McCain a Faux Maverick : Stealing a Texas Tradition

Posted on September 14, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

The Maverick political family — Maury Maverick, Sr. is sworn in by his father as San Antonio mayor, as Maverick, Jr. looks on.

John McCain has appropriated a cherished name from Texas progressive politics. A scoundrel like McCain calling himself a “maverick” doesn’t sit too well with those on the Texas political left. Fontaine Maverick, grandaughter of famed Texas iconoclastic politico Maury Maverick, Sr. and niece of Maury Maverick, Jr., wrote of this ironic bit of thievery in The Rag Blog on August 30. Now “Paul in Austin” — aka Paul Robbins — has posted two interesting and informative pieces on Daily Kos about the subject.

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / September 14, 2008

Identity Theft: McCain Stealing Maverick Family Name
by Paul in Austin / September 13, 2008

This is my second diary about the irony where John McCain is branding himself a Maverick, when the name comes from a family of progressive Democrats in Central Texas, including two elected officials, Maury Maverick, Sr. and Maury Maverick, Jr., both of San Antonio.

Maury Sr. was the grandson of the original Texas Maverick Sam, one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Maury earned a law degree, and then fought in W.W.1, where he received a Silver Star and Purple Heart. He was county tax collector (1929-1931). He was elected for two terms to Congress (1934-1938). He was defeated, in part, by red-baiting tactics. Maverick was elected Mayor of San Antonio between 1939-41. But he lost reelection in main because he supported freedom of speech through a crowd permit to a labor union with ties to Communists.

I am a friend of Fontaine Maverick, Maury Jr.’s niece. In discussing McCain’s identity theft of her family name, she directed me to a fascinating online book by the late Maury Sr.

Part autobiography, part history, part storytelling, and a good part political philosophy, this book-now-blog describes the life and opinions of an unrepentant Southern Democrat and liberal who thought it was society’s duty to protect the poor and disadvantaged, who believed government was part of the solution and not part of the problem, and who had concerns about the environment long before it was a national focus.

He decried overpopulation in the South as one of its main causes of poverty, the environmental degradation of its land, and its disrespect for labor.

Put in plain American language, this means the South has plenty of natural resources, but they are being wasted; that in skilled trades the region is low; that the population is too great, and although there is a culture of a kind, this culture is unsatisfactory. And it also means the South could be a prosperous and happy place, but isn’t.

Some five or more million acres have been ruined in the Black Bottoms, the Mississippi keeps rolling along with its floods—and millions of tons of fertilizers wash down to the sea in rains. The South is forced to use huge quantities of fertilizer. Per annum it uses five and a half million tons. All of the rest of the nation uses only two and a half million tons.

As for labor, I find not a single state which has a minimum wage law. Only one, Arkansas, has approved the Child Labor Amendment. Labor is generally in a bad shape. And it must be organized, so that it can build up a purchasing power, buy itself out of hock, and trade with the rest of the nation as an equal. This needs progressive labor legislation, with decent pension laws.

On health care:

It is a damned outrage that a poor man can’t go to a doctor. Why should a man in moderate circumstances have to die because he hasn’t got the money for an operation and hospital expenses?

On classism and the American Revolution:

The new American Tories were worse than the British Lords—and some of them, including the arrogant, swell-headed, lace-collared John Hancock, merely got out of paying their debts. They quickly proceeded to exploit their own people at home.

On race, he was the only Southern Democrat of his day to vote in support of anti-lynching legislation.

His monograph had interesting stories about how, at the beginning of the Great Depression, he and 2 friends disguised themselves, Mark Twain-style, as hobos and visited the missions, soup kitchens, and hobo camps to see the poverty first hand.

We stood there in the cold. It was drizzling, and some sleet came down. A youngster about thirteen years of age stood by me, hatless and coatless. The sleet fell on his hair.

In a group under a shed there were about twenty-five men. One seemed to have pneumonia. I came up and insisted that the man go to the hospital, but all said that there was no use, that he had already been refused because he was not a resident of the town. I never found out whether this particular incident was true, but widely, all over the country, “transients” were denied hospitalization even in the gravest emergency cases.

During the trip:

I found that a very large proportion of those riding the freight trains were tenant farmers, share-croppers, and agricultural workers. The old-time tramp constituted only a negligible portion, say ten or fifteen per cent of the whole. People just didn’t have any place to go. I traveled with one old man who had with him his two young sons. He lost his farm, became a tenant, then lost out completely. I did not have the heart to ask him if he had a wife and daughters.

