Register To Vote (america)

[smueske]

If you live in America and have not registered to vote, please do so by clicking on the image below. Your voice matters.

[BYTE-Smasher]

Especially if you’re tired of the current state of your country

[Andrew_Rice (a2n3d7y)]

OBAMA!!!

[Foo (mr_mark_dollin)]

Nader ftw.

Published on Saturday, June 28, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Primary Over, Hillary Won
by Dave Lindorff

Now that the primary season is over, we can see that the clear winner was Hillary Clinton.

Oh, I know. Barack Obama got the most votes and the most delegates, and he’ll be the Democratic presidential nominee this August, but increasingly, it’s becoming obvious that he’s just a pretty wrapper. Sneak a peak inside the wrapper and you’ll find Hillary Clinton inside.

Look at the facts.

No sooner did the last votes get counted in Montana, than Obama hied himself off to Washington to show his fealty to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where he promised to do whatever Israel wanted. You would have thought he was Bush or Hillary, so fulsome was his promise to unquestioningly back the worst policies and actions of Israel’s criminally insane right-wing government. Claim all of Jerusalem for the Jewish state? Fine by him. Starve and terrorize a million people in Gaza? No problemo. Attack Iran to prevent a merely suspected nuclear program from eventually producing a possible bomb? Okay. Negotiate with Hamas? Never.

Then there was the FISA and Fourth Amendment-violating campaign of spying by the National Security Agency. Some members of Congress and the courts have been trying for years to find out what Bush and Cheney have really been up to with this program, but they¹ve been stymied by the administration’s insistence that the phone companies, who enabled most of the spying, are immune from prosecution and don’t have to surrender records of, or talk about what they actually did. Congress, with the help of a spineless Democratic majority in both houses, came up in June with a bill that endorses the spying and gives retroactive immunity to the phone companies. 15 Senators - all Democrats - opposed that wretched sell-out of the Constitution and the American people. Sen. Obama supported it, just like Clinton.

When the Supreme Court, in a rare exception to a rash of reactionary rulings in the past few weeks, overturned a state law authorizing the death penalty for the rape of a child, Obama stood up for the death penalty, saying that he thought states should have the right to kill anyone who would sexually abuse a child. I guess he must think the states should be able to kill people convicted of killing someone too, since murder has to be at least as nasty as child rape. Another Clinton position. Never mind that most of the people who get the death penalty are persons of color, and that almost all the 4000 people on America¹s bulging death rows are either poor, desperately poor, retarded or simply insane. Never mind that rape is one of the most likely crimes to lead to wrongful convictions.

Barack was out there dissing black dads, too, charging them, as a class, with abandonment of their children, even though studies show that black fathers are no less likely to abandon their kids than are white dads. Okay, that’s not really a Hillary position. It’s more akin to Bill Clinton’s attacks on prominent blacks like Jesse Jackson or Sister Soulja during his campaigns for higher office.

It¹s getting harder and harder to see any light between Obama’s and Hillary’s positions on the Iraq War too, what with Obama backing away from his earlier campaign pledge to end the war within 16 months of taking office and saying instead that he would “listen to the generals” and that withdrawal would depend upon the situation on the ground.

Finally, Obama, after showing a remarkable ability to inspire tons of small donations and support from individuals, and to fund a huge national campaign without much in the way of corporate support, is greedily slurping from Hillary’s cesspool of corporate backers, now that she’s out of the way. Soon, he’ll be wallowing in tainted cash from Wall Street commercial and investment banks and hedge funds, telecom companies, defense contractors, Big Pharma companies, the HMO industry, and the entertainment industry. He’ll be owned like just about every other politician in Washington.

The transmogrification of an upstart people’s candidate for ‘change’ into just another front man for the corporatocracy will be complete.

Hillary will have won, but in the corporal form of Barack Obama.

