From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Monday morning at 7 on CONNECT THE DOTS, on KPFK. 90.7FM" Secretary of State Debra Bowen will be with us to tell us what California is doing to make sure our votes count, and what to do when you see violations at the polls.
And, nationally, can this election still be stolen. If so, which states are most likely to be corrupted. Brad Freidman of Brad Blog,com will fill us in. We'll talk more about the ballot with Marcy Winograd. Where do progressives agree and disagree with Obama's agenda? Even if progressives support Obama (and most do) what should their role be once he is elected? And why is Senator Diane Feinstein pushing NO on Prop 5 which rehabilitates drug offenders instead of throwing them in our overcrowded jails. We'll hear from Margaret Dooley-Sammuli Deputy Campaign Manager of YES on Prop 5. Lila Garrett (Host of CONNECT THE DOTS) KPFK 90.7 FM in LA; 98.7 Santa Barbara Airs Mondays from 7AM to 8AM. You can podcast or download the broadcast by logging on to KPFK.org, click audio archives, click PrYograms, scroll down to CONNECT THE DOTS. Each show is on line for three months. PDLA mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.svpal.org/mailman/listinfo/pdla *** http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081030_mandate_08_reagan_vs_fdr/ Mandate '08: Reagan vs. FDR By David Sirota Truthdig: Oct 31, 2008 So it has all come down to this. After two years and a quarter-billion dollars worth of ads, the pulverizing election has become a steel-cage match pitting rivals against each other-and not Immigrants versus Natives, Americans versus Foreigners or Whites versus Blacks. No, John McCain and Barack Obama have made the race's final weeks an ideological proxy war between two presidential icons who still loom larger than them: Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt. McCain promises to "follow in [Reagan's] tradition and in his footsteps" while vilifying Obama as a 1930s-era "socialist" looking to "redistribute wealth." Obama counters by invoking Roosevelt's speeches and depicting the financial meltdown as "the final verdict" on McCain's "failed philosophy" (i.e., Reaganism). Mind you, neither personifies these predecessors. Obama's moderate record is not FDR's quasi-socialism, and McCain has renounced some of his Reagan-inspired dogma. Both also ignore inconsistencies. Obama criticizes the "failed philosophy" of Reagan conservatism while infusing some of his own prescriptions with such conservatism. McCain attacks Obama's "socialism" after voting for the bank bailout bill-the most aggressive stroke of socialism in contemporary American history. But all that is less important right now than the duo's binary framing. They both effectively say a vote for McCain is a vote to continue Reagan's trickle-down tax cuts and free-market fundamentalism, and a vote for Obama is a vote to resurrect Roosevelt's regulations and redistributions. And because this choice has been made so clear-because we know what we're voting on-whoever wins will have a huge mandate to implement the ideology he thematically represented. That's why conservatives are so worried. They see the cause and effect: As McCain doubles down on the right's economic catechism, Obama is surging. Even in traditional Gipper territory like Colorado and Virginia, the Rooseveltian Socialist is running ahead of Reagan Reincarnate. Conservatives' response is a pre-emptive "ah, nah, can't hear you!" They contend that no matter how big progressives may win on Election Day, this is nonetheless a center-right nation. Indeed, a LexisNexis search shows this poll-tested term-"center-right nation"-is lately among the Punditburo's most ubiquitous Orwellian buzzwords. From a Newsweek cover story by conservative dittohead Jon Meacham to a Wall Street Journal screed by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan to a Politico.com diatribe by former Rudy Giuliani aide John Avlon, the "center-right nation" phrase is being parroted with the propagandistic discipline of Cuba's Ministry of Information. The proof of this center-right nation? Republicans cite polls showing more Americans call themselves conservative than liberal. While that data point certainly measures brand name, those same surveys undermine the right's larger argument because they show majorities support progressive positions on most economic issues. Nevertheless, if Obama wins, expect more frantic talk from the fringe about how electing a black man billed as an Islamic Karl Marx obviously means our country is more conservative than ever. We'll also be treated to hysterical assertions like those from former Bush aide Peter Wehner, who this week told The Washington Post that "it is a mistake to assume that significant GOP losses, should they occur, are a referendum on conservatism." But with the Bush era finely tuning America's BS detector, repetition and revisionism can no longer cloak reality. "As the Republican ticket continues to run against the very idea of progressive politics, they are sowing the seeds of the post-election realignment narrative," writes The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, adding that a McCain loss in such an ideologically polarized contest means "Democrats can justifiably claim that conservatism itself has been rejected." That would be the very mandate for the "direct, vigorous action" Roosevelt described in his 1933 inaugural address. Should a President Obama try to capitalize on it, he will have nothing to fear but fear itself. David Sirota is a best-selling author whose newest book, "The Uprising," was released in June. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network, both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota. © 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc. *** http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081029_election_protection/ Election Protection By Amy Goodman Truthdig: Oct 29, 2008 Election Day approaches, and with it a test of our election system's integrity. Who will be allowed to vote; who will be barred? Who will get paper ballots; who will use electronic voting machines? Will polls be open long enough to accommodate what is expected to be a historic turnout? Veteran activist Harvey Wasserman has co-written four books on elections and voter rights. He says John Kerry won Ohio in 2004. Why look back? Wasserman is concerned about the attempt by the Ohio Republican Party, with help from the Bush White House, to challenge the registration of new Ohio voters: "The GOP is trying to disenfranchise these 200,000 people by challenging their right to vote, asking the secretary of state here, Jennifer Brunner, to let the counties investigate and knock off the voter rolls, if they choose to, people who have minor discrepancies in their Social Security numbers or driver's license numbers. And the secretary of state has rightfully showed that many of these mistakes come from typographical errors when the numbers are entered in at the agencies." The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only the U.S. Department of Justice can purge these new registrants from the voter rolls. Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner, of Ohio, and President Bush urged U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to take action, potentially purging these 200,000 people. Advocates feared the homeless in Ohio would be disenfranchised because they lack a traditional address or identification (Wasserman notes that many of them may be veterans). U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus ruled that Ohio counties must allow voters who list their addresses as park benches or other non-building locations. Wasserman's two main concerns about the integrity of the election are mass disenfranchisement through computerized purging and the failures of electronic voting machines, which can skew vote tallies and cause impossibly long lines at polling places (as can the provision of too few voting machines, whether they work well or not). These issues are both coming to a head in Colorado. There, Secretary of State Mike Coffman, a Republican who is also running for Congress, has been sued by Common Cause, Mi Familia Vota and the Service Employees International Union for purging 30,000 voters within a 90-day window before an election. Six thousand seven hundred new registrants were purged for failing to check a box on the voter-registration form. Colorado has seen enthusiastic participation in early voting (some estimates nationally put the number of early voters at an astounding 10 million, with days to go), and also has seen many voters opt for mail-in ballots. However, more than 11,000 voters in Denver did not receive their mail-in ballots because of a mistake made by Sequoia Voting Systems, the company that was supposed to have delivered 21,000 ballots to a Denver mail-processing facility on Oct. 16. Election officials promise the ballots will be delivered. Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com told me: "Sequoia is one of the big-four voting-machine companies. Of course, they have failed in state after state." Friedman also reports on "vote flipping," a problem with electronic, touch-screen voting machines. "It's West Virginia, it's Tennessee, it's Texas, Missouri, Nevada ... people go in and vote for a Democratic straight-party ticket or for Barack Obama, and the vote flips to a Republican or some other candidate." The companies claim the machines can be calibrated to work properly. Friedman disagrees: "These machines need to be pulled out, because even when they work, the problem is that there is absolutely no way to ever verify that any vote ever cast on a touch-screen machine like this has been recorded as per the voter's intent." In response to video of Georgia early voters waiting eight hours, Friedman blogged: "Thank you to those voters who were willing to hang in there! Shame on you to those officials who set up this system that can't even accommodate the limited numbers of early voters! God save us all next Tuesday. Stay strong and brave people!" The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has sued Virginia's Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, on the grounds that he is unprepared to deal with a massive onslaught of voters there Nov. 4. Virginia is not among the 31 states with early voting. Thousands of lawyers and citizen-activists will be monitoring the polling places on Election Day. People are posting videos of election problems at videothevote.org. When you go to cast your vote, take a friend or neighbor, take your ID and take a camera as well. Election protection is everyone's job. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!" a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She has been awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the "Alternative Nobel" prize, and will receive the award in the Swedish Parliament in December. © 2008 Amy Goodman Distributed by King Features Syndicate ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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