Back in San Antonio, after our return home, I organized the transient relief stations…We had relief stations at all the freight depots and when anyone came in we gave him a very cheap meal of hot coffee, bread and beans, and sometimes Mulligan stew. I had freight train schedules made up and gave information as to the best travel routes, and the best place to board trains without getting in trouble.

This spirit and conscience were inherited by his son, Maury Jr. I will save this for another installment.

But I ask again how anyone can equate Maury Maverick’s life and philosophy with John McCain?

Source / Daily Kos

Here is Paul in Austin’s previous post about the real Maverick:

Senator McCain, You’re No (Maury) Maverick
by Paul in Austin / September 10, 2008

The McCain campaign has become infamous for using other people’s copyrighted material. During the campaign, popular songwriters have chafed about how their music was used without permission. These have included Jackson Browne, John Mellencamp, and most recently, the Wilson sisters of Heart, when their song “Barracuda” was used as the theme for the new Vice President.

But McCain’s campaign is also stealing a family name and a political legacy: a Democratic one. If you use the word “Maverick” in Central Texas, you are referring to a family of progressive Democrats that McCain has decidedly little in common with. This is indeed the family descended from the original 19th Century Texas Maverick. And some of his descendents are not at all pleased. While one cannot copyright a name in the public domain, McCain’s use of the word goes over as well in this region as trying to dub McCain a “Kennedy” in the Northeast.

The first Texas Maverick hailed as Sam. He migrated to Texas in 1835. He was a patriot who was one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, fought in the Texas Revolution, and was jailed in a Mexican prison for it.

After the war, he was a lawyer and land speculator that sometimes took cattle instead of money for payment. He never branded them, so they were eventually appropriated by neighbors. These unbranded cattle became known as ‘mavericks.”

Sam was the grandfather of Maury Maverick Sr., a New Deal Congressman and Mayor of San Antonio in the 1930s.

Jan Jarboe Russell, writing for the San Antonio Express, recalls:

…he and a group of other liberal Democrats pressed to push the New Deal further than President Franklin Roosevelt had in mind. These members of Congress — first identified on March 10, 1935, as “the Mavericks” by the Washington Herald — pushed through legislation to clear slums, created the National Cancer Institute, and passed bills to conserve natural resources.

Maverick was elected mayor of San Antonio in 1939 and served only one term, yet still ranks as the city’s most progressive mayor. He got federal money to build the San Antonio River Walk and reformed corruption at City Hall.

His political undoing came when he supported granting access to the Municipal Auditorium for a rally for a labor union with Communist connections. A lynch mob emerged outside the auditorium. They hung Maury Maverick’s effigy. His unqualified support for freedom of speech effectively ended his political career.

Maury Maverick, Jr. continued the legacy.

As a member of the Texas House during the McCarthy era, Maury Jr. broke with fellow Democrats to oppose the banning of books and other anti-communist hysteria laws that he believed violated the U.S. Constitution. As a civil rights lawyer, he broke with President Lyndon Johnson, once his friend, over the Vietnam War.

Maury Jr.’s niece, Fontaine Maverick (now of Austin), was recently quoted in the Austin Chronicle about the sordid misuse of her name.

Maury’s niece Fontaine* wrote last week that her brother (yet another Maury, in a lengthy line) told her that “if he hears that John McCain is a Maverick ONE MORE TIME, he is going to shoot the TV. … Every time we hear that use of our name, it is like fingernails on a blackboard times ten.” Expect to feel that sensation a lot, this week and over the next couple of months – while you do everything you can to make certain it won’t persist for the next four years.

McCain and his handler’s have proved they will misuse art, history, and whatever else they think they have to in their efforts to win. I think we should challenge McCain to live up to the standard that the real Mavericks have set for him.

Source / Daily Kos

Also see Fontaine Maverick : John McCain is no Maverick! by Fontaine Maverick / The Rag Blog / August 31, 2008

And Point Austin: More Mavericks by Michael King / The Austin Chronicle / September 12, 2008

And The Real Original Maverick by Rick Casey / Houston Chronicle / September 6, 2008

And for more background on the Maverick legacy: This Maverick The Real Deal by Joe Holley / The Rag Blog / March 1, 2008

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Tim Wise : Palin, Obama and the Reality of White Privilege

Posted on September 14, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

White privilege: Levi Johnston , Bristol Palin’s boyfriend — who calls himself a ‘fuckin’ redneck — is considered an ‘all-American’ boy.