The joke, of course, is that this evocation by Obama of his inner Clinton is not going to win him many votes, and may in fact lose him far more than he gains. Being Clinton, after all, didn’t win it for Hillary Clinton. It was Obama¹s differences from Clinton that won him the primary votes.

Clintonian positions didn’t really win the presidency for Bill Clinton either. It was Ross Perot who won the 1992 election for Clinton, by stealing enough votes from George Bush Sr. to let Clinton win with a mere plurality of the votes cast. There won’t be any Ross Perot this year, though, so Obama can’t hope to squeak by with a minority of the votes cast the way Bill did. In fact there will be at least two candidates - a Green Party one and Ralph Nader - who will be picking off some of the people Obama’s imitation of Clinton will turn off sufficiently for them to abandon him. There will also be a Libertarian candidate running, whose outspoken opposition to the war will attract disillusioned erstwhile Obama backers. Many more voters may just stay home in disgust. (It was also Al Gore’s decision to run a Clintonesque campaign or triangulation and pursuit of those elusive “mainstream” voters that made his run against Bush in 2000 close enough for the election to be stolen.)

Meanwhile, those Hillary primary voters Obama seems intent on pursuing at the expense of the progressive vote‹the pro-Israel hawks in New York and Florida, the “hard-working whites” of the West Virginia hollers, the Pennsylvania hills and the flatlands of Ohio and Indiana aren’t going to vote for him just because he adopts Hillary’s positions. They¹ll want the real deal, not just a front man posing as a front woman, so they’ll go for John McCain (just as they would have in November had Hillary won the nomination).

You gotta ask why a guy who had it all going for him is suddenly making such incredibly bad strategic decisions.

It has to be either that he’s brought on board too many Clinton backers, or that his own strategists have lost confidence in their own game plan. In his bid for Democratic Party “unity” Obama has sold whatever soul he once had.

He has met the enemy, and he has become her.

Dave Lindorff’s most recent book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.

[Andrew_Rice (a2n3d7y)]

We have 2 choices now.
McCain will start WWIII.
I like Nader too but he’s un-electable. Fuckin sad but true.
My first choice was actually Dennis Kucinich…but same thing.

Plus. You understand how much this country is obsessed with the superficial right? Giving this country a black president will be the most inspirational thing to have happened since we hit the moon.

And on a different note. Wall-E is awesome!

[choice]

Sadly, Mickey Mouse, Still, is not on the ballot!
that’s f’ed up…

i was actually thinking about registering just for this election.

i was kinda hoping Arnold would have been able to run, but since there are still steps to be made till the 1 World, and he needs to learn a hell of a lot more about being a leader, i will settle for Arnold being Emperor of the Planet, later on.
i do feel that inspiration & hope coming from Obama, he certainly has the charisma, though how he could stop what’s coming without world war. is perplexing to me. it is simply possible he could rearrange everything in a way to improvise what needs to be done, but that’s the hard stuff no one will be, is or will be ever talking about until it’s solved or supplanted. either way, it’s going to be pretty exciting.
mccain certainly looks like an attachment to a retarded missle.

[BYTE-Smasher]

I personally think if Obama got in, you’d see a lot of positive change. Then again, I also think there’s the possibility that it would be JFK all over again. Of course if that happened, a civil war would undoubtedly erupt… and the damned republicans have all the guns

[smueske]

I just can’t believe how fucked up things have gotten in the last ten years. The national debt has gotten so out of hand that we spend more on interest than we do for all of education.

Personally, I’d like to see the day when religion doesn’t figure into anything political. I’m not against religion, but when I heard Bush say “I have seen the valley of peace beyond” I got a sick feeling in my stomach.

I’m not crazy about Obama’s religious views, but I’m really hoping that he can open a dialog that this country desperately needs. Communication and discussion are never a bad thing. We can’t just bury all the nasty shit we’ve done and pretend it never happened. The question is, how to we move forward. How do we get people engaged, hopeful, and involved in making our country better.

