The best best best election coverage site I know of.

www.electoral-vote.com is a plain-looking, but totally great, site devoted to tracking election results. I first discovered it when I started blogging before the 2004 election. It was the only source that seemed to accurately show what was really going on, and explained things pretty well also. Now, as I am not the most worldly source of info in the blogosphere, I can't guarantee that there isn't something better around the corner. But I recommended watching www.electoral-vote.com to keep track of the unfathomable chaos that serves as our electoral process.

Same Old More of the Same

Here's a quick thought...

Here's a quick thought that I heard on my morning drive time radio (Stephanie Miller show): "Attorney General John Edwards."

Not bad, eh? Strange, after those words were uttered, the sun came out and the rain stopped and the birds began hopping around...

I like to see him start prosecuting you-know-who, you know?

Hoo.

Corporate Media Fascism Rules the Day

So dig it, truthseekers:

MSNBC prepares to broadcast a "debate" (they're not debates in the true sense of the word, just public appearances). They decide, of course, to exclude Dennis Kucinich (the candidate who best represents progrssive values and enjoys huge popular support, therefore scaring the shit out of America's powermongers). Exclude him! I mean, they actually changed the rules so he could be disinvited. Lovely.

So, insted of a democracy where we get to choose between candidates who are running for office, we get whatever triangulating centrist corporate shill the news media decide to whore out for mass consumption.

And we all know that most people in this country don't have the brains to think past American Idol and will happily vote for whoever is most successfully marketed to them. No matter how much they complain, they (we) will receive more of the same, wrapped in a new package.

It's all just sales schtick. The new brainwashing catchphrase on all sides is "change", repeated enough to make people think that's what is being offered, when the truth is they are receiving the very same plutocratic corporatist gruel they are given every election. The only change they offer is the fact that the next president is much more likely to be able to actually speak english in a coherent fashion like a sober adult, instead the absurd, unintelligible gibberish we have been subject to for the last eight years. Yes, Bush has lowered our expectations to the point where we will accept a villian just as rotten as him, if only they can present themselves as if they are at a job interview instead of an audition as a babbling, snickering hillbilly lunatic in a Tarantino film. But I digress.

The subject at had is the slow painful death of American democracy. If I counted the times I have read and/or heard progressives state who they would like to elect for president, I would swear that 90% of them have said they liek Kucinich best. But the corporate media (bizarrely characterized by the "right" as the "liberal media") would have you think that Kucinch does not even exist.

We are truly fucked, truthseekers, when our so-called "democracy" is just another poorly produced "reality" show where the candidates we have to choose between for President of the United States are chosen for us by the corporate media, who not only choose who we should choose, but more importantly, decide who we are not allowed to choose.

Even progressives have been saying for months that the best candidates, their favorite candidates, who they believe would best lead the country, have no chance of winning. No chance of even being considered. Everyone resigns themselves to the lesser of evils.

And that's not even factoring in the electronic vote manipulation the right will employ to steal votes, or the dirty tricks they'll employ right before the election (like suddenly declaring victory and bringing the troops home or whatever).

Yes, we are screwed, and I feel like the election is already over and the same old power elite has won again as they always do and they always will. We are truly on our own, those of us who want anything more than plutocratic/theocratic/fascist corporatocracy.

PS: Remember what Eisenhower said:

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Dwight Eisenhower, November 8, 1954

I talk about the candidates and choose the ones I loves and hates

Okay, now that I am blogging again, I am way overdue to offer my sage wisdom regarding the presidential race of 2008. How can I best describe the excitement of the 2008 American presidential election?

Pitiful comes to mind. Pathetic. Appalling. Disappointing, disheartening, discouraging. I’m sure there are more adjectives than we have room for here.

The Big Two parties continue to fail us.

The republican party presents us with liars, hypocrites, “flip-floppers”, religious fundamentalist zealots… at least they’re consistent with previous offerings.

The democratic party has offered us enablers, appeasers, facilitators, rhetorical hypocrites, and more of the same, except for Dennis Kucinich, who is a shining beacon of hope and is, therefore, regarded as unelectable. Integrity is poison to American government.

