interesting post ashanti. surely though if history is good at repeating itself baby bush should not get a second foot in the door. as most presidents at the turn of the century rarely stay for two terms. but i guess with so many bushes in power it may be easier. i hope you guys get blessed with a president who believes in world peace and not world war

@ MB

Although she has the credentials...I don't think peeps here are ready for a female president plus too many Clinton haters.

LadyDay wrote:
i hope you guys get blessed with a president who believes in world peace and not world war

From your mouth to God's ears.

ZNet | Race



Racist Felony Disenfranchisement


by Paul Street; December 16, 2003

In a period of painfully close presidential elections, with the most dangerous White House in history hoping to extend its criminal reign, every American vote in 2004 is potentially a matter of life and death for masses of people at home and abroad. It is exceedingly significant, therefore, that 4.4 million Americans are disenfranchised due to a past or current felony conviction. No other nation imprisons a larger share of its population or marks so large a share of its population with the lifelong mark of a serious (felony) criminal record. According to the best estimates last year, 13 million Americans – fully 7 percent of the adult population and an astonishing 12 percent of the adult male population – possess felony records.

At the same time, no other democratic nation denies the vote to a remotely comparable share of its offender and ex-offender population. According to Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, the leading academic authorities on felon and ex-felon voting rights, "48 states disenfranchise incarcerated felons, 37 states disenfranchise felony probationers or parolees (or both), and 14 states additionally disenfranchise some or all ex-felons who have completed their sentences." America’s army of disenfranchised felons and ex-felons "are expected," note Manza and Uggen, "to respect the law (and indeed, are often subject to significantly harsher penalties and face a higher level of scrutiny, than non-felons). They are expected to pay taxes to the government, and to be governed by elected officials. Yet they have no formal right to participate in the selection of those officials or the public policies that allocate government expenditures." Among those expenditures we might include the hundreds of billions of dollars that American governments spend on mass surveillance, arrest, detention, prosecution, incarceration, and post-release criminal supervision.
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Please quote the entire article or provide a link to the original.

copied the whole article twice now and it is still not pasting in full...will have to go back and look for link to article


http://www.zmag.org/content/print_ar...p;sectionID=30



Kunjufu, how come it won't take the whole article? I'v seen longer?

February 14/15, 2004

Bush v. Kerry
The Power Elite's Dream Ballot

By MICHAEL COLBY

If you hear gleeful giggling from behind the curtain shielding the political elites from the mere masses, you're not alone. There's a party going on and we haven't been invited. It's a presidential election party, where the puppeteers of our democracy are celebrating an upcoming election that they can't lose. It's a contest between two of their own.

George Bush versus John Kerry is a dream ballot for those whom C. Wright Mills called the "power elite," that tight little club of economic, political and military leaders who truly rule the nation. The power elite doesn't care about political party affiliations. That's child's play. In their view, fools line up to vote while the real players decide who's on the ballot. And for some reason we still refer to the whole charade as democracy. The joke's on you.

Bush v. Kerry is simply nirvana for the bluebloods. As they say in the business world: it's a win-win situation. From their perspective, whomever places his hand upon the Bible (yes, the Bible) on January 20, 2005 doesn't matter because with a Bush/Kerry contest they're already assured there will be no meaningful change in America for the next four years. None. Zero. Zippo.

Before the delusional Democrats out there start peppering me with hostile emails about the absolute necessity of getting "anybody but Bush" in the White House, just stop yourselves long enough to consider these facts: Kerry supported Bush's war on Iraq; Kerry supported Bush's tax cuts; Kerry hasn't proposed one major social or environmental initiative in over 20 years in the U.S. Senate; Kerry hasn't put forward any meaningful policy initiatives in his campaign for the presidency regarding jobs or healthcare. Kerry's campaign seems to be all about proving that he qualifies as "anybody but Bush." And all that takes is a pulse.

Bush and Kerry are also, of course, both proud military men. Bush took the easy way out of the Vietnam War by joining the National Guard - whether he showed up or not is another matter. Kerry, as he's so fond of telling us, served his country by running gunboats up and down the rivers of Vietnam. Brace yourselves, folks, because the Bush/Kerry contest will be filled with assertions and accusations about who loves the military more.

Kerry is really confusing on the issue of the military, too. Before pro-military audiences, Kerry trots out his military medals (three Purple Hearts!) and talks tough about his "duty and service" to the nation. But then he'll stand before the Dean Democrats and talk about how he led the anti-war movement when he got home. Well, John, what's it going to be: duty and service or conscientious objections?

