The Impeachment Hearing Room

Children Soldiers (Rage or Illness will follow viewing) http://thomasfortenberry.net/?p=3907

By kenny's sideshow(kenny's sideshow)

We refer here, of course, to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney - their immediate removal from office being of the UTMOST urgency. They SHOULD have been impeached as soon as their complicity in the attacks of 9/11 became apparent.
kenny's sideshow - http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/

Legal effort begins to prevent Cheney from covering criminal actionsBy Mikael Months before the Bush administration ends, historians and open-government advocates are concerned that Vice President Cheney, who has long bristled at requirements to disclose his records, will destroy or withhold key documents that ...Impeach Bush For Peace - http://impeachforpeace.org/impeach_bush_blog

Country LastOpEdNews - Newtown,PA,USAStrange, then, that a convention chock-a-block with reactionaries didn’t stop a moment to sing the praises of the good lads Bush and Cheney. ...See all stories on this topic

Hey, did you know that John McCain was a POW?

Did you also know that he was a POW, and that he was a POW?

Now that I’ve recapped seventy percent of the Republican Convention last week, let me fill in the remaining 30 percent: hypocrisy, arrogance, lies and bullshit.

This definitely demonstrates two things about John McCain. First, that his judgement is deeply impaired. We know, for example, that he had hardly vetted Sarah Palin at all, other than within the last couple of days before the announcement. We know, from Alaskan Republicans no less, that no one from the McCain campaign was up there asking questions prior to the choice (but they are now!). We know that McCain had met her all of once before making the choice. Americans really need to ask themselves, do we truly want another four years of a president who goes on gut hunches and politicizes every decision?

'Not one more day of US imperialism'Party for Socialism and Liberation - USABush and Cheney should not be simply impeached. They should be indicted as war criminals. I was sent to Iraq in 2003 not to save the Iraqi people, ...See all stories on this topic

Why We're Planning to Prosecute Cheney and BushAmerican Chronicle - Beverly Hills,CA,USABush and Cheney bore me. What interests me and inflames me is the desire to establish the rule of law, not for its own sake but in order to promote peace, ...See all stories on this topic

2014By ralphlopez ... tail feathers but good, right up to their balls, in the middle of an election. We should have impeached their treasonous asses while we could have, and put them on ice for war crimes later." Tags: impeach bush cheney miers (all tags)MyDD - http://www.mydd.com/section/Diary

September 05, 2008 IMPEACH BUSH IMPEACH CHENEY THE GOP EMPTY SUITS ...By Jerry(Jerry) IMPEACH BUSH IMPEACH CHENEY THE GOP EMPTY SUITS Republicans offer war and more war, tax cuts for the rich, carte blanche for polluters, immigrant bashing, assaults on civil liberties and the Constitution, bigotry against anyone who's ...Fresno California Liberal - http://fresnoliberal.blogspot.com/

The RoveCyberGate Campaign Can we at least send one deserving son of a bitch to jail?

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/prosecute_rove

We are working with Ohio election attorneys, Cliff Arnebeck, Bob Fitrakis and Henry Eckhart to find out the truth about recent information indicating that Karl Rove architected and directed a strategy to manipulate elections through the use of computers. Rove’s Cyber Guru, Michael Connell, has worked for the Bush family for over 20 years and helped Bush Sr., Jeb and Bush Jr. “win” their elections using his computer skills.

Whistleblowers, including Republicans, say that several of these and other national elections have been rigged through various invisible and illegal means, including vote tabulation manipulation, improper partisan use of the Justice Department to target Democrats and uncooperative US Attorneys, and the laundering of hundreds of millions of corporate dollars funneled into fake advocacy groups directed against Democrat candidates running for public office.

Ex-Alabama Governor Don Siegelman has stated publicly that Rove was the person who directed Siegelman’s rigged election and criminal prosecution. Here GOP cyber sleuth Stephen Spoonamore has stated publicly that the leadership of the GOP has been "lying and stealing elections" http://www.velvetrevolution.us/prosecute_rove/images/Spoon_Full.wmv and doing so through computers. http://www.velvetrevolution.us/Video/SpoonPC-2.wmv

According to the attorneys, Rove’s goal with this strategy is to establish a unitary Executive Branch with a supportive judiciary, a weak legislature and a fearful press. Corporate sponsors of this strategy, such as tobacco, energy, telecom, and pharmaceutical companies are rewarded with hands off government: deregulated oversight, stringent limits on class-action damages, the stacking of high courts with pro-business/anti-consumer Justices etc. http://www.velvetrevolution.us/images/Mukasey.pdf

VR’s campaign is in support of the Ohio attorneys’ use of a federal civil lawsuit in a new legal strategy of taking targeted discovery and depositions of those who have been identified as being involved with or having knowledge of Rove’s CyberGate, including Rove, Michael Connell, Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, Bob Ney, Brett Rapp, Ken Blackwell and others. The attorneys intend to file a racketeering RICO lawsuit against those identified in this case and will refer any proof of criminal activity to both state and federal authorities for criminal prosecution.