Here are my thoughts about the candidates (most of them, not all of them), starting with the democrats, for whom I will be forced to vote because we are stuck with the @#$%^&* two-party system again when I would far rather vote for the Green Party.

Besides which, the cadidates we have to choose are selected by the media before we ever get near them. There is no good reason why the media darlings should get virtually all the press attention, while the best candidates, in my opinion, are ignored by the media as if diseased, until they are finally driven from the race. More on that later.

First, the Democrats.

Hillary Clinton:

She was the front runner for a long time (and may be again) because the republicans who control everything (that is, society's corporate puppetmasters) want her to be. I say again, and insist this is true: Hillary is the republican’s chosen candidate. She has been crafted and nurtured by the right into their desired adversary over the last decade, and she represents a total win-win situation for the republicans: If she wins, they get a president who has been a loyal adherent to Bush policy, and yet will manage to improve America’s reputation abroad by virtue of her connection to her well-regarded husband. If she loses, which they expect her to do anyway, they get their own body in there. Either way, a vote for Hillary is a vote for the republican party.

Barrack Obama:

Says he would have voted against war in Iraq, which we can never really know because he wasn’t there. And he’s a little too hawkish about Iran for my taste. I like Michael Moore’s description:

“Barack Obama is a good and inspiring man... But who is he... other than a guy who gives a great speech? How much do any of us really know about him? I know he was against the war. How do I know that? He gave a speech before the war started. But since he joined the Senate, he has voted for the funds for the war, while at the same time saying we should get out. He says he's for the little guy, but then he votes for a corporate-backed bill to make it harder for the little guy to file a class action suit when his kid swallows lead paint from a Chinese-made toy. In fact, Obama doesn't think Wall Street is a bad place. He wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan -- the same companies who have created the mess in the first place. He's such a feel-good kinda guy, I get the sense that, if elected, the Republicans will eat him for breakfast. He won't even have time to make a good speech about it.”

Don't get me wrong, I like Obama. I worry that he might be swallowed up by the corruption of the vocation, but I would take the risk and vote for him if he was the democratic candidate for president.

John Edwards:

Of the three front runners, he’s the one I like best. Moore writes about him, too:

“…you find a man who is out to take on the wealthy and powerful who have made life so miserable for so many. A candidate who says things like this: "I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy." Whoa. We haven't heard anyone talk like that in a while, at least not anyone who is near the top of the polls… he has nowhere near the stash of cash the other two have. He won't take the big checks from the corporate PACs, and he is alone among the top three candidates in agreeing to limit his spending and be publicly funded. He has said, point-blank, that he's going after the drug companies and the oil companies and anyone else who is messing with the American worker. The media clearly find him to be a threat, probably because he will go after their monopolistic power, too. This is Roosevelt/Truman kind of talk. That's why it's resonating with people in Iowa, even though he doesn't get the attention Obama and Hillary get.

And he voted for the war. But unlike Senator Clinton, he has stated quite forcefully that he was wrong. And he has remorse…He went further than Clinton and Obama and said he'd have all the troops home in less than a year.

Edwards is the only one of the three front-runners who has a universal health care plan that will lead to the single-payer kind all other civilized countries have… he is the only one who has correctly pointed out that the health insurance companies are the enemy and should not have a seat at the table.

Then, as the theme from Gilligan's Island puts it, are "all the rest" (I'm only touching on a few of them):

Richardson: Excellent resume, made lots of sense, has good experience in foreign policy, I liked him a lot, but then he made a stupid statement about homosexuality in a debate and it was downhill from there. That, combined with the lack of media attention, seemed to remove him from the race.

Biden: Also made a lot more sense in debates than, say, Hillary Clinton, but was also ignored. He was possibly the best qualified candidate the democrats had to offer. Because of that, he was given the silent treatment, too.