It's this kind of double talk that has littered the political career of John Kerry. He's always hanging around talking out of both sides of his mouth until it's safe to actually pick a side - and then only if he's forced to. Kerry doesn't need Botox injections; he needs a spinal transplant.

Then consider Kerry's oft-quoted attacks on "special interests." Apparently, his special interests are holier than Bush's special interests. The truth, of course, is that they share many of the same special interests, all to the detriment of we, the non-special people.

While it pains me to invoke the words of David Brooks, a conservative columnist at The New York Times, he did sufficiently lampoon Kerry's rhetoric on special interests in a recently published column entitled "Kerry's Special Friends." After detailing many of Kerry's special favors to the high and mighty, Brooks concludes as follows:

"You just ask David Paul, one of the big figures in the savings and loan scandal, if Kerry didn't make him feel special. You just ask the high-tech executive Bob Majumder how special Kerry made him feel, at least until Majumder was charged with 40 counts of conspiracy, witness tampering, fraud, tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions. You just ask the law firms, the brokerage houses, the oil companies, the <H.M.O>.'s and the drug companies, which have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Kerry.

"Oh, he sometimes pretends that he doesn't care about our special interests. He puts on that callous populist facade. But deep down he cares. Maybe he cares too much. When he's out on the stump saying otherwise, he's just being a big old phony."

Of the many similarities between the patricians Bush and Kerry, there's nothing more disturbing than their membership in the super-secret and super-elite Skull & Bones club at Yale University. The fact that both men are members of this club and neither is willing to spill the beans on any of its internal secrets and favors should speak volumes about the apparent "choice" this nation is being offered on the November ballot.

"America is about to choose between two presidential candidates," writes Sam Smith, editor of the indispensable Progressive Review http://www.prorev.com , "who belonged to an organization whose values were infantile, elitist, misogynist, anti-democratic and secret and whose purposes include the mutual support and protection of its members as they make their into the upper ranks of American society and throughout their adult lives. Far from apologizing for this, the two candidates refuse to give open and honest answers about their participation. Further, at least one of the candidates, Kerry, has retained a close enough relationship to the organization to have sought news members from among his young acquaintances."

If Bush v. Kerry is truly the choice being offered to the nation in November, we don't even have to wait for the voting to begin in order to declare the winner. This nation's power elites are not only poised for yet another victory, but they're thrilled by the prospects of four more years of calm, non-threatening waters from which they float their political boats.

Michael Colby is the editor of Wild Matters. He can be reached at: mcolby@wildmatters.org

Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/colby02142004.html

February 18, 2004

Spinelessness and Credulity
Why is Kerry Getting a Pass?

By GREG WEIHER

I was listening to excerpts from a debate on "Democracy Now" the other day. On one side was Mark Green, Michael Bloomberg's opponent in the recent mayoral race, and John Kerry's New York campaign chair. On the other were Robert Scheer, the Los Angeles Times columnist, and his son Christopher who writes for AlterNet.

The Scheers' argued that Kerry should call for Bush's impeachment for lies he told in the run-up to war. Green pretty much labeled such an approach "wack-job" politics, and said it would result in Bush regaining the White House. In defending Kerry, Green painted him as the near twin of Ted Kennedy, and praised the stalwart service that both had given to Democratic causes.

Both sides' apparently agreed that Kerry was not culpable in voting for war since, like everyone else, he was deceived by the Bush administration. The comparison of Kerry to Kennedy made this particularly disquieting. As you may recall, Ted Kennedy did not vote to authorize Bush to attack Iraq. In Kennedy's own words, "[Bush] did not make a persuasive case that the threat [from Iraq] is imminent and that war is the only alternative."

What?

How is it that Teddy could resist the prevari-con necromancy? How did Teddy see through the befuddling loquacity of George W. Bush?

Well, let's take a look at what was known prior to the beginning of hostilities.

· The argument that Iraq sought enriched uranium from Niger was an inept fabrication

· The case presented to the U.N. Security Council by Colin Powell included information that was plagiarized and woefully dated

· The aluminum tubes imported by Iraq were not suited to the production of fissile material

· The widely publicized meeting of an Al Qaeda representative and an Iraqi diplomat in the Czech Republic almost certainly did not happen

There were CIA assessments that criticized the prevari-con's conclusions with respect to WsMD and Al Qaeda connections to Iraq. There were veteran diplomats and CIA insiders, like Ray McGovern and Greg Thieleman, who were vocally skeptical about the prevari-con intelligence vetting process. How is it that Kennedy could critically assess the available information but Kerry could not?

