always have enough for food and shelter—no frills.

     But the legacy did not end there. He had taught us how to organize our lives, how never to stop until we found work that not only sustained us materially but also satisfied us intellectually and spiritually. Often he preferred his work to human interactions. He was never happier than in his attic office working away at contractual work he did in addition to his full-time job.

     He had taught us that we could survive the most grueling tribulation life could offer and learn to weather the good fortune that followed as well as the adversities. Upstairs in his aerie, inventing, translating, listening to foreign music and news on the “Telefunkens” he had put together himself, he sustained two families and was charitable beyond that, with his time for worthy causes and with what financial donations he could afford beyond that.

     A mixed bag indeed, you might say. He had little time to play with us. We feared his European domination of so much of our childhood. My mother was the approachable one. He was killed instantly in a collision just as 2003 was born. We were all shocked, all reacted differently. I was the one who told my colleagues at work to drown me with assignments so that I would not have to think about anything else—truly my father’s daughter.

     And we miss what he was able to give us, the traditional male foraging, the security that we’d always be taken care of, the amazing ascent from penniless refugee to world-renowned engineer, creator of computer programs that sold all over the world, inventor, solar engineer and insightful pioneer.

     He tried to retire at 65 but quickly became a caged animal, so at age 70 he found a job in a new field, chemical engineering. He was hired and oriented into this new field, specializing in water chemistry. He worked full-time in this capacity, also working as a contractor in his spare time, arising eagerly at 5 in the morning each day, including weekends.

     He died with a full head of dark hair, the health of a 55 year old, a survivor of level-4 melanoma; well I could write even more about this gifted man. A hard act to follow for my brother and me, but rather an ideal in many ways and an exemplar.

     Dad, on this day we remember both your merits and faults and rejoice in the full and satisfying life you led, cut off at a moment of triumph.

     My father was within one chapter of completing a textbook on engineering and had already found a publisher. He died in the act of endeavor and somewhere is still hard at work. He visits me occasionally, always telling me what to do: “Take care of your mother.” I try to obey him, as always.

©

1 June 2008: What’s Going On and Why?

There is a lot to dissect lately. I think psychology began before Freud—he himself drew heavily on the classical tradition for a reason. I am defending psychology because I think it will matter in this blog if not dominate it.

     Hillary Clinton weighs heavily on my mind—the one with more popular votes than Obama, whose lead, I read today, leans heavily on caucus victories even as she claimed key states like New York, California, and Pennsylvania.

     Hillary has been campaigning since 1992, if not 1969, when she graduated from Wellesley as the class speaker, her dark brows accentuating her power even then.

     Now her brows are no longer dark and she is traversing a tough place, a low she will get over soon. If Obama lacks her baggage, he will acquire it in a far more perilous place, the presidency. All we can hope is that his learning curve doesn’t arch into the ground.

     Hillary can bounce back, a pro who can easily turn tough; she can even run again, though she has used up so much and exerted so continuously, I wonder if she has the energy and wherewithal to do it again.

     And if Obama screws up, with the public give the Dems another chance in four years? The presidency seems to be the most difficult position in history, but the Golden Generation I’m sure will argue otherwise.

     To think that as a Wellesley frosh Hill was so intimidated for the first few days she considered returning to her small town in Illinois.

     I also wonder how different life would be now if her plan for universal health coverage in 1993 have been better, if she had known more. America will have waited more than fifteen years for its presumptive president to carry out her promise. If Obama succeeds, it will be sad in a way and few will look back to Hillary’s clumsy first efforts.

     Unless Hillary becomes his v.p. and he assigns her that task, now older and wiser.

     I’m assuming a Democratic victory in November, of course: Bam Bam vs. Bomb Bomb.

     And, by the way, the battle for the nomination was not black versus white—the White Christian male was eliminated early on—but male versus female. Obama isn’t black enough and this won’t be the first time that the gift of articulateness has led to greatness. Let words this time around be the seeds of resounding actions:

Out of Iraq and away from Iran

Universal health care

Curing the economy (universal wealth care?)

Peace through understanding—-a compromise between knowing that everyone wants what we’ve got or else thinks that we need what they’ve got

improved education

no more outsourcing

restoring Iraq to the way it was before we bombed it, sans Halliburton and its peers.

I mean, there is so much, far too much to accomplish in four years—I would maintain it’s the heaviest job description on the market, ever, so let’s hope that Barack surrounds himself with the right people. Can we assign each of the above bullet points to a cabinet secretary? We’ll need a Department of Peace, I’d wager, and guess who to lead it? Would O. go that far out on the limb of democracy, to that funny-looking, so-underrated visionary?

++++++++

And now to an even more universal issue: religion/politics—where does one end and the other begin if the most secular of items, the most heavily traded paper money and our Pledge of Allegiance, not to mention one of the most celebrated speeches of modern times, invoke God?

     And the two overlap so many times—sex, the third of the trio, not an issue here?

     The war against terrorism can be seen as one between a religious versus a secular government. That’s one perspective anyway.

     But recently I’ve experienced, vicariously, a clash between enlightened religiosity and governmental opacity.

     On January 11, some religious people, activating their religious principles, demonstrated peacefully in front of and barely inside of the Supreme Court building here in DC as it was deciding on issues related to the Gitmo prisoners. What rights do they have anyway?

     Plenty, the protesters answered. You can’t hold someone prisoner because of presumed guilt; you can’t hold someone prisoner because he/she was in the wrong place at the wrong time; you can’t hold someone prisoner without a trial, and so on.

     And you have no right to torture anyone physically. None.

     And so forty people barely inside the Court building and forty on the steps, all praying, received punishment of various degrees, mostly suspended sentences, low fines, probation that no one will care about, warnings to stay away from the Court building which no one will heed.

     But one seventy-seven year old woman will be imprisoned for ten days because she told the judge that her religious principles would not permit her to cease and desist.

     Here is a shining example of hypocrisy’s opposite—a shining event, activating God’s words; a blessed event in every sense and we are so lucky for those few brave people sacrificing a peaceful life for peace for all of us.

     Ultimately, I think they keep the rest of us going, though they receive little if any media attention. Most of us leave it to others and thank God there are a few.

     It does say something that, unlike the tortured prisoners in Gitmo, those protesting on their behalf aren’t tortured in return, at least physically. Nonviolent protest should always be slapped on the hand, nothing more. And then heeded.

     The trial occurred on May 27. One of the people I know who participated even though he was on probation for his last act of civil disobedience, received a prison sentence of one day—tomorrow, to be exact. What a waste of taxpayer money.

     Torture costs even more. And the expenses of war, mostly wasted, are far higher.

     And the toll in human suffering?

     Priceless. Like a credit card that should be demolished in a paper shredder in lieu of the human lives and liberties being demolished right before our eyes.

     Priceless.

©

29 May 2008: “Harris”ing Them into Quality Control

Short of Olympic figure skating or a clown act in the circus, there’s really no excuse for all the times an “oops” occurs in the electoral cosmos in this country. Oops, an election official didn’t boot up the machine in time; oops, the machine crashed again; oops, the light keeps going back to the wrong candidate on the screen.

     Citizens must invoke quality control where their votes are concerned. Think of the analogies again, if other vital industries in this country had occasion to say “oops” one thousandth, one hundred thousandth of the times oops events occur in realms concerning the vote, our constitutional right.

     No greater gesture of contempt for the people is there than the sad state of the voting process in its every aspect.

     The godmother of voting integrity, Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org, was the featured guest on Voice of the Voters Wednesday evening.

&mnsp;    She had some surprising analyses to offer this evening, inventive and stimulating insights on what is happening and what we can still do about it.

     There are three areas where elections go bad, she said: One is the simplicity of those in charge of the ballot, who are frequently untrained—which works well in New Hampshire, where vote counting is done in public, but few other places.

     Two is the mind control achieved by bad talking points, suppression, misdirection, miscounting; we must see through these devices to what they are accomplishing and wage a better battle against them.

     Three is the projections based on exit polls when those who provide the figures are hidden from us, nor do we know how they arrive at their totals. In this grey area, there was no ooops on CNN during the primaries. It is either foolproof or manufactured. The projections were always on the mark.

     One of the reasons Bev is a pillar of IE is her ability to twist around truisms to show us how much we accept unthinkingly. I always esteemed exit polls, as do many others, for achieving a validity evasive within the buildings. But now I wonder.

     Another reason Bev is such a hero is the blackbox toolkit she offers at her Web site: myriad ways to combat those oopses that so overturn our democracy and constitutional rights.

     The tool kit is “focused on making 2008 as fair as possible.” She categorized activists into five groups: 1) Those who work behind the scene; 2) The hunter-gatherers; 3) The organizers; 4) The funders; and  5) The communicators. The latter group comprises those who are verbally articulate, as speakers or writers—of course the group she identifies with best.

     The point is simple: bring in whatever you can. If you have no talents, then give money. We couldn’t have gotten Harri Hursti here from Finland to achieve what he did without funding.

     Everyone has something to give. Bev’s toolbox encompasses all skill sets. Those who say they are too busy should think again, because the stakes are too high. They should rethink their priorities, she said.

     The top three issues this fall, she continued, are the five to ten million voters who will be kept from voting or stuck with provisional ballots (“second-class votes”) that are often not counted. Then there are the miscounts: the ES&S contraption that kept hopping around among the candidates—these Bev called the number crunchers.

     She spoke of some free software on the Web that harvests the vote counting process as it occurs; one of them can gather up results from all the states at once and follow them minute by minute.

     But finally, there are the robocalls used by the spoilers, as in Oregon, where people were called and told that instead of mailing their ballots they could bring them to “ballot collecting centers.” So much for vote-by-mail.

     In line with Mary Ann’s idea of the two weeks in September devoted to “Ready, Set, Vote and Check,” Bev suggested a further step: see if your i.d. matches their lists. If you say Bev and Beverly is on their list, you might not be able to vote. You can’t be too careful these days. Check and recheck where you are assigned to vote.

     If something goes wrong at the polls, be sure that a poll worker documents it in writing. In one instance, after summoned to witness a “hopping” machine screen, a poll worker reported the incident and the entire surrounding area received new machines.

     Lori asked Bev if she thought that protesting was effective or useful. The answer was, it depends on how you protest. She spoke of the effectiveness of the number twenty—how twenty protesters dressed in orange made quite a dramatic statement without uttering a word. Their presence alone was provocative.

     “After the written report, what happens next?” asked Mary Ann, who credited Bev with drawing her into IE.

     Propagate the report, answered Bev. Send notices to elected officials, the media, blogs, and networks.

     Mary Ann spoke of change occurring at the periphery and then of climbing up in the hierarchy, from “what” to “why.” As an illustration she referred to the Six-Day War and Israel’s battle with Egypt over Sinai. That was what they both wanted, but once it occurred to someone to ask why. Sinai was demilitarized, so that Israel could breathe easier and Egypt could have a territory dear to its cultural and historical tradition.

     In voting also, we must move up to the “why”s.

     We’re coming together more than we have before, said Bev. It’s about being sure that our country keeps its promises to the people—sovereignty. Blackboxvoting draws in people of all political persuasions, all who believe in EI.