Kucinich: Now, then. I want to state loud and clear that Dennis Kucinich is my top pick of all the candidates of any party (or independent). He represents the values of progressives right down the line. On every issue: war, health care, environment, economy, etcetera, Dennis Kucinich is absolutely the ultimate top-flight a-number-one best-choice candidate. And if that's not enough, dig this: He is consistently chosen in polls by many other progressives as their favorite, too. I am truly shocked by how often I read other progressive writers' opinions that they, too, like Kucinich best. Nationwide polls choose Kucinich as the number-one favorite. In fact, I read more often that he is the chosen favorite candidate by progressives than any other, and I mean any other, including the media front-runners. Nevertheless, Kucinich is thoroghly ignored by the media, effectively turning him into a non-entity and strangling his campaign. Why? Because he is exactly what we want, that's why, and the corporate pigs who contral everything, left and right, are terrified of us having so much power as to elect a president who represents the majority of progressives. They're afraid of him, they're afraid of us, and I am sick of trying to take that as a compliment. Besides, they are stealing another election by selecting candidates that they want us to choose, instead of us choosing who we want. How long must we be subject to this?

Now, the Republicans. Short work, this. I mean, in general, it is still true that the republican party is the party of hypocrites, liars, perverts, and the only thing you can count on with any of them is that whatever they tell you, you can be sure the opposite is true.

Huckabee: Fundamentalist crackpot, bible-literalist, wants to convert the whole country to his religion, pitifully uninformed, is a great schmoozer but so is every asshole salesman I've ever known. Make that bible salesman in his case.

Romney: Let me just say this up front so I can be accused of predjudice: I have been intimately involved with the Morman church in my lifetime. Specifically, I was "converted" when I was 10 by a stepfather into it and was thus involved until I was in my late teens. I hated it, but these are not just sour grapes. See, I believe that in order to support a particular religion, one must accept that religion's dogma - all of it, including the metaphysical parts like creation, life after death, the definition of "God" and other important members of the pantheon, etc. If you don't accept those things, then you don't believe in the most important aspects of that religion and are thus a disbeliever, affiliated in name only. Fast forward to Mitt Romney. I happen to know some things about mormonism that make me despise it as the insidious cult that it is, founded by a liar and con man. I won't go into them here (no room, no time), but I say for the record that anyone who is involved in mormonism is either ignorant of these things or agrees with them. I don't want someone who is that ignorant in charge of the country. And I certainly don't want anyone who actually believes in the bullshit that is mormonism to be in charge of anything connected with my life. No apologies. Mormonism is not a religion that deserves tolerant respect, it is a con that hurts people and would be prosecuted as a crime if it didn't cloak itself in a facade of false "Christianty" so that society is afraid to touch it. Mitt Romney is part of all that.

Giuliani: At the republican national convention of the 2004 election, he said that his first thought when he saw the towers fall was, "Thank God George Bush is president." That statement alone, whether true or not, is enough to disqualify him as a candidate by virtue of his thorough disconnection with popular opinion. Added to that is the fact that he is sleazy (moved his mistress into the governor's mansion while he was still married), corrupt (Bernie Kerrick?), and cannot be trusted. He was a joke up until 9/11, at which time he exploited tragedy for personal gain (Bushism in a nutshell). He would sell us all out to achieve his personal glory.

McCain: I am from McCain's state, Arizona. I have followed his career since he came on the scene in the 80's. His only qualification at that time was that he was a prisoner of war. Everyone who voted for him then, who effectively began his political career, stated up front that they voted for him because he was a POW. No regard whatsoever for his policy positions, whatever they were. Since then, he has proven himself to be a political whore who will flip-flop his ass off and sell his soul to toe the party line. He was also in the pocket of savings-and-loan-scandal figure Charles Keating. He's likeable but he is bad news.

Fred Thompson: A lobbyist/lawyer!? How wonderfully republican. How perfect, if he hadn't turned out to be the scary uncle candidate.

The rest of the republicans: if they've held office during the last eight years, they are guilty of being part of the legion of vial bastards who believe America should become the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany all rolled up in one. To hell with them all.

So there we are. What is the result of my analysis? It is this:

1. Believe in the priciples of Dennis Kucinich,

2. If we are forced to choose between Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, choose Edwards,

3. Expect the republican corporate fascist plutocrats to steal the 2008 election using the same methods that worked for them in 2000 & 2004.