GOP attacks on American voters turn desperate, ugly and dangerous

The GOP assault on American voters has hit full stride as the economy and John McCain tank in synch.

With just over three weeks until election day, the Republicans have mounted an all-out attack against newly registered voters and the organizations working to sign them up. As many as 75% of these new voters are expected to vote Democratic, but the attacks have also spread to long-established voters as well. Recent calculations show more than a million more newly registered Democrats in Ohio than Republicans.

The usual drumbeat claiming massive voter fraud has become ceaseless at Fox "News" and other right wing media mouthpieces.

As expected, the assault centers in Ohio, which once again could decide the presidency, but has manifested throughout the nation:

Struggle: A Documentary

Struggle: a Documentary set primarily in Ohio examines several conditions that lead to George W. Bush's victory in the 2004 Presidential election. This film places the audience right in the action with a unique "street level" perspective on the struggle to Protest Publicly or Vote Democratic in this American Society. Come see it at the Free Press Second Saturday Salon, Oct. 11.

The Producers of Struggle Struggle the Movie will be releasing segments of the film over the next month up until the eve of the 2008 Election. This film is a critical observation of an Electoral System in chaos which has produced subsequent fraudulent elections of President George W. Bush, and threatens to deliver another fraudulent result in the 2008 Presidential Election.

Struggle is the most recent "Street Level" Documentary from Mental-Rev Productions, directed by Roger Hill and in association with The Free Press www.freepress.org.

What's in an article?

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Cindy, Charlotte, and our Constitution

As you watch the presidential debates, here's a game to play that won't even get you drunk (unless you want to add tequila shots to it): every time you hear John McCain tell a lie write down $10 under the name Charlotte, and every time you hear Barack Obama agree with John McCain write down $10 under the name Cindy. You can also play this if you're broke by writing down 10 hours.

When you're done you can still plan to vote for Obama, with rapture or a clothespin or anything in between. You can still plan to do everything you can to deny Republicans as many seats as possible in both houses of Congress. But you can do something more as well. One thing you can do is send a powerful message to the woman who has managed the war funding, the Wall Street funding, the Bill of Rights shredding, and the elimination of the power of impeachment from our Constitution over the past two years.

CINDY:

I came to know Cindy Sheehan in May 2005, and -- like most people who know her -- I immediately loved her. She is a very friendly and loving person, and you cannot work on a project with her without being

Unofficial referendum in Vicenza, Italy: 95% opposed to new U.S. base

On October 5, 2008, Vicenza overwhelmingly said no to a second U.S. military base. In a referendum that had officially been suspended just four days before it was to take place, 24,094 voters, determined to express themselves, showed up to cast their votes. The referendum asked local residents if they agreed with the City of Vicenza taking up measures to purchase the Dal Molin area, the site of the proposed base, in order to designate its use in the public interest and to protect the environmental integrity of the site. With a resounding no to the new base, 23,050 voters, or 95.66%, voted in favor of the referendum.

The people of this city in northern Italy had been asking to have a say in this issue that has dominated local politics since May of 2006, when news of the proposed base first began to leak out. More than two years later, it had finally been called following a vote by the newly-elected city council this past June. Vicenza´s mayor, Achille Variati, had been elected in a runoff vote in April of this year on a platform that opposed the base and supported a local referendum.

As the date of the referendum neared, a campaign against this expression

Brace yourself

Call it, what, our crapshoot democracy?

The looming election — the process itself, not merely the feints and jabs of the candidates — is actually getting some mainstream media attention, as in, ahem, voting public, excuse me, but maybe you should be aware that irresponsible self-interest has been detected in the vicinity of our polling places and some bad choices have been made lately (electronic voting is unreliable) and, well, how badly did you want your vote counted?

In September, for instance, the Washington Post sounded this subdued, hapless warning: “Faced with a surge in voter registrations leading up to Nov. 4, election officials across the country are bracing for long lines, equipment failures and confusion over polling procedures that could cost thousands the chance to cast a ballot.”

Got that? Election Day could be chaos in many places. Election officials are bracing themselves. Crazy, untested equipment, too darn many new voters. Should the rest of us be bracing ourselves too?

Warming to Palin

It's the second week of October. When I was a kid it would sometimes snow and always be cold by now. I'm typing this on my laptop sitting outdoors in the warm sun with no sweater or jacket on the downtown mall, a pedestrian street in Charlottesville, Va. Flowers are blooming, and butterflies and hummingbirds are hanging out, several states out of their old territory. We haven't had the heat or the air conditioning on in our house for months. The weather is perfect and we're saving money. Global warming is making it easy for us to take steps to reverse global warming. So why does the perfect summer breeze on the back of my neck scare the hell out of me?

Dispatch propaganda campaign to cover-up e-voting flaws reaches new low

The Columbus Dispatch editorial of September 19 proclaimed: “Votes of confidence” and the editors offered this subhead: “Poll shows Ohioans trust elections to be fair, with accurate results.” The Dispatch touts a poll by the Institute for Public Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati demonstrating that most voters have confidence in the Ohio election system.

This is a bit like the Vatican scribes announcing in medieval times in a Papal bull that the vast majority of people believe that the world is flat. The Dispatch, with its usual Republican operative arrogance, writes “The outlandish conspiracy accusations concerning the 2004 election have been intended to convince the Democratic rank and file that the GOP ‘stole’ the Ohio vote to ensure President Bush’s re-election.”

Finally, the story of the whistleblower who tried to prevent the Iraq War

Of course Katharine Gun was free to have a conscience, as long as it didn’t interfere with her work at a British intelligence agency. To the authorities, practically speaking, a conscience was apt to be less tangible than a pixel on a computer screen. But suddenly -- one routine morning, while she was scrolling through e-mail at her desk -- conscience struck. It changed Katharine Gun’s life, and it changed history.

Despite the nationality of this young Englishwoman, her story is profoundly American -- all the more so because it has remained largely hidden from the public in the United States. When Katharine Gun chose, at great personal risk, to reveal an illicit spying operation at the United Nations in which the U.S. government was the senior partner, she brought out of the transatlantic shadows a special relationship that could not stand the light of day.

The fox in the henhouse

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