Republican Voting Laws Focused On Suppression

Jim Greer, Ex-Florida GOP Chair, Claims Republican Voting Laws Focused On Suppression, Racism
Ian Gray
11/26/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/26/jim-greer-florida-voting-laws_n_2192802.html

Jim Greer, the former head of the Florida Republican Party, recently claimed that a law shortening the early voting period in the state was deliberately designed to suppress voting among groups that tend to support Democratic candidates, the Palm Beach Post reports.

“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told the Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only...‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us.’"

The HB 1355 law, which was passed by Florida's Republican legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Scott (R) in Nov. 2011, cut the number of early voting days from 14 to eight. It was publicly sold as an effort to reduce voter fraud and to save money, but Greer says that this was simply a "marketing ploy."

Greer served as Florida's GOP chairman from 2006 until 2010 when he was forced to resign after allegedly stealing money from the party. He was arrested and his case is pending.

Scott's predecessor, Republican-turned-Independent Charlie Crist, resisted efforts from Republicans to shorten the state's early voting period, citing reasons that mesh with Greer's claims.

In an interview with The Huffington Post earlier this month, Crist said the new law is clearly aimed at curbing turnout among Democrats.

"The only thing that makes any sense as to why this is happening and being done is voter suppression," he said.

Crist added, "People have fought and died for our right to vote, and unfortunately our legislature and this governor have decided they want to make early voting less available to Floridians rather than more available ... It's hard for me as an American to comprehend why you don't make democracy as easy as possible to exercise for the people of our state. It's frankly unconscionable."

Greer also acknowledged that the effort to restrict early voting would directly affect turnout among Florida's African Americans, a demographic that consistently supports Democrats.

“The sad thing about that is yes, there is prejudice and racism in the party but the real prevailing thought is that they don’t think minorities will ever vote Republican,” he told the Post.

Greer went on to suggest that there was "absolutely nothing" state Republicans wouldn't do in following their "absolute obsession with retaining power."

Parts of HB 1355 were overturned by a panel of federal judges in August, partially due to its anticipated impact on minority turnout. The three judge panel ruled that a "dramatic reduction in the form of voting that is disproportionately used by African-Americans would make it materially more difficult for some minority voters to cast a ballot than under the benchmark law.”

The court's ruling, however, only affected five of Florida's 67 counties -- those covered by the section of the Voting Rights Act cited by the court in its ruling. The vast majority of Florida voters were subject to the shortened voting period.

Despite lines as long as nine hours on Election Day in Florida, Scott said he stands by the new law. "Well I'm very comfortable that the right thing happened," he told WKMG Orlando after the election. He later promised to order a review of electoral issues.

Beast of the Year 2012: Paul Ryan

The votes are in, and The Konformist readers have spoken. Paul Ryan is your choice for the 2012 Beast of the Year - a choice that is well deserved.

Perhaps the biggest news story of the last year - if not of the last four years - is just how scary crazy the entire GOP has gone in the age of Obama.  And no figure has been more important in the Republican Party to the right-wing movement than Paul Ryan, currently their VP nominee in this year's election.  His 2012 federal budget plan would abolish korporate income taxes, estate taxes, taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest, and heavily reduce tax rates on the wealthy while ruthlessly cutting social programs, partially privatizing part of Social Security to Wall Street and fully privatizing Medicare.  Some would call this "Ayn Rand on Crack" (which may be an unfair smear of Ms. Rand, who was at least a gifted writer) yet all but four Republicans in the the HOR and five in the Senate voting for it.

Runner-Up: Brian Moynihan

In the unlikely event that Ryan can no longer fill his duties as Beast of the Year, Brian Moynihan is ready to take over the crown. Rest assured the BOTY trophy is in good hands either way, as Mr. Moynihan has had great Beastly practice as CEO of Bank of America.

In any case, we salute you, Paul Ryan and Brian Moynihan.  Congratulations, and keep up the great work, dudes!!!

HP to cut 27,000 jobs

The fact that Hewlett-Packard has started a wave of layoffs isn't really a story, as it really represents business as usual.  That this isn't a story is a story.

Believe it or not, there was a time when HP didn't lay off employees.  Seeing workers as assets that were valued rather than disposable goods was part of a philosophy known as the HP Way.  Indeed, it is fair to say no company so huge has ever treated its workers so well as HP did.  That all changed under the leadership of Carly Fiorina, who instituted the first wave of job cuts during her time as CEO from 1999-2005.  The current round of layoffs merely represent the realities of a new business philosophy.

(A little side note: I know a lot about the HP Way because my dad was an HP executive who took great pride in how well the company treated its workers.  He left early in 2001, seeing the writing on the wall that Fioriana was an abusive CEO who didn't see the value of those beneath her.)

Perhaps it isn't a coincidence that Fioriana was the GOP nominee in 2010 for the California Senate race.  Likewise, Meg Whitman, the current CEO, was the 2010 GOP nominee for California governor.  Both are noted for being "moderate" Republicans, whatever the hell that means.  Of course, the connection to the Republican Party and HP isn't new: David Packard, the business brains behind HP, was a Deputy Defense Secretary under Richard Nixon.  Despite his conservative street cred, it was he who fully embraced the no layoff philosophy, believing workers would only achieve at their fullest if they knew the company they served stood behind them.

Today, there are really no corporate executives, either Democrat or Republican in political loyalties, who share Mr. Packard's sympathetic and progressive outlook.  In this sense, the job cuts at HP don't represent a change in merely the philosophy of CEOs ore the Republican Party, but a change of view in workers from the entire political establishment...

Source:
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/HP-to-cut-27-000-jobs-on-weak-forecast-3581237.php

How Well Did Herman Cain Know Lawrence King?

Herman Cain isn't the only African-American conservative who spent time in Omaha, Nebraska during the mid-eighties. From DownWithTyranny.blogspot.com:

Omaha is tornado country, so when I say it's a great big small town, I'm talking acreage versus gossipy connectivity. It's flat and spread out with few tall buildings, but everyone is a whisper away from everyone else's business. It's not so big as to be home to two up-and-coming black Republicans with strong ties with the bigwigs in the Republican Party who could never cross paths. Restaurant people of all colors make it a point to know each other. To know what secrets wandering waiters and chefs may have taken with them as they move from job to job, etc... Wealthy Republicans are an even tighter clique. Wealthy black Republican restaurateurs in Omaha Nebraska in the late '80s were more likely to have been twins than not to have social if not business ties.

Lawrence E. King was a fixture in the Omaha black community. He had seen his opportunity gathering up black folks' money in a credit union known as the Franklin Credit Union, which he'd taken over in 1970. By 1976 there where whispers about this 300-pound socialite living large. There were minor stabs at investigating him, but the police did not want to be seen as the big bad white guys picking on the little ol' great big black man.

Tales of King entertaining guests with cocaine, hookers and hustlers were pervasive, but Omaha has some strange code of silence. It had been for many years a sort of mob neutral zone. "Tony might whack Vinnie in Chicago," but in Omaha their kids and wives would peacefully shop, play and picnic together. Drawing attention is not acceptable. Bush flew to Omaha on 9/11 in a very standard emergency protocol, and not one in ten Americans ever knew. Lily Tomlin and her partner Jane Wagner were a known couple around "The Big O" long before Lily came out. Omaha had lots of stories and still does, but none of them are news.

King -- who had been recruited by the RNC to get out the black Republican vote -- in his rise through the Republican ranks, was able to be the sum of their black best friends, as it were. He sang the national anthem at the 1984 and 1988 Republican conventions. In 1986, the Franklin Federal Credit Union moved into brand-new digs that also served as headquarters for King's burgeoning catering and food-service empire. King began making donations to the Omaha Press Club, the Republican Party and even gay rights organizations (especially those funding area youth programs). Upon being told he had no style by a ten-year-old boy, he went shopping and became a clothes junkie, big-time-- thus earning the nickname "Reverend Alice." People really began talking. Franklin Federal Credit Union seemed to be all right until an audit of King's taxes revealed what appeared to be some missing funds. A phony "certificates of deposit" scheme. Initially it was thought that $400,000 had disappeared. Then $4 million. Ultimately $40 million was determined to have vanished.

The FBI raid of the credit union sparked rumors that drugs and child pornography were discovered in the lower levels of the facility. It had been whispered that King had used the basement of the credit union as a "waiter academy" to train young men (twinks and blinks) in the fine art of waiting tables for what was hopefully to become his restaurant empire. In an Omaha World Herald interview, he spoke about how he wanted his places to be real elegant; the waiters would wear white dinner jackets. But King's deeper desires were rumored to be something quite different.

There was a lot of recruiting going on for guys to come be part of King's catering business. Many teens and young men talked of being expected to "put out," and rumors of pornographic video shoots circulated in the gay and black communities. After the raid there was an investigation into what had become of the missing funds. Eventually a private investigator was hired by the state legislature to look into stories of an international child prostitution ring. He interviewed dozens of waiters and folks around Omaha who had been curious about King's lavish gifts and extravagant ways. But things seemed tempered by the fact that King hung out with presidents, and area journalists. And owned a bank, and a sushi bar and...

The investigator is said to have flown to Chicago to meet with a person who had damning photographic evidence as to what was going on in the bowels of Franklin. That investigator never made it back to Omaha. His plane mysteriously blew up on the return flight. Primary witnesses suddenly changed their stories, and those who did not were convicted of perjury. One rent boy who testified that he was farmed out to several closeted power brokers in and around Omaha died mysteriously in New Mexico.

King was convicted of bank fraud and served nearly 10 out of the 15 years to which he was sentenced, but the grand jury concluded that all of the salacious allegations were merely "a big hoax" (wtf!) These allegations included supplying children for satanic blood rituals in Spain and supplying teens to a sex party in Washington, D.C., where some of those teens claimed they saw George W. Bush in attendance.

The story is larger and dirtier than what is within the scope of a DWT guest blog, and in fact was the subject of a Discovery Channel investigative report. Alas, that program was "purchased" a week before it was to air by some anonymous party...

Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2011/07/does-herman-cain-have-40-million.html

US House of Representatives votes to abolish Medicare

By Patrick Martin
16 April 2011
http://wsws.org/articles/2011/apr2011/medi-a16.shtml

In the most reactionary social policy proposal in recent US history, the House of Representatives voted Friday afternoon to support the abolition of the Medicare program, the government health insurance system for tens of millions of retired and disabled Americans. The 235-193 margin was a near party-line vote, with only four Republicans opposing the bill and no Democrats supporting it.

The vote was to approve an overall budget resolution for fiscal year 2012, which begins October 1. The bill drafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and backed by the entire House Republican leadership calls for $6.2 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years, with at least $3 trillion of this sum to be handed over to the wealthy in the form of additional tax cuts for the highest income bracket and for corporations.

The budget resolution serves as a framework for the bills that will actually authorize spending for FY 2012 by the various departments of the federal government. Even if passed by both houses of Congress, it is not legally binding and does not go the White House for the president’s signature to become law. This House version, in any event, has little chance of being passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Nonetheless, from a political standpoint the House vote is of enormous significance. For the first time in modern American history, a major social benefit is being targeted by one of the chambers of Congress for complete elimination. Every US resident 65 years and older is eligible for Medicare, which pays the bulk of the cost of hospitalization and other health care.

The Ryan budget resolution phases out Medicare for all Americans now aged 55 or younger. Instead of guaranteed coverage when they reach the age of 65, they would receive “premium supports,” or vouchers, to buy private insurance once they reach the age of 67. The value of the vouchers would be capped at a level that assures ever-rising health insurance costs for all those enrolled in the program.

Current Medicare recipients, and those over 55 who will become eligible for Medicare during the next 10 years, would remain under the preset program. However, the funding would be sharply cut, forcing cuts in coverage and reimbursement rates that would lead to more and more doctors and hospitals refusing to take Medicare patients.

The Republican budget also effectively eliminates Medicaid, the companion program to Medicare that provides health coverage for the poor, as well as paying for nursing home care for many seniors.

Medicaid is now a joint federal-state program, with the federal government bearing most of the costs and setting minimum standards for coverage. The Obama health care legislation passed last year proposed to expand Medicaid as one means of providing health insurance for working people who cannot obtain it through their employers.

Under the budget resolution adopted Friday, Medicaid would become an entirely state-run program, with federal support limited to block grants that would fall steadily behind the pace of health care costs, forcing states to continuously reduce benefits, eligibility or both. Total Medicaid spending would be slashed by $771 billion over 10 years.

The Republican resolution is motivated not by the desire to reduce the federal deficit, but by class hostility to the provision of any public social benefits. When Congressman Ryan outlined the plan in a speech two weeks ago to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, he condemned such benefits as encouraging laziness and indolence—although the primary beneficiaries of Medicare and Medicaid are the elderly, poor children and the disabled, those who in any decent society should not be working.

The brutality of this proposal did not prevent an outpouring of praise from the corporate-controlled media and the Washington establishment. On the contrary, it was this characteristic that most recommended the Ryan plan, leading to effusions from pundits like David Brooks of New York Times hailing Ryan’s “courage” and “realism.”

The Democratic Party response to the proposed termination of Medicare and Medicaid is a mixture of demagogy and cowardice. President Obama, after stalling for a week to give the Ryan plan more traction, finally denounced it in his budget speech Wednesday. But the Democrats merely propose to accomplish the same social goals—slashing spending for health care and other social needs—using less strident rhetoric and more subtle tactics.

From a purely electoral standpoint, the Republican proposal to destroy Medicare and Medicaid might appear reckless, even suicidal. The policy they are proposing is deeply unpopular: a recent Gallup poll found just 13 percent supporting a complete overhaul of Medicare, and opposition was particularly strong among the elderly, who backed Republican candidates by a 21-point margin in the 2010 congressional elections.

However, the policies of the US government are not determined by public opinion, but by the class interests of the American financial aristocracy, which controls both parties and uses their largely stage-managed conflicts to delude the population and sustain the illusion of electoral “choice.” The ruling class is determined to make working people pay the price for the Wall Street bailout as well as three wars and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The real attitude of the Democrats towards deficit reduction was demonstrated Thursday in the passage of the fiscal year 2011 budget resolution negotiated by the congressional Republicans and the White House. The bill cuts domestic social spending by $38.5 billion, the largest one-year cut ever enacted by Congress.

There was a last-minute hitch in the congressional approval process for the FY 2011 budget, after the Congressional Budget Office issued a report detailing the size and timing of the cuts and finding that the reduction in current-year outlays, as opposed to overall spending authorization, would be only $352 million. This prompted a group of the most right-wing Republicans in the House to declare their opposition to the budget deal.

The House Democrats stepped in to assure passage of the bill. According to press accounts, the Democratic leadership in the House held back the votes of some 75 Democrats, waiting to see how many votes would be needed to approve the bill. At one point, the vote tally stood at 211 for the bill and 140 against, with 66 Democrats and only 16 Republicans not yet voting. The final tally showed passage by 260 to 167.

The New York Times reported back-channel contacts between leaders of the two parties to finalize the parliamentary maneuver: “Realizing that the majority was going to need Democratic votes to pass the measure and avoid a [federal government] shutdown, aides said that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 3 Republican, reached out to Mr. Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat, for help on Thursday. Democrats initially did not have enough firm supporters of the measure, one official said, prompting Mr. Hoyer and his allies to reach out to lawmakers and round up what ultimately amounted to 81 Democratic votes, enough to provide a comfortable margin.”

In the event, 22 of these 81 Democrats were allowed by the leadership to vote against the budget so they could posture in front of their constituents as opponents of the cuts. The remaining 59 Democrats voted for the budget, exactly offsetting the 59 Republicans who voted against the bill proposed by their own leadership. Without the Democratic votes, the deal would have collapsed.

No such horse-trading was required in the Senate, where the record cuts in domestic social spending had overwhelming bipartisan support. The budget passed by the House was approved by the Senate 81-19, with most of the opposition coming from the right wing of the Republican Party, including figures like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jim DeMint of South Carolina who wanted even greater cuts.

Paul/Ventura 2012?

From PrisonPlanet.com:

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura has an important message for Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul – ditch the Republican Party and run for President as an independent.

On the day that Obama officially announced his 2012 Presidential campaign underway, the spotlight will now turn on those who are expected to set the wheels in motion to run against the president.

One name mentioned over and over again for the past few months has been Republican Congressman Ron Paul. However, Ventura, who was victorious as an Independent himself in 1998, believes that Paul can mount a more powerful challenge by distancing himself from the GOP establishment.

And Ventura even offered to throw his own name into the hat as a possible running mate.

“If Ron Paul would quit the Republican Party, and he asked me, then I would give serious consideration to running with him.” Ventura told syndicated radio host Alex Jones today.

“I will not run as a Democrat or Republican. I want nothing to do with these parties. They are the problem, they are not the solution.” the former Governor added.

“They’re the ones that have been in control of this country, as Ralph Nadar calls them, the two party dictatorship. They are the ones that have us in this mess. They are the ones who have caused all the debt problems… it’s time to throw them out. The people of this country can do a major thing and its so easy. The next election, don’t vote for ANY Republicans or Democrats. That would be the greatest thing that could happen in this country, to bring down and destroy these two political parties.” Ventura urged.

Congressman Paul has recently been victorious in several Republican straw polls of potential presidential nominees, and he has raised a staggering $3 million already this first quarter via his various grass roots organizations. That is more than any other potential Republican nominee thus far.

Ventura believes Paul should fully capitalize on his political popularity and make the break from the GOP.

“He won’t get the Republican Party nomination, he has to understand that.” Ventura said.

“The Republicans are not going to put Ron Paul up as their Presidential nominee. He is too much of a rogue, he is not bought and sold by multinational corporations. Plus the biggest thing of all, he calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve.” he added...

Ventura is currently promoting his new book, 63 documents The Government Doesn’t Want You To Read. The former Governor explained that he had dedicated the book to Congressman Paul as a thank you for his tireless efforts to bring more transparency to Washington.

“He was the only Congressman we have that had the courage to go out on the floor of the Congress and support Wikileaks,” Ventura noted, alluding to the whistle blowing website.

“Like Ron Paul said, no one has died from Wikileaks. How many people have died from the trumped up intelligence and the lying that got us into the Iraq war. And then he said something even more profound. He talked about in a free country like ours, when the truth equals treason we are in big trouble.”

While Ron Paul has yet to announce whether he will mount another presidential run, he may want to take Ventura up on his offer before the former pro-wrestler turned political powerhouse looks toward an even more ambitious role.

“I never said who would be President and who would be Vice President.” Ventura quipped.

“Ron and I may have to flip a coin.”

Ventura Urges Ron Paul To Run For President As Independent
Steve Watson
April 4, 2011
http://www.prisonplanet.com/ventura-urges-ron-paul-to-run-for-president-as-independent.html

Wall Street Whitewash

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/opinion/17krugman.html
Op-Ed Columnist
Wall Street Whitewash
PAUL KRUGMAN
December 16, 2010

When the financial crisis struck, many people — myself included — considered it a teachable moment. Above all, we expected the crisis to remind everyone why banks need to be effectively regulated.

How naïve we were. We should have realized that the modern Republican Party is utterly dedicated to the Reaganite slogan that government is always the problem, never the solution. And, therefore, we should have realized that party loyalists, confronted with facts that don’t fit the slogan, would adjust the facts.

Which brings me to the case of the collapsing crisis commission.

The bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was established by law to “examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States.” The hope was that it would be a modern version of the Pecora investigation of the 1930s, which documented Wall Street abuses and helped pave the way for financial reform.

Instead, however, the commission has broken down along partisan lines, unable to agree on even the most basic points.

