Vote For Change: Rock vs Bush

SOB and Ms SOB had the good fortune to have tickets to the final concert of the Vote for Change tour, an effort to raise money for ACT (America Coming Together), a progressive group dedicated to voter registration. This is one of the few occassions where the much overused term "awsome" actually fails to fully capture the magnitude of the event - John Melancamp, Bonnie Raitt, Keb Mo, Jackson Browne, REM, the Dixie Chicks, James Taylor, the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and more, including Tim Robbins who just appeared on stage singing harmony. The MCI Center holds 21,000 people and they were all really into the event. The show, broadcast live on the Sundance Channel, started at 7:00 PM and ended at 12:25 AM, with a sold out house on their feet for the final numbers that featured all the evening's principals.

If Kerry doesn't win the election it won't be for lack of enthusiasm on the part of his supporters. As James Taylor said: "For all you undecided voters, just pay close attention to what the candidates say, and then vote for the smart one.

Amen.

Democracy in Afghanistan - Bush Style

Amid controversy, Afghan vote results tallied: Karzai challengers boycott, claiming fraud and incompetence

Imagine that. Right out of the gate the Afghans manage a truely American style election with charges of voter fraud and corruption and a general feeling that the American backed candidate, Ahmid Karzi, would be "elected" no matter what. So why should we be suspicious of a "free" election in Afghanistan? Ted Rall, in A Laughably Fake Election in Afghanistan provides a partial answer:

Afghanistan will again preview future failure in Iraq on October 9, when the United States will hold its first occupation-era national election. A real Afghan election? Not now; not in 20 years.

Afghanistan doesn't even have a government. Puppet president/former Unocal oil consultant Hamid Karzai is the weak, ineffectual mayor of Kabul. As Agence France reports, "Karzai has tried and largely failed to extend his control outside the capital of Kabul and into medieval-era provinces which remain under the sway of regional warlords." In 95 percent of the country, the warlords and their thuggish commanders issue visas to travel through their districts and charge entry fees to travelers. And the Taliban are back. U.S. military officers have already ceded several large provinces to Taliban governors.

And just for grins, with no real national media, how would most Afghan voters even get to know anything about any of the candidates? Just asking.

Afghan bureaucracy is non-existent. Afghans don't have passports, driver's licenses or national ID cards. Representatives of the Karzai government can't travel freely, nor do they know who lives in their country, since they have never taken a census. Estimates of the total population vary widely, between 24 and 28 million. Millions more live in in Iran and Pakistan; absentee ballots are impossible because Afghanistan doesn't have a postal system. To add to the fun, many Afghans are like Madonna; they only use one name. Because there are no phones or electricity to allow officials to crosscheck records, Madonna from Kabul can easily register as Madonna from Mazar-e-Sharif and Madonna from Kandahar. The Bushies brag that 12 million Afghans registered to vote; they leave out that only 10 million are eligible.

Is Bushworld a great fantasy, or what?

Send Judith Miller to Jail

While it isn't getting the media attention I would have expected, a judge today has directed NY Times reporter Judith Miller to jail for refusing to identify the administration figures who contacted her with information that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. Miller, of course, maintains that she cannot reveal her sources because to do so would mean that whistle blowers would not be willing to come forward and - in her words - "the public would not be informed."

Well, where to start? A real case could be made that without Judith Miller's exaggerated reporting about Iraq's mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction (mostly based on lies from Ahmed Chalabi and his followers) we would never have gone to war in Iraq. She has never admitted to any mistake despite having virtually all of her frontpage extravaganzas revealled to be so much hot air. Now she is refusing to identify federal criminals who attempted to use journalists in Bush's war against his enemies. In the whole ugly Iraq situation Miller has been a player and not a reporter, a role she continues in this legal grandstanding.

VP Debate Insanity:Part 2

SOB was so excited by the vigorous VP 'debate' that he went to sleep after the first hour. Commentators this morning assure him that he missed some really good stuff, but what he saw was so shallow that it's hard to imagine it getting better.