This legal strategy will require significant resources for lawyers, expert witnesses, videotaped depositions, public relations, and investigators. The attorneys will need to go toe to toe with the top lobbyist law firms which will be hired to represent these targets. One of our targets is the US Chamber of Commerce which has spent close to a half billion dollars on lobbying since George Bush was inaugurated. The attorneys assert that Rove has used the Chamber to bankroll many of the illegal attacks using fake front groups posing as advocacy organizations.
http://www.velvetrevolution.us/images/KAIRIS.doc.

The attorneys will need to respond immediately to what we expect to be a smear campaign by those implicated in this attack on democracy. Press and FEC reports show that Rove and Connell are now working for the McCain presidential campaign.

Our job does not stop with simply exposing the truth. We need to make sure that these same people are not able to manipulate the upcoming presidential election. Why are these people now working for John McCain?

Is it because they have promised him a win no matter what? We want to make sure that McCain knows exactly what these people have done and hold him to his promise of a clean election.

Growing evidence suggests that, together, they've delivered many times in the last decade.

We need your help.

DONATE HERE TO SUPPORT OUR “PROTECT ELECTIONS, PROSECUTE ROVE” CAMPAIGN. Let’s get to the bottom of this scandal before it’s too late.

Kris Kristofferson wrote the lyric that said, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." That's about what freedom means to the Republican party. While their lily white speakers talked up freedom inside the convention hall, protesters outside the hall got arrested on the slightest pretext. It's a little like the "free speech zones" that have followed George W. Bush throughout his presidency.

This column by Dave Lindorff is at www.commondreams.org:

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

One thing the Republicans are good at -- Coverup!Capitol Hill Blue - VA,USASo we have a potential POTUS and VP who are engaged in the same type of activities that we want to impeach Bush/Cheney for. "How can this possibly be read ...See all stories on this topic (Palin)





Sarah Palin For President?!By Jared Louche(Jared Louche) Want to support MoveOn.org? We're entirely funded by our 3.2 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.http://pol.moveon.org/. ...Back Room of the Hydrogen Bar - http://jaredlouche.livejournal.com/

From Steve Kraske moving with the John McCain-Sarah Palin entourage.

In Lee's Suummit, Palin took the stage of the pavilion at John Knox Village first and quickly described her running mate as "the only man in this race who's got what it takes to lead our country."

And later she said of McCain, "he doesn't run with the herd."In her short stump speech, Palin recited a litany of her own achievements in Alaska that have already becoming familiar fare to many Americans.

For instance, she once again described her decision to reject federal money to build the infamous "bridge to nowhere" because she she said if her state wanted the bridge it would build it itself. It's been widely reported, however, that she first championed the project and kept the federal appropriation for Alaska even after the bridge idea died.

Palin's speech was interrupted numerous times by chants of "Sarah, Sarah, Sarah" and "John McCain, John McCain."When McCain got his chance, he stressed the importance of Republicans winning Missouri in November."We must win this state, and we will to win the presidency of the United States," he said.

He described himself as a maverick, adding "now we have a team of mavericks. We understand that who we work for. We're going to work for you and we're going to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C., and take on the special interests. And we're going to reform the government."

He criticized Obama for decrying earmarks while seeking nearly $1 billion in those special appropriations.

"It's remarkable," McCain said.

He also knocked his Democratic rival for once saying that he had helped his country by increasing defense spending. But another time, McCain complained, Obama had claimed he had cut tens of billions of dollars in defense spending.

McCain also cited an ad campaign by the liberal group MoveOn.org that portrayed Gen. David Petraeus, then commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, as "General Betray Us." McCain claimed that Obama refused to vote on a Senate resolution to condemn that ad.

McCain told the crowd that "you may not always agree with me, but you will always know exactly where I stand."

The pair arrived at John Knox Village about 11:10 a.m., greeted by dozens of supporters waving signs. One read: "Palin for such a time as it is," but its precise meaning was lost on your tag-along correspondent. A handful of protesters were on hand as well.

Both McCain and Palin were scheduled to speak at the retirment community's pavilion this morning.

The walked off their bus to cheers from thousands in a light rain. Palin seemed to be the star and focus of many of the signs.