In fact, even after the war began, Kerry was a vocal supporter. At house meetings in South Carolina, Kerry avowed that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States and had to be removed. It was not until the major media jumped on the "no-WsMD" bandwagon that Kerry dared to differ with the Bushies.

The simple fact of the matter is that anybody who was paying attention should have had serious reservations about the case for war. A million marchers in New York did, and so did a million in London, and so did other millions in places around the world. Teddy Kennedy did. How did all of this elude Kerry?

This is not the only curious case of Kerry sliding under the press's radar. Much has been made of Bush family connections with the band of thieves that ran Enron, but Kerry has his own history of complicity with corporate malfeasance. He had close connections to David Paul, CEO of the failed S&L, Centrust. Paul was convicted of ninety-seven counts of bank fraud and sent to prison for ten years, and the failure of CenTrust cost taxpayers $2 billion.

Charles Lewis notes that Kerry has never been reluctant to accept money from special interests.

"Over the course of his senate career, [Kerry] has not been averse to taking campaign cash from the companies and firms with a direct interest in his work. Since 1995, he raised more than $30 million for his various campaigns, most of it from industries such as finance and telecommunications companies (which are overseen by the Senate committees he serves on) and the law and lobby firms that represent them."

It is not clear why the media are so reluctant to call Kerry on his pontificating about special interests. But it is possible that they are not asking Kerry about his complicity in the rape of Iraq because the answers might lead in embarrassing directions. A recent assessment by Michael Massing in the New York Review of Books documents the credulity of the mainline press during the run-up to the war. The reluctance of this same press to confront its sorry performance is apparent in the fact that Judith Miller still holds a job at the New York Times.

Miller presents a microcosm of the mainline coverage of the case for war. Her reporting style is to take whatever the Bushies say and relay it to the American people. This is not my description of her work, but hers. She has said, "my job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal."

This was her approach when she reported that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes for enriching uranium for nuclear weapons, one of her many stories that proved to be without substance. It also characterized her involvement in a particularly weird episode once the war was joined. Miller operated as an ex officio member of "Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha," an Army team looking for caches of WsMD in Iraq. Time and again, MET alpha undertook activities outside its formal writ because it would result in good stories for the Times. When MET Alpha was to be reassigned, Miller threatened unflattering coverage, and the order was rescinded.

The goofiest of all these episodes had Miller reporting that "a leading Iraqi scientist claimed Iraq had destroyed chemical and biological weapons days before the war began . . . the scientist 'had pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried'" (Washington Post, 5/26/03). In typical Judith Miller fashion, there was no attempt to consult other sources or gain independent confirmation of any of this. She "was not permitted to interview the scientist." She only saw him from a distance while he was in MET Alpha custody. The story ran on the Times front page and, of course, was entirely apocryphal. It is a close question whether the journalistic sins that got Jason Blair and Rick Bragg fired were more egregious than Miller's.

Like Miller, the American mainline press suspended disbelief, sidled right up to the Bush administration, and spewed whatever nonsense about WsMD the prevari-cons decided to put out. Like Miller, the corporate media parroted drivel about Scuds, about mobile weapons labs, about anthrax spewing drones that might appear over Milwaukee or Paducah. So the big problem for them now is this: if they start to give Kerry a hard time for his spinelessness on Iraq, they might just have to confront their own spinelessness as well.

Greg Weiher is a political scientist and freelance writer living in Houston, Texas. Excerpts from this article appeared previously on the OpEdNews website under the title "George Bush, the Democrats, and Revisionist History." He can be reached at gweiher@uh.edu.

Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/weiher02182004.html

Representative democracy as practiced in the UK and USA is fundamentally broken. It needs to be fixed and/or replaced.

This is why there have been from time to time in the UK, discussions of such things as proportional representation.

There are supporters for the more frequent use of referenda. It would have been interesting for instance, if prior to going to war in Iraq the British people had been given the opportunity to vote in a referendum on the matter.

There is a need for a more participative democracy. At this point though, it seems that nothing short of a revolution will bring this about. History tells us however that revolutions are subject to the law of unintended consequences and that there are no guarantees that they will prove to be beneficial in the long run.

One salient example is Haiti, it has not been able to truly enjoy the fruits of its democracy since its own revolution due to internal class/racial warfare much exacerbated by external hegemonic interference.