It’s not as if the story of the crisis is particularly obscure. First, there was a widely spread housing bubble, not just in the United States, but in Ireland, Spain, and other countries as well. This bubble was inflated by irresponsible lending, made possible both by bank deregulation and the failure to extend regulation to “shadow banks,” which weren’t covered by traditional regulation but nonetheless engaged in banking activities and created bank-type risks.

Then the bubble burst, with hugely disruptive consequences. It turned out that Wall Street had created a web of interconnection nobody understood, so that the failure of Lehman Brothers, a medium-size investment bank, could threaten to take down the whole world financial system.

It’s a straightforward story, but a story that the Republican members of the commission don’t want told. Literally.

Last week, reports Shahien Nasiripour of The Huffington Post, all four Republicans on the commission voted to exclude the following terms from the report: “deregulation,” “shadow banking,” “interconnection,” and, yes, “Wall Street.”

When Democratic members refused to go along with this insistence that the story of Hamlet be told without the prince, the Republicans went ahead and issued their own report, which did, indeed, avoid using any of the banned terms.

That report is all of nine pages long, with few facts and hardly any numbers. Beyond that, it tells a story that has been widely and repeatedly debunked — without responding at all to the debunkers.

In the world according to the G.O.P. commissioners, it’s all the fault of government do-gooders, who used various levers — especially Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored loan-guarantee agencies — to promote loans to low-income borrowers. Wall Street — I mean, the private sector — erred only to the extent that it got suckered into going along with this government-created bubble.

It’s hard to overstate how wrongheaded all of this is. For one thing, as I’ve already noted, the housing bubble was international — and Fannie and Freddie weren’t guaranteeing mortgages in Latvia. Nor were they guaranteeing loans in commercial real estate, which also experienced a huge bubble.

Beyond that, the timing shows that private players weren’t suckered into a government-created bubble. It was the other way around. During the peak years of housing inflation, Fannie and Freddie were pushed to the sidelines; they only got into dubious lending late in the game, as they tried to regain market share.

But the G.O.P. commissioners are just doing their job, which is to sustain the conservative narrative. And a narrative that absolves the banks of any wrongdoing, that places all the blame on meddling politicians, is especially important now that Republicans are about to take over the House.

Last week, Spencer Bachus, the incoming G.O.P. chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told The Birmingham News that “in Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”

He later tried to walk the remark back, but there’s no question that he and his colleagues will do everything they can to block effective regulation of the people and institutions responsible for the economic nightmare of recent years. So they need a cover story saying that it was all the government’s fault.

In the end, those of us who expected the crisis to provide a teachable moment were right, but not in the way we expected. Never mind relearning the case for bank regulation; what we learned, instead, is what happens when an ideology backed by vast wealth and immense power confronts inconvenient facts. And the answer is, the facts lose.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on December 17, 2010, on page A39 of the New York edition.

After the elections: Behind the Democratic debacle

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/pers-n04.shtml

After the elections: Behind the Democratic debacle
4 November 2010
Joseph Kishore

Only a day after the midterm elections, the US media quickly coalesced around a narrative, accepted by everyone in the political establishment, that the victory of the Republican Party was a popular repudiation of the supposedly left-wing policies of the Obama administration. In his press conference on Wednesday, Obama himself adopted this analysis, pledging to work closely with the Republican Party, find some compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy, and improve his relations with corporate America.

Underlying this claim are two premises, both of which are false: 1) that Obama has carried out an anti-corporate program during his first two years; and 2) that the population as a whole has used the election to give a rousing affirmation of capitalism and big business. These premises are not only absurd, they clash with the basic facts.

In the flood of political commentary, no one in the mainstream media has suggested a far more plausible explanation: After coming to power by posing as the tribune of “hope” and "change you can believe in," Obama, through his pro-corporate and pro-war policies, has succeeded in alienating and politically demoralizing large sections of the population that had voted for him.

The event that secured Obama's election was the spectacular collapse of Wall Street in September of 2008, which shattered whatever was left of the credibility of the Bush administration and deeply discredited the capitalist system itself. Obama came into office with an overwhelming mandate for radical reform.

The response of the administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The administration opposed any constraints on executive compensation and rejected out of hand sanctions against or the prosecution of those responsible for the economic catastrophe. Over the past two years, the wealthiest individuals have vastly expanded their share of the national income and the largest banks are expected to hand out record compensation packages.

The economic crisis has led to a jobs crisis unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. The administration has rejected any government hiring programs. Throughout the crisis, Obama has endlessly repeated the claim that employment levels are a “lagging indicator.”

After bailing out Wall Street, Obama oversaw the forced bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler, demanding that workers accept deep cuts in jobs, wages and benefits. As a result, profits for the auto giants have soared while the assault on auto workers’ wages has become the model for wage-cutting in every economic sector and in every part of the country.

The consequences can be seen in the collapse of support for the Democratic Party in the industrial Midwest, the site of half the seats lost by Democrats in the House of Representatives. In Michigan, a center of the auto industry, the Republicans swept state and local offices, amid a turnout of only 45 percent. In Detroit, which had voted for Obama overwhelmingly in 2008, barely one in five voters showed up at the polls.

The principal domestic program for which Obama is associated is the overhaul of the health care system. The bill was entirely tailored to the interests of insurance companies and giant corporations. For the sake of “bipartisanship,” Obama abandoned anything that hinted of progressive reform, including the “public option.” Elderly voters, in particular, quite correctly saw the entire measure as a step toward cutting Medicare benefits and rationing care, resulting in a significant electoral swing to the Republican Party, which recorded an 18 percent advantage among voters over 60.

On foreign policy, Obama came to power on a wave of opposition to war. In the Democratic primaries in 2008, his main argument against rival Hilary Clinton was that he had not voted to support the Iraq war. On assuming office, Obama quickly moved to reappoint those responsible for the war under Bush, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General David Petraeus. His administration has continued the occupation of Iraq, vastly expanded the war against Afghanistan and Pakistan, threatened new wars against Yemen and Iran, and deployed CIA drones to kill people all over the world.

In every election since 2002, the issue of war has played a dominant role. Through the actions of the Obama administration, however, it is becoming clear to millions of people that it is impossible to end war by voting for the Democratic Party. Among young people, where opposition to war is particularly strong, turnout on Tuesday fell precipitously. Whereas voters aged 18 to 29 made up 18 percent of the electorate in 2008, they comprised only 10 percent this election.

To the list of right-wing policies in Obama's first two years must be added: expanding the attack on democratic rights and opposing any prosecution of those responsible for torture and domestic spying; defending the profits of energy giant BP, responsible for the greatest environmental disaster in US history; and rejecting any moratorium on home foreclosures, despite evidence of massive fraud carried out by the very banks that are throwing millions out of their homes.

Under the peculiar conditions of American politics, which excludes any opposition to the two parties of big business, mass disaffection with the Democratic Party found expression in the victory of the Republicans. In addition to capitalizing on the collapse in voter turnout for Democrats, Republicans were able to exploit the fact that all of Obama’s betrayals and his lack of principle exposed the insincerity and duplicity that permeates the Democratic Party and its liberal backers. The rhetoric of the Republicans resonated in sections of the population that felt they had been duped.

The failure of the Obama administration is not simply failure of one individual. It is one expression of the failure of an entire political and economic system. Under conditions of long-term economic decline, American capitalism has no response to the capitalist crisis outside of an ever-expanding attack on the working class.

The trade unions and the array of liberal and middle-class organizations that promoted Obama will point to the victory of the Republicans to insist once again that the Democrats must be supported. This is utterly bankrupt. The claim that the growth of extreme right-wing forces can be stopped by the election of Democrats is the opposite of the truth. The promotion of the Democratic Party facilitates its own anti-working class policies while creating the conditions for even more right-wing forces to come to the fore.

The elections must be seen as a warning. The political system, including both parties, is moving ever further to the right. The aftermath of the elections will bring a deepening of the attacks on jobs and wages, a further erosion of democratic rights, and an expansion of war, including preparations for a global conflict with unimaginable consequences.

In the midst of this crisis, American politics takes on a diseased character. Like an impacted tooth that leads to infection, the anger and discontent felt by millions of people are denied any genuine expression. So long as the working class remains trapped within the framework of the Democratic Party and the capitalist two-party system, it is the right wing that will exploit the situation to its advantage.

Workers and young people have to seriously think through the implications. There is no way forward through the Democratic Party and capitalist politics. What is necessary is the building of an independent revolutionary movement of the working class in the struggle for socialism. This is the perspective that the Socialist Equality Party is fighting to bring to the broadest sections of workers and youth.

Burn, Witch, Burn!: America Rages Against Islam

http://revoltoftheplebs.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/burn-witch-burn-america-rages-against-islam/

Burn, Witch, Burn!: America Rages Against Islam
by Keith Johnson
8-27-2010

Islamophobia is sweeping the nation—and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Just when the American people were starting to become distracted with trivial issues like the potential stock market crash, the re-branding of the war in Iraq, and the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf—along comes a crisis of Biblical proportions, that threatens to destroy the moral fiber of America itself, and deliver its Christian population into the diabolical hands of an Islamic dictatorship ruled under the precepts of Sharia law.

Oh, foolish man. What can you not be made to believe?
~Adam Weishaupt~

By now, it should be quite obvious that the hysteria centered on the proposed construction of an Islamic cultural center—a full two blocks from Ground Zero—is nothing more than an engineered distraction, designed to take the focus away from serious geopolitical and domestic issues as we head into the November elections.

Late last year, we watched in horror as the Tea Party movement was infiltrated by certain personalities from the GOP establishment. Glenn Beck, Dick Armey, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, and others of that same ilk—all dressed down to mingle with working class folks— and let them know that the Republican party shares their pain. Before these clowns got involved, the focus of the Tea Party was on big government, compulsory health insurance and Wall Street bailouts. But over a period of time—as these Johnny-Come-Latelies sunk their fingers deeper into the pie—they used their influence to diffuse the ire against Wall Street and redirect those energies to support the GOP war agenda.