[BYTE-Smasher]

I’m not crazy about Obama’s religious views, but I’m really hoping that he can open a dialog that this country desperately needs. Communication and discussion are never a bad thing. We can’t just bury all the nasty shit we’ve done and pretend it never happened. The question is, how to we move forward. How do we get people engaged, hopeful, and involved in making our country better.

I don’t think Obama would let his religion get in the way of his politics… if that were the case, he’d be using his religion as a focal point in his campaign.

[Foo (mr_mark_dollin)]

Published on Thursday, July 3, 2008 by TruthDig.com
It’s Not the Man, It’s the Movement
by Amy Goodman

I was on a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado this week when Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter asked me, “Is Obama a sellout?” The question isn’t whether he is a sellout or not — it’s about what demands are made by grass-roots social movements of those who would represent them. The question is, who are these candidates responding to, answering to?

Richard Nixon’s campaign strategy was to run in the primaries to the right, then move to the center in the general election. Bill Clinton’s strategy was called “triangulation,” navigating to a political “Third Way” to please moderates and undecided voters. This past week, Barack Obama has made some signal policy changes that suggest he might be doing something similar. Will it work for him?

Take the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, for example. A Dec. 17, 2007, press release from Obama’s Senate office read: “Senator Obama unequivocally opposes giving retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies and has cosponsored Senator Dodd’s efforts to remove that provision from the FISA bill. Granting such immunity undermines the constitutional protections Americans trust the Congress to protect. Senator Obama supports a filibuster of this bill, and strongly urges others to do the same.” Six months later, he supports immunity for the companies that spied on Americans.

I asked Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., about Obama’s position on the FISA bill. He told me: “Wrong vote. Regrettable. Many Democrats will do this. We should be standing up for the Constitution. When Sen. Obama is president, he will, I’m sure, work to fix some of this, but it’s going to be a lot easier to prevent it now than to try to fix it later.”

Feingold and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., are planning on filibustering the bill. It will take 60 senators to overcome their filibuster. It looks like Obama will be one of them. Disappointment with Obama’s FISA position is not limited to his senatorial colleagues. On Obama’s own campaign Web site, bloggers are voicing strident opposition to his FISA position. At the time of this writing, an online group on Obama’s site had more than 10,000 members and was growing fast. The group’s profile reads: “Senator Obama — we are a proud group of your supporters who believe in your call for hope and a new kind of politics. Please reject the politics of fear on national security, vote against this bill and lead other Democrats to do the same!”

Then there were the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on gun control and the death penalty. Obama supported the court in overturning the 32-year-old ban on handguns in the nation’s violence-ridden capital. It’s the court’s most significant ruling on the Second Amendment in nearly 70 years. And in a blow to death-penalty opponents, Obama disagreed with the high court’s prohibiting execution of those who were found guilty of raping children.

In a Jan. 21, 2008, primary debate, Obama called the North American Free Trade Agreement “a mistake” and “an enormous problem.” He recently told Fortune magazine, “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified … my core position has never changed … I’ve always been a proponent of free trade.” This, after the primary-campaign scandal of the alleged meeting between Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee and a member of the Canadian consulate. A Canadian memo describing the meeting suggested Obama was generally satisfied with NAFTA. Goolsbee described the accounts as inaccurate. Now people are beginning to question Obama’s genuine opposition to NAFTA and “free trade.”

Then there is the floating of potential vice presidential candidates. Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post was on the Aspen panel and noted that he has been receiving e-mails from gay men who angrily oppose former Sen. Sam Nunn as an Obama running mate. They can’t forget Nunn’s key role in shaping “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which prohibited gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military. The e-mails trickled up, prompting the writing of an influential Capehart column, “Don’t Ask Nunn.”