She faced the crowd, mouthed the words "wow" and "thank you" before grabbing a microphone and introducing McCain.

"It's such an honor to be here with John McCain, the next president of the United States," she said to those waiting outside the pavilion.

"This is absolutely overwhelming. ... You you to be out here showing your support, we can't thank you enough. It's going to take a lot of work here. Missouri, we love you."

Next, McCain said: "Was this just a great choice for the American people? What a great reformer. What a great governor. The most popular governor in the United States of America. … We’re going to go to Washington and drain the swamp."

Ticket-topper McCain left the President Hotel earlier this morning for media interviews in an office at 20th and Baltimore. That lasted about an hour.

His caravan, with your correspondent in tow, then returned to the President and about 10:40 a.m. Monday, the Republicans' vice presidential nominee joined McCain on his so-called Straight Talk Express bus bound for a joint appearance in Lee's Summit.

Submitted by Scott Canon on September 8, 2008 - 10:42am.2008 White House Race

As I have said before McCain and Palin will give you....
Submitted by panda on September 8, 2008 - 11:35am.

Something to die for whereas Obama will give you something to live for. McCain is a Bushie over and over again and I cannot take 4 more years of it and I do not think the country can take 4 more years of it.

When I read of the escalation of the unemployment rate and the government and the American people taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it scares the living daylight out of me. George Bush and the Republican Party for the most part have brought us to this point. I believe you are jeopardizing everything that is important to you if you vote for McCain.

So the message that McCain/Palin will give to you at Lee's Summit today will be a political one to get elected but not one that will address the multitude of problems brought to us by the likes of Karl Rove and others. Your vote in November will be an important one, make sure you make the right choice or you will be living with the consequences if the wrong choice is made.

Submitted by Throw the bums out on September 8, 2008 - 1:22pm.

BTW, correction on earlier post, Freddie and Fannie will be at least $200 Billion, not Million.

It's still the economy stupid. Obama's message has been drown out by the Republican convention. The bounce has been bigger due to the surprise VP pick. That's to be expected

However, the Democrats have got to get their message out on the economy now, and not get distracted by the petty attacks.

The one dynamic that scares me is that it takes time for the general public to see through a gimmick when it's new. Ross Perot jumped into the race late in 1992 and was riding high in the polls in September, but faded. Ollie North went before Congress, admitted he broke the law by diverting money, destroying evidence, and lying about it. Yet, his popularity for weeks was sky high because his reasoning was he was just a good soldier following orders. When he ran for Senate a few years later, he was defeated.

Palin appears to be in that dynamic. New and self proclaimed reformer. That's all people hear now, since that's all their campaign is saying and they won't allow her to do a press conference. When she lies about her record, the press should expose that. So should the Democrats. It will take awhile to cut through the rhetoric, that's just the way it is since most people only pay attention to politics for very brief periods. With less than 60 days, the Obama campaign and their surrogates, including the Clintons, have got to step it up now.

Palin reminds me of a cross between Dick Cheney and Richard Nixon. Cheney never admits when caught in a lie, even if you show him on video what he said. Palin is the same way. She still takes credit on cancelling the bridge to nowhere, when we know it's a lie.

Worse, like Nixon, she seems to have problems with grudges. As mayor and governor, her first actions were to figure out who was against her and who was for her. Loyalty tests were put to many employees, and it didn't matter if you were a law enforcement agent, or just a librarian, if you disagreed, pressure was brought to have the person resign or be fired. That's an enemies list.

Having Palin's personality type in the VP office, where she would have real power - access to the FBI, CIA, FISA courts and warrantless wiretapping - scares the crap out of me. She may put herself forward as an innocent hockey mom (which is the package the voters are buying into), but look at her behavior in Alaska. She earned her nickname as Barracuda. We don't need another Tricky Dick.

I contend the people of Missouri must be the dumbest per capita of all the states in the union. If McCain were to die before election day you know these yahoos would still vote for him. A team of mavericks indeed, they have a bridge they'd like to sell you.

McCain/Palin-more of the same - or worse?American Chronicle - Beverly Hills,CA,USAPalin who didn´t back McCain in the primary, vetoed wind power and clean coal projects, including a 50-megawatt wind farm on Fire Island. ..See all stories on this topic

As a European blow-in watching the American election process, I am dizzy from mind boggling, fact spinning, truth twisting, conflicting news about the candidates and their alleged policies. Never mind the length of the process and the money that is spent on their individual campaigns.
Palin, McCain´s surprise pick, steps out of the middle of nowhere into the limelight of the Republican convention. In a pit-bull attack dog fashion, she accuses Obama of flawed decisions, claims facts that can easily be repudiated.