Now we are starting to see large swaths of Tea Party factions taking up the war banner at their events—complete with metrosexual cowboys singing war anthems in the background—and stirring up racial tensions the likes of which we have not witnessed since before the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.

No longer is Wall Street feeling the hot pangs of public anger breathing down their necks. These terrorists have been left to their own devices, with free reign to continue their raping and pillaging of the American dream. Now, cab drivers wearing turbans have more to fear than the bankster gangster riding in their back seats.

From New York City to Southern California, large groups of paranoid warmongers gather outside Islamic places of worship to parrot the lies fed to them by the mainstream media. Much of their ammunition comes straight out of a likely source: FOX News.

On August 16, disgraced former congressman Newt Gingrich made an appearance on the morning program, FOX and Friends, and said, “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.” Is that right? Well, according to that line of thinking, and assuming that America is a Christian nation (like so many people claim it to be), would it not be just as wrong for us to expect the Japanese to accept a Christian church in Hiroshima or for the Germans to accept one in Dresden? You, Mr. Gingrich, may think that these are entirely different circumstances. But I’d waged that there are thousands of Germans and Japanese who would beg to differ.

Later that week, on the same program, host Brian Kilmeade asserted his fear that the Islamic Cultural Center in New York City would be the future site of a new “Hamburg Cell.” In case you didn’t know, the “Hamburg Cell” was where three alleged hijackers reportedly cooked up the 911 plot. Two of the three men were tried in Germany, but the cases were dropped when the U.S. failed to provide any incriminating evidence that linked them to the attacks.

Other FOX propagandists, like Dick Morris, claim that the center will be used to ‘train and recruit’ future terrorists. “Shariah law mandates jihad” blurted Morris. “And it mandates terrorism and suicide bombing. So this is really a juridical center that is being established to study and promote and train and recruit Shariah law advocates, which will become terrorists. … We’re establishing literally a command center for terrorism right at the 9/11 site.” This kind of B.S. brings to mind that famous Arte Johnson line from ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In’: “Very interesting…but stupid!”

Recent evidence suggests just the opposite of Morris’ line of thinking. According to a recent New York Times article, “A two-year study by a group of academics on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that contemporary mosques are actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism. The study was conducted by professors with Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina. It disclosed that many mosque leaders had put significant effort into countering extremism by building youth programs, sponsoring antiviolence forums and scrutinizing teachers and texts.”

But this won’t stop the likes of Gingrich, Kilmeade and Morris from spreading their message of intolerance. They have an agenda, and that agenda is to stir up a deep-seated hatred against the Muslim community in order to rally support for a war on Iran. And they’ve been very effective. Their rhetoric is being picked up and repeated by Islamophobes all across the nation. For them, it’s all about the fear of Shariah law, disrespect to 911 victims, and the paranoid assumption that all Mosques are staging grounds for future terrorist attacks.

In Murfreesboro, Tennessee—opponents of a proposed Mosque spray-painted the words “Not Welcome” on a sign that marked the construction site, and later tore it to shreds. They also brought dogs to intimidate Muslims as they worshipped in the modest office space they’ve been using as a prayer room. One man—sounding a lot like Newt Gingrich—told a CNN reporter that “In Islam, a mosque means ‘We have conquered this country,’” And where are they? They’re in the center of Tennessee. They’re going to say, ‘We have conquered Tennessee.’” Oh, boy! First Tennessee…then the world!

In Temecula, California—plans by the Islamic community to build a mosque on a four-acre parcel of land has sparked a similar protest. Pastor Bill Rench, of Temecula Calvary Baptist Church, echoed Kilmeade and Morris when he stated, “There is a concern with all the rumors you hear about sleeper cells and all that. Are we supposed to be complacent just because these people say it’s a religion of peace? Many others have said the same thing.” Yes, Pastor Rench, many others have said the same thing. I think you would be hard pressed to find a religion which has not been used by some greedy tyrant as a pretext to wage war…including Christianity.

A website for a group calling itself ‘We the People—Citizens in Action’ called on their members to attend a rally in Temecula and to “bring your Bibles, flags, signs, dogs and singing voice.” At the event, demonstrators held up signs that read ‘No Sharia Law’ and ‘Muslims Danced For Joy on 9/11.’ Apparently they haven’t learned that the “so-called” dancing Palestinians they’re referring to were actually paid to perform in front of the camera with candy and cakes supplied to them by the Israel Ministry of Defense. The whole thing was staged.

What was not staged were the five dancing Israelis arrested on 9/11, who were reported to police after being seen cheering and ‘high-fiving’ as they watched the towers come down. They’d been shooting video of the disaster from a short distance away. They were later released by police and deported back to Israel, where three of them admitted on Israeli TV that they were in New York City that day to “document the event.”

In Bridgeport, Connecticut—a dozen “so-called” Christian demonstrators angrily screamed, “Islam is a lie” and “Jesus hates Muslims” at worshippers of a local Mosque. One demonstrator even confronted a group of children and called them “murderers.” Have these people even read the scriptures? Where can Jesus be found to say that he hates Muslims? Muslims weren’t even around during the time Christ walked the Earth. Islam began almost six hundred years after the death of Christ. There is not even one biblical passage that eludes to Islam or mosques or Muslims.

We haven’t seen this level of ignorance and superstition since the Salem Witch Trials of the 1600’s. There are many parallels that be can drawn from that time and now. During that era of American history, the colonies suffered from severe enviromental and economic troubles. Severe weather changes resulted in crop failures which devastated livestock and the ability for families to put food on the table. What made matters worse was the influential and fervently religious Puritans, who were very active politically, and attributed all adversity to the wrath of God. The economic woes, coupled by a belief that all bad things are a result of supernatural punishment for unrepentant sin, fostered a climate of suspicion that sent many in search of the source to their problems. Someone had to take the blame and be held to answer for all the troubles they inflicted upon everyone else. While the fanatically religious clung to their superstitions in pursuit of justice, many others took advantage of the hysteria and used it as an opportunity to eliminate bitter rivals and steal coveted and valuable pieces of property.

What we don’t understand, we fear. What we fear, we judge as evil. What we judge as evil, we attempt to control. And what we cannot control…we attack.

We see the same thing happening today. As we fall deeper into our own economic crisis—aggravated by enviromental disasters and poor money policies—the ignorant masses are susceptible to clinging to a simple explanation for their troubles. In this case, it is Islam. They are the modern day witches, whose behavior is foreign and therefore a threat that must be exterminated. Our modern day equivelent to the Puritans are those fervently religious and politically active Judeo-Christians who cling to a politicised perversion of Biblical scriptures. They have been led to believe that allegiance to the state of Israel is critical to their salvation. If Islam is a threat to Israel, then Islam is the enemy that must be defeated. Then, of course, there are those who are simply taking advantage of the hysteria. These are our politicians, who will send our children to die in these most unholy of wars, and clean up whatever spoils those wars have wrought.

Contrary to popular perception, none of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials were burned at the stake. However, the victims of these latest witchhunts have not had it so easy. Entire villages have burned to the ground in Afghanistan, white phosphorus has been dropped on Palestinian children in Gaza, and talks of a strike on Iran may very well place a mushroom cloud over Tehran in the not so distant future.

Here at home, violence has already begun to show its ugly face. In New York City, a Muslim cab driver’s throat was aledgedly slashed by an irate Islamophobe, and elsewhere, several prayer rugs were urinated upon by an angry drunk shouting racial slurs. Is this the beginning of even greater violence that we should expect to witness as the rage against Islam escalates out of control?

This frightening trend is indeed a crisis—but to both Democrat and Republican candidates seeking office in November—this is a god send. For the Republicans, the mosque controversey is a good prop, like the paper mache’ mask that the “Wizard of Oz” lit on fire and waved around to scare Dorothy into taking on the Wicked Witch of the West. For the Democrats, bringing attention to the frenzied hysteria of the reactionary right provides a good opportunity to lure back disgruntled dissenters, who have been suffering a bit of buyers remorse since Obama took office.

It’s a sad thing to watch. Just when the time was ripe for the people of this nation to unite in opposition to the established government, we are now beginning to see them part ways… and herded back into their respective corners.

Cenk Uygur Debates 'Wingnuts' Author John Avlon

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/cenk-uygur-debates-wingnuts-author-john-av

Cenk Uygur Debates 'Wingnuts' Author John Avlon
Heather
Sunday Jun 27, 2010

Cenk Uygur took on one of my least favorite pundits, John Avlon, in this segment on The Young Turks and did what you never see anyone in the our "mainstream media" do when allowing this hack to come on their shows, which is to call him out for the fact that there is no one on the left that you can honestly compare to the ultra-crazies we have on the right side of the aisle right now. The best Avlon could muster without going back to the 60's was to call unions left wing extremists.

Cenk made some other really great points like just how far to the right our country has moved when it comes to what you'd call a "centrist" these days and does a good job of attempting to explain to Avlon that what he calls "centrist" is actually "corporatist" and that when it comes to the issues that really matter to most Americans and what is causing to get hammered economically, unlike the wedge issues that get everyone riled up, people on the left and progressives are losing those battles, whether it be the bank bailouts, health care reform or tax breaks for the rich and for corporations. He also did a really good job explaining just how far what used to be called the center has shifted to the right where the positions of those on the left are what used to be considered moderate and that a lot of Republicans from past eras would be run out of today's Republican Party.

My only quibble with Cenk about this interview would be that he allowed Avlon to filibuster him a bit too often. He did finally have enough of it later in the interview and stopped him so he could make his points. He also allowed him to be portrayed as "independent" and didn't point out to his viewers that he worked for Rudy Giuliani.

That said it was a breath of fresh air to see this guy get challenged in the manner he deserves for once and premise of his book, which tries to paint people on the left as extremists when they're not and that calls centrism giving corporate America anything it wants, called a bunch of nonsense, which it is. Avlon finally showed his true colors with being an anti-union zealot in this interview with Cenk. It doesn't surprise me one bit but makes me dislike him even more than I did before listening to him call us "extremists" who are destroying America and the Democratic Party.