This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise / September 13, 2008

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”


White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.


White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.


White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.


White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college–you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.


White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”


White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.


White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.


White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.


White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a “light” burden.


And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…


White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White. He has contributed essays to seventeen books, and is one of several persons featured in White Men Challenging Racism: Thirty-Five Personal Stories, from Duke University Press. A collection of his essays, Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male, will be released in fall 2008.

Source / Red Room

Thanks to David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

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Iraq Report: Mosul Very Uneasy

Posted on September 13, 2008 by RagBlog

Three Armored Combat Excavators clear debris and obstacles from a four-lane highway while a Bradley Fighting Vehicle provides security in Mosul, Iraq, Dec. 2007.

Fear and mistrust plague Iraq’s Mosul
By Tim Cocks / September 11, 2008

MOSUL, Iraq — Falah Mohammed peered over his shoulder as he spoke of how militants threatened to kill him and his family unless he quit his government job.

“It wasn’t worth the risk after the third threatening letter, so I left,” said the former guard in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. “Insurgents have created so much fear in this place.”

Officials and security personnel die at the hands of gunmen nearly every day in Mosul, a city of 1.8 million people still struggling to shake off a determined insurgency while much of Iraq enjoys its best security in years.

Attacks in Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province have fallen since an Iraqi-led offensive against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and other insurgents was stepped up in May. Markets are busier and traffic heavier.

But residents say a climate of fear persists in Mosul, an ancient melting pot of ethnic and sectarian groups.

“People here are very afraid,” said Nisreen Mustafa, a housewife. “We always heard explosions before the operation and we still hear them a lot now. What’s changed?”

U.S. military officials say attacks fell from around 130 per week just before the May offensive to 30 a week in Nineveh by July, before creeping up to 60-70 per week.

“It’s things like targeted drive-bys on Iraqi police,” said Major Adam Boyd, a U.S. military intelligence officer in Mosul.

“There’s a campaign of intimidation (against) … the Iraqi security forces … to get the local populace to feel insecure.”

Two weeks ago, insurgents tried to kill Major-General Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, commander of military operations in Nineveh, with a roadside bomb. Two professors from Mosul University have been killed in the past three months.

ETHNIC PATCHWORK

A U.S. army patrol rumbles through Mosul, past a main street so devastated by fighting that barely a building stands. Bombed out concrete roofs droop over collapsed walls. Rubble litters streets. The vehicles cross a bridge over the Tigris River and the smell of raw sewage fills the air.

But as neighbouring western Anbar province has shown, even the most violent, lawless places in Iraq can be turned around.

The desert region of Anbar was lost to insurgents in 2006, but this month the U.S. military handed control of security back to Iraqi forces after Sunni Arab tribes joined forces with the military to largely expel al Qaeda from the province.

U.S. officials do not expect Anbar’s triumph to be repeated easily in northern Iraq, where communities are a complex patchwork of Sunni and Shi’ite Arabs, Kurds, ethnic Turkmen, pre-Islamic Yazidi Kurds and Assyrian Christians.

Anbar by comparison is overwhelmingly Sunni Arab.

“The dialogue in Anbar between sheikhs willing to put aside their differences is one reason … they (succeeded),” said Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Molinari, U.S. army operations officer in Mosul.

“You don’t see that here in Nineveh. The provincial government is not open to that kind of dialogue.”

LACK OF TRUST

Mistrust between Arabs, who make up most of the police, and Kurds, who fill most army posts, hinders intelligence efforts.

In a hot, stuffy office with only one fan, U.S. Army Captain Adam Cannon greets two Iraqi army officers in their Kurdish tongue, chats, then hands them a list of suspected insurgents.

But there’s a problem, says Major Jahir Bahoddin: few in the predominantly Sunni Arab neighbourhoods will talk.

“They won’t help us,” he told Reuters. “They’d really rather not cooperate with Kurds. We are trying to tell them: ‘we’re here to rid your neighbourhood of insurgents’. Even when they want to help, they are too afraid to speak.”

Cannon said Kurdish army officers, mistrustful of Arabs, do not share information with the police. Many Kurds have bitter memories of Saddam Hussein’s oppression of Kurds in the 1980s.