It may be the strategy of the Obama campaign to run to the middle, to attract the independents, the undecided. But he should look carefully at the lessons of the 2004 Kerry campaign. John Kerry made similar calculations, not wanting to appear weak on the war in Iraq. Uninspired, people stayed home. There are millions who care about the issues from which Obama is distancing himself, from FISA to gun control to gay rights to free trade to the death penalty. Rather than staying home, they should recall the words of Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America.

© 2008 Amy Goodman

[ericneilj (ideomux)]

The thing about the American macro-political system, is that it’s a complete lie.

The imagery and surface arguments are so far from the root of any worthwhile issue.

Examine the consequence of American politics as a behaviorist; don’t listen to the spoken logistics, look at the results.

I’m not voting because neither candidate (to suggest a third party is laughably absurd) represents my beliefs.

Why elect the candidate i’m least-displeased with?

I do not live in a functioning democracy, therefore I will not partake.

[Foo (mr_mark_dollin)]

Systems of violence also rely upon passiveness and non-action of the citizenry. Opting out gives the power structure what it wants.

Put aside your intelligence and vote for the least worst of the candidates. If they get in then it’s a good incremental step in the direction of reclaiming a proper system of representation for the people.

[ericneilj (ideomux)]

Systems of violence also rely upon passiveness and non-action of the citizenry. Opting out gives the power structure what it wants.

Put aside your intelligence and vote for the least worst of the candidates. If they get in then it’s a good incremental step in the direction of reclaiming a proper system of representation for the people.

very true if I lived in a swing state, but my second reason for not voting is the electoral college. my vote carries no weight; I live in california, which will vote for the candidate on the left. the popular vote does not matter in the us.

[choice]

in all actual honesty.

we pay way too much attention to this sort of thing.

the government doesn’t work even remotely close to what the american people are taught in college.

when everyone is trying to change the world, who will listen?
-certainly not those who are changing the world.

[Foo (mr_mark_dollin)]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/05/10125/

[choice]

if i can afford a place of my own in a decent neighborhood setting. making at least the equivalent of working 40-50 hours a week earning minimum wage, being able to save at least a few hundred a month.
an not have to dole out any interest to credit card companies.

i would be pretty happy to fix the cascade.

[Foo (mr_mark_dollin)]

Published on Monday, July 7, 2008 by The Huffington Post
The Mind and the Obama Magic
by George Lakoff

Barack Obama should not be moving toward right-wing views on issues — even with nuanced escape clauses. Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman and the NY Times Editorial Page all agree, for various reasons. I agree as well, for many of the same reasons, as well as important reasons that go beyond even excellent political commentary. My reasons have to do with results in the cognitive and brain sciences, as discussed in my recent book, The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st Century Politics with an 18th Century Brain.

But before I get into the details, it is important to get a sense of why Obama might be “moving to the Right.” There are at least two possibilities. The first is for political expediency. The second is to reassure voters that he is a responsible leader, not a crazy radical. Let’s start with the first possibility — expediency, the one assumed by most observers.

The Political Expediency Argument

The usual political wisdom is (1) voters vote on the basis of positions on issues, (2) there is a left-to-right spectrum of voters defined by positions on issues, (3) most voters are in the “center.” Polls are constructed to appear consistent with this tripartite hypothesis. The Dick Morris strategy, based on this hypothesis, says: if a Democrat moves the Right, he will get more votes because he will “take away” the other side’s issues. If Obama and his advisors believe this, then the more they more to the Right, the bigger their win should be. But all three hypotheses are false, and so is the conclusion based on it.

First, voters mostly vote not on the details of positions on issues, but on five aspects of what might be called “character,” as Richard Wirthlin discovered in the 1980 Reagan campaign. (pdf) They are Values (What are the ethical principles that form the basis of your politics?); Authenticity (Do you say what you believe?); Communication (Do you connect with voters and inspire them?); Judgment; Trust; and Identity (If you share voters’ values, connect with them, tell them the truth effectively while inspiring trust, then they will identify with you — and they will voter for you. Positions on issues matter when they come to stand symbolically for values. Reagan and George W. Bush understood this. Carter, Mondale, Gore, and Kerry did not. And in the primaries. Hillary Clinton did not get it (she focused on policy, while Obama and McCain focused more on character, on who he was).