It's a long interview, over twenty minutes but if you've got that time to spare it is well worth is watching the king of the false equivalencies get his talking points taken apart for once. Good for Cenk. It would be nice to see MSNBC give him a job if they allowed him to do the type of interviews he just did here instead of just having him on Ratigan's show to debate wingnuts in a five minute debate box with Ratigan controlling the narrative. I'd say this interview ranks right up there with his take down of S.E. Cupp and Wayne Allyn Root.

To view the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbrkvbsUfYw

The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru

http://www.maxim.com/humor/stupid-fun/86265/mysterious-death-bushs-cyber-guru.html

The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru
Wednesday 02/10/2010
Simon Worrall

Shortly before six o’clock on the evening of December 19, 2008, a man standing outside his home in Lake Township, Ohio heard the whine of an engine in the sky above him.

Moments later two red lights broke through the low clouds, heading almost directly toward the ground. It was a light aircraft, and for a second, as it descended below the tree line, the man thought it would climb back up. Instead, there was a terrible thud, and the sky turned orange. When the fire crews arrived, they found the burning wreckage of a Piper Saratoga strewn across a vacant lot. The plane had narrowly missed a house, but the explosion was so intense that the home’s plastic siding was on fire. So was the grass. The pilot had been thrown from the plane and died instantly. Body parts and pieces of twisted metal were scattered everywhere. A prayer book lay open on the ground, its pages on fire.

The crash would have remained a private tragedy confined to the pages of the local press and the hearts of the pilot’s widow and four children, but within days the blogosphere was abuzz with rumors and conspiracy theories: The plane, it was said, had been sabotaged and the pilot murdered to cover up the GOP’s alleged theft of the Ohio vote in the 2004 presidential election. At the center of this plot was the Saratoga’s pilot, a prodigiously gifted IT expert named Michael Connell, whose altar boy charm and technical brilliance had made him the computer whiz of choice for the Republican Party. Left-wing Web sites openly referred to Connell as “Bush’s vote rigger” and claimed that his fingerprints were on all the most controversial elections in recent history. There were dark whispers of electronic pulses or sniper fire being used to bring down the plane—a black ops attack designed to keep him from testifying against his former cronies. Right-wing bloggers and talk show hosts derided such claims as the twisted delusions of liberal nut jobs and tinfoil hatters. The mainstream press sat on its hands.

But while the rumors, innuendos, and allegations continue to swirl through the ether, evidence has recently emerged that suggests the Ohio vote may have been hacked, and that Connell was involved.

Born in 1963 in Peoria, Illinois into a large Irish-American family, Michael Connell was a lifelong Republican and a devout Roman Catholic who went to Mass every day and wore a wristband saying what would jesus do? What Connell did was realize the potential of the Internet to shape politics. While still in his 20s, he worked as finance director for Republican Congressman Jim Leach, and as director of voter programs for Senator Dan Coats of Indiana. In 1988 Connell developed a voter contact database for George H.W. Bush, thus inaugurating a long association with the Bush family: Connell worked on Jeb’s gubernatorial campaign in Florida in 1998; two years later he was the chief architect of George W. Bush’s Web site as Dubya launched his bid for the White House.

But it was while serving as tech guru to Karl Rove that Connell developed his deepest and perhaps most problematic professional relationship. Recruited in the late ’80s, Connell became Rove’s most trusted cyberlieutenant: a Web wizard who could turn portals into power and who would gain access to the very heights of American politics by the time he reached 30 years old. Connell’s two Ohio-based companies, New Media Communications and GovTech, became virtual research and development labs for the Republican Party, building and managing Web sites and e-mail accounts for both Presidents Bush and a long list of leading Republicans. GovTech also designed and managed numerous Congressional IT systems, including those for the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, putting Connell “behind the fire wall” of some of the most sensitive government Web sites from the safety of the Bush White House.

“Mike was known as the GOP’s Mister Fix-It,” says Stephen Spoonamore, an IT security expert and friend of Connell’s. “He built really intelligent tools that allowed people who wanted to win elections do a better job organizing their data.” But aside from his more legitimate business, Connell was no stranger to the darker side of American politics. He was forced to resign from Senator Coats’ campaign for his involvement in ethical violations. Connell’s was also the hand behind the Web site for the notorious Swift Boat Veterans’ for Truth smear campaign against John Kerry and GWB43.com, the secret e-mail account used by Rove and dozens of other White House staffers.

Just six weeks before his death, Connell had given a deposition in an Ohio lawsuit that accused Rove, Bush, and Co. of something far more serious than merely scrubbing e-mails: the theft of the 2004 Ohio vote. “This is the biggest scandal in our history,” says Mark Crispin Miller, a professor at New York University who has written extensively about electronic voter fraud. “Watergate grew out of a paranoid attempt to disable the opposition. But Ohio was exponentially different. We’re talking about a systematic, centralized attempt to rig the voting system.”

“We decided to try to bring a racketeering claim against Rove under Ohio law,” says Cliff Arnebeck, the attorney who brought the suit, a broad-shouldered man with a Senatorial air dressed in a blue blazer. “We detected a pattern of criminal activity, and we identified Connell as a key witness, as the implementer for Rove.”

By any calculation, the Ohio 2004 election was a black day for American democracy. Lou Harris, known as the “father of modern political polling,” and a man not given to hyperbole, called it “as dirty an election as America has ever seen.” All the exit polls suggested Ohio would go to Kerry. But when the vote was counted George Bush had won by 132,685 votes, adding Ohio’s crucial 20 Electoral College votes to his tally. And putting him, not Kerry, into the White House. It has since been alleged that at several points on election night, the Ohio secretary of state’s official Web site, which was responsible for reporting the results, was being hosted by a server in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Ohio’s secretary of state in 2004 was a fiercely partisan Christian named Ken Blackwell. Blackwell had hired a company called GDC Limited to run the IT systems, which had subcontracted the job to Michael Connell’s company, GovTech. Connell had in turn sub-contracted SMARTech, an IT firm based in Chattanooga, to act, it was claimed, as a backup server.

“By looking at the URLs on the Web site, we discovered that there were three points on election night when SMARTech’s computers took over from the secretary of state,” says Arnebeck. “It is during that period that we believe votes were manipulated.”

In computer jargon it is known as a man-in-the-middle attack.

“At the time I didn’t know who SMARTech were,” says IT expert Stephen Spoonamore, opening a file on his computer showing the Internet architecture map of the 2004 Ohio election. He points to a red box in the bottom right-hand corner showing SMARTech’s server.

“Then I found out: They host Rove’s e-mails. They host the RNC’s Web site. They host George Bush’s Web site.” His voice rises in disbelief.

“I go, ‘Holy shit, this is a man-in-the-middle attack! These guys have programmed the state’s computers to talk to a company with ties to the Republican Party.’ It’s brilliant.”

With his wiry hair and designer glasses, Spoonamore looks like a character in a Tim Burton movie. A lifelong Republican, he is also one of the world’s acknowledged experts on cybersecurity, with a résumé that includes work for the U.S. armed forces and the FBI. In his spare time he has devoted thousands of hours to investigating cyberfraud in American elections. “I know I sound crazy when I talk about this stuff. No one wants to believe it. They say, ‘No one would steal an election.’ And I go, ‘Yeah, they would. And that’s exactly what they did.’”

Spoonamore believes that while Michael Connell may have facilitated electoral fraud, he was really just a tool of more powerful forces. “Mike has been called the Forrest Gump of GOP IT operations,” he says. “And I think there’s a truth to that. I think he was a good guy surrounded by wolves. He was always going to be the fall guy.”

The two men had gotten to know each other at Spoonamore’s Washington, D.C. offices in late 2005. “The two of us hit it off,” recalls Spoonamore. “We were the same age, the same generation. We had a lot of friends in common.” At the end of the meeting, Connell broached a delicate topic. “Mike asked me, ‘How easy is it to destroy all records of e-mail?’” recalls Spoonamore. “He sort of gestured toward the White House and said, ‘Because I have clients down the street who are working on that problem.’ And I stepped back and said, ‘If you are talking about White House e-mail destruction, I want nothing to do with it.’”

A year later, at an IT conference in London, Spoonamore confronted the pro-life Connell about the Ohio election: “He said, ‘I’m afraid that in my zeal to save the babies, the system I built may have been abused.’”

Three days later, in the back of a cab heading toward the airport, Spoonamore asked Connell if he would be willing to talk to a Congressional judiciary committee about what he knew. “I actually took Mike’s hand and said, ‘If I can arrange for a private meeting for you to sit down with the committee and explain what you think may have happened in 2004 and how your systems may have been abused, will you do it?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’”

Connell never did talk to the judiciary committee. But in the months leading up to his death he was under intense pressure. In an attempt to extricate himself from the world of politics, he had sold two of his businesses, including GovTech. Throughout the fall his plane was being tracked by Arnebeck and his associates so they could serve him with a subpoena. Connell sought refuge from the maelstrom in his deep Catholic faith. He took to wearing a scapular, two squares of cloth with religious images favored by devout Catholics, under his shirt. He went to Mass twice a day and became more directly involved with the pro-life movement, spending weekends standing outside abortion clinics. He traveled to Burma and Thailand to work with religious dissidents and started a Catholic charity in El Salvador.

Finally, on October 8, 2008, Connell was served with his subpoena at College Park Airfield outside Washington, D.C. Seven weeks later his Piper Saratoga would fall from the sky.

On December 18, Connell flew to D.C. to meet with the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s organization, about starting a new branch and rebuilding their Web site. He stayed the night at a hotel, got up early to attend Mass and then a breakfast meeting. At about 11 a.m., Connell went to College Park Airfield to prepare to fly home to Akron. His firm, New Media Communication, was holding its Christmas party that evening, and he didn’t want to miss it. An experienced pilot with more than 500 hours of flight time under his belt, Connell waited for the weather to clear. Shortly after 3:30 p.m., he called his wife, Heather, in Ohio to say he had his “window.” He took off at 3:51 p.m.