     To assemble her toolkit, said Bev, she traveled the country finding out from grassroots activists what actions had been most effective for them, in terms of combining common sense, ingenuity, and creativity.

     Keep it simple, she said, something you do well; stay in your comfort zone.

     We need to get everyone involved, said Mary Ann—from youth to senior citizens, combining energy and wisdom.

     Mary Ann asked further what Bev had witnessed during the New Hampshire primary. “Beauty and the Beast,” was the answer. The public was welcome, but at the top level the under secretary of state was obstructing the counting, which of course led to problems.

     Go after the bad, but don’t forget the good, said Bev.

     She called Maine the actual “role model” state. When someone was caught tampering with the ballot boxes, stronger ones were purchased.

     In New Hampshire the polls are located in 239 different towns. The ballots have to be brought to one central location. This year the primary ballots arrived “in a mess.” Boxes had been opened and those in charge refused to lock them into a vault overnight, so the ballots were left out—what Bev called a “breakdown in the chain of custody.” Tracking the votes from the polls to the central tabulation point is also crucial.

     We can never do enough—to pay for years of lethargy or to rescue our democracy from those who took over while we slept.

©

25 May 2008: Memorial Day

For many years on Memorial Day, I’d attend Yardley, Pennsylvania’s small-town parade down Main Street. I’d bring my camera in search of the Great American Photo. When I achieved it, I didn’t stop, attached to the marching bands from Pennsbury High, the proud veterans who always brought a lump to my throat even though they were unfond of my progressive leanings. There were older vets driving in old cars, tooting horns. There were a few floats, modest ones.

     On the Memorial Day after 9/11, there was gloom, of course, and a certain amount of fear, but persistence also, and we all sat there as ever, along the sidewalks, baking in the heat.

     Children rode decorated bicycles proudly. The scouts of both genders, in full regalia, marched past us.

     My great American photo, which is posted in an early Memorial Day blog, is of a little girl clad all in red, white, and blue, obviously decked out just for this occasion. Her parents seemed ill at ease with my shadowy, voyeuristic presence, so I photo’ed the child from the back, small flag in hand. I’m sure they would have preferred a front page photo in the Yardley News, but mine seemed to be the only attention. The folks in folding chairs concentrated on their own kids, all squiggling around and in need of supervision.

     Today in DC, the mall toward the Washington Monument is lined with white paper birds, each one inscribed with the name of a young veteran of the Iraq or Afghanistan war. The empty boots are there too, I’m told, an exhibition that came to Princeton a few years ago, an exhibition none of the neo-cons or oilmen will come to view, fodder for the choir, not doubt, but jarring our memories as the achingly blue skies contrast with the eternal darkness of lives cut off prematurely..

     I think the vets whose lives have been ruined and/or severely altered by these wars should also receive tribute, perhaps with boots bent out of shape that will never be worn again, because their feet are missing or worse. But I have written this before.

     As we welcome the relief of a three-day weekend we remember those who died in the most excruciating line of work.

     Then there are those who died for peace. No holiday commemorates them. But in front of my apartment building stands a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, who proved that nonviolence could prevail, a kind of nonviolence that also claimed countless lives but ultimately prevailed.

     So I will go to the mall today, if the Metro is not too jam-packed, though the crowding is a good sign that people care at least as much as they did for the week of the Cherry Blossom festival.

     The irony is that during World War II no one chopped any of the trees down, though the Japanese had become our most bitter enemies. And the trees kept flowering during all that time. No one committed violence against them.

     There are all sorts of ironies tied up with warfare—for instance, that a woman seeking the presidency is brushing dirt off of her face, lambasted by the press. Few people doubt that more women in places of power could bring about a more peaceful world.

     Consider the constant horrors engendered by males in power throughout the ages. I’m not claiming that a woman in office would bring about peace, nor that other women in the past, so few of them, did not bring about peace while they held the power to. The process would be gradual as they began to consider the future more than the bloody past.

     A past so bloody that the ironic beauties engendered by all other forms of culture are amazing; they draw attention also. We appreciate them in peace. Let war become the fiction, war die on the printed page, war released into art become the norm, trading places with war by governments and terrorists.

     Now I’ll set off to the mall if I can. And realize how lonely it is to wish for a better world. And how lonely and how few and how powerless are the people who work for peace.

PS: The Metro was not at all jam-packed, but neither were there any paper birds nor empty combat boots. So I can't conclude any demography on which is the better draw, though I'd guess the festival. Today was motorcycle heaven at the mall. Endless droves of Suzukis, Harley Davidsons, and the like were puttering and roaring and revying all over the place. The streets were blocked off in their honor, even I-395. I didn't ask the police how many were there and then multiply by two--the standard practice at prog rallies etc. The police knew nothing of the sort of pageantry I had arrived there for. They're busy erecting the rudiments of the annual folk festival, which will feature Nepalese among others. By then it is too hot to endure the treeless mall. So what did I do? Googles of tourists and I crowded into the Museum of Natural History. The ultimate Museum that place is. I'll save it for another blog: "elephants, dinos, and the Hope Diamond."

©

22 May 2008: VoV: Changing the Mindset

This evening’s Socratic edition of Voice of the Voters featured hosts Mary Ann Gould and Lori Rosolowky, who interviewed EI celebrities Ellen Theisen of Votersunite.org and Susan Pynchon of Florida Fair Elections Coalition.

     The paradox unfolded through a dialogue between Ellen and Susan that broadened the dimensions of EI discourse. First came the conclusion that there is no ideal voting system. But then, the method is only part of the complete story. Rotating around the act of voting and the machines we use is the Who does it? Lots of people, some of them with malicious forethoughts.

     What is needed by the process is supervision. Elections must be verifiable as well as verified; observable as well as observed. The act of voting is what must be private. The rest must be open to and participated in by the public—a concerned public committed to accurate and honest election returns. That is how our democracy will continue.

     In other words, said Ellen, privacy must be protected in a public venue.

     Counting the votes must be public. Observers, from all walks of life, must be honest. Citizens must observe the entire process. Different self-interests create a good balance.

     The vote belongs to the people but the administration is out of our hands, said Mary Ann.

     Partisan interests run elections, said Lori, quoting Professor Alex Keyssar, last week’s guest on Voice of the Voters.

     Said Susan, hands-on observation is a huge challenge. Ballot transportation and storage are vital parts of the process. The time between the machine calculations and the counting of the ballots must be secure. In Florida, the ballots are stored in manila envelopes, which are in turn stored in vaults. Her group is working on a citizens’ guide to elections, trying for grant money to complete it. Bev Harris has an election “tool kit” on her Web site blackboxvoting.org.

     When hand-counted paper ballots are used, said Ellen, every single part of the voting process can be observed.

     We focus so much on actions, said Mary Ann, attempting to turn the mindset. What are the key principles?

     To encourage citizen ownership of a transparent process, answered Ellen. We take democracy for granted until serious problems result from this apathy.

     Added Ellen, we must watch the government in action as much as we must watch elections.

     Either we control our destinies or we don’t, said Susan. People want easy answers; they don’t think it is exciting to observe elections.

     How many activists have been poll workers? asked Lori. For her it was a most exciting process, filled with subtleties that must all be visible and observed.

     The problem is that the average age of poll workers is 72 and they work 13-hour shifts. This should change. Shifts should rotate every four hours. Youth must become involved. Each voter should participate in some part of the process.

     Susan said that all those interested should find out the relevant laws in their states about citizens’ rights to observe. In Volusia County, twenty-three provisional ballots were discarded because poll workers had forgotten to obtain signatures on the outside of the envelopes.

     Protecting a few ballots means saving democracy, said Ellen.

     It requires building trust into the system, Lori added.

     We need more than confidence; we need truth, said Mary Ann. Two days after Labor Day, we should have a Check Your Registration Day; during that time each of us should bring another person to register. Poor people can’t go on line to check their registration status.

     PFAW and NAACP, among others, can be contact points, said John Gideon, who had just joined the conversation.

     We can call it Ready, Set, Go, and Check, said Mary Ann. We can engage our representatives and candidates during a two-week process.

     The subject turned to Sequoia as John the news hound, also of votersunite, told listeners that this manufacturer, whose machines are used throughout New Jersey, is in danger of being taken over by Hart Intercivic; it is close to bankruptcy and claims to have forgotten about a $250,000 bond purchased from New York State. Sequoia had been pushing its machines there.

     John also reported on the Kentucky and Oregon primaries, which went smoothly, though a local election in Arkansas turned out to be problematic.

     But what do we want EI activists to focus on? What are the critical considerations? asked Mary Ann.

     To get out as many as possible to observe elections, answered Susan. All states have different operation laws.

     Participating at the polls is a way to really make a difference, she continued. That’s our challenge.

     It sounds simple, said Mary Ann, but it’s really critical. With Ready, Set, Vote and other strategies, we can all join together and make it happen.

©

19 May 2008: From Blindness to Truth

Simon Hayhoe, God, Money, and Politics: English Attitudes to Blindness and Touch, From the Enlightenment to Integration

Therefore, O Lord, let me preserve

The Sense that does so fitly serve,

Take Tongue and Ear—all else I have—

Let Light attend me to the grave!

--Theodore Roethke, “Prayer”

God, Money, and Politics may seem to be a misleading title for a history of attitudes toward and activities on behalf of blind people in England from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century. Actually, these three realms form the backdrop to the events described in the book. God as the force of caring and enough altruism to lift many of the blind off the streets as beggars to gainful education and employment—in short, productivity.

     Money was crucial to the establishment and maintenance of the schools formed to house and educate blind people, who learned useful crafts to support the schools: caning and knitting, for example.

     Politics formed the day-to-day dealings that enabled this elevation of blindness and appreciation of it as the most grievous of all disabilities [as Roethke prays to avoid in the epigraph above]. It also concerned the dealings between sighted and blind people and among blind people themselves. Hayhoe emphasizes that politics is too involved in this context and a handicap itself to many dimensions of overall progress, for all of us.

     There were during the Enlightenment blind professors and scholars—fully functional in society. But the majority suffering from sightlessness needed help and finally received it in an age dominated by the likes of Isaac Newton and John Locke, who introduced the study of God and light, and vision and light, respectively, into the discourse of their time and thereafter (see Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding).

     They were to bring some light into the life of blind people, at both the intellectual and pragmatic levels: from theory and research to housing and training in life skills. Blind people would gravitate away from their image as useless and indolent into productive participation in day-to-day society, slowly but more and more.

     And it all began with a question posed to Locke by William Molyneaux [in brief]: If a blind person can identify an object such as a cube by means of touch, will he recognize it immediately if he regains his sight?

     And thence to the late twentieth century, when England began in integrate blind people into society, another type of politics.

+++++

Ancient Greek mythology equated blindness with inner light, be it the poet Homer’s genius as a singer of epic verses or the blind seer Tiresias, punished for witnessing the nakedness of a goddess but thereafter a prophet and among the shades in Hades the only one to exhibit wisdom while the shades flit about (Odyssey, book 11).

     Not that these examples exhaust the repertoire of Greek attitudes toward blindness, but in the late seventeenth century, even at the mythic level, religion had other concerns.