Values, authenticity, communication, judgment, and trust are not irrational reasons for voting for a president, even over positions on specific issues. The reason is that situations change, and what you rationally wind up depending on are just those virtues.

Obama introduced himself to the primary voters not as a policy wonk, but as a person of character, who announced his values, said what he believed (no pussyfooting), communicated beautifully and powerfully, and gave examples of his good judgment–he was someone you could trust and identify with. That was a major part of the Obama magic. If Obama even appears to adopt Right-wing views for the sake of getting more votes, he will appear to be giving up on his values, renouncing his authenticity and believability, clouding his judgment, and raising questions about whether he can be trusted. The Obama magic will be in danger of fading.

Let us now turn to the second reason. There are two major modes of thought in American politics — conservative and progressive, what I’ve called “strict” and “nurturant.” We all grow up with brains exposed to both and capable of using both, but usually in different areas of life. Some people are conservative on foreign policy and progressive on domestic policy, or conservative on economic issues and progressive on social issues–or the reverse. There is no left-to-right linear spectrum; all kinds of combinations occur. I’ve called such folks “biconceptuals.” Brainwise, they show a common situation called “mutual inhibition,” where two modes of thought are possible but the activation of one inhibits the other. The more you activate a conservative mode of thought, the more you inhibit the progressive mode of thought — and the more likely it is that the conservative mode of thought will spread to other issues.

Interestingly, many people who call themselves “conservatives” actually think like progressives on a range of issue areas. For example, many “conservatives” love the land as much as any environmentalist; want to live in communities where people care about each other, that is, have social not just individual responsibility; live progressive business principles of honesty, care for their employees, and care for the public; and have progressive religious values: helping the poor, caring for the sick, being good stewards of the God’s creation, turning the other cheek. One view of “bipartisanship” for progressives is finding self-described conservatives and independents who have such progressive values and working with them on that basis. That’s what Obama did when he went to Rick Warren’s megachurch and it is his strategy in Project Joshua. Note that this is the opposite of the form of bipartisanship that involves really adopting right-wing values, or even appearing to. What this bipartisan strategy does, from the brain’s viewpoint, is to activate the progressive mode of thought in the brains of conservatives, and thus tends to inhibit conservative thought.

But the form of bipartisanship that involves adopting, or appearing to adopt, right-wing views has the opposite effect. It strengthens conservative thought in the brains on those biconceptuals and weakens progressive thought. In short, it actually helps conservatives. Rather than “taking arguments away from them” it strengthens their basic values and hence all their arguments. It give conservatives more reason, not less, for voting for conservatives.

If Obama adopts, or appears to adopt, right-wing positions, he may still win, since McCain is such a weak candidate. But it will hurt Democrats running for office all up and down the ticket, since it will strengthen general conservative positions on all issues and hence work in the favor of conservative candidates.

As has often been said, if you are a conservative, why vote for the progressive spouting conservative views when you can vote for a real conservative?

In short, if Obama adopts, or appears to adopt, right-wing views, he will not only hurt himself, but also hurt other Democrats.

The Responsibility Position

Suppose that Obama’s motivation is not political expediency, but rather an attempt to counter both right-wing and centrist stereotypes of progressives as being irresponsible.

Adopting, or appearing to adopt, right-wing positions is not going to work, and will only hurt, for reasons given above. What is the alternative?