At first everything went fine. On his approach to Akron-Canton Regional Airport, he asked the tower if there were any reports of icing and was told there were not. It was certainly dark and cold, with cloud cover at 1,000 feet, but the plane had a sophisticated autopilot system that would normally bring it onto the runway, like a homing pigeon. But at 3,200 feet, as Connell began his descent, air traffic control radioed to say he was off course by several miles. Connell radioed that he would correct his position. Something seemed to be wrong with the lateral controls.

The audiotapes of Connell’s last communications with the tower suggest a rising sense of panic and confusion. Realizing that he is still off course, he asks to do a 360-degree turn “to reestablish ourselves.” It’s an unusual maneuver at this late stage of the approach, and the flight controller denies the request. Instead, he advises Connell to “climb and maintain 3,000 feet.” Seconds later there is a loud rushing sound as the cockpit bursts open and the engine goes haywire. Connell screams, “Nine nine November declaring an emergency!” Out of respect for his religious beliefs—and his children—the tower reported that his last words were, “Oh, God!” In fact, he cries out, “Oh, fuck!” Then the tape goes dead.

Capt. Lorin Geisner of the Greentown Fire Department was the first person to arrive at the scene. “We received a 911 call, so we contacted the tower and asked what size plane it was and how many souls were on board,” he recalls. “But we were informed that the tower was in lockdown and that no information was available.”

According to sources, there were other anomalies. Normally, a night crash scene would be roped off and investigated in daylight. In this case representatives of the NTSB and FAA used light towers to photograph and document the scene. Connell’s plane was hastily removed to a secure hangar under cover of darkness. By 6 a.m. the investigators had vanished, leaving behind them a trail of debris, and one very angry widow.

“How is this OK?” asks Heather Connell, pulling a chunk of metal from a cardboard box she had brought in from the garage. She is kneeling on the floor of her husband’s basement office, a tidy space decorated with sleek black office furniture. A photo of a 25-year-old Connell with George H.W. Bush sits on the bookshelf next to an action figure of Dubya decked out in fighter pilot garb. A cascade of frizzy blonde hair tumbles forward over Heather’s face. Her eyes are red from crying. “They think this is part of the foot pedal.”

When I ask how she met her husband, she starts to hum the ’80s hit “Don’t You Want Me.” “She was working as waitress in a cocktail bar...” Then her voice falters. “That much is true. We met in Indiana. He was working for Senator Coats, and I was going to college and working at a sports bar. He was with a bunch of interns who came in. I carded every one of them and was in the process of kicking him out of the bar.” She gives a throaty chuckle. “He was used to people fawning over him, and I think he liked me because I was mean.”

“I didn’t go to the crash site on the night he died,” she says, picking another piece of debris from the box. As her husband began his final descent, Heather and the rest of the staff gathered at a restaurant for the company’s annual Christmas party. “I got a message that his plane had landed,” she recalls, choking back tears. “So I kept calling and calling.” She winces at the memory. “This is making me sick again.” Leaning back in her chair, she takes a drag of a cigarette. “They told me the plane had crashed and that he was dead, but I didn’t ?want to believe it. I thought maybe he was on the way to the hospital, so I didn’t go to the crash site until December 26.” Her left nostril spasms. “I have pieces of my husband’s brain!” she cries. “I picked them up with my hands six days after the crash. Chunks of his skin and internal organs. How is that a proper investigation? How is that acceptable? How dare they leave pieces of my husband lying there!”

She pulls out another storage box filled with personal items from the crash site: $50 in cash; a charred prayer book with a note inside it reading, “I love you”; a Mickey Mouse dollar bill. Something important is missing, though. “Why do I have his earpiece?” she asks, pulling out the Jawbone headset of a BlackBerry. “This was in his backpack. And the backpack was zipped. So where’s his phone?”

“He always clips them next to each other,” interjects her 15-year-old daughter, Lauren. It’s an important detail because it suggests that the BlackBerry may have been intentionally removed from the backpack. On it were hundreds, if not thousands, of sensitive files and e-mails relating to Karl Rove and the Bush administration.

“I want to know where my husband’s phone is,” Connell says angrily. “It’s my responsibility as a mother and a spouse to find out what happened. And I will not accept ‘Cause of crash unknown.’ I will not.”

Though she is furious at the NTSB, she has no time for the conspiracy theories. While she admits that Connell was disillusioned with politics, she bridles at any suggestion that he could have been involved with vote rigging. “With Mike there was religion, family, and a love for democracy,” she says firmly. “He would never interfere with the democratic process. That’s just ridiculous.”

Connell’s younger sister isn’t so sure. “I knew he worked for the Bushes,” says Shannon Connell. The two siblings had diametrically opposed views — Shannon Connell is a pro-Obama liberal — but they never allowed this to come between them. “We stayed close despite the political differences. He was my brother.”

She doesn’t know whether Connell helped steal elections. If he did, she says, it was because of his passionate anti-abortion views. “I think he was convinced he was doing good — to save the babies,” she says. “That’s the only thing my sisters and I can come up with.

“Mike had been deposed, but he hadn’t been called as a witness yet,” she says of the possibility that her brother was murdered. “He was incredibly loyal to the people he worked for, but he would never have lied under oath. For want of a better expression, I think they played him. His death would have been a really nice Christmas present for Rove and Cheney.

“I am beyond looking for justice,” she says, resigned. “I just want the truth to be known. But I am not counting on it.” She may be right.

After more than nine months, the factual report into Connell’s crash had still not been made public. According to an NTSB spokesperson, it was “still being reviewed.” That’s scant comfort to Connell’s family, who just want some sense of closure, whatever the outcome.

Still, “In my mind and my heart,” says Shannon Connell, “I am convinced he was murdered.”

We may never know the truth about Connell’s last flight, but contracts between Connell’s company, GovTech, and Ken Blackwell’s administration establish a credible scenario for electoral fraud and place Connell at the scene of the alleged crime.

Among other things, the contracts contradict Connell’s sworn testimony that SMARTech, in Chattanooga, merely acted as a backup site for election data.

The contracts, signed in March 2004, show that SMARTech was specifically tasked with creating a “mirror site” to manage election night results.“What this means is that Connell’s company was on both sides of the mirror,” explains Stephen Spoonamore. “And that the votes of the people of Ohio were in the control of a fiercely partisan IT company (SMARTech) and operating out of another state.”

Clouding matters further is the persistent specter of paranoid conspiracy that has enveloped the case from the beginning. In September 2009, an anonymous letter was sent to the FBI in Ohio and five other addressees, including Heather Connell. “Enclosed is a document that is not meant to exist,” begins the anonymous writer. Included is what purports to be an “after action report” by a black ops agent. All names have been redacted, but the report provides a detailed time log of actions taken to install an AMD (microprocessor) in the engine of Connell’s plane at College Park Airfield in D.C. the night before he made his fatal last flight. Connell himself is not mentioned by name. Just the registration number of his plane, NP299N, which the agent confirms he had been sent to “neutralize.” The letter accompanying the report is headed MICHAEL CONNELL, HOMICIDE. It ends with the words: “Connell was not NST (national security threat).”

While skeptics may be tempted to dismiss these documents as the ingenious work of a hoaxer intent on pouring gasoline on the bonfire of conspiracy theories already surrounding Connell, a number of experts from the intelligence community who have seen the document believe it to be genuine.

In early November, the NTSB finally released its factual report into Connell’s crash. The report concludes that tests carried out on the plane’s engine, flight control, and autopilot systems revealed “no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.”

A spokeswoman for the NTSB confirmed that the organization had received a copy of the anonymous letter, but would not say whether its claims were being looked into. “We’re investigating the accident,” she says, “not any possible criminal activity.” She adds that the NTSB forwarded the letter to the FBI in Cleveland. When asked to confirm this, Scott Wilson at the FBI’s Cleveland bureau, says, “The only thing I can say is...I can’t say anything.”

Ultimately, only a full criminal investigation can determine the truth about Ohio ’04 and the death of Michael Connell. Robert Kennedy Jr., who sought Connell’s cooperation during an investigation into the election, believes the current administration should pursue the matter. “I think this is more serious than Watergate,” he says. “Watergate was essentially about winning the battle for public opinion. That’s why the break-in took place—to gather strategic information about Democratic strategy and dirt. But the electoral process remained intact. The Ohio vote undermines the very foundation stone of American democracy. There should be an official investigation. Otherwise this becomes a blueprint for how to steal an election from here to eternity.”

That may not be enough for Connell’s widow. When I first spoke to her on the phone, Heather Connell was adamant that her husband’s plane crash had been an accident, God’s will. But she is no longer so sure. “This is a messed-up case of whether Karl Rove threatened my husband or not,” she says. I ask her directly if she now believes her husband could have been murdered. She takes a deep drag of her cigarette and, choking back tears, says: “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

The passing of Aquino, the rigging of elections...

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4977.shtml

The passing of Aquino, the rigging of elections and the need for people power
By Bob Fitrakis
Online Journal Guest Writer
Aug 4, 2009

The death of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino on August 1, 2009 should be remembered for many reasons: not just because she led the People Power revolution in the Philippines that stood for peace and human rights, and not just because she did it after the brutal Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos had her husband assassinated, but most importantly, she stood up to one of the first documented stolen elections.

While the American mainstream media steadfastly refuses to recognize the use of both computer hardware and software in modern election manipulation, President Ronald Reagan’s good buddy Marcos immediately knew the score with the new technology and blatantly used mainframe computers to rig his 1986 election. With the support of the Reagan administration, Marcos simply had the vote count shut down until “new tapes” were brought in that reversed Aquino’s victory.

All of this was captured on the nightly news, and more tellingly, in Hedrick Smith’s book, The Power Game, and the video he did called “The Power Game: The President.” The video documents the role of Senator Richard Lugar complaining to the world that somebody was cooking the numbers on the election computers. Fortunately for Aquino, most of the election workers walked out rather than accept the rigged election.