     Dr. Hayhoe delves into the scholarship and research that evolved from that point, concentrating on the sense of touch that serves as the “eyes” of blind people. He does not dwell until later in the book, as do many, on the compensatory sharpness of the other senses that results from blindness. But he does show that blind people are capable of enjoying sculpted art forms and further that they can grasp the concept of perspective in visual art.

     One striking example of Dr. Hayhoe’s infrequent discussion of deaf-blindness concerns a girl taught to equate a sculpted anatomy with her own body parts, one by one. Blind people would also demonstrate their ability as sculptors. It’s hard not to think also of the Helen Keller story and her long road to consciousness through grasping the meaning of finger spelling and hence language. Dr. Hayhoe does discuss the development of the Perkins School for the Blind, where Keller went to school, from its beginnings to its development. It is also surprising that his mention of Braille, though developed in the late nineteenth century, does not occur until late in the book. One wonders what effect that had on blind people of all ages and backgrounds.

     He also discusses the fate of blind people whose vision is restored later in life. The experience is traumatic and at times lethal; those “cured” seek out dark environments, where they are far more at home. Annie Dillard, in her essay collection Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, shared this seemingly surprising outcome years ago.

     Hayhoe’s main concentration is England, land of Newton and Locke and hence an important birthplace of crucial insights. He does briefly compare other systems, finding that France, for instance, concentrated more on academics than hands-on practicalities, practices that did convince the British to pay more attention to nurturing the mind as well as preparing students with life skills. The institutes [terminology varied among countries] in Austria were concerned with emotional development.

     A most interesting aspect of Hayhoe’s narrative is the comparison between those blind from birth, others blinded early in life (and he finds little difference between the two) and adults blinded by diseases such as syphilis, who were far more likely to exhibit conventional behavior.

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.
 2His disciples asked him,
                    “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
 3Jesus answered,
 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned;
 he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.

                                                                                --John 9: 1-3

     This may have been true of Homer and to some extent Tiresias, but compare with this Hayhoe’s own take:

[T}hese people have never seen, and thus visual conceptions are a closed world they are controlled by but never grasp.

     Who is right? Homer and Tiresias or Hayhoe? One is poetry (compare Robert  Graves’s poem on this subject, which I can’t presently locate), the other perceived reality.

     Then the narrative turns to the subject of blind people and music, concentrating on  the situation in England (ahead of other countries in this regard and usually favoring middle-class over poor students), and revealing that their sense of hearing opened worlds to them denied to the deaf and the deaf-blind ( though in both categories it has been found that rhythms can be detected and enjoyed by physical contact with surfaces that capture them): worlds of esthetic gratification, new abilities to cultivate, and new avenues toward employment and productivity, from performance to piano tuning and intellectual education—music, recovering the association between blindness and performance without the claim that blind people excel others in this realm. It seems, though, that initially (the late 1800s) at least the instruction was confined to male blind people. The great composer Edward Elgar was among those providing instruction.

     Music was to become a vehicle for integration of this formerly shunned category of humanity into mainstream society—but only gradually.

     A first major step, at the dawn of the twentieth century, involved discovery of ways to treat the diseases that habitually led to blindness—affecting not only the victims but their offspring, and thus reducing the number of blind subjects in general. Moreover, those blinded by direct participation in World War I generated more interest in and benevolent actions toward such heroes, including special homes for them and respectful treatment.

     Hayhoe then anticipates the human-rights movements in the nineteen sixties that promoted the accommodation of public facilities to handicapped populations in general, including blind people. The United States led in this effort, which also, of course, heralded the further mainstreaming of disabled people into society at large.

     England proceeded more slowly in this direction. The 1981 Act, coinciding with the United Nations International Year of the Disabled, allowed for the integration of blind children into the regular school systems but without funding or training of teachers in how to interact with their new charges. The education system in England was already overburdened for lack of funding, but teachers were nonetheless awarded pay raises. This event Dr. Hayhoe puts forth in his Conclusion as a prime example of the politicization of all forms of education.

The single biggest factor influencing education . . . were the moral, political and financial motivations . . . above the heads of both teachers and students.

     The above quotation reiterates the elements of the book’s title, which he concludes applies to all education, not just that of disabled populations. Furthermore, the most disabled people comprise society itself, blind to the advantages of understanding not only those who are disabled but all students. Not only teachers, but society at large must educate itself in an understanding that fundamentally, as a “neo-phrase” expresses it, “We’re all in this together.”

     I can’t help but say that although the sense of touch is part of the book’s subtitle and at times paired with it throughout, the narrative focuses heavily on blindness and touch largely in the contexts of crafts and sculpture. Blindness dramatically enlightened by the sense of hearing receives equal emphasis.

     The book is beautifully organized from the beginning, with an introduction that clearly anticipates in order the discussion that  follows, and each chapter section and chapter ends with a summary, so that the reader can never be lost in density and is able to enjoy a guided content. There are also frequent chapter subheads. I think, however, that the book would benefit enormously from an index, which perhaps can be added to a second edition.

                                                                                   --Marta Steele

14 May 2008: On Screen and in Print: The State of the Vote

The last eight years could be called The Age of Limitations, as people have been far less aware of their power than the pointlessness of reaction. This evening on Voice of the Voters, hosted by Mary Ann Gould and Lori Rosolowsky of the Bucks County Coalition for Voting Integrity, the theme was Obstacles to Democracy: Denying Votes and Turning Away Voters.

     In the first segment, Lori interviewed the famous filmmaker David Earnhardt, who has been traveling the country with his feature-length documentary Uncounted, which will be shown next Tuesday, May 20, 7 pm, at the County Theater in Doylestown, PA.

     Earnhardt said that he has been showing Uncounted  mostly in independent theaters, starting with Sacramento and culminating in thirty screenings which he attended and hosted. He called dissemination of the film a “win-win” situation for election integrity (EI) activists: they attract the choir but also friends and family and a few other curious individuals.

     “We leave each city . . . in better shape,” said Earnhardt.

     The niche is not so much “artsy” as “neighborhood” types, those who have been loyal to their independent theaters for years. A healthy cross-section of the population is represented, mostly in their thirties to fifties. Students have yet to be reached in sufficient numbers, though Earnhardt is direct mailing brochures to thirty-five hundred colleges and universities throughout the country to gain invitations to classrooms.

     Overall, he said, the issues draw people together at a nonpartisan level; they cut to the core of our identity as a democracy, a “grand experiment.”

     And why the theater in preference to DVDs? Earnhardt cited the pros and cons of each: there is power in the communal experience; film as an art form is always greater on the big screen. With DVD showings, however, the disc can be stopped for discussion and the atmosphere is more intimate and homey, more conducive to lively conversation.

     Mary Ann said that CVI is planning a film consisting of comments and reactions to the crisis in voting in this country. Those who attend the May 20 screening may be interviewed for their opinions and suggestions.

     Even at this late stage preceding election 2008, Uncounted might influence Pennsylvania to offer paper ballots tallied centrally, she said. Theirs is the worst state for voting—fully 25 percent of all paperless machines in the country are in the Quaker State.

     For more information on how to host house parties for screening Uncounted, visit www.uncountedthemovie.com.

++++++++

The next segment of Voice of the Voters consisted of a lively conversation between Professor Alex Keyssar, specializing in history and political science at Harvard University, and Professor Mark Crispin Miller, a media studies expert at NYU and prolific activist.

     The theme, centered around Keyssar’s award-winning book The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (2000), was the Constitution, the right to vote, and the state of our American democracy.

     Keyssar’s book analyzes the diminishing vibrancy of our democracy. Voter turnout, even for presidential elections, is remarkably low: 30 percent in nonpresidential elections and 20 to 25% in local elections. Moreover, incumbents tend to remain seated while challengers in most cases fail.

     We nonetheless cling to the mythology that the U.S. is an exemplary democracy, which reflects both aspiration and ignorance of other democracies in the world.

     How does all this reflect the Constitution? asked Mary Ann.

     Keyssar answered that the right to vote is implicit but not otherwise actually worded in the Bill of Rights [where the large majority of rights do center on voting]. The effects are subtle, but real, he said. It is easier for states to interfere with the voting process, so recently exemplified by the Supreme Court decision to support Indiana’s law requiring voter i.d.'s to avoid voter fraud although none has existed in that state for decades.

     Our voting system excluded African Americans and women for years, and poor people were only given the vote in the 1960s.

     Describing Keyssar’s book as bracing and edifying, Mark Miller asked for the implications of “turnout not impressive.” Exit polls, for example, don’t measure those who do not vote, and this number includes people eliminated by illegal processes such as caging, felon lists, and others.

     Said Keyssar, the “muted optimism” in his book will be only further muted in the second edition he is working on, which will be published in a few months.

     The best turnout figures, he said, are based on the number of votes cast. The number of eligible voters is not easy to determine, and the number of no-shows is not measured. Some districts don’t even count absentee votes. Because of the purging of voter rolls, both legal and illegal, actual figures are skewed so that the number of voters may seem to increase when it really remains the same as in previous years.

     And what does turnout mean? The Constitution has counted African Americans as eligible to vote since 1900, though reality tells a different story.

     The blame was laid largely on the political right—their view that the public is apathetic and dense. Miller labeled this a “campaign to keep people from voting.”

     Moreover, the Bush administration will not allow an updated census. A subversion of the system is feared, if it hasn’t already happene--a system dedicated to limit the ability of the poor to participate in politics. Turnout varies by state and also social and economic status. Those affluent and well educated turn out in droves, while others hang back or are suppressed.

     The right interprets this behavior as poor people’s contentment with the status quo. The more it can eliminate the poor and aged from the tally, the more their status quo can persist, reducing the Democratic vote by 4 to 6 percent.

     Keyssar compared the number of cases of voter fraud in this country—eighty-six since 2002—to the tens of thousands prevented from voting through Republican machinations. “The franchise is a partisan battleground,” he said.

     New York state, a case in point, required naturalization papers from some immigrants and required reregistration for each election cycle, he continued. At one time only two days were designated for voter registration, and they happened to be the two High Holidays for the Jews, who were obviously prevented from full representation as a result.

     Keyssar’s views on voting machines match those of CVI and other EI groups: optical scanners are the best we can do at this moment, and DREs are, well, “the pits.” Election officials must not be partisan, he said. “This is a great time to make the system more fair and democratic.”

     But the establishment and the media don’t want to get involved.

     Said Miller, we must engage the public in this debate, move out of [what I call] the Age of Limitations, a difficult project and one the media treat as tangential anecdotes.

     “Change always happens on the edge,” said Mary Ann, the strategist.

     Echoing John Adams, Miller said that the public must be [somehow] informed: the issues are civic, their effects far-reaching. We need a functional democracy.

     This is not the time for complacency, added Keyssar; the Iraqi constitution allows all citizens the right to vote.

     “The basic design should be to encourage people in rather than out.”

©

30 April 2007: Remote Voting—Who’s Counting?

This evening’s edition of Voice of the Voters, hosted by Mary Ann Gould and Lori Rosolowsky, focused on the pros and cons of remote voting, that is, both vote by mail (vbm) and Internet voting.

     The nationally known roster of guests included Barbara Simons, of the National Workshop on Internet Voting; Charles E. Corry, of the Equal Justice Foundation; and Gentry Lange, director of the No Vote By Mail Project.