She degrades and berates Obama´s record and experience while the rest of the party − hungry for a female candidate to counterbalance the excitement Obama has created, and to pick up disappointed Clinton voters− rallies around her like mindless sheep extolling her alleged virtues.

What little is known about Palin, makes clear that the only thing she shares with Hilary Clinton is a chromosome. She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. Her function on the ticket is to consolidate the pro-life evangelical base around McCain that was clearly not enchanted with this choice for nominee.

Palin who opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools said she will only support abstinence-only approaches; a policy that clearly hasn´t worked in her own family. McCain and Palin want us to leave their families alone. Yet they want to make rules for our families by eliminating our right to make our own choices over abortion, eliminate our access to family planning, education or domestic partner benefits, and our freedom from discrimination.

The mainstream media need to tell the nation a few facts about who they are going to vote on:

The War Within http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/war-within

In his "fourth insider account from the Bush White House," The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008, veteran journalist Bob Woodward "tracks the growing alarm in the White House in 2006, as U.S. casualties mounted during Iraq's plunge toward civil war." Based on "more than 150 interviews," including conversations with the President and classified documents, Woodward's book "reveals that the administration's efforts to develop a new Iraq strategy were crippled by dissension among the president's advisers, delayed by political calculations and undermined by a widening and sometimes bitter rift in civilian-military relations."

Woodward portrays Bush as an out-of-touch commander in chief who was slow to recognize the threat posed by the growing Iraqi insurgency during the summer of 2006. Woodward reveals that, despite the Bush's public assertions that "he relies on his generals to tell him what to do," the surge strategy "came from the White House" and was strongly opposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General George W. Casey, the Commanding General in Iraq from 2004 to 2007. The surge itself, Woodward notes, was not solely responsible for the lessening of violence in Iraq. "At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge," Woodward writes.

DETACHED PRESIDENT:

As violence escalated in Iraq throughout 2006, Bush seemed detached from the reality on the ground. In a recent interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, Woodward reported that Bush could not understand why the Iraqis were seemingly unappreciative of "what we've done to them." "His beacon is liberation. He thinks we've done this magnificent thing for them. I think he still holds to that position," Woodward said. In 2006, Casey "concluded that one big problem with the war was the president himself" who viewed the war in conventional terms, repeatedly asking how many of the various enemies had been captured or killed." Casey "confided to a colleague that he had the impression that Bush reflected the 'radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, 'Kill the Bastards! Kill the bastards! And you'll succeed.'"

Similarly, deputy national security adviser Megan O'Sullivan and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley tried "in the summer of 2006 to get an Iraq strategy review underway" but "they encountered resistance," and "it was almost a month before the president would be fully engaged" in the process. With the 2006 midterm elections looming, the administration, Woodward writes, did not want to acknowledge that "Iraq had gotten so bad that they were considering a new approach. That would play into the hands of critics and antiwar Democrats." Finally, "in mid-October, after months of inaction, Hadley told the president, 'I want to start an informal internal review'...'Do it,' Bush said."

MILITARY OPPOSED THE SURGE:

"While the violence in Iraq skyrocketed to unnerving levels, a second front in the war raged at home, fought at the highest levels of the White House, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department," Woodward writes. Indeed, "the idea of five brigades came from the White House, not from anybody except the White House." The Joint Chiefs of Staff "all but dismissed the surge option, worried that the armed forces were already stretched to the breaking point." Like Casey, the JCS "favored a renewal effort to train and build up the Iraqi security forces so that U.S. troops could begin to leave." By November 2006, the chiefs' frustrations burst into the open" after "news coverage that retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff had briefed the president...about a new strategy being proposed by the American Enterprise Institute." "When does the AEI start trumping the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this stuff," Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief, asked during one meeting.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, warned that "the all-volunteer force might break under the strain of extended and repeated deployments" and "several of the chiefs noted that the five brigades were effectively the strategic reserve of the U.S. military, the forces on hand in case of flare-ups elsewhere in the world." But Bush decided that the surge would "keep a lid on" violence and "also help here at home, since for many the measure of success is reduction in violence." For all his certainty, however, the president "did not know what his principal military adviser, Gen. Pace had recommended." During an interview with Woodward, Bush said, "Okay, I don't know this. I'm not in these meetings, you'll be happy to hear, because I got other things to do."