Ultimately, officials say, success will depend on reviving the economy of this battered metropolis, which sprawls around the crumbling walls of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh.

Jobless men are easily coaxed into militant groups and residents are losing patience with the pace of reconstruction.

“A lot of things need to be fixed and they’re not doing it,” said Saad Mohammed Rasheed, a former soldier in Saddam’s army who now runs a shop. “There’s no water, no electricity. We don’t hate the Americans any more; our anger is for the government.”

© Thomson Reuters 2008

Source / Reuters UK

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It’s Just Like the Election in 2004 All Over Again

Posted on September 13, 2008 by RagBlog

If you haven’t yet read Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse, you might want to do it before November 4 to educate and amuse yourself. There are a lot of reasons to believe that John McCain and his class act from Alaska will win that night. Here are a couple more of them for your reading pleasure.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner

Ohio Republicans Use Lawsuit To Fight for State’s Crucial Votes
By Amy Merrick / September 13, 2008

The Ohio Republican Party spearheaded a lawsuit Friday over a directive from the office of Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner that would allow some early voters to register and vote on the same day.

The suit, filed by two Ohio voters in the Supreme Court of Ohio, in Columbus, ramps up the battle over voting procedures in a critical swing state with 20 electoral votes. But the parties’ roles are reversed from the 2004 election. This time, a Democrat is setting the rules, and the state Republican Party is charging that those rules favor Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate.

Conflicts over voter registration and voting procedures are heating up across the U.S. as the Nov. 4 election approaches. In Wisconsin, the Republican attorney general sued a state board this week over a process of comparing voter names with driver’s-license records. The Florida Department of State made a last-minute announcement this week that it will begin enforcing a controversial law that requires matching an identifying number on voter-registration forms with government databases that critics say are prone to mistakes.

In Ohio, a recently enacted state law — the subject of the Brunner directive — allows residents, for the first time in a general presidential election, to vote early by absentee ballot without providing a justification. Advocates for the homeless and other groups say they will direct new voters to take advantage of the overlap between early voting, which begins Sept. 30, and voter registration, which ends Oct. 6. During that window, citizens can register and vote simultaneously. The outreach efforts are expected to benefit Democrats.

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, a Cleveland-based umbrella group for service providers, housing activists and others, is making plans to drive about 2,000 shelter residents to polling places during the overlap period. “This is a huge opportunity to prove to elected officials that very low-income people do vote,” said Brian Davis, executive director of the group.

Republican officials are furious, charging that the one-stop process will encourage voter fraud. They argue that a state law requires Ohio residents to register at least 30 days before voting, so same-day registration and voting should be banned.

Ms. Brunner’s position is that early ballots do not constitute votes until they are tabulated on Nov. 4, said Jeff Ortega, a spokesman for Ms. Brunner. In a statement about Friday’s lawsuit, Ms. Brunner said, “It is unfortunate that a small, but vocal, group of Republican leaders continues to inject confusion and chaos in our elections.”

Responding to the charge that Ms. Brunner favors Democrats, Mr. Ortega said, “Secretary of State Brunner has simply tried to provide clear, consistent, statewide standards for election boards in this state on a whole host of issues.”

Ohio’s boards of election are hoping that many people will vote before Nov. 4, easing the strain on an Election Day expected to produce a huge turnout. Ohio had a strong 46% turnout in the March primary, with 15% of the vote coming from absentee ballots.

Another wrinkle this year is the thousands of foreclosures hitting Ohio each month, which could mean many voters no longer live at their registered addresses. Nonprofit groups conducting voter-registration drives are concerned that these people will be challenged at the polls.

Ohio residents must present identification to vote, but they can use utility bills, bank statements, pay stubs or other documents in place of a driver’s license or ID card. Early voters may provide the last four digits of their social-security numbers in lieu of such documents.

In 2004, Ohio was in an uproar over a tactic known as “caging,” in which a political party calls for voters to be stricken from the rolls because mail sent to them was returned as “undeliverable.” In the last presidential election, the state Republican party used returned mail to challenge the registrations of 35,000 new voters, most of whom lived in urban, heavily Democratic areas.

Not many voters were successfully removed, because “there was so much litigation and public backlash,” said Teresa James, a lawyer in Ohio for Project Vote, a nonprofit voter-registration group. But she said some voters likely were intimidated by the challenges and stayed home.