     Dr. Corry, first to be interviewed, pointed out that vbm ballots are counted by computerized machines; citizens can send in as many as they want to [theoretically], thereby using this modernized system for ballot stuffing. Moreover, the ballots are counted in unsupervised back rooms.

     The advantages of this system are that it removes pressure from the voting process—voting can begin as many as ten days prior to election day; there is no need to hire and train election judges; the cost is less; the turnout improves; and this system is more convenient—it is possible to vote at a kitchen table rather than wait in long lines in the rain.

     But another problem with vbm is that 25 percent of the population in this country move every year. The ballots, therefore, don’t always reach registered voters, and each ballot must be accounted for. Moreover, one third of the electorate is disenfranchised in that those who missed a previous election may not receive another mailed ballot. In this regard, systems of course vary throughout the country as to the category of election missed: county, state, federal, whatever.

     An audience questioner wanted to know how those voting from home can deal with coercion, that is, vote buying and selling and electioneering. There is no protection, as opposed to the polls, where it is supposedly present. [Vote buying and selling can occur in any scenario imho—MNS]

     But is there not more pressure in the voting booth, where a voter may have to make quick decisions about issues he or she was previously unaware of?  asked Lori. Does vbm allow for more voter education? Well, yes, said Dr. Corry, but consider that over the final two weeks before an election, things can happen after one’s ballot has been sent in that can alter a candidate’s portfolio altogether. Scandals can occur, for instance. A candidate might die.

     And what of all the rejected ballots? Ten to twenty percent of mailed-in ballots are returned; the database that contains address changes is not used.

     Mary Ann noted ruefully that more and more localities seem to be moving toward vbm. Does this harbinger more voter fraud? The interesting answer was that the higher up the municipality hierarchy, the more difficult it is for voter fraud to succeed.

     Gentry Lange, another EI activist who resides in Washington State, now opposes this system that seemed more desirable when compared with the issues surrounding black box tampering, hacking, and malfunction. He thinks it would make more sense to carry paper ballots, already filled out, to the polls.

     In King County, WA, alone, six thousand votes were rejected, and half of these were simply tossed out. Lange nonetheless favored vbm until he witnessed the rejection of his friends’ votes. Moreover, he realized that there was no privacy possible in the absence of polls and secret ballots. Most people in King County oppose vbm, he said. The ballots must be folded and thus easily jam the machines that count them.

     Eighteen bullet points at novbm.com, the Web site of the No Vote By Mail Project, sum up all the reasons vbm is not the ultimate in twenty-first-century voting solutions.

     And if we look to our legislators for solutions, said Mary Ann, how can we better educate them to act effectively on our behalf? Are there legislators leading the fight against vbm? What of the problem that ballots can be received after election day as long as they are mailed on that day or postmarked no later than that date? This can protract the counting process right into the day certification is required.

     Mary Ann waxed sentimental about the community aspect of voting at the polls on a quasi-holiday, a chance to discuss issues and mingle with neighbors and friends.

     Barbara Simons wrapped up the show by discussing her interest in Internet voting. In 2002 she learned from her Stanford colleague David Dill that Silicon Valley was about to purchase paperless machines. They warned against it, unheeded, though a paper they subsequently wrote in opposition to expatriate and military absentee voting via the Internet was more influential. Three weeks after publication, this project was dropped. There was no way to keep the ballot secret and no way to verify that a vote had been received and counted.

     In Geneva, Switzerland, she said, there is Internet voting, but experts are laboring to make the system more secure. And as to the future of such a system, no large program can be free of bugs, nor free from outside hackers and inside employees corrupted into manipulating votes and totals.

     And so, said Mary Ann, our voting system is out of control. It is even difficult to audit a vote. Manual audits are necessary, said Simons—the closer the vote count, the greater the audit must be.

     What questions must we ask? To be sure, how easy is a system to audit? An optical scanner is far easier to audit than a voter-verifiable paper trail. But any sort of remote voting is insecure, she continued. We are moving in the right direction, slowly.

     Paperless voting is on its way out. Both precinct- and central-based optical scanners are preferable to it.

     Why try to fix a system that isn’t broken? Gentry Lange had asked. His question might actually apply to SCOTUS, the recent victory of Indiana’s stringent law that requires picture i.d.s of voters, at the Supreme Court level. In other words, since Indiana can’t produce evidence of one instance of voter fraud, what’s it all about, anyway? Why is it a consideration at all? And yet experts predict that such legislation, which already exists in other states, will spread even farther.

©27 April 2008: Politics and Religion

politics:

I made a special trip north last week to witness the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania on the 22^nd. I expected a lot of flap about the Bucks County commissioners’ refusal to consider the introduction of paper ballot systems to replace their push-button, ineffectual toys. I expected national attention to a sort of scandal of epic proportions, the future of our voting system sloughed off, but as one of the heads of the Coalition for Voting Integrity has reiterated, election integrity has no sex appeal.

     I sped into Doylestown, the county seat, at what I thought would be a strategic time to catch the action, close to lunchtime, but the streets were empty. I first came to Obama headquarters, where they attempted to sit me down at their phone bank or canvas, so I left and next arrived at the Democratic Party office, which was empty. I bought a button, “Another Proud Democrat,” and so costumed came to the local polls, where there was dismal silence and a friendly Republican who tried to chat me up charismatically while the Democrats turned away. Then I dropped the name of a fellow CVI’er also an active Democrat, and at least inspired a bit of friendliness among my fellow partisans.

     Not much action today, they said. So, feeling silly, I left with an empty reporter’s pad and drove to my former hometown, Yardley, where a Republican and Democrat stood outside the polls making uneasy conversation. The Democrat was glad to see me while the Republican scowled. It turns out that he is married to a member of the borough council.

     We rapped for a while about local events and gossip that had occurred in my absence. The vote in Yardley had so far that day exceeded all previous records—five hundred before noon, as opposed to the average ninety who usually showed.

     Still no blog really, though a harbinger of what was occurring throughout the state, record voter turnout, thanks in part to Obama’s appeal to previously disaffected youth, and thanks in part to Hillary Clinton’s well-advertised roots in the state and her appeal to the oppressed working class and senior citizens. Pennsylvania has more senior citizens than any state except Florida.

     Pennsylvania is also the swing state with a record amount of push-button and touchscreen voting machines, which guaranteed all the glitches that did occur, from votes counted backward to trouble booting up machines, the resulting long, impatient lines of would-be voters, and other routine problems that DREs occasion.

     And so thence, according to a pattern emanating from New Hampshire, where Hillary won in all precincts with optical scanners while Barack won where votes were hand-counted—Hillary won by a margin bordering on 10 percent. Recall that she needed double digits to qualify for further campaigning.

     I think that both candidates should begin to campaign against McCain, and the one who proves to be more effective should receive the nomination.

++++++

religion:

On April 20, at the Friends Meeting of Washington, fifty Quakers, Jews, Christians, hybrids, and others gathered to hear a panel of six Muslim women of diverse origins inform them and answer many many questions.

     Mimi, co-organizer and native of Vietnam, was joined by colleagues who regularly speak around the Washington, DC, area: Rahima, Alexa, Ola, Sumiyeh, and Hajar, a Mexican American. All are married to Muslims but only one was born and raised Muslim, and she had lived in England before emigrating here.

     Ola began the event with “Islam 101,” for audience members unfamiliar with her religion: Muhammad issued the last testament with the Qu’ran, which is the word of God from cover to cover. Islam means peace through submission and submission through faith.

     At this point, the audience already had questions, including “Why, if there is so much love among all religions, is there not peace among us?”

     Holy cow.

     The best answer among these extremely well prepared panelists was that there is evil in the world. Added Hajar, according to the Qu’ran those who turn away from God will meet with scourge.

     One-sixth of the world’s population is Muslim. The majority of Muslim men “like” jihad.

     But the teachings are perfect and the shari’a system of law is perfect.

     An Iranian member of the audience said that hatred does not proceed from religion, that the Jews, for example, who live in Muslim countries are welcomed there and well treated. Politics is what engenders conflict.

     Ola continued Islam 101 at this point. There are five pillars of Islam: God, prophecy, pilgrimage at least once to Mecca, fasting, and prayer five times a day.

     Jesus is important in Islam. In the Qu’ran he commands Muslims to emulate his apostles in their support. There is a longer account of Jesus’ birth in the Qu’ran than in the Gospels.

     Said Sumiyeh, the family is important in Islam. Men and women are equals but not identical (their relationship was later described by Olla as balanced)—and because of this stereotyping occurs that women are considered inferior. In fact, as in Orthodox Judaism, they are considered more spiritual than men. They have the right to education, owning property, and choosing their spouses. A little-known fact is that Muslim men have a dress code also, but “there are not too many men’s fashion magazines,” she reported to an amused audience.

     Women are the bedrock of family life. Hajar finds Muslim life very liberating. She converted to Islam eight years ago and during the subsequent time has known the greatest peace of her life. She is married to an Egyptian.

     Mimi, a convert from Buddhism, recounted that amid four different African countries she visited, the feeling was that Muslims were bad, cannibals. She said that such issues became politicized after 9/11, including the impression that Muslim women are victims.

     Muslim women have voted since the fourteenth century. They had the right to serve in the government and divorce (they receive their dowries back also), as well as serve in the military, short of driving tanks. Some led battles.

     It is up to us to get together to deny the wishes of fanatical governments, was the conclusion of the panel discussion.

     During the question-and-answer period that followed, we learned that Muslim women dress so modestly to emulate the Virgin Mary and of course to be like her. Said Ola, the man of the family works and the proceeds go to the family, but the wife can save money to use for herself. Negligent husbands are imprisoned. Said Hajar, attorneys inspect mosques several times a year to be sure women are treated well.

     Charity is required of Muslims several times a year, as are social action and good works.

     A member of the audience pointed out similarities with Judaism: strict dietary laws, humane killing of animals as food (prayers are recited during this ritual), and the taboo against eating milk and meat together. No pork is allowed and meats must be well cooked to eliminate the consumption of blood.

     Another member of the audience who has lived in the Arab Middle East noted the pragmatism of these dietary laws (and recall how in the Middle Ages the Jews avoided the Plague)—for instance, it is forbidden to eat already-dead animals except if one is starving in the desert and comes across one.

     And, surprisingly, on the hajj to Mecca women are not allowed to wear veils. Both sexes dress in white and become indistinguishable from each other.

     Though traditionally Jews and Muslims have dwelled together in harmony, Zionism created a schism between the two religions and now, in addition, Sunnis no longer marry Shi’a.

     Women in Saudi Arabia are most restricted and those in Iran considered most equal to men—they are allowed to attend the Olympics, for instance.

     Though at this point in the most interesting discussion I had to leave early, discussion lasted another half hour. Afterward, the panelists went into the meeting room to pray, and the audience was encouraged to observe the ritual and join in, while the women explained each step of this five-times-a-day pillar in their lives.

©

18 April 2008: Hilary Won, But Obama Will Win, and then . . . McCain?

“Then there are the cultural issues. Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News are taking a lot of heat for spending so much time asking about Jeremiah Wright and the “bitter” comments. But the fact is that voters want a president who basically shares their values and life experiences.”