Not the case in Ohio in 2004. And coincidentally, August 2 marks the fourth anniversary of the death of the Reverend Bill Moss. He was the lead plaintiff who sued to overturn the 2004 Ohio presidential election. A key difference between the people of the Philippines and most of those in the U.S. is that the Philippine people took to the street in a general strike after the election was stolen.

The corruption of the Marcos regime was well established, including the bullet to the back of Corazon’s husband Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr.’s head when he returned from exile in the U.S. to ask for a democratic election. Recall Marcos had him assassinated right on the tarmac at the airport.

Yet, were the dealings of the Bush administration any less blatantly corrupt? You had the coup in Florida in the 2000 election, followed by the illegal occupation of Iraq, and the blatant embracing of torture and other violations of human rights before the eyes of the world. So, when Bush crony J. Kenneth Blackwell privatized the 2004 Ohio election bringing in private companies like Triad, Diebold, New Media, and Smartech, and the exit polls all indicated unprecedented vote theft -- it was Moss who led the charge.

The election integrity movement remains to evolve into a real people power movement that will wrest control of the computer software and hardware from the private vendors with direct ties to the Republican Party and the CIA-connected Bush family.

This weekend we should honor our election integrity heroes who have passed. The wondrous “ordinary housewife” Corazon Aquino who became the 11th president of the Philippines and beat back Reagan’s version of the U.S. as an evil empire, and Bill Moss, the man behind the Moss V. Bush lawsuit in Ohio that resulted in the first challenge to a state’s entire electoral college slate in U.S. history.

There is much work to be done. But much inspiration is the legacy of Aquino and Moss.

Bob Fitrakis is the freepress.org editor and was one of the four attorneys in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit.

5 Myths About an Election of Mythic Proportions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/13/AR2008111303287_pf.html

5 Myths About an Election of Mythic Proportions
By Chris Cillizza
Sunday, November 16, 2008; B03

The 2008 presidential election ended less than two weeks ago, but the mythmaking machine has already begun to churn. President-elect Barack Obama transformed the face of the electorate! The Republican Party will be a miserable minority in Congress for the next century! Cats and dogs are now living together! Below we explode the five biggest myths that have already sprung up around the election that was.

1. The Republican Party suffered a death blow.

There's no question that losing six Senate seats and 24 House seats (not to mention the White House) wasn't a step forward for the Grand Old Party. But there are two good reasons to believe that Republicans will be back on their feet sooner than many people expect.

First, much of the Republicans' permanent political class has concluded that electing Sen. John McCain as president would have amounted to applying a Band-Aid to a gaping wound. Given the state of the party -- bereft of a signature new idea and without many fresh faces -- plenty of Republican operatives have come to subscribe to what I'd call the Ra's al Ghul theory of rebuilding: Ghul, a villain in the movie "Batman Begins," advocates destroying the city of Gotham to rebuild it from the ground up. "It is beyond saving and must be allowed to die," he says -- a sentiment echoed by many Republicans these days, who argue that hitting rock bottom was the only way to allow new faces and ideas to emerge.

Second, historical electoral patterns suggest that Republicans could pick up a passel of Senate and House seats in 2010 -- the first midterm election under President Obama. Every president (save one) since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 has lost seats in the House in his first midterm election. The exception? George W. Bush in 2002, when Republicans picked up six House seats and two Senate seats -- a historic anomaly widely credited to the world-changing events of Sept. 11, 2001.

2. A wave of black voters and young people was the key to Obama's victory.

Afraid not. Heading into Election Day, cable news, newspapers and blogs were dominated by excited chatter about record levels of enthusiasm for Obama among two critical groups: African Americans and young voters (aged 18-29). It made sense: Black voters were energized to cast a historic vote for the first African American nominee of either major party; young people -- following a false start with former Vermont governor Howard Dean in 2004 -- had bought into Obama in a major way during the primary season, and they finally seemed on the cusp of realizing their much-promised potential as a powerhouse voting bloc.

Or not. Exit polling suggests that there was no statistically significant increase in voting among either group. Black voters made up 11 percent of the electorate in 2004 and 13 percent in 2008, while young voters comprised 17 percent of all voters in 2004 and 18 percent four years later.

The surge in young and African American voters is not entirely the stuff of myth, however. Although their percentages as a portion of the electorate didn't increase measurably, Obama did seven points better among black voters than Sen. John F. Kerry did in 2004 and scored a 13-point improvement over Kerry's total among young voters.

3. Now that they control the White House and Congress, Democrats will usher in a new progressive era.

Not likely. At first glance, the numbers do look encouraging for proponents of a new New Deal era in government: Obama claimed at least 364 electoral votes and more than 52.5 percent of the overall popular vote, while Democrats now control at least 57 seats in the Senate and 255 in the House.

But look more closely, and you see a heavy influx of moderate to conservative members in the incoming freshman Democratic class, particularly in the House. Of the 24 Republican-held districts that Democrats won in 2008, Kerry carried just three in 2004. Democratic victories on Nov. 4 included Alabama's 2nd district (where Kerry took 33 percent of the vote) and Idaho's at-large seat (where Kerry won just 30 percent). In fact, according to tabulations by National Journal's Richard E. Cohen, 81 House Democrats in the 111th Congress will represent districts that Bush carried in 2004.

The fact that roughly a third of the Democratic House majority sits in seats with Republican underpinnings (at least at the presidential level) is almost certain to keep a liberal dream agenda from moving through Congress. The first rule of politics is survival, and if these new arrivals to Washington want to stick around, they are likely to build centrist voting records between now and 2010.

4. A Republican candidate could have won the presidency this year.

I doubt it. In the hastily penned postmortems of campaign '08, much of the blame for McCain's loss seems to have fallen at the feet of the candidate and his advisers, who (so the narrative goes) made a series of lousy strategic decisions that wound up costing the Arizona senator the White House. There's little question that some of the choices McCain and his team made -- the most obvious being the impulsive decision to suspend his campaign and try to broker a deal on the financial rescue bill, only to see his efforts blow up in his face -- did not help. But a look at this year's political atmospherics suggests that the environment was so badly poisoned that no Republican -- not Mitt Romney, not Mike Huckabee, not even the potential future GOP savior, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal -- could have beaten Obama on Nov. 4.

Why not? Three words (and a middle initial): President George W. Bush.

In the national exit poll, more than seven in 10 voters said that they disapproved of the job Bush was doing; not surprisingly, Obama resoundingly won that group, 67 percent to 31 percent. But here's an even more stunning fact: While 7 percent of the exit-poll sample strongly approved of the job Bush was doing, a whopping 51 percent strongly disapproved. Obama won those strong disapprovers 82 percent to 16 percent. And Bush's approval numbers looked grim for the GOP even before the September financial meltdown.

Just one in five voters in the national exit polls said that the country was "generally going in the right direction." McCain won that group 71 percent to Obama's 27 percent. But among the 75 percent of voters who said that the country was "seriously off on the wrong track," Obama had a thumping 26-point edge.

Those numbers speak to the damage that eight years of the Bush administration have done to the Republican brand. It's a burden that any candidate running for president with an "R" after his -- or her -- name would have had to drag around the country.

5. McCain made a huge mistake in picking Sarah Palin.

No subject is more likely to break up a dinner party early than the Alaska governor McCain chose as his running mate. Everyone not only has an opinion about her qualifications (or lack thereof) but also feels it necessary to share those opinions with anyone within shouting range.

Love her or loathe her, the data appear somewhere close to conclusive that Palin did little to help -- and, in fact, did some to hurt -- McCain's attempts to reach out to independents and Democrats. But just because Palin doesn't appear to have helped McCain move to the middle doesn't mean that picking her was the wrong move.

Remember where McCain found himself this past summer. He had won the Republican nomination, but the GOP base clearly felt little buy-in into his campaign. A slew of national polls reflected that energy gap, with Democrats revved up about the election and their candidate and Republicans somewhere between tepid and glum.

Enter Palin, who was embraced with a bear hug by the party's conservative base. All of a sudden, cultural conservatives were thrilled at the chance to put "one of their own" in the White House. In fact, of the 60 percent of voters who told exit pollsters that McCain's choice of Palin was a "factor" in their final decision, the Arizona senator won 56 percent to 43 percent.

For skittish conservatives looking for more evidence that McCain understood their needs and concerns, Palin did the trick. It's hard to imagine conservatives rallying to McCain -- even to the relatively limited extent that they did -- without Palin on the ticket. And without the base, McCain's loss could have been far worse.

Which myths did we miss? Let the conversation begin!

chris.cillizza@washingtonpost.com

Chris Cillizza covers the White House for The Washington Post and writes "The Fix," a political blog, on washingtonpost.com.

Sea of white faces at Republican convention

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080905164053.kt1koqqw&show_article=1

Sea of white faces at Republican convention
Sep 5, 2008

There is such a thing as a black Republican, but they have been all but invisible at the party's national convention which is hardly representative of America's diverse population.
Among the party's 2,380 delegates gathered in St. Paul only 36 are African Americans and very few other visible minorities were to be found on the convention floor.

This is the first time in 40 years that there has been such a weak representation of minorities at a major political party convention, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who did not appear at the convention, is like a tree hiding in the forest of the Republican landscape.

For the past six years there has not been a single black Republican governor, senator or representative in the US Congress.

Blacks comprise 12.4 percent of the US population while 14.8 percent are Hispanics, according to the most recent census data.

By comparison, nearly a quarter of Democratic delegates at the party's convention in Denver last month -- some 1,087 -- were black.

Democrats have one black senator -- presidential nominee Barack Obama -- and 42 representatives in Congress.

The party is heavily favored by African Americans: polls show that nine in ten support Obama's bid to become the nation's first black president.

Deborah Honeycutt, a doctor from Georgia who is running for a seat in the house of representatives in the November 4 elections, hopes to be the first black Republican woman elected to Congress.

But it's a nearly impossible proposition: her district is overwhelmingly Democratic.

