Kerry wins first debate

If I were a debate judge I probably would call it a draw, but because there must be a winner and a loser -- the American people demand it -- I score it for Kerry on points. Both candidates pretty much stuck to their talking points -- Bush is certain that he was right to invade Iraq while Kerry questioned how Bush diverted resources from the battle against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and proceeded to war with Iraq without building an effective alliance. But Kerry managed to convey that he would wage war on terror and refuted the Bush campaign image of him as weak and indecisive. I don't see Bush gaining any votes from the debate but Kerry might have won over some potential voters who had questioned his foreign policy and national security credentials. (9/30/04)

SF solves 'spoiler' problem

San Francisco is implementing a new instant runoff system that could be a model for reforms across the country. The idea, as Nathan Newman notes, is simple: voters rank their candidate preferences in order. If no candidate gets a majority based on the first choice of all voters, the second choice of voters supporting the least popular candidate is added to the totals for the other candidate. If no candidate has a majority yet, repeat with the third choices.

Democrats would be much better off nationwide if they concentrated on passing bills allowing instant runoff voting and proportional representation instead of trying to keep people like Ralph Nader and parties like the Greens off ballots. For more on IRV and proportional representation (also called "full representation") see the Center for Voting and Democracy. (9/30/04)

The Road To Hell / Rise

Two shockwave movies explore the politics that let the richest 20% of Americans get richer, while the other 80% of us and the rest of the world lose ground. Michael Wadleigh (who directed the Academy-Award-winning movie "Woodstock" in 1970) created the shorts. The three-minute "Road to Hell" shockwave looks at 30 years, Vietnam to Iraq, and the score of major domestic and foreign issues that should be the focus of this election -- but of course they are not.

"The Rise" notes that in the last 30 years the share of the richest 20% of Americans has increased; everyone else has lost ground. And it's worse every year: 20% now have 88% of the wealth and rising, 80% of Americans have only 12% of wealth and falling.  "The Rise" predicts that sooner or later the 80%, and the world, will awake and rise against the 20%.

Both movies, which argue the need for alternatives to the Democratic and Republican parties, are available in stream or for download. (9/25/04)

Stealing the election 2000

Powerful flash movie on the Republican effort to "clean" Florida voter rolls of convicted felons, which took 58,000 names off the rolls, many of which were found to only share a name or birthdate with a real felon. The list was later found to be 95% inaccurate, but investigative reporter Greg Palast estimated the inaccurate voter cleansing cost Democrats 22,000 votes in an election Gore officially lost by 537 votes. And they're at it again. (9/25/04)

Your mutual fund helped loot the economy

As corporations defrauded the public in the 1990s with distortions of their budgets and excessive, unchecked pay for CEOs, it turns out mutual funds were sitting there as the cheerleading squad for all these excesses. No one knew this until this past month -- although many suspected it -- since mutual funds were not required to tell their customers how they voted all the shares of stock that they controlled. Nathan Newman has the stories. (9/12/04)

Peaceful tomorrows on 9/11

Three years ago, families of victims of 9/11 created September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows to promote the idea that war and killings overseas was not the solution to prevent further killing by terrorists globally.

See their statement on the third anniversary and Nathan Newman's conclusions. (9/11/04)

Scare tactics dishonor 9/11

A bumper sticker was sighted recently that asked "Who would al Qaeda vote for?" We presume it was intended as a dig at John Kerry, after Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sept. 8 that if voters make the wrong choice on election day (that is, vote for Kerry), the US risks another terrorist attack. Actually it is pretty clear that al Qaeda terrorists hope for Bush's re-election. According to the Associated Press (March 18), "The Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri (Al Qaeda)" in a statement that claimed responsibility for the March 11 attacks that killed more than 200 people and wounded more than 1,600 in Spain, also told American voters that it supports the re-election campaign of President Bush: "We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections" because Bush's "idiocy and religious fanaticism" would "wake up" the Islamic world.

Three years after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush has succeeded in turning the Islamic world from sympathy with the United States for the senseless slaughter to anger at the United States for its invasion of a nation that, for all its faults, had nothing to do with the 9/11 outrage and posed no real threat to the US. Bush squandered the goodwill of his countrymen as he capitalized on the nation's unity in the wake of a foreign attack to pursue a partisan agenda under the cover of patriotism. He radicalized a generation of Arabs and other Muslims who saw the invasion of Iraq and the occupation of its oilfields and industries as a heavy-handed extension of US military and commercial power. He also has alienated many US allies, notably France and Germany, whose cooperation is needed to prosecute any actual war on terror, with his administration's distortions of the threat posed by Iraq and the clumsy attempts to tie Saddam Hussein with al Qaeda. (By the way, both France and Germany, which were vilified by neocon hawks advocating the Iraq invastion, participated in the NATO support of American intervention in Afghanistan. That action had the virtue of actually removing the base of al-Qaeda activity, at least until the US withdrew troops and other resources from Afghanistan to focus on Iraq.)

Bush boasts that the US has not seen any further terrorist attacks on our soil but we have seen more than 1,000 US soldiers killed and more than 6,000 wounded in Iraq. Meanwhile terrorist attacks are on the rise dramatically around the world and we can be sure that al Qaeda is waiting for its chance to strike at American interests at home and abroad. And thanks to George W. Bush's reckless behavior, al Qaeda has plenty of recruits.

See also Juan Cole's informed analysis of the aftermath of 9/11.

Public Prints

By Charles Cullen (9/9/04)

Nick Turse writes at MotherJones.com Sept. 7 of his experiences in the "homeland security statelet" that was New York City during the Republican National Convention. Having experienced firsthand the uncomfortable transition from bystander to detainee, Turse notes in this must-read for anyone interested in the truth behind the RNC show that nothing short of "the 10' by 20' chain-link pen with razor wire over the top that I found myself in" could drive home the reality and future implications of "Fortress Big Apple."

Dale Maharidge of The Nation (Sept. 2) documents the anger and desperation that is festering in America's heartland as workers watch plants being closed or sold and jobs being lost. Feelings that could have once best been described as despair have metastasized into a "flailing, unfocused" rage and have combined with the xenophobia that currently seems to grip the nation. Unfortunately, but not unpredictably, this animosity has turned toward the middle-east and, harnessed by the skillfully coded hate language of the GOP, become a driving force in the Bush campaign. The out of work, the underemployed, and the overcharged in middle America; those who have been most hurt by Bushís socio-economic policies have become some of his staunchest allies. Xenophobia and anger uber alles.

Craig Aaron of Dissent Magazine chronicles George Bush's numerous betrayals of the American public and the world in general. Among the highlights (or lowlights) are his 1.35 trillion dollar tax cut, his activation of a "shadow government" without congressional knowledge, and the almost endless list of human rights abuses in the name of freedom.