Paul Krugman and David Brooks both wrote in today’s New York Times about the humanization of Barack Obama from “We can!!!” to “We will.”

     The above quotation is from Brooks’s op ed (sometimes he does make sense). Indeed, the ABC news commentators are taking a lot of flap from the Progressive authorities I usually agree with. They find the debates hosted by Cable stations CNN and MSNBC lots better.

     At this nadir in the debate history of the current Democratic showdown, despite the two important primaries to follow, the word is that we watched the last Democratic candidates’ debate last night.

     Another word is that even if he did poorly last night, Obama will win the nomination.

     But precisely what we need is someone superhuman to take over the hardest job in the world. Someone who doesn’t buckle under with fatigue. Someone who sparkles with self-possession even toward the end of this harrowing fight for the Democratic nomination.

     One thing we must own up to: despite all this sympathy for Barack and huge cloud of obfuscation encompassing media ineptitude and Barack’s self-revelatory fatigue, poor guy, maybe, just maybe, Hillary won the debate last night and no one wants to admit it.

     According to Krugman, Obama may well win the nomination but will have a hard time up against McCain, not because both will tire more easily than Hillary, but because one in five Democrats have said they would prefer McCain over Obama, who is statistically behind in many of the key states that would put him over the top in November.

     We heard earlier that Obama was the one out of two who could squash McCain. Now we have cause to wonder.

     But it is not up to this obscure blogger to speak about next November—rather, all I want to say is that Hillary did better last night. She won the debate.

Period.

Paragraph.

End of blog.

©

17 April 2008: Hopping Around with Hope

Even as Hill and Bam-Bam were duking it out on prime time ABC, with Stephanopoulos out in left field still smarting from Travelgate, there was much to take in on Renaissance Radio also, where three different EI affiliates from three different regions were interviewed.

     From Georgia, Garland Favorito of VoterGA.org spoke of their lawsuit that challenges the legality and constitutionality of electronic voting (compare New Jersey’s lawsuit still pending). From Florida, Ellen Brodsky of the Broward Election Reform Coalition discussed the “Mystery of Broward County,” that is, the turnout of 110 percent of their electorate in 2006. From Pennsylvania, Sara Haile-Mariam spoke encouraging words about “youth on the ground” in anticipation of the April 22 primary that the whole country will be watching, even CNN.

     Strait, this evening’s host, first cautioned voters on how best to deal with the Danaher DREs, how best to try to get the vote counted and not lost in cyberspace. Press the button decisively and make sure to examine the screen carefully to be sure you’ve voted for those you want in office. Then don’t leave before pressing the green “vote” button, or else your vote will be discarded by others to clear the screen.

     Garland Favorito, the first guest interviewed, recalled that Georgia was the first state in the country to sprint to DREs after the Florida catastrophe in 2000, and the only state to use the same machine throughout—in this case the Diebold Accuvote DS R6.

     There was one problem with the sprint: Georgia’s constitution requires secret ballots and audit trails, neither of which the Diebold DREs supply.

     Georgia’s new secretary of state agrees with Favorito’s group and supports its lawsuit. The defense, led by the state’s attorney general, hinges on the definition of “ballot,” challenging that those gestures “touched” into cyberspace create a ballot of sorts.

     The constitution also requires a verifiable vote, which the Diebolds in question can’t provide, coughing up when requested a carbon copy of the tabulated result.

     Begun in 2006, the lawsuit is due to be settled in the next few months. And then, said Favorito, there is bound to be an appeal to Georgia’s supreme court by either side, something his side won’t be able to support without pro bono legal assistance.

     The suit is against the state, not Diebold, which has remained remarkably distant from this activity. There’s no need for technical expertise in this case, Favorito clarified. But if his side wins, the nation will know.

     Details are available at voterga.org. They want to hear from people all over the country and fundraise also, if possible.

+++++

     To the tune of the new song “Stop Me Before I Vote Again,” Ellen Brodsky of the Broward County Election Reform Commission, spoke of the “110 percent turnout” recorded by the same machines, ES&S Ivotronic, that plagued Sarasota two years ago. The machines have a long history of counting backward, she said.

     The reason for the 110 percent turnout? Other precincts’ votes were combined in the report turned in after the election. Brodsky’s group challenged these results to a chilly reception. No testing of the machines was carried out, but there was the consolation that Broward County was not alone in this quandary, which was reported elsewhere also.

     Re the complicated and long-desired introduction of optical scanners to replace the Ivotronics and their peers, contracts with vendors vary throughout the state, including performance bonds. Benchmarks also vary.

     Broward County, if you haven’t guessed, suffers from the worst voting problems in the state, whereas the neighboring Miami-Dade enjoys the best situation, including a responsible supervisor of elections working hard to train voters and poll workers in time for the November election.

     The best county falls short though, said Jim, lacking a good performance bond.

     Compliance with the Freedom of Information Act also falls short. Audit data requested from the 2006 election has not yet been provided despite their two-year struggle. Thousands of votes had been lost even when the information was finally provided, because of missing files.

     The state is trying to cover up such poor election administration, said Brodsky. Her group plans to work closely with the secretary of state toward better outcomes in the future. Pro bono lawyers are hard to come by, she added, though Volusia County is lucky enough to have one.

+++++

     At this point, Jim repeated his advice to listeners from Pennsylvania about how to tame the DRE beast if at all possible, and supplied some names and numbers, which can all be accessed at saveourvote.com and voiceofthevoters.org. Mary Ann Gould will also be happy to answer election-day questions. She can be reached at 215-357-5026.

     Lori Rosolowsky next interviewed Sara Haile-Mariam, a graduate student of activist and author Mark Crispin Miller at NYU. In her report, “Youth on the Ground,” this vibrant and enthusiastic young activist spoke of her pre-primary work in the state, which included voter registration, door-to-door canvassing, and “phone begging.”

     In contact with people from all backgrounds and ages, Sara reported enthusiasm among youth but little interest in election integrity. She said she found more undecided voters than in the past because of the lengthy head-to-head race between Obama and Clinton.

     Sara admitted to being a recent convert to these issues, drawn out by Obama’s candidacy.

     She lamented the media’s concentration on identity politics rather than policy, based on the assumption that the voters are dumb. “Stereotyping doesn’t work,” she said. People are crossing lines to choose their candidates.

     Sara decided on a career in journalism early in life, when she learned in school that journalists are the “watchdogs of society.” Their performance these days is, to say the least, disappointing, with their emphasis on controversy and their attempt to manipulate opinions, denigrating their public.

     Lori’s advice was to seek out alternative media sources.

     There is not enough attention to transparency, said Sara, despite the recent GAO report that emphasizes its importance. We must pressure politicians to pay attention to these and the many other problems of the election integrity movement. We can work most effectively at the grassroots level. The recent belittling of the value of exit polls is another issue of importance, where there is the need to “change the mindset.”

     The problems afflicting us now will take generations to fix, Sara concluded. Youth are energized and mobilized to confront them head on.

     “We must be that one America.”

2 April 2008: No Foolin’, but Helpless, Helpless, Helpless

The day after April Fool’s Day was no laughing matter for two congressional committees voting on voting bills.  The Universal Right to Vote by Mail, HR 281, was passed by the House Administration Committee, so that those who wish to vote absentee—that is, on paper ballots—won’t have to lie anymore.

     So while Representative Susan Davis, who sponsored the bill, had cause to celebrate, HR 5036, Representative Rush Holt’s emergency bill that would reimburse any municipality that chose to opt out of touchscreen voting in favor of  paper ballots, passed out of the Committee on House Administration adulterated. Now, instead of providing for paper ballots, the bill will authorize hooking touchscreen machines up to printers, a measure that has caused so much trouble in New Jersey that an effort has mounted to postpone implementation until after election 2008.

     And even with “evidence” of who or what you have voted for, visible on paper rolling out of the printer, many voters forget to look. The concept is new. Think about it. We just flipped some levers, pulled a great big handle and presto the curtain opened and our vote was cast. Old habits die hard.

     Personally, I voted on an absentee ballot in DC last month, giving the reason that I wanted to vote on paper. I got it.

     If I had my way, we would never grow old, and Edwards, my candidate, would already be sparring with McCain and besting him hands-down.

     Back to John Gideon’s appearance on Voice of the Voters, broadcast Wednesday evenings from 8 to 9 on Renaissance Radio in South Jersey. He packed a lot into the program’s final five minutes.

     At that point my sound system was crackling, so I had to go to his daily newsletter to figure out what he actually said, but in other news, New Jersey’s problematic Sequoia touchscreens will finally be examined by Princeton University expert Ed Felten, famous for hacking into a touchscreen in less than a minute. Oh, the palace of lies erected by the touchscreen universe is collapsing like a sand castle attacked by high tide.

     But not yet in Pennsylvania, where VoV host Mary Ann Gould said that 25 percent of all the touchscreens in the nation are located. She urged all Pennsylvanians to vote and report any problems they experience. She mentioned two Web sites in this context: www.voteraction.org and www.voiceofthevoters.org. Pennsylvania is the state most at risk in the country, with no way to prove who voted for whom in most counties.

     Why is New Jersey, flooded also with touchscreens, less at risk? I figured this out myself. It’s not a swing state, leaning toward the blue most of the time.

     Having reported what I found most newsworthy this evening, I cannot bypass a rising star who was interviewed first, Clint Curtis. You have probably heard of him. A head programmer for Yang Industries in Florida, he was approached in 2000 by Ed Feeney, then the company’s chief lobbyist, to design a program for him that would apportion 49 percent of a given vote to one candidate and 51 percent to the other.

     Thinking Feeney was trying to prevent election fraud instead of invent the phenomenon of vote flipping, Clint produced the program. He next became a famous whistle blower, when he found out the real motive behind the requests by Feeney, who had since then become a Congressman in Florida.

     Clint took his case to Congress after Florida 2000, but the audience he aimed for shied away uneasily despite the overwhelming evidence.

     Today thanks to the efforts of some enlightened Republicans, Florida’s touchscreens are being hauled off to the junkyard in favor of optical scanners. But it’s not that easy to rid this nation of vote flipping. A programmer can set the percentages of victory and defeat in a touchscreen, said Clint. A programmer can activate the flip surrounded by a “lay” audience that would not suspect anything amiss, he continued.

     What happens on the screen doesn’t have much to do with what’s going on inside, he said.

     Mary Ann said that it’s time for the people to speak up. Abraham Lincoln said it better, she said, warning that one’s back to the fire will only occasion pain in the buttocks—something like that only, as I said, Abe said it better.

     And these Pennsylvanians then shifted to the impasse in Bucks County, where two of the three commissioners refuse to hear the incontrovertible evidence that they may as well vote by scratching on a pebble as on a Danaher 1242. With its dumb terminal and dependence on a central server, it represents the worst of all voting systems, said Clint.

     This scenario is worse than precinct-based tabulation, he said. With 90 percent of votes in Pennsylvania now paperless, there is no way to know if any of them is worth a scratch on a pebble, and this plight in a swing state could rock the nation, as did Florida and Ohio most famously.

     In a Lincoln-esque mood, Mary Ann called this situation “faith-based elections.”

     The power is with the programmers, not with the people, continued Clint. The commissioners really have nothing to worry about broken voting-machine seals, he said. First you perform an accuracy test and run the tapes and then seal the whole thing up. Magnets and power surgers . . . anything can affect the touchscreens.