On Sept. 5, Ms. Brunner told election boards that Republicans had passed a law concerning caging that she considered unconstitutional, and that a single returned election notice cannot be used as the sole basis to cancel a voter’s residency. She also said every challenged voter must be notified and given a chance to attend a hearing before Election Day.

Kevin DeWine, deputy chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, said “nothing is off the table” in terms of election tactics, but he declined to be more specific.

Allegations of voter fraud are potent charges that have been part of elections for more than a century. Project Vote, which is running voter-registration drives with the community organization Acorn, says it has responded to the concerns. Recruits are paid by the hour, rather than by the name, to sign up new voters. Project Vote has set up call centers to attempt to contact people listed on all registration cards to verify their information. Canvassers found to falsify registrations are fired and reported to state boards of elections.

While the administration of President George W. Bush has made prosecuting voter fraud a priority, the government has provided little evidence that registration fraud is widespread or that it has a significant impact on elections. The U.S. Department of Justice said in March that it has convicted 102 people of voter fraud of various types since October 2002.

In 2004, a margin of 118,601 votes in Ohio gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to reclaim the White House. The many election problems in that state still rankle Democrats. After the election, the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee compiled a list of irregularities and grievances, including 10-hour lines in some urban areas, thousands of Republican challengers concentrated around polling places in minority and Democratic areas, and fake voter bulletins that told Republicans to vote on Tuesday and Democrats to vote on Wednesday.

Some Democrats alleged that J. Kenneth Blackwell, then the secretary of state and co-chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, deliberately disenfranchised Democratic voters. He denied that partisanship affected his decisions.

Source / Wall Street Journal

And there’s this:

Florida Voting Law May Disenfranchise Thousands
The Brennan Center for Justice and Advancement Project / September 12, 2008.

The state will start enforcing a law that penalizes voters if their names are misspelled in voter registration records and government databases.

Voting rights advocates are alarmed over the Florida Secretary of State’s September 8th decision to enforce the state’s “no-match, no-vote” law, a voter registration law that previously blocked more than 16,000 eligible Florida citizens from registering to vote, through no fault of their own, and could disenfranchise tens of thousands more voters in November.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning’s last-minute decision to implement the law in the final month before the registration deadline will post a significant hurdle to eligible Florida citizens hoping to vote in November. It will disenfranchise voters who do not send or bring a photocopy of their driver’s license to county election officials’ offices after voting, even though these voters will have shown their driver’s licenses when they went to vote at the polls.

“This 11th-hour decision is an ill-advised move to apply a policy the state has never enforced in its current form, at a time when registration activity is at its highest,” stated Beverlye Neal, director of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, a plaintiff in a lawsuit that challenges Florida’s matching law. “The Secretary’s decision will put thousands of real Florida citizens at risk due to bureaucratic typos that under the ‘no-match, no-vote’ law will prevent them from voting this November,” said Alvaro Fernandez of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, another plaintiff in the case.

“Voters who do everything right, who submit forms that are complete, timely, and accurate, will suddenly find themselves unregistered when they go to vote, just because someone somewhere punched the wrong letter on a keyboard,” said Myrna Pérez, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The no match, no vote policy is unjust and unnecessary, and Florida voters will pay the price this fall,” stated Jean-Robert Lafortune, president of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, another plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The law at issue bars any Florida citizen from voting a valid ballot if the state cannot validate their driver’s license number or the last 4 digits of their Social Security number, no matter how much identification the voter is able to bring to the polls. The process starts with an attempt to “match” voter information to other government databases, an error-prone exercise that often fails. For example, the Social Security Administration reports that 46% failure rate when trying to match voter registration applications. State officials admitted in a recent challenge to the law, Florida NAACP v. Browning, that typographical errors by election workers are responsible for most of the failures.

If the state fails to match the voter registration records, many eligible voters who submit registration applications before the October 6th deadline to register may not be notified of the matching failure until they go in person to vote. There, they will be forced to cast provisional ballots, and that provisional ballot will only be counted if the voter submits a photocopy of his or her driver’s license or Social Security card within 48 hours after the election, even if they already showed their driver’s license at the polls.