In The Audacity of Hope, Obama portrays what I would call progressive ideals as simply American ideals, and he continued that account throughout the primary campaign. I think it is a correct account. And I think it is the key to uniting the country without adopting right-wing views. From this perspective, responsibility and the strength and judgment to act responsibly works with empathy (caring about other people) to define the basic American ideals: freedom, fairness, equality, opportunity, and so on. One can speak from this perspective of “full responsibility” both social and individual as central to the American vision, and they say what it means to be both responsible and committed to American ideals in each issue area. Moving to right-wing views, and abandoning American ideals, is never necessary to win.

A Final Word on Nuanced Escape Clauses

When Obama ran for Senator in Illinois he had to at least appear to support Illinois industries — coal, ethanol, and nuclear energy. He has used nuanced escape clauses, such as if it turns out to be economically feasible, while aware that sequestered coal, corn ethanol, and nuclear could not be economically feasible. Is this good politics? It may have been for a new senator, but it is not for a president. The reason again is that doing so activates a conservative mode of thought and inhibits a progressive mode of thought, making the move to real alternative energy that much harder.

Positions like this depend on a deep mistake about policy. There are two aspects to policy: cognitive and material. Material policy is about the nuts and bolts, how things are to work in the world. Cognitive policy is about what the public has to have in its brain/mind in order to fully support the right material policies. Coal, nuclear energy, and ethanol are policy disasters, and even giving them phony support with nuanced escape clauses hurts the possibility of real energy reform, but it activates, and hence strengthens, the conservative modes of thought that lie behind those proposals.

Can You Avoid Attacks?

No. No matter how many right-wing views you move toward, you will be viciously attacked as too liberal, as influenced by radicals, as inexperienced, as unpatriotic, as all words and no content. Stick to your core values. Be yourself. Voters will respect you.

Why Understanding the Political Mind Matters

Politics looks different from the perspective of the cognitive and brain sciences. That is why I have written The Political Mind. Your arguments change when you start with how the brain and mind really work.

From the brain’s perspective, the pragmatic arguments and moral arguments converge: Don’t adopt right-wing positions for the sake of political expediency (that will backfire) or to demonstrate responsibility (that too will backfire). The best way to be expedient is to be authentic, stick to your core values, show and discuss responsibility, and thus garner trust. That is how to lead our nation, and to do so responsibly and toward fulfillment of its ideals.

George Lakoff is the author of The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 20th Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain. He is Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley.

Copyright © 2008 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

[Andrew_Rice (a2n3d7y)]

and the answer is… Political Expediency!
I’ve been planning on picking up a copy of The Political Mind. I heard George Lakoff on NPR, brilliant.

[Conner_Bw]

@Mushen

In Canada where I live I always vote Bloc Pot.

They have no hope in winning and are a one issue party. Hell, I don’t even smoke pot.

But if the party that wins the riding wins by a small margin my hope is that they are smart enough to realize that if they legalize marijuana Bloc Pot will disappear an they will get my vote the next time.

Other parties of note in my riding are marxist-leninist and green party.

I always go vote, and I always vote the party that represents me. Are you sure there aren’t any fringe parties you can vote for?

Your vote counts. Someone has to count that shit and the look on the face of the people counting, a representative of each party, when they have to say “one for bloc pot” is worth it.

[ericneilj (ideomux)]

@Mushen

In Canada where I live I always vote Bloc Pot.

They have no hope in winning and are a one issue party. Hell, I don’t even smoke pot.

But if the party that wins the riding wins by a small margin my hope is that they are smart enough to realize that if they legalize marijuana Bloc Pot will disappear an they will get my vote the next time.

Other parties of note in my riding are marxist-leninist and green party.

I always go vote, and I always vote the party that represents me. Are you sure there aren’t any fringe parties you can vote for?

Your vote counts. Someone has to count that shit and the look on the face of the people counting, a representative of each party, when they have to say “one for bloc pot” is worth it.

I would consider voting libertarian or some other third party closer to my personal beliefs, but the us is strictly a two party system. third party votes don’t show the dominant parties what people will vote for; the dominant parties do not care what voters want because they realize their dominance.

Barriers to third party success