See, for me the problem is that the two parties have moved so close together that they can't really clash on most issues. The Dems want to fault the Repugs for the 'way' they went to war in Iraq - as if the war makes any sense - which it clearly doesn't. Then they want to claim that they will be able to fight the 'war on terror' better, as if the 'war' on terror were something real rather than a bad figure of speech.

There are many real issues that the American public needs to hear about in this election season, but what the two parties are giving us is total crap. I really want Bush and his whole crew out - but the Democractic opposition is not much of an alternative. They promise to be more hawkish on Iraq, more supportive of Israel against the Palistenians, more 'whatever' is required to be alert to 'evil' in our midst. This is not the set of choices I want. This is nasty nonsense. And we deserve better.

VP Debate Insanity

SOB is hold up in an ugly motel room in East Hartford, CT watching the pre-Veep debate coverage. It's enough to make one scream; hours of idiotic talking heads predicting what will or won't happen in just a couple of hours. What's the point? Most of this talk is nonsense and will be invalidated as soon as the actual debate happens. Give it a rest and wait and see what actually happens.

Political Reality vs Laura Bush

School invite to first lady yanked

A couple of years ago, Laura Bush cancelled a White House poetry event because some of the poets invited had publicly said they would take the occassion to read anti-war poems. The response was the creation of the organization Poets Against the War and lots of negative publicity for the criticism averse first family. Now the tables have been turned and Laura Bush as been dis-invited from a reading in a public school because of her husband's stand on the assault weapons ban:

Hubbard Woods School officials last week withdrew an invitation to first lady Laura Bush to spend 30 minutes reading to school children after meeting resistance from local Democrats and gun-control advocates.

Invoking memories of a shooting rampage at the school 16 years ago, members of two gun-control lobby groups told the school's principal, Maureen Cheever, there was no place in the "sacred" halls of Hubbard Woods School for a representative of the Bush administration, which they argued has a lax stance on gun control.

Seems that what goes around comes around.

Bushworld vs the Real World

Even the Media Sees the 'World' Through Bush's Eyes

One of the problems in watching the debates last night was in seeing how far right the Bush administration has skewed the terms discourse. John Kerry had to accept numerous ideologically slanted postitions in order to even have a basis for debate. This gives an unjust advantage to the Republican zealots from the start and is a hard thing to counter because it requires a different debate on its own terms, and one the media is not willing to engage in.

By way of example, consider this story in CNN online, "U.S.: 109 insurgents killed in major offensive":

In the largest operation seen in Iraq's Sunni Triangle city in months, an estimated 3,000 U.S. troops moved into Samarra late Thursday. It was a response to what the United States called "repeated and unprovoked attacks by anti-Iraqi forces."

The article does not bother to explore the implications of our government maintaining that its attack is in "response" to "unprovoked attacks." Somehow we are all expected to accept that 130,000 U. S. troops on Iraqi soil and daily bombings of Iraqi cities don't constitute a provocation. I am constantly amazed at the seeming inability of ordinary Americans to put themselves in the place of those we are supposidly 'helping' through violence and force. If the shoe were on the other foot, would most Americans stand passively by while foreign troops attacked our fellow countrymen and told us it was for our own good?

Isn't it time for some real truth telling and honest assessment of what is happening in the world? Bush claims to be a Christian; is a full out military assault on a basically civilian population what he thinks a "good Samaratin" sould do in Samarra?

Bush vs Kerry

A Great Communicator Bush is NOT

It was with some trepidation that I approached the presidential debates last night. I have come to cringe when hearing John Kerry's constant pompous upward inflection, ending long run-on sentences that tend to confuse rather than clarify. Of course, I have long since simply given up hearing the annoying nonsense Bush parrots over and over with his idiotic self satisfied smirk - proud to have managed a complete sentence that some staffer crafted for him. Much to my surprise, the debates were a welcome change. Kerry kept his answers brief and emphatic and Bush was - if this is possible - even worse than normal, appearing annoyed and petulant at having his judgement questioned and actually having to explain his reasons for being such a jerk.

Kerry clearly "won", but whether that will make much of a difference is another question.