“The most senseless part is that the state creates these errors, and then makes it unnecessarily hard to fix the problem,” said Myrna Pérez of the Brennan Center. “If the state insists on enforcing this misguided matching provision, it should at least make it possible for voters to show their driver’s license at the poll and validate their registration then and there. To have registered, brought your ID to the polls, and still be told you can’t vote — all because of a bureaucratic error — is ridiculous.”

“It is unfortunate that the Secretary of State launched this policy less than a month before registration deadline. Had he enforced this sooner, there might have been time to troubleshoot the law or investigate its consequences, but this is really the 11th hour and is certain to derail eligible voters. At the very least, counties can and should help avoid the chaos that this law creates by making it possible to fix the problem at the polls,” urged Elizabeth Westfall of Advancement Project, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs.

“In 2006 alone, more than 12,800 citizens submitting complete and timely forms were kept off of the rolls, and the volume of registration in 2006 is nothing like what we anticipate in this presidential year,” said Robert Atkins, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, also representing plaintiffs. 2006 was a year of unusually low voter registration rates in Florida because of a separate law that shut down voter registration drives that year. “With the huge number of registration forms pouring in at the end of the registration period, county officials may not be able to fix problems that will cause thousands of eligible voters to be disenfranchised,” Atkins added.

The Secretary of State’s announcement Monday poses the latest obstacle to eligible Florida voters seeking to register before the 2008 elections.

In June, a federal trial court in Gainesville, Florida, refused to stop the “no-match, no-vote” law in Florida NAACP vs. Browning after challenges from several voter advocacy organizations. The case was filed in September 2007 by the Florida branch of the NAACP, the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project. The plaintiffs are represented by The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law; Advancement Project; Project Vote; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP; and Greenberg Traurig LLP.

In December 2007, the Gainesville federal court granted a preliminary injunction against the no-match, no-vote law under two federal statutes, ruling that Florida’s law “makes it harder to vote by imposing a matching requirement that is a barrier to voter registration.”

The ruling’s criticism of the no match, no vote law prompted the state legislature to revise portions of the statute — eliminating untenable distinctions between typos made by voters and those made by election officials, and standardizing the notice sent to voters kept off the rolls. Still, voting rights advocates argue that the law’s core burdens remain.

In April, the trial court’s original decision was overturned in split decision from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, following an appeal by the Florida Secretary of State. Plaintiffs in the case returned to the federal trial court to challenge the amended law under the federal constitution, but on remand, the court refused to enjoin the law, citing the changes that the legislature had made to the statute.

For more information about the lawsuit challenging Florida’s voter registration system and how voter database matching laws disproportionately affects Latino voters and other minorities, visit the Brennan Center website here.

Source / AlterNet

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Friday’s Fractured Fairy Tale (with the Bankers)

Posted on September 13, 2008 by RagBlog


A Redneck from Alabama walked into a bank in New York City and asked for the loan officer.

He told the loan officer that he was going to Bakersfield on business for two weeks and needed to borrow $5,000 and that he was not a depositor of the bank. The bank officer told him that the bank would need some form of security for the loan, so the Redneck handed over the keys to a new Ferrari. The car was parked on the street in front of the bank. The Redneck produced the title and everything checked out. The loan officer agreed to hold the car as collateral for the loan and apologized for having to charge 12% interest.

Later, the bank’s president and its officers all enjoyed a good laugh at the Redneck from the south for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral for a $5,000 loan. An employee of the bank then drove the Ferrari into the bank’s underground garage and parked it.

Two weeks later, the Redneck returned, repaid the $5,000 and the interest of $23.07. The loan officer said, “Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multimillionaire.”

What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow $5,000?”

The Alabama Redneck replied, “Where else in New York City , can I park my car for two weeks for only $23.07 and expect it to be there when I return?”

His name was … BUBBA …

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Lighten Up and Be Less Snooty and Judgmental

Posted on September 12, 2008 by RagBlog


Experience Is Over-Rated
By Dave Lindorff / September 12, 2008

Sarah Palin stated again, most recently in her interview yesterday by ABC’s Charlie Gibson, that she has foreign policy experience because as governor of Alaska she has been in charge of that state’s National Guard, and because Alaska is, doggone it, “right next” to Russia.

This made me feel pretty good, because it made me realize that I have a whole lot of skills and experience which I hadn’t really appreciated before and that I could perhaps use to get myself out of this freelance journalism profession, which is not all that great from a financial perspective.