SURGE NOT FULLY RESPONSIBLE FOR DECREASE IN VIOLENCE:

Despite conventional wisdom that "the surge had worked...the full story was more complicated." According to Woodward, the U.S. military's reliance on "a series of top-secret operations...had a far-reaching effect on the violence and were very possibly the biggest factor in reducing it." These covert activities enabled the military "to locate, target and kill key individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias, or the so-called special groups." Defense officials say that the military relied on "fusion cells" or "small, hybrid teams of special forces and intelligence officers" to capture "hundreds of suspected terrorists and their supporters in recent months"

The book also reveals that U.S. intelligence closely tracked Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. "There is significant surveillance of Maliki. And as one source told me, 'We know everything he says.' And others I've talked to about that say, 'You can't literally know everything.' But we know a great deal," Woodward said in the 60 Minutes interview. Woodward also confirms that "the so-called Anbar Awakenings, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces," and Moqtada al-Sadr's decision "to suspend operations" of his powerful Mahdi Army also contributed to the lessening of violence.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) has partnered with the three leading associations of U.S. historians -- the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the National Coalition for History -- to send letters urging Congress to strengthen the Presidential Records Act of 1978 (PRA), which requires the preservation of all presidential records. Mark Agrast, a Senior Fellow at CAPAF who led the effort, told The Progress Report, "After learning of the loss or destruction of millions of White House e-mails, we asked 30 of America's most eminent historians to join us in urging Congress to put real teeth behind the PRA." Agrast explained the need for action saying, "The PRA cannot do its job if presidents are free to ignore it, and the preservation of the historical record is too important to be left to the sole discretion of this or any future White House."

Separately, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is "asking a federal judge to declare that Vice President Cheney's records are covered by the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and cannot be destroyed, taken or withheld without proper review," the Washington Post reports. Their goal is to preserve records that "could be hidden from the public if Cheney adheres to his view that he is not part of the executive branch." View CAPAF's letters to House and Senate leaders here and here.


RELIGION -- RIGHT-WING ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND SEEKS TO PUT OVERT POLITICS


In Churches: The conservative group Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is recruiting several dozen pastors to publicly endorse political candidates from their pulpits on Sept. 28, "in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules," the Washington Post reports. The effort is "designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF layers would then challenge in federal court," with the aim of persuading the Supreme Court "to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship." Three dozen church leaders have already agreed to participate, promising to "make a specific recommendation from the pulpit about how the congregation would vote," according to an ADF attorney.


In 2004, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State asked the IRS to investigate statements by Bishop Michael Sheridan, who sent a letter to church members "insisting that they not vote for candidates who support legal abortion, stem-cell research or euthanasia." Another group of bishops that year, "alarmed at the prospect of a President Kerry," blanketed churches "with guides identifying abortion, gay marriage, and the stem cell debate as among a handful of 'non-negotiable issues.'" Archbishop Charles Chaput declared voting for Kerry would have been tantamount to "cooperating in evil."

RADICAL RIGHT -- REP. SMITH: 'OUR STUDENTS MUST FIND THE GOD OF THE BIBLE AND BIBLICAL VALUES IN THE CLASSROOM':

At a reception in St. Paul, MN on Wednesday for Catholic Republicans, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) -- a fierce opponent of abortion -- said that he is "very concerned that many of our schools and universities have lost their way." They have become "bastions of moral relativism and moral compromise with the culture of death." As a solution, Smith suggested that "students must find the God of the Bible and Biblical values in the classroom." "Our schools need to become oases of goodness," said Smith. Smith's call for "Biblical values in the classroom" could easily be interpreted as a call for the promotion of Christianity in American schools.

But, as the First Amendment Center has pointed out, "the courts have been clear that public school teachers cannot teach religion to their students or read the Bible to the class as a way of promoting their faith." Smith's comments appear to be even more radical than Rep. Steve King's (R-IA) claim last year that "every child" in American schools needs to learn "the tenets of the Christian faith." While King conceded that if "the tenets of Christianity" are to be taught in school, "other faiths" should be taught as well, Smith said no such thing.

"Stop saying that!" my wife says to me. But this is not a high school football game and I'm not a cheerleader with a bad attitude. This is an election and as things stand now, we're gonna frickin' lose this thing. Obama and McCain at best are even in the polls nationally and in a recent Gallup poll McCain is ahead by four points.

Something is not right. We have a terrific candidate and a terrific VP candidate. We're coming off the worst eight years in our country's history. Six of those eight years the Congress, White House and even the Supreme Court were controlled by the Republicans and the last two years the R's have filibustered like tantrum throwing 4-year-olds, yet we're going to elect a Republican who voted with that leadership 90% of the time and a former sportscaster who wants to teach Adam and Eve as science? That's not odd as a difference of opinion, that's logically and mathematically queer.