     Remember the machines in North Carolina that reached a certain total and then began counting backwards? The fault was in the program—the wrong one was used. The backward-counted votes could be interpreted as undervotes also, Clint answered to Lori Rosolowsky’s question.

     And, back to Bucks County, where the two Republican commissioners argue that a paper trail resides inside their Danahers, Clint explained that a computer won’t generate a log—people do. The programmer owns every component of the voting system.

     An internal hack is worse than an external one, continued Clint. On a Danaher, the virus will attack the server. External hacks are performed with the network card, the famous black-box skullduggery.

     Helpless, helpless, helpless—remember that old sixties song? We must show up at the polls in stampeded proportions—united we stampede?

     Is the conclusion of the evening that the fate of the nation lurks within the brains and preferences of computer programmers?

     Not exactly. The power is still, somewhere, with the people, dormant and quiet as Mary Ann calls her home state. The truth will need some buckshot to emerge from this ethical swamp in the Buckeye State.

     This is the time, then, not to mourn for HR 5036, but to get everyone to vote absentee, I say. If the ballots get hacked, the hackers will have a hard time of it with all the election protection united against them. There will be mountains of paper ballots. We can distribute stamps. We can go door to door. We can fight racism and discrimination, as usual.

     But there’s no time to waste on tears right now, but think of the paper mountains and what a boost not only USPS will receive, but all of us, back to paper at last. Helpless, helpless, helpless let the opposition be, for a change, and stay that way.

©

23 March 2008: Take Back America IV

The loss of liberty at home makes us more vulnerable to the rest of the world . . .

Being a citizen is something we do.—James Madison

Silence is betrayal.—Martin Luther King

The second plenary on March 18 that I attended included Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), Christy Hardin Smith, of Firedoglake.com, and David Cole, of the Georgetown University Law Center.

     Said Cole, among other things, Bush’s view of executive power revives the Nixon doctrine. For Bush, the only checks and balances exist within the White House—no other branch of government can check the president. When he said that Congress cannot review his actions, the same Supreme Court that put him into office rejected that decision.

     Conyers reminded the audience that the Court did overrule the voluntary desegregation of schools.

     The struggle for fair voting is still on, he said. Make sure that voting integrity is the first consideration until November 4. The Department of Justice is not doing its job, with its emphasis on a mere eighty-six cases of voter fraud documented since 2004. Caging and other forms of corruption as well as malfunctioning and hacked voting machines are virtually ignored—only two such cases have been prosecuted.

     Conyers wants to meet with the DOJ leaders weekly and receive weekly reports on what they are doing.

     Bring retroactive immunity to the phone companies for wiretapping for the government? “No way!!”

     Our distinguished attorney general still can’t figure out what waterboarding is, following Gonzalez’s distinguished precedent.

     Regarding the impeachment of Bush before November, we must prioritize electing Obama to replace him, unless Bush invades Iran.

     And regarding the Spitzer scandal, if he was number nine, who were numbers one through eight? Who was ten?

     And regarding the federal attorneys fired last year for refusing to discover cases of “voter fraud” that didn’t exist, what were the others doing, those kept on, that was so great?

     I have already mentioned the press conference that followed, announcing that the progressives as a coalition plan to spend  $350 million to recapture Washington. The issue I prioritized, which received such short shrift despite Conyers’s prioritization mentioned above, was election integrity, the subject of the last question from the press.

     Meanwhile, among the prominent organizations that spoke to the press, I was most struck by Page Gardiner, of Women’s Voices, Women Vote, who said that unmarried women comprise 26 percent of the voting population for the first time in history. Fifty-three million fall into this category, along with an equal number of married women.

     Most of these women favor progressive change. One-fifth of them lack health care protection.

     At this year’s primaries, the largest components of women and youth in history voted.

     The first session of the last day of the conference was entitled Bushed: Conservative Failure and the Danger the Legacy Lives On

     If the Republicans are happy about the wedge over the Michigan and Florida primaries dividing the Democratic party, consider Brad Woodhouse’s view that only 10 percent of conservatives consider themselves “pro-government.”

     The Bush legacy must be seen for what it is—not the failure of his ideology but his own failure. Woodhouse works for Americans United for Change.

     Added Jared Bernstein, of the Economic Policy Institute, job growth under the Bush administration grew at one third of its usual rate. He called this “yo-yo economics,” reminiscent of the situation in the 1920s. Real wages since 2000 have been flat. Government deregulation went too far.

     There is a need to restore faith in the government, to get the fiscal house in order.

     John Podesta, of the Center for American Progress, also a former aide to Bill Clinton, listed all the presidents considered abysmal in the past: Buchanan, who laid the foundations for the Civil War; Harding, considered, the most corrupt; and Nixon. But the unanimous decision is that Bush is the all-time worst U.S. president.

     He told us that government is a problem, but it has never been bigger since his time in office. His tenure illustrated that.

     According to Arianna Huffington, of Huffington Post, the question is how we allowed the right to take over.

     First, the media enabled it. Leftist positions are now mainstream. She compared this fiasco to Pericles’ Sicilian expedition, whose failure destroyed the democracy in Athens, the world’s first attempt at it.

     Moreover, the Republicans are not keeping us safe and the Democrats have shrunken back from doing anything about it. The fear mongering is fanned by the McCain campaign.

     But the era of the right has exhausted its course, with McCain as its Trojan Horse. Electoral corruption and tampering with voting machines were the principal factors that paved this destructive, eight-year-long tenure, now on its way out.

     Reflections on God and Country from the Left was the title of Norman Lear’s presentation. Now representing People for the American Way, Lear captured the hearts of the entire country with TV creations like All in the Family,  still a household word after decades.

     Introduced by his protégée Yara Peng, Lear said that two myths are needed by a nation, a national one and a religious one. But Congress has yielded to the Bushocracy’s “spitting” on the system of checks and balances. We must reinvent our reaction, disposing of the “fine word” liberalism.

     The real crime of the neoconservatives was to “hijack God.” Religious demagoguery became the norm. How could we be so spiritually repressed?

     No two relationships to God are alike. We are all seekers. He quoted the classical historian Louis Mumford that Rome fell through a leaching away of meaning, a barbarism from within rather than without. We must resurrect our nation.

     Quoting George Bernard Shaw, he continued that the will of the universe is to move toward perfection. We must be open to all of the miracles before us.

     The Internet is the most democratic entity we have ever conceived, but we must fight our way into the mainstream media. Let us not fear to move foreward.

     The minute I hear Arianna speak, he said, I realized the place of election protection in the neoconservative sphere; it is part of the huge machine, the mechanical starting pedal, so to speak.

     Note how election integrity finds its way into the discourse concluding the conference—ed.

     Not having had the chance to attend an event focused on the environment, at this late point in the conference I at least wanted to check into some of the thinking of another issue I totally support, universal health care.

     So I attended the session Health Care: The Politics of Winning, moderated by Roger Hickey, co-director of the conference and of the Campaign for America’s Future. He predicted that this is the year when we’ll finally acquire universal health care. “Fundamental change is needed that doesn’t threaten people,” he said.

     We must stand against special interests.

     Celinda Lake, author of What Women Really Want, said that 96 percent of voters in the 2006 elections had health insurance. The uninsured don’t vote. Many suffer because insurers refuse to cover those with “pre-existing conditions.”

     Cynicism toward the government is at an all-time high, said Lake. Health care is part of the American dream; there is a desire to build the best health-care system in the world. It should cover prevention as well. 66.75 percent of Americans support this, even with the necessary tax increase.

     Continued Bob Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, passage of universal health care is possible next year, but several needs precede it. There must be a Democratic president and increased margins in Congress; reference back to our fundamental values; absence of competition; opposition to private insurance; allies in the business community; enlisting of doctors and nurses; some Republican support; $150 million; agreement that there is a crisis in America.

     Louise Novotny, of Communications Workers of America, said that employers are trying to shed the responsibility of providing health care to employees. Millions of Americans want to join unions but can’t—since 1979, the number of unions has been cut in half, as have pensions and retiree coverage. Health-care costs are rising.

     There is a need to go outside of the bargaining table; for people to be trained how to lobby; for union programs to be rebuilt; for strong government control; for effective dialogue with members and others.

     Diane Archer, a co-director of the Institute for America’s Future, said that logic and reason play no role in Congress. The strengths of public insurance and limits of its private counterpart are missing from the debate.

     To get to the heart of what is wrong, she continued, we must make the private insurers tell us what we’re paying for—then we can get to the heart of the debate.

     With Roger Hickey having spoken to the presidential candidates, she said that she told both Democrats to guarantee their commitment to universal health care and to get members of Congress to talk about it. Public insurance is the only way to guarantee Americans good, affordable health care.

     There is an incredible movement going forward, said David Bonior, former head of John Edwards’s presidential campaign, as he began the closing plenary session, Taking Back America: Progressive Strategies in a New Era.

     Edwards drove the candidates’ debate, he said, on universal health care, poverty, the economy, and trade policies.

     Washington, DC, may be broken but hope remains. Unheard numbers of people are now politically active, he continued. The United States is ready for progressive change more so than ever before.

     There is an unprecedented opportunity to end the war, empower unions and environmental concern, and universal health care.

     We must re-establish our credibility in the world.

     Bonior called the Iraq war a great colossal disaster in history.

     We must rebuild the middle class and labor movements, he said. The progressive movement can’t exist without labor.

     We must work to conserve our natural resources and create millions of green jobs. Fifty million people now lack health insurance.

     Again, Edwards led the debate.

     Deepak Bhargava, of the Center for Community Change, asked who is on our bus? Who’s driving? Whom might we run over?

     The strength of outside movements really determines events. Will constituents continue after a Democratic win? We must not confuse the electoral road with the progressive bus.

     There must be targeted universalism that benefits all, especially poor people. The achievement level of politicians must be improved.

     We have a great historic opportunity to achieve change, all the components of the progressive agenda including poverty and racial injustice.

     The head of Planned Parenthood for America, Cecile Richards, called the conference the “annual renaissance weekend for progressives.” People are voting like rabbits this year. Progressives are ready to lead and the public is ready for us.

     Her dream is for twenty-four years of uninterrupted progressive leadership.

     Planned Parenthood has provided free reproductive care and health care for ninety-one years. The statistics are astounding, said Richards. Planned Parenthood is the most respected organization of its kind.

     We can’t elect McCain—he will name a fifth reactionary to the Supreme Court.

     Abstinence Only is a disaster, she concluded.

     Anna Burger, of the Service Employees International Union, a union leader also, said that permanent issues should finally find solutions.

     “Politicians have to be acceptable to real people,” she said. “They work for us.” We must educate voters about what their local officials do—it worked in the case of S-CHIP. SEIU is launching a movement for this purpose.

     No child should have to go to war because he/she lacks health care, she said, echoing Anton Gunn, the former head of Obama’s campaign in South Carolina. Without accountability, the neoliberals will take over.

©

22 March 2008: Take Back America III

Let no diversion break our spirit—Rev. Jesse Jackson

We’re winning the struggle here and around the world—Rev. Jesse Jackson

I have already mentioned the youth plenary Millennials Rising, a panel of defiant progressives eager to prove that they are capable of  taking up the torch, though I’d first send them to grad school for a few years.