I, for instance, live very close to the garage where my mechanic works (I mean, I drive past the place every day and even buy my gas there), so I’m ready to be a car mechanic (I can’t tell you how many cars I’ve seen being gone over there, and have even sometimes watched a bit as my own vehicles were up on the lift). I also live literally across the street from a large forest, which qualifies me to be a number of things-forest ranger, lumberjack, and perhaps naturalist.
I’ve also been to the doctor many times, so maybe I should hang a shingle and open up a medical practice. I swear I’ve got all those exam questions by memory at this point, and they’ve got nurses to do the stuff with the arm cuff and the stethoscope.

Of course, the real money these days is in law, and there I’ve really got it nailed. Not only do several lawyers live right in my neighborhood, but I’ve actually been in court and seen lawyers at work. For that matter, I even had a lawyer argue a case for me once, when I was being charged with trespassing at the Pentagon. He wasn’t successful at getting my fine and jail time dropped, but hey, you learn from other people’s failures, too. Furthermore, I actually wrote a book with a co-author who is a lawyer. With all that experience, I could certainly be an attorney.

Over the years, I’ve spent time at the seashore, and even went on a one-week ocean sailing trip, so you’d have to admit oceanography is almost in my blood. Or perhaps I could be a sea captain. I’m sure I could do at least as well as the captain of the Exxon Valdez tanker.

Come to think of it, back when I was 16, I hitchhiked up to Alaska with a friend and spent the summer thumbing around the state, so I know that place like the back of my hand, which means if Sarah Palin gets elected and goes to Washington, maybe I could be governor of Alaska. And then, as governor I’d be commander of a National Guard unit, so I’d be qualified to be a vice president, or, should the opportunity present itself, even president of the United States. Actually, I’d be maybe more experienced than Palin for the job, because I grew up in Connecticut, and thanks to the small size of the states in my native New England, have actually been living closer to a foreign country-Canada-than she, living in Wasilla, has been living to Russia. In other words, when you think of it, my foreign policy experience is much greater than hers. Besides, I’ve actually visited Canada a few times, which really boosts my experience in international affairs.

I know some people think that jumping into jobs like president or vice president of the United States based upon what they might perceive as limited experience is presumptuous, but that’s because they aren’t being fair and open-minded. And I’ll admit that it’s hard, with relatively limited experience, to expect someone like Palin or me to measure up to the standard of someone like our current vice president, Dick Cheney, who came to his position after having served previously as presidential chief of staff, as secretary of defense, and as a member of Congress. I mean, that’s real experience, and it shows in the fine job he’s done as VP.

But we shouldn’t let examples like Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld, another guy who took an important government post-in his case Secretary of Defense-after having considerable prior experience-make us obsess about experience. I mean, look at our current president. George W. Bush got elected in 2000, when his experience consisted of just two terms as governor of Texas, a state where the governor has a largely ceremonial role and most of the real work of government is handled by the legislature, and look what a great job he did in the White House! Furthermore, his only military experience was as a pilot in a Texas National Guard unit, most of which tour of duty he missed because he decided to work on his father’s failed election campaign instead, and because he didn’t want to take any drug tests, and look what a fine job he’s done as commander in chief.

This should all make Americans lighten up and be less snooty and judgemental about what they demand in terms of experience in presidential and vice presidential candidates. Palin in my view has proved her qualifications for the job. Yesterday she sent her young son off to battle in Iraq to fight against “the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of Americans” on 9-11 seven years ago. What better evidence do we need of this woman’s solid grasp of foreign affairs, history and combat?

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/.
Source /

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Bailout Blues: We Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

Posted on September 12, 2008 by RagBlog


A Conservative Confidence Game
By Deborah Stone / September 9, 2008

Leave it to Fannie and Freddie to do for American politics what reasoned argument failed to do–strip the clothes off the Emperor of Markets. The fuss over whether government should rescue naughty shareholders was merely a distraction. What this latest financial crisis revealed is that “the government” and “the market” are not two distinct and separate parts of the country. They work together and need each other.

Ever since Ronald Reagan declared in his first inaugural address that “in the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” conservatives have been steadily privatizing government functions on the theory that free markets can do everything better. Education, medicine, criminal justice, social services, building and maintaining roads and bridges, supporting an army at war–you name it, it has all been contracted out to allegedly more efficient and innovative private enterprise.