"We've given 90 percent of our vote to one party basically since the 60s and are we where we thought we would be by doing that?" Honeycutt told AFP, adding that as a private doctor she had become angered by all the red tape, rules and regulations she felt were holding back small businesses.

"Are our children better educated? Are our neighborhoods safer? Are we economically better off? The answer is a resounding No!"

"The reasons I chose the Republican party is because the values and principles of the Republican are similar to mine."

Only one African American was given the opportunity to address the convention during prime time -- former Maryland governor Michael Steele.

He spoke for about 10 minutes Wednesday ahead of Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Rudolph Giuliani, who all lost out to John McCain in the party's primary, and briefly touched upon the color of his skin.

"The ideal of a colorblind society is worth fighting for because each man, woman, and child is an individual and not a member of some hyphenated class or group," he told the convention.

But when asked about the lack of black representation, Steele admitted to the Washington Post: "It's hard to look around and not get frustrated."

The Maryland delegation, a state whose population is 29 percent black, did not have any other African American in attendance.

Other visible minorities, most notably Hispanics, were given the chance to address the convention, but not during the time when it was being broadcast live on local television.

The Republicans were the first party, however, to elect a governor of Indian heritage.

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, the son of Punjabi immigrants, is a rising star in the Republican party, but was forced to miss the convention in order to coordinate the state's response to Hurricane Gustav.

How The Democrats Can Blow It...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/22249602/how_the_democrats_can_blow_it_in_six_easy_steps/print

How The Democrats Can Blow It ...In Six Easy Steps
A blueprint for losing the most winnable presidential election in American history
MICHAEL MOORE
Aug 21, 2008

For years now, nearly every poll has shown that the American people are right in sync with the platform of the Democratic Party. They are pro-environment, pro-women's rights and pro-choice. They don't like war. They want the minimum wage raised, and they want a single-payer universal health-care system. The American public agrees with the Republican Party on only one major issue: They support the death penalty.

So you would think the Democrats would be cleaning up, election after election. Obviously not. The Democrats appear to be professional losers. They are so pathetic in their ability to win elections, they even lose when they win! So when you hear Democrats and liberals and supporters of Barack Obama say they are worried that John McCain has a good chance of winning, they ain't a-kidding. Who would know better than the very people who have handed the Republicans one election after another on a silver platter? Yes, be afraid, be very afraid.

In an effort to help the party doofuses and pundits — and the candidate himself — spare all of us another suicide-inducing election night, as the results giving the election to the Republican pour in, here is the blueprint from the Democrats' past losing campaigns. Just follow each of these steps and you, the Democratic Party establishment, can help elect John Sidney McCain III to a four-year extension of the Bush Era.

1. Keep saying nice things about McCain.

If you want to help elect McCain, keep blessing him as if he were the white knight who accidentally hopped on the wrong horse. Keep reminding a country at war that he, and he alone, is a war hero. That he's been "good on global warming" and campaign finance. Say that enough, and you know what happens? People start to believe it! You've sold them on the idea that McCain isn't a bad egg, and they do not hear the rest of what you have to say: "But John McCain is four more years of George W. Bush."

Don't remind people that McCain wants to help the oil companies even more than Bush did. Don't bring up that he wants to outlaw abortion. Back away from painting him as the guy who thinks it's a good idea to stay in Iraq until pigs fly. That way, if you keep praising him, you can send a mixed message to the less informed, who are simply not going to figure it out. When they walk into a voting booth, they will see two names on the ballot:

BARACK OBAMA
WAR HERO

Trust me, this ain't Sweden you're living in. War Hero wins every time.

2. Pick a running mate who is a conservative white guy or a general or a Republican.

Yes, it will seem like smart politics at first. Shore up Obama's lack of military experience with a hawk. Be true to Obama's message that he'll be a president for everybody by having him run with a Republican. Make a pitch to the purple states of Virginia and Indiana by putting one of their own on the ticket. Or make the red state of Ohio happy by handing the vice presidential slot to its governor. Just so long as Obama's running mate screams "same old, same old," making it harder for him to attract the new voters he needs to win.

There is nothing wrong with picking someone who can help him win a swing state or someone who has more experience than he does in certain areas. But when I hear pundits say things like, "He has to pick a Catholic," well, John Kerry was a total Catholic, and the Catholic vote went to Mr. W. I mean, here's one of the largest groups in the country — 66 million Catholics — and they/we have only allowed one Catholic to be president in 219 years. You would think they would have been flocking to Kerry in 2004. THAT IS NOT THE WAY PEOPLE THINK. IT IS THE WAY PUNDITS THINK. Keep listening to them and you can help elect John McCain the next President of the United States.

3. Keep writing speeches for Obama that make him sound like a hawk.

Here's what Obama said in front of the American-Israeli lobbying group the day after the final primaries:
"The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat."

And: "Let there be no doubt — I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel. Sometimes there are no alternatives to confrontation."

Sounds like a speech McCain would give. Sounds like he's ready to invade Iran. Obama staked out an even worse position for the Palestinians vis-à-vis Jerusalem than the one held by George W. Bush. Keep that up, and more and more supporters will be less and less enthused. He also says he wants to send more troops to Afghanistan. The implied message of all of this is that the Republican plan is a good plan. So why would voters want to elect the candidate imitating the Republican when they can get the real thing?

4. Forget that this was a historic year for women.

Obama should be making a speech about gender like the brilliant one he gave on race back in March. Millions of people, especially women, had high hopes for the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Attention must be paid. And you don't pay attention to it by having your advisers run your wife through the makeover machine, trying to soften her up and pipe her down. Michelle Obama has been one of the most refreshing things about this election year. But within weeks of the end of the primary season, the handlers stepped in to deal with the "Michelle problem."

What problem? She speaks her mind? She wears what she wants? Her biggest sin, according to the punditocracy, was to say that, as a black woman, this may be the first time in her adult life she's been really proud of her country. Shock! Surprise! Outrage! But not from any of the black women I know.

You have to be white and stupid to not know what she was really saying. If you don't understand, let me ask you this: Have you been proud of what this country has been doing in the past few years? Are you proud your neighbors had their house taken from them? Are you proud to be sending a good chunk of your paycheck to the oil companies so they can post record profits? Are you proud to know your vice president outed one of our spies and put her life and the lives of others at risk?

That's all she was saying — what we are all feeling.

Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton both lost the white-male vote but won the White House. They did so by winning the black, Hispanic and female vote. That HAS to be Obama's strategy to win. Otherwise, Cindy McCain will be our new First Lady.

5. Show up to a gunfight with a peashooter.

Convince yourself that the Republicans are just going to roll over and play dead because there is simply no life left in their party. Convince yourself this one is in the bag! Convince yourself that if you play by the rules, the Republicans will too.
And when McCain and his people roll out their nuclear arsenal on you, just go all sweet and sensitive and logical. Believe that the truth shall prevail, that good people will see what the Republicans are up to. As they smear you, your family, your religious beliefs — cower, back down, go on the defensive.

If they say you should quit your church, quit your church! If they explode over your speaking the truth about the anger and despair of the white working class, take it all back! If they ask you to stand on your head and do the hokeypokey, snap to it and do it with a smile on your face — and don't forget to apologize for not doing the hokeypokey earlier; you meant no disrespect, and please don't take it as any indication that you do not love your country, your flag and your Christian God.

Do all of that and then listen for that sound — the sound of your supporters shuffling away in silence. They'll stop showing up at campaign headquarters. They'll say they're too busy to go on another door-to-door literature drop. On Election Day, they'll do their duty and vote, but they will not be up at 6 a.m. driving around the city's neighborhoods, picking up strangers who need a ride to the polls.

And on the way to the polls, some of them might just come to a stoplight, turn around and go home. Maybe they'll pick up a six-pack on the way. Maybe there's a new episode of Deal or No Deal on tonight. That would be nice. The girls are pretty, especially the blonde in the third row. Wait, they're all blond. No, not that one — THAT one! Oh yes, I see her. She is pretty. But the Man in the Booth has picked up the phone! He's calling down to you. Deal? Or no deal? No deal! No deal! Don't do it! Hey, I'm outta beer! Why didn't I pick up a case? Now I gotta spend eight bucks on gas to go buy more beer! Aaaaarrrggggghhhhhh!!!! HOWIE MANDEL ISN'T WEARING A FLAG PIN!! U-S-A! U-S-A!

6. Denounce me!

Obama, at some point, might be asked this question: "Michael Moore has endorsed you. But he recently said (fill in the blank with some outrageously offensive line taken out of context). Will you still accept his endorsement, or do you denounce him?"

And he better denounce me, or they will tear him to shreds. He had better back away not only from me but from anyone and everyone who veers a bit too far to the left of where his advisers have told him is the sweet spot for all those red-state voters. I won't take it personally. After all, I'm not the guy who married him or baptized his kids. I'm just the idiot who went to the same terrorist, Muslim school of flag-pin desecrators he went to.

I remember poor John Kerry not even being able to admit, when asked by Larry King, if he had seen Fahrenheit 9/11. "No," he said, "I haven't. . . . I don't plan to, right now." But he had indeed seen it. I sat there watching him say this, and I just felt sorry for him and for the election he was about to lose.

We can't take four more years of this madness, Barack. We need you to be a candidate who will fight back every time they attack you. Actually, don't even wait till you have to fight back. Fight first! Show some vision and courage and smoke them out. Keep asking why these lobbyists are McCain's best friends. Let's finally have a Democrat who's got the balls to fire first.

So Barack, by denouncing me, you can help McCain get elected. Because when you denounce me, it's not really me you're distancing yourself from — it's the millions upon millions of people who feel the same way about things as I do. And many of them are the kind of crazy voters who have no problem voting for a Nader just to prove a point.

Elections have been lost by just 537 votes. I don't want that to happen to you.

From the forthcoming book "Mike's Election Guide," by Michael Moore. Copyright © 2008 by Michael Moore. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing, New York, NY.