     “Voting is cool again,” began Anthony Daniels, head of the National Education Association. In 2004 21.1 million between the ages of 18 and 29 voted; in 2008 that turnout has doubled.

     “It’s up to youth now to choose candidates. It’s our turn, our time. . . . We think we can change the world.”

     However, when it comes to heroes, Daniels looked back to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, and the anonymous youth who died at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

     Next to speak was Anton Gunn, former head of the Obama campaign in South Carolina. He lamented how much of the youth in his state enlisted into the military in order to have their material needs taken care of.

     Diana Nguyen, of Declare Yourself, concerned with celebrity outreach, said that nobody is more excited than they are at the culmination and unity between celebrities and politicans.

     “Cool dies quickly,” she said, emphasizing the importance of voter registration, which “keeps kids interested in the US, in voting.”

     Heather Smith, executive director of Rock the Boat, reminded the audience that it was youth who brought down Milosevic. It is important to be aware of the multitude of causes that motivate people and to be able to reach out to all of them.

     In 2003, the media began to shift its narrative away from youth’s apathy—1.2 million youths registered to vote at that time. Rock the Boat now has a one-page registration form to download and fill in.

     Carmen Berkley, vice president of the United Students Association, said that education is a right, not a privilege. She had to have to jobs at college in order to work her way through. “Voting is power,” she said, concerned with higher education and adding graduates to the workforce.

     When students have to drop out of college for lack of funds, the results are deplorable, she continued.

     Another main concern is that people of her generation comprise the largest group lacking health care and also the highest numbers serving their country.

+++++

Among the high points of my experience at Take Back America was the plenary session Progressive Movement in a Democratic Era: The Lessons of King and the Civil Rights Movement.

     Rev. Jesse Jackson of the Rainbow Push Coalition began the session speaking of the dynamics of change. He quoted MLK’s analysis: “Vanity asks the question ‘Is it popular?’; politicians ask, ‘Will it work?’, and morality asks, ‘Is it right?’”

     In all change, he said, there is tension with the status quo.

     His examples included the reactions of both JFK and LBJ to the civil rights movement: JFK’s initial opposition, RFK’s support, MLK’s Nobel prize, and LBJ’s materializing as much as he could of the movement’s aspirations, at the same time predicting the split in the Democratic party along the lines of racism.

     “Don’t forget how successful we were,” said Jackson, the battles won through coalition.Selma transformed America, redefined democracy, gave birth to the black vote, youth vote, students voting on campus, voting in Braille, affirmative action, and the EEOC.

     Added Roger Wilkins, nephew of the famous head of the NAACP Roy Wilkins, the civil rights movement defined his entire career.

     JFK did not understand the civil rights movement, he said. He considered it a political problem rather than a moral crusade. He thought that the participation of children was wrong, while Wilkins claimed that it provided a better education than did the Birmingham school system.

     What changed Kennedy’s mind, he continued, was the dignity displayed by 275,000 civil rights advocates marching on the mall in Washington. Even the Republican Everett Dirksen observed that “this is an idea whose time has come.”

     Jackson reviewed his own daring introduction of a group of poor people into a government cafeteria at lunchtime. “Feed these people,” he demanded. He and Ramsey Clark pushed for food stamps.

     And then perhaps the most striking quote of all, when Joe Califano took this issue to Wilbur Mills. “Don’t think that wars abroad don’t devastate the people here,” he said, referring to the Vietnam war.

     Taylor Branch, author of Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, observed that citizens’ movements change history.

     When the government is bad, he said, liberal is a dirty word. The civil rights movement redeemed Americans across the board. When the Berlin Wall came down, people sang its theme song “We shall overcome.”

     LBJ said that the Voting Rights Act should have  preceded Brown v. Board of Education.

     MLK did not blame LBJ for the Vietnam war; he said the movement would be most productive minus the demonization. Johnson was afraid of being called a coward, afraid of admitting to the UN that “we messed up.”

     Wilkins remarked that though people are skeptical that protest actions affect the government, it does listen even when it pretends not to.

     Said Jackson, MLK recommended substituting the war on poverty for the Vietnam war. He ultimately felt so attacked from all quarters that he considered quitting. Jackson compared the words of Jesus: “Let this cup pass from me.”

     “The only things that are certain are death, taxes, and change.”

     Jackson spoke of MLK’s unfinished business, the broken expectations that followed his “I have a dream” speech.

     “Never underestimate the power of the vote,” he said. A margin of 112,000 votes led JFK to victory.

[to be continued]

Take Back America II: Some Substantive Cuts

Something is happening in this country—Newt Gingrich

We must clear out the stables—Robert Borosage

And what if we win in November? Unlike Bush’s Shock and Awe, we must have a plan once we’re “there.”

     A primary pledge is to dive into universal health care as quickly as Bill Clinton tried his darndest to allow for openly gay males to enlist in the military. But today, instead of paying down the national debt, his signature achievement, the US government pays an interest rate of $2 billion on a debt Joseph Stiglitz has forecasted will advance into the trillions before the war has been fought (even over Bomb Bomb’s plan to remain “over there” for one hundred years?).

     Then there’s the funny story about how Bush, at a $20,000 per plate fundraiser in New York, conceded that our economy is in a “rough patch”? What to do about it? Funnel funding among his dinner guests and then see what happens? (There won’t be anything left to happen, and meanwhile the host of the leaches will be gone, and they will follow.)

     Such were the highlights of Robert Borosage’s opening address at the conference.

     Donna Edwards, candidate for Congress, followed up by adding that we must also have a plan beyond the anticipated exit from Iraq. Fire Halliburton for starters? Take good care of those poor veterans? Rebuild Iraq so that the structures and infrastructures don’t buckle under?

     Diane Archer, of Campaign for America’s Future, reminded us that the U.S. ranks 37^th in the world, behind Morocco and Chile, in terms of quality of health care. “Our health-care system is a failure,” she said. Forty percent of Americans have no or insufficient health insurance. Even if one third of all Americans opt for public health care and taxes are raised, this country will save $80 million.

     Van Jones, of Green for All, introduced the concept of the green economy which, like the New Deal, will create a massive number of new jobs, but relevant to cleaning up the ecology before it’s too late. After the Democratic victory, we must abandon the policy of sink or swim and progress to the theme that Brothers and sisters, we are all in this together!!  Take America forward!!

     Congress should regain its oversight of war. At least, last weekend, it stood up against the opposition on the issue of media consolidation. (But there is a bipartisan consensus in that area, which may have helped.)

     The second plenary I attended, The Crackup of Conservatism, began with a brief film in which a Barbie doll complained to a Ken doll of lead poisoning. The issue of toxic imports from China provides more evidence of the failure of conservatism, reversing a century of progress.

     Corporations spend millions on sweetheart deals and advertising, while ignoring workers’ rights and environmental protection. 1.6 million US jobs have been outsourced overseas, 2.1 million have gone to China, and our trade deficit is now at $233 billion.

     CEO wages are now 364 times those of workers. Rising costs of health care and gasoline are direct results of NAFTA.

     Walmart employees in China earn 54 cents an hour, work sixteen hours a day, suffer from neglected on-the-job injuries and there is no protection for corporate whistle blowers and a pitifully low amount of inspection of imports to this country.

     Cliff Schechter, a once and future MSNBC commentator, rehearsed McCain’s complete sellout to the neocons, after building up a reputation as a maverick throughout the years. He has even come out in favor of torture.

     Kirsten Sinema, state representative and Democrat from Arizona, ended this session on a hopeful note. The religious, corporate, and imperialist groups are more united than ever, supported by the media. Both Obama and Clinton are worlds ahead of McCain. They must stop fighting. Polls project that either Democratic candidate will defeat McCain by only a few points.

     We must embrace the moderates, she said.

     The third plenary I attended, Media Reform and High-Speed Internet for Everyone, heralded the Internet as the most important aspect of the media’s future. Said Josh Silver of Freepress.org, computers and televisions are merging, while use of radios and newspapers is descending.

     We are, however, way behind most of the rest of the world in terms of broadband speed.

     Commissioner Adelstein of FCC, a surprise last-minute addition to the panel and in complete agreement with Josh Silver, added that the Internet must become a higher national priority. There is a need for government leadership. We should be number one in this area as we are in telecommunications. [Noam Chomsky would wryly agree, as evident in his recent article “We Own the World,” justifying all Bush II initiatives as defensible based on this premise.]

     All the international competition is based on government leadership. He listed the tapped and untapped benefits of Internet use and added that Congress can do much to further efforts in this direction.

     However, we must also, keep options open for conventional media, he concluded.

     Only half the US is connected to the Internet, continued Debbie Goldman, of Communication Workers of America. Fully 60 percent of the public agree that the government should rule Internet policy. There is life-saving information in the areas of education, the economy, and public safety, for starters. There is bipartisan support for these advances.

     Julius Stenakowski, senior telecommunications advisor to Barack Obama, introduced the concept of “horizontal” Internet issues, which he says are key to the solutions of US “problems.” He called Obama “the first twenty-first century candidate.” It is critical to alter secrecy that isolates the Bush administration from us “rabble” [quotation marks mine].

     All government data should be placed on line, along with federal earmarks, and public input should become a matter of course. A chief technical officer should oversee this new dimension of Internet communication.

     Via the Internet, and reminiscent of Howard Dean’s campaign, one million donors have contributed to Obama’s campaign—small amounts that have, however, added up.

     Susan Ness, a former advisor to Hillary Clinton, outlined Hillary’s broadband vision:

     Staunch advocacy of diversity in media ownership and net neutrality; universal access to the Internet; competition without censorship; opportunities for recovery from the worst economic crisis in decades.

     The US ranks fifteenth globally in Internet advancement and this situation is one of Hillary’s top priorities to address and improve. She encourages business investment in the growth of the Internet.

     She suggests $100 million in grants to low-income families, including the 25 percent that live in rural areas and supports e-9/11 and emergency responders to these calls.

     She wants her country to regain its global scientific leadership. She wants to spend $50 million on energy research.

     Steve Abbott of the Communications Workers of America in Iowa shifted the concentration to the nuts and bolts aspects of the Internet.

     He advocates fiber-based broadband as providing an enormous number of kilobytes per second (kbps). Broadband has been used successfully to educate handicapped people, including those with autism. In health care, specialists from far off can monitor and comment on surgery in progress.

     Abbott advocates spending $13 billion to provide broadband to all, which will return invaluable benefits.

     The Europeans call our broadband capacity, which costs more than theirs, “snail service.”

     I asked my only oral question of the conference: Why give out Internet to illiterate people who won’t know what to do with it?

     The answer, of course, was to provide the needed education first, a massive effort in itself.

[more to follow]

21 March 2008: Taking Back America

Having spent three days at the annual conference Taking Back America, I have two notebooks to transcribe, a daunting task. Let me begin with a generalization I wrote for my sponsoring organization, mediachannel.org, which featured it last Thursday:

"More than three thousand Progressives from all over the country are in attendance at Washington, D.C.’s fifth annual Take Back America conference.  Sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future (www.ourfuture.org), the event was launched by Robert Borosage, co-director and co-founder of the K Street strategy center.