Self-interest, profits and free markets, we have been promised, are the great social engines. Now, as the American housing market collapses and the world trembles before our mistakes, those profit-driven, supposedly self-correcting and perfectly efficient engines are turning against us like Frankenstein. Why did anybody ever believe that CEOs and shareholders whose every incentive leads them to seek greater profits would care about anything else, such as their purported government mission to foster homeownership and stable communities?

Maybe this is the ultimate lesson in why the Republican strategy of privatization and deregulation doesn’t work. Markets depend on confidence–confidence that somebody stands behind the currency of exchange, confidence that somebody will hold buyers and sellers to their promises, and above all, confidence that if banks and big businesses crash, somebody will step in to help all the little people who might be wiped out with them.

It’s telling that the very officials who have been dead-set against regulation and bailouts justify the new government plan as necessary to restore confidence. The markets are perfectly healthy, they kept saying, but the public’s confidence is faltering. On July 17, just after the big bailout was proposed, Fannie Mae’s CEO, Daniel Mudd, told Newshour’s Judy Woodruff, “Fannie Mae is very financially sound. We have . . . more capital than we’ve had at any point in our history.” If your capitalization is as strong as you say, asked Woodruff, why do you need this Treasury plan to help you out? “All the capital markets, the lending markets, are really built on confidence,” Mudd replied. “Confidence has gotten jittery over the past quarter or so.” It’s important, he continued, “that there be a strong backstop (Mudd never uttered the words “bailout” or “rescue”) in case that kind of lack of confidence and that kind of jitteriness continued for too long.”

With the bailout, these officials admitted what Reagan and all the government denigrators denied. Only government can provide the rock-solid confidence that markets and communities need to function.

Libertarians warn that what the government gives, the government can take away. But the same is true of markets. Employers can take away your job or your health insurance and pension. Big companies can take away the lifeblood of a community, as when Maytag closed in Iowa. Big chain stores can take away the livelihoods of small independent business owners and their employees, not to mention the rental income of commercial landlords, the vibrancy of downtowns, and the tax revenues of local government.

Who’s taking away people’s homes right now in the foreclosure frenzy? Not government. Well, not unless we remember that government could have done a better job reining in mortgage lenders and Fannie and Freddie. If indeed government is responsible for this mess, its fault was inaction. Finally, in the present crisis, government sees itself once again as the solution.

But restrain your hopes, because here’s how Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson conceived the bailout. It would arm him, he told Congressional leaders, “with a bazooka in my pocket to pull out when we need to it to shoot down.” Excuse me? The top official of the U.S. economy thinks he’s a guerrilla armed only with a bazooka? Please, sir, it’s time to step into uniform and use your authority and modern regulatory tools to build a strong mortgage system instead of waiting to take pot shots at misguided missiles.

No, government is not the problem. Leadership is.

About Deborah Stone: Deborah Stone, a senior fellow at Demos, is the author of The Samaritan’s Dilemma: Should Government Help Your Neighbor? just published by Nation Books.

Source / The Nation

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Jim Hightower : Sarah Palin’s Faux Populism

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Talking populist? Here’s the real thing: Progressive labor leader and community organizer Mother Jones.

‘Living in a small town and being able to field dress a moose does not make Palin a populist, no matter how much pundits want to pretend it does’
By Jim Hightower / September 11, 2008

It was not my intention to be writing about Sarah Palin, since everyone with a laptop, a No. 2 pencil or a red crayon seems to be covering that beat. But then came the pundits:

“She’s a populist,” gushed Karl Rove on Fox TV. Weird, since this right-wing political slime and corporate whore loathes, demonizes, mocks, fears and tries to destroy real populists.

“Perfect populist pitch,” beamed CBS analyst Jeff Greenfield right after Palin’s big speech at the GOP fawnfest in St. Paul. In his less infatuated moments, Greenfield surely must realize how ludicrous his comment was, since once, long ago, he co-authored a book that had “populist” in the title, so he has at least had a brush with the authentic people’s movement that the term encapsulates.

So they made me do it. Karl, Jeff and other pundits who are rushing to place the gleaming crown of populism atop the head of this shameless corporate servant — they are the ones who have driven me to write about Palin. Someone has to nail the media establishment for its willing perversion of language, American history and the substance of today’s genuine populism.

Palin might be popular, she might be able to field dress a moose, she might live in a small town, she might enjoy delivering “news flashes” to media elites, she might even