It reminds me of playing blackjack (a losers game). You make all the right moves, play the right hands but basically the House always wins. I know what you're going to say " But I won twelve hundred dollars last year in Atlantic City!" Of course there are victories. The odds aren't tilted crazy, but there is a 51%-49% advantage. And in the long run, the house has to win. The house will win.

So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It's the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on...I'm not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox...I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that's the 51% advantage.

Think this is some opinion being wryly posited to titillate other bloggers and inspire dialogue with Tucker Carlson or Gore Vidal? Fuck that. Four corporations own all the TV channels. All of them. If they don't get ratings they get canceled or fired. All news is about sex, blame and anger, and fear. Exposing lies about amounts of money taken from lobbyists and votes cast for the agenda of the last eight years does not rate. The end.

So one side can lie and get away with it. Now let's throw in one more advantage. Voter caging and other corruption on the local level with voting. Check out the article here on HuffPost about Ohio messing with 600K voters. If only five thousand of those voters don't or can't vote that's a huge advantage in a contest that could be decided by literally dozens of votes. That takes us to about a 52 to 48% advantage.

I'm not even getting into the fact that the religious right teaches closed mindedness so it's almost impossible to gain new voters from their pool because people who disagree with them are agents of the devil. I just want to look at two inarguable realities: A) we have no more press and B) the Repubs are screwing with the voters on the local level.

I'm telling you, we're going to lose this thing. And afterwords we'll blame ourselves the same way we did with Gore and Kerry (two candidates a thousand times more qualified to lead than W Bush.) Just watch.. McCain wins by a point or two and we all walk around saying things like "Obama was too well spoken." "Biden wasn't lovable enough." "I shouldn't have split those eights." "Why did I hit on 16? Why?!"

So what do we do?

1) We give definitive clear speeches like Biden and Obama gave the other day about how no one talked about any issues at the Republican Convention and how they outright lied. But we do them over and over again.

2) We use the one place where it's still a 50-50 game -- the internet -- as much as we can.

3) But most importantly we should bring up re-regulating the media and who owns it and what that conflict of interest is a lot more. By pretending there's no conflict of interest we're failing to alert the public that they're being lied to or given a looking at a coin at the bottom of a pool slanted truth.

Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least. Disney, GE, Viacom, and Murdoch -- all want profits and the candidate and agenda that will get in their way the least.

Obama and Biden should also create a "master sound bite sentence" and repeat it hundreds of times. It should be so true that even the corporations can't screw with it when it makes the airwaves. Here's my attempt: "Katrina, four dollar gas, a trillion dollar war, rising unemployment, deregulated housing market, global warming...no more."

This race should be about whether the Republican Party is going to be dismantled or not after the borderline treason of the past eight years. But instead it is about making the word "community organizer" a dirty word and a beauty queen who shoots foxes from a plane. Someone is not in any way doing their job and it's the press. Or more specifically, that job no longer exists.

Probably the worst offenders are the pundits who take the position that it's all just a game and say phrases like "getting a post-convention bump" or "playing to the soccer Moms." This isn't a game of Monopoly or Survivor.

There are real truths that exist outside of the spin they are given and have an effect on lives. 250,000 Iraqi civilians are dead because we let our reality be distorted by the most effective propaganda machine in fifty years, the corporate American press.

Money and jobs are flying out of this country as our currency becomes worthless and we're talking about the fact that McCain is a veteran. If someone busted into your house and robbed you would you then forgive them if you found out they were a veteran? Of course not.

So why are we forgiving McCain for selling out his country by supporting the Bush agenda?

This is it folks. If McCain takes power we fade and become Australia in the seventies: a backwoods country with occasional flashes of relevance. Except we've got a way bigger military and we're angrier. People will get hurt and we'll pay the bill for the bullets. I'm telling you, unless we wake up, we're gonna lose this frickin' thing.

The Party's Over

Millions of voters have moved out of the political party system. The decline of loyalty has made politics less stable and predictable -- and has resulted in close elections.
By ALAN BRINKLEY September 6, 2008; Page W1

One of the conundrums of this political year is why, at a moment when Democrats are clearly preferred over Republicans, the presidential race remains so close. But for the past 40 years, close and unpredictable elections have increasingly become the norm.

The most important reason for our volatile presidential elections is a fundamental change in American politics -- the birth of a post-partisan world. This may sound surprising in an era in which politics are as polarized as at any moment in our recent history -- as illustrated by Sarah Palin's slashing, sarcastic acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention this week -- and in which the two major parties in Congress seem to disagree, sometimes violently, on almost everything. But what makes our politics so different from early periods in our history and so volatile and unpredictable, is the absence of strong political parties as moderators of public life, and their replacement with sharp ideological differences.