"The theme of this year’s conference is “Progressives Rising: 2008, A Sea-Change Election.” Subjects of the conference include health care, the economy, energy and the climate change, national security, and of course the 2008 elections, on which the coalition of organizations, including the AFL-CIO, plan to spend millions. The sea change Borosage celebrates will alter the conservative and then neoconservative surge ushered in by Ronald Reagan, he said, for the first time since then.

"Among the many participating organizations, some of the largest were represented at a press conference on Tuesday, including, besides the Campaign for America’s Future and the AFL-CIO, Women Voices, Women Vote; MoveOn.org; Rock the Vote; ACORN; and the National Council of La Raza.

"It is hard to say where celebrity ended and energy and dedication began, but among the most prominent attendees were the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. John Conyers, Sen. Jim Webb, Donna Brazile, Roger Wilkins, and Robert Greenwald. Many of the participating organizations had booths; there was a small store of recently published progressive books, and some of the authors are present to sign them.

"The three-day event will end Wednesday with a march from the Omni Shoreham Hotel to the White House."

     To begin from the end of this extract, one thousand stalwart souls did march, not all from the convention, to the White House on that rainy afternoon. Some of them committed civil disobedience, using mock police tape to seal off the entrance to the IRS. Other forms of cd were committed throughout the country as well as in Washington.

     During those three amazing days, the first of which began with a personal greeting and smile from Rev. Jesse Jackson, I had several continuous issues. The first was why do we have to take back America? How did we ever lose it? Why has the new era, “our time,” supposedly just dawned because this time perhaps the Democrats will once again dominate Capitol Hill? Didn’t we win in 2000 and 2004?

     Next I wondered why the issue of election integrity received such short shrift—a few sessions and workshops—when the vote is at the root of our democracy. The issue is simply “not sexy,” to quote some of the most dedicated members of the movement. At the press conference that occurred at the center of the event, the last question concerned election integrity. There was silence among the representatives of the largest progressive organizations. Finally and guiltily, Karen Ackerman of AFL-CIO, an ally of the progressives rather than a progressive organization in itself, answered that measures were being taken: they have worked in alliance with [election integrity?] in 2004; had trouble with alliances and funding in 2006. But in 2008, they have a number of resources, and a number of commitments to protect the vote. In twelve states and thirty cities they are working for a sufficient number of ballots and voting machines and also concerning themselves with the machines’ functionality.

     Foundations are homely things but highly functional. You know, like concrete blocks stuck into the earth, always there first before the chrome and the steel and the glass. And session after session urged us all to get out the vote and spoke of near-victories by Progressives. But in the vocabulary of this most polluted of all times in voting history, “near-victory” means “repressed landslide” when applied to Democrats. When they do win, you can be sure of a perfect storm even the most competent hackers can’t weather. We talk so much about the founding fathers, the origins of this country—how can we ignore Tom Paine, who wrote that without the vote there can be no democracy?

     Youthful progressives, those twenty-nine and younger, have great faith in hip hop’s ability to take over and keep things rolling. At their plenary Millennials Rising: Young Voters Revitalizing Democracy, I wanted to tell them we need their energy and moxie to preserve everything they plan to accomplish through their vote. I was one of only three or so boomers present, scribbling furiously, wishing they were better educated. They are mired in the present without context, the fault of our educational system that is so eclipsed by others throughout the world.

     Look what happens when even an educated illiterate runs this country. Not that the kids were illiterate at all. They had their social science vocabulary intact. They were all mired in debt from their undergraduate regimes, but oh you kid, someone tell them that they are perfect fodder for graduate school grant money. They are as smart as any of us boomers, but need water to become our longed-for bloomers? Well, successors anyway.

     I raised my hand to provide some context for all the voting and running for office they plan, but kids lined up to take the mike, so I left in despair, praying for miracles. It’s so hard to study. Why can’t they acquire wisdom the way that Solomon did, by simply asking God for it?

     I know that the above sounds callous and sour. There is much more to review that will be more uplifting.

+++++

I noticed throughout that the terms liberal and progressive were used interchangeably, though on the first day Rick Pearlstein, of the hosting organization Campaign for America’s Future, lamented the relative demise of a term that used to describe us, liberal. Rick attributed this decline to the press.

     I asked a classicist what the difference between the two terms are, and he said liberal came first, but that he considers liberals to the right of progressives.

     Like a true classicist, pedantically and predictably I will resort to origins. I delved into The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and somehow emerged with some vision left—the figures are so small that the “fine print” among them must be read with heightened magnification beyond that of a conventional glass.

     Liberal is the older term, but not by much, appearing in text in a political context for the first time at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Progressive appears closer to the end of that century.

     Liberal, which first appeared in print in 1801, is defined by OED as “freedom from bigotry; open minded; open to new ideas or proposals of reform (the opposite of conservative).”

     Progressive  is defined by OED as “favouring [sic], advocating, or directing one’s efforts toward progress or reform.” It first appeared in text in 1889. It encompasses those who are liberal or reforming.

     So if we trust OED, progressives are more active, liberals more sedentary.

     At the conference, it struck me that the speakers were using liberal as other than profanity, attempting to restore its respectability. But at the written level, beginning with page 2 of the official pamphlet of events and participants, progressive appears far more often.

     At a session called Arguing Our Case: Pros and Cons, I actually found a discussion of the two terms. For lack of time, this discussion was delivered so rapidly that I am sure you will find inaccuracies in what follows.

     The speaker said that progressivism, liberalism, and populism are part of a common project. Liberalism couldn’t exist without progressives. Liberalism is part of a long tradition [it has always somehow or other embodied the concept of freedom].

     Consistent with OED, the speaker said that progressivism deals with concrete issues, fighting against the Republican dominion over society; it is more pragmatic.

     Progressivism is committed to the common good and pragmatic solutions. Liberalism is more theoretical.

     Modern liberalism, the speaker said, emerged from progressivism. Thomas Jefferson is more than once called progressive by his biographers and the scholarly tradition.

     Liberalism diffuses religious tension, respecting tolerance and the First Amendment; progressivism embodies a specific set of Christian values. In this way the two concepts are reciprocal.

     He referred to the Progressive era as “moralistic and utopian.”

     After the New Deal, liberalism was connected with the Democratic Party. Progressivism kept the whole legal system honest.

     Liberals focus on individualism while progressive correct the excesses of individualism.

     Progressives are more focused on the American national spirit. Liberals are associated with governmental action while progressivism had its origins at the municipal level.

     In terms of foreign policy, liberalism is more internationalist while progressives fight over this country’s role in the world and are anti-imperialists.

     Progressives today comprise a strong minority. Progressivism means “moving forward and open minded.”

     Today 40 percent of Americans are unfamiliar with the term progressive. But progressives are viewed more favorably; liberals less so.

     Progressive history connects past values to present ones.

     In another perspective on this subject, Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, said that LBJ was the last president to call himself a liberal. Celinda Lake, of Lake Research Partners, said that the term progressive is more popular; Democrats prefer the term because it can encompass Republicans, while the term liberal tends to polarize.

[to be continued]

19 March 2008: The Skeptical Patriot

Voice of the Voters began instead of ended with John Gideon’s segment, so that across-the country news could be guaranteed airtime. News there is, as always: in New Jersey the Sequoia DREs, a chronic bone of contention, were found to produce inconsistent results between their internal paper record and their software. The company first agreed to refer the problem to Princeton University’s Ed Felton and Andrew Appel, but then reversed its decision and threatened legal action if the experts did investigate.

     New Jersey’s attorney general did not push for resolution of this well-publicized issue. The same Sequoias are used in two Pennsylvania counties.

     In other good news, Secretaries of State Jennifer Brunner (Ohio) and Debra Bowen (California) both received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award.

     Mimi Kennedy, founder and head of the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) made her second appearance on the program this evening, interviewed by Lori Rosolowsky. The subject this time was poll working and involvement in general.

     Mimi said she became a poll worker as a critic about how votes are counted, needing to understand how things work from the inside. She took the course twice to polish her abilities and ran a primary in Los Angeles with four working under her.

     Her motivation, of course, was patriotism. In the true self-critical spirit of the United States (remember that from before election 2000?), she was exercising what she termed skeptical patriotism, as contrasted, for instance, with complacency with the way things are and unquestioning trust in the authorities in charge.

     To become a poll worker, said Kennedy, go online to the site of your county registrar; there is a great need for poll workers. You will find a list of training classes along with the wheres and whens and should also obtain course materials.

     Poll working is a healthy step in the right direction “toward a more perfect union.”

     Lori asked about what good could possibly come from the continued use of DREs. The skeptical patriot had a good answer: poll workers record incidents of malfunction; these add up, ammunition to strengthen arguments to junk this category of machine. The hotlines that receive these reports are set up by the political parties and nonprofits.

     On the birth of PDA in 2004, Mimi said that it grew out of the Democratic National Convention; both Jim Hightower and Tom Hayden are board members. Their motivation was to continue that curious American habit of faith in the future and our influence to shape the best of worlds for our children. They wanted to penetrate the party structure, turn it away from neoliberalism to progressivism.

     And more on efforts to restore integrity to our voting system once there has been the change to paper ballots: transparency is imperative—there should be a substantial audit percentage. Mimi reminded listeners of the Double Bubble Trouble in the Los Angeles primary—how forty to ninety thousand votes were lost because of young voters’ misunderstanding of the ballot format.

     The Coalition of Voting Integrity’s indispensable researcher Madeline Rawley was a featured caller who discussed her experience as a poll watcher and also reported on the most recent county commissioners’ meeting this morning, which lasted three hours.

     Evidently there was a suggestion to switch from the fiercely disputed touchscreen system to vote by mail, perhaps a cynical comment from one of the commissioners. Madeline spoke of the importance of the voting experience, the meeting of friends and neighbors. For Lori, voting at the local polls is a form of athletic absorption for a confessed non sports fan.

     Jim said that his efforts to become a poll worker have so far received no response. Madeline said that the job is hard, requiring long hours and little pay; there should be two shifts instead of one from dawn to midnight. The average age of poll workers is 72, Jim added. There is not enough effort to recruit new workers. Perhaps in Jim’s case there is too much awareness of his skeptical patriotism.

     Jim emphasized the importance of ascertaining that you are registered to vote in this critical year. Pennsylvanians have until March 24 to register for the April 22 primary, an event that is certain to draw national attention.

     Further on today’s commissioners’ meeting, Madeline said that State Representative Jim Clymer stood up to voice his support for Commissioners Martin and Cawley—he too finds that the Danaher DREs are unproblematic, a wave of the future. Members of the Coalition for Voting Integrity asked to meet with him to discuss the issue further.

     In other news, the owner of Electec, which provides Bucks County with its Danahers, was caught napping when he misinformed a questioner about the voting process on his full-faced machines. His conception of the format was incorrect.

     Commissioner Diane Marseglia again requested approval of a resolution in favor of HR 1536, reminding her fellow commissioners that they would be reimbursed for the expense of switching from the DREs to optical scanners.

     They again refused.

(c)

16 March 2008: Iraq, St. Patrick’s Day, and a Milestone

The day of Shock and Awe, March 19, 2003, a small area in <