End of the World as We Know It, and I Feel Fine

John Zogby has now Christened it the "Armageddon Election:"

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=911

My friends are all on a major apocalypse kick. Now the pollsters. Yep, I'm having trouble sleeping at night.
Not taking into consideration the Book of Revelation, here's what I see right now for the election:

* Some polls are showing Kerry ahead, noticeably more are showing a small Bush lead either within or very close to the margin of error (random inaccuracy level of the poll).

* We have several strong reasons to believe these polls are undercounting Kerry voters due to cell-only voters (polls are not calling cell phones), underestimation of youth turnout (from the trenches, it looks to me like that this will be a big surprise to those who aren't talking much with young people right now), and other factors.

* If the youth vote gets out the way it looks to me like it will, *Kerry WILL Win*.

Election Stealing Starting

Greg Palast and the BBC are telling us about it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm

"A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals."

But the American press is not telling us about it? Oh, I know why... U.S. media logic goes like this: "Oh, that would look really bad for Bush, right? So if we run the story, we make Bush look bad, and we're taking a liberal bias. It would be better to stay neutral and not report news that makes Bush look bad." Unfortunately, I think we must be prepared for the possibility that the media will not report George W.'s loss of the election next Tuesday quickly or easily... that would look bad for Bush.

John Kerry Endorsement

A formality?
I wish I lived in a country in which one week before election day I would be writing my endorsement of Carol Mosley-Braun, Denis Kucinich, or Al Sharpton for President of the United States. God bless them for running and telling the truth; they are profits who will serve as models for the statesmen of our children.
In this country, however, John F. Kerry is my first choice for President, and I extend my official endorsement to this candidate.
I will not enter the voting booth in a week to vote against a tyrant. Such an act would grant a sad man more dignity than he deserves. Anyone who faults Kerry for lack of principles, complicity with war, or any other of the deadly sins of the liberal is someone who has managed by some secret devices not to live in the same America as I have for the past four years.
A candidate noticeably more liberal than Kerry would hold better odds of an open-ended vacation to Guantanamo than the election to the highest office of the land. This is indeed a profound problem in our civilization which we must not ignore. As a cultural definition, "liberal" has become equated to "traitor" and "weak," while conservative has been accepted to mean "principled" and "strong."
For this to have become our national near-consensus casts a deep, dark shadow of blame upon several groups of Americans.
I charge in the first count, the conservatives. Ignorance of the law is no defense. The law greater than any made by man or nation is Love. Their purpose is wrong and unjust, and their means inhuman and immoral.
I charge in the second count, the "liberals," the hippies, the intellectuals, and to keep the list short, anyone who knows better. We blew it in 1969 because the Summer of Love never needed to end.
Next Tuesday, I have the privilege of voting for John F. Kerry whose strength, courage, and principles will lead us to a better future. Let every one of us vote next week, elect Kerry President, live each day of our lives in the ideals we wish for, and next round we may have earned an even better candidate.

Media-ocrity

We need to continue and expand the discussion of our expectations from the media. A few years ago, the predominant voices were those decrying the mythical "liberal press." The corporate media were emboldened by this to transform their reporting to a consistent right-wing perspective. In November of 2000, before the votes were counted, the news media sung a chorus of "Should Al Gore concede?" It was dirty and wrong.
One of the ongoing sources of right-wing favoritism from the media is actually stemming from the idea that the reporting should be balanced and fair. Implemented wrongly, this approach has obscured the strengths of John Kerry and the Democrats, and glossed over George Bush's inadequacies.
Michelangelo Signorile gives a good example through examining the commentary on the debates:

http://www.365gay.com/opinion/Gist/Gist.htm

"Television news coverage has become so twisted that CNN commentators are not only withholding judgment on who won each debate, waiting to get spun by the campaigns--they're admitting that they're doing so...
All of which is why it has been pitiful to watch tv commentators pander to Bush in the post-debate analysis. The Hardball panel on MSNBC went out of its way to compliment Bush after both debates--Salon noted that they seemed to have watched some other debate on another planet the first time around--while Tim Russert and Tom Brokaw punted, pining on with sentimental crap about how debates show the true spirit of democracy. On CNN on Friday night, Jeff Greenfield blurted out a wish-washy analysis that basically amounted to saying the debate was a draw--though he didn't even want to be that definitive--while Wolf Blitzer waited until Judy Woodruff offered up a report from the "spin room." "

It is not obvious to me how to go about fixing these issues so that the American people can get reasonable information from the media. But we should observe the reporting on the eve of, and through the final result of the election with a critical eye. Discussing the problem and spreading the truth are critical tasks for the nurturance and rebuilding of our now fragile democracy.

President Gore

Rex Wockner interjects a point that is getting very little play leading up to this election:

http://members.aol.com/rexwockner/

"We never elected Bush in the first place. Al Gore got more votes. That's a fact. Florida cheated. Then the U.S. Supreme Court halted the processes that would have proved Florida cheated, leaving Bush the "winner" of the "electoral vote" though not the actual vote."

Under the law as it was and is written, Al Gore not only won the popular vote nationwide, but also the legal majority vote in Florida, which under the law of the land should have resulted in a move to Pennsylvania Avenue. Florida law, which the Constitution of the United States empowers to determine the state's electoral vote states that votes are valid under law if they express the "clear intent of the voter." George Bush was awarded the state by an arbitrary, made-up margin of 537 votes. Many thousands of legal votes for Al Gore were never counted. Far more voters than needed to produce a margin of victory for Gore marked their ballots on the Gore line, and wrote "Lieberman" onto the ballot also. Many of these were Jewish voters proud to vote for Lieberman for vice-president along with Gore for president. These were discarded as "over-votes" -- i.e. invalid supposedly because of voting for more than one candidate. I dare any rational person to tell me that these ballots did not express the "clear intent" of the voter. They were true legal votes, and Al Gore won Florida and was legally elected President of the United States.
I suppose that Democrats are not discussing this because it probably doesn't "focus-group" well. It is hard for Americans to accept that a tyrant illegally seized control of the Presidency of the United States in what was indeed a coup d'etat in America. It is easier for many to go to sleep at night viewing the Dems as 2000's Sore-Loserman rather than think their freedom and security are in the hands of our Commander-In-Thief. Those who can handle the truth should be energized above and beyond ever before to correct the near-fatal blow to our democracy which occurred in November 2000, and make sure it is fixed in November 2004.

Hunting for the Truth

Hunter S. Thomson has written an excellent Tell-It-Like-It-Is in Rolling Stone about the election:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6562575?rnd=1098731682406&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.857

"The question this year is not whether President Bush is acting more and more like the head of a fascist government but if the American people want it that way. "

One of my recent mantras has been that it is true, but too easy, to blame all the faults of George W. on just the man himself. The important thing is the people of this country who now have a glaring spotlight shining upon them as they will go in a week and a day to decide whether to return a dangerous man back to the ranch were he cannot inflict so much harm on us and the rest of the world. We must put John F. Kerry in the White House to begin to heal and grow as a people.

Good people, people of principles must vote on November 2, and they must make sure their friends and family vote.