John McCain has very openly proclaimed "country," not party, "first," and Independent Joe Lieberman was a serious candidate for the vice presidential nomination. Barack Obama has said that "we are not a collection of Red States and Blue States, we are the United States of America," and Jim Leach, a longtime Republican congressman from Iowa, endorsed Sen. Obama at the Democratic convention. Both candidates decry "partisanship," and both pledge to reach "across party lines."

A half century ago, American politics looked very different, as the political scientist V. O. Key made clear in a short article published in the Journal of Politics in 1955, titled, "A Theory of Critical Elections." There were, Mr. Key argued, periodic elections of unusual importance that create a "realignment" of party affiliations that is "both sharp and durable" and persists for "several succeeding elections." Large social changes -- wars, depressions, popular upheavals -- destabilized the party systems every generation or so and produced new electoral coalitions that often lasted for several decades.

Mr. Key was not alone in seeing a predictable pattern in American party politics. A few years earlier, the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. had proposed a similar, if less rigorous theory -- that there are "cycles" in American politics that move from periods of progressive energy to periods of conservative stasis, such periods alternating in reasonably regular and predictable patterns. (Mr. Schlesinger's son, Arthur Jr., continued to promote this idea into the 1970s.) Mr. Key and the Schlesingers were among a large group of scholars who, over many decades, developed a range of theories that they believed could predict how the polity would behave and thus how electoral outcomes could be decided.

Almost all of these theories rested on the assumption that elections were determined by the shifting nature of strong political parties. When the balance between the parties changed, so did the outcome of elections.

At the time, history made these theories seem to work. In 1896, a great shift in party affiliations led to a remarkably stable period of 36 years in which Republicans controlled the White House for 28 of those years and the Congress for 30. And in 1932, the earthquake of the Great Depression launched yet another 36-year period of political stability in which the Democrats held the presidency for 28 years and the Congress for 32.

Through most of American history, the party system was indeed the driver of American political life. More than that, it was a profound form of self-identification for almost all voters, whose loyalty to parties was often as intense as their loyalty to churches, or ethnic groups, or regions. From the 1840s to the early 20th century, voter turnout in presidential elections almost always exceeded 70% and at times exceeded 80%, less because of strong feelings about presidential candidates -- who were often indistinguishable from one another -- than because of fierce loyalty to parties.

In the 1890s, David B. Hill, an otherwise unremarkable governor of New York, created a national sensation when he ended a speech at a party convention by momentously declaring, "I am a Democrat!" This banal statement briefly became a rallying cry for Democrats across the country and made Gov. Hill a party hero (and a briefly plausible presidential candidate). The two major parties in the late 19th century had few policy differences and, on the whole, shared a common, conservative philosophy; but that was of little importance to the way in which the political process worked. Few voters seemed to care.

They were not much committed to their candidates, but they were passionately committed to their parties -- in much the same way many people today care about baseball or football teams. Party loyalty, like fan loyalty today, had little to do with most people's economic or social interests, but it inspired great passion nevertheless.

Even when interest groups began to displace parties as the focus of many citizens' commitments in the early 20th century, the party system remained powerful and, for the most part, a stable and reliable predictor of the outcome of elections. From the election of William McKinley in 1896 to the election of Lyndon Johnson in 1964, the outcome of most presidential elections were easily predictable months, even years before the voting.

One of the few surprises -- the unexpected victory of the seemingly unelectable Harry Truman in 1948 -- reflected the durable loyalty to the Democratic party rather than support for Truman himself. Twenty years later, everything had changed.

Many things fell apart in the late 1960s -- racial, sexual and social norms; patterns of deference and authority; and, not least, political parties. At the time, many political scientists and historians identified the election of 1968 as a signal of a new political "realignment," through which voters would once again shift party loyalties and create new and lasting coalitions. Kevin Phillips's influential 1969 book "The Emerging Republican Majority" was a prescient analysis of the immediate aftermath of 1968, but its predictions of a long, stable period of Republican dominance never materialized.

Instead, it soon became clear that 1968 was not a realignment at all. It was, rather, the beginning of a massive de-alignment -- the movement of millions of disillusioned voters out of the party system altogether. By the early 1970s, nearly a third of the public identified themselves as "independents," affiliated with no party. Many of them ceased voting entirely. Others began to pick and choose candidates on whatever criteria mattered to them at a given moment.

Serious third party or independent candidates, a rarity through most of the 20th century, have siphoned off significant numbers of voters from the major parties in five of the last 10 elections. Turnout in presidential elections, rarely below 60% in the first seven decades of the 20th century, dropped dramatically after 1968, and dipped below 50% in 1996. Party loyalty, in short, is no longer a strong factor in the decisions of voters, and with its decline has come a less stable and less predictable political landscape.

By the late 1970s, political scientists and historians were no longer paying much attention to parties and were focusing on social movements instead.

The parties, of course, still survive as essential vehicles for organizing our political life -- managing primaries and elections, organizing nominating conventions, determining leadership in Congress. And in state and local elections, citizens still give serious attention to party affiliation when they make their political decisions.

The less voters know about a race, the more likely they are either not to vote at all or to choose on the basis of party. But in presidential elections, during which almost everyone knows a great deal about the major candidates, parties have increasingly little meaning to voters who, whatever their formal affiliations, cross party lines often and without hesitation.

One result has been the end of the once-strong connection between the election of presidents and the election of members of Congress. In only 10 of the last 40 years have presidents and the two houses of Congress all been under the control of the same party at the same time.

Rarely has this post-partisan world been more visible than in the campaign of 2008. Sen. Obama has few ties to any party leaders or organizations and nevertheless edged out one of the most famous, well-connected and well-funded candidates of recent decades. For a time, at least, many supporters of Hillary Clinton appeared likely to vote for Sen. McCain.

In the Republican race, the nominee is a man who has spent much of his career as a self-proclaimed maverick, crossing party lines on many issues. In 2004, he was so faintly identified with the Republican party that he was even considered as a possible Democratic vice presidential candidate; and in 2008 primaries, he nearly lost the race for the Republican nomination because conservatives in his own party did not trust him.

Since clinching the nomination, he has been repudiating some of the Bush administration's policies and embracing ideas that were once taboo in the current Republican party. Not surprisingly, some of the most ardent Republican supporters of George W. Bush have claimed they will not vote for McCain in the same way that some Clinton voters say they will not vote for Obama -- although the selection of the extremely conservative Gov. Palin as McCain's running mate might change this dynamic.

There are, of course, enormous differences between the two candidates, but they are not all differences that fit neatly into the announced goals of their parties. And why should they? What do the parties do for them today? Trumpeting party loyalty may have been a valuable political tactic a century ago. But today most Americans see partisanship not as an integral part of the political system, but as an obstacle to progress and honest government.

Sen. Obama expresses such sentiments himself sometimes and rarely refers to the Democratic party's past or present. And he appears to have paid no price for it. The Internet now makes it possible for candidates to reach voters entirely independently of the party apparatus, and no one has done so more successfully than Sen. Obama. He has raised more money on his own than any presidential candidate in history, while the party's national committee had difficulty even collecting the funds it needed to stage its convention.

Sen. McCain jettisoned his identity as a loyal Republican partisan almost the moment he clinched the nomination and -- at least until the Republican convention -- appeared sometimes to be putting more distance between himself and President Bush than between himself and his Democratic opponent. The 2008 election is not typical, of course.

It occurs in the midst of an unusually dark moment both domestically and internationally, and it reflects the great disillusionment Americans feel about many of the policies of recent years. Even so, this campaign is not radically different from most others in recent decades -- with presidential candidates seeming almost to invent themselves on the spot so as not to appear to be beholden to their parties' establishments.

What difference does this make to the workings of government? To answer that question, we should look at the success rate of recent presidents. Since 1968, we have seen one president driven from office, two presidents discredited and defeated after single terms, and two others badly weakened by scandals (one of them impeached). Our current president is approaching the end of his term as unpopular as any leader in our history and is facing a growing chorus of critics calling (implausibly) for his impeachment as well.

Strong party systems created problems of their own, and during their heyday many reformers yearned for a time like our own when the parties would have little power. But a political world without effective parties risks the creation of the kind of anarchic factionalism that the authors of the Federalist Papers warned against in the 1780s. "The friend of popular governments," James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10, "never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates...the instability, injustice, and confusion [that factions] introduced into the public councils...the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished."

The framers at first feared political parties for this reason, but within a generation they began to champion parties as a bulwark against factional anarchy. Broad and robust party organizations, they argued, would be capable of containing and taming disagreement.

Today, untethered from the party system, many voters seize increasingly not on issues that affect their lives, but on whatever simply catches their interest -- inflammatory social issues, personalities, and even lapel pins.

The post-partisan character of our politics is not only a reason for the difficulty in predicting electoral outcomes. It is also one of the reasons our government has worked so poorly and has lost the confidence of so many Americans.

Leaders who get elected without strong parties behind them often find themselves without the allies they need to achieve the goals they have embraced. But going it alone has increasingly become the norm in our fractious, unpredictable political world.

Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins professor of history and the provost at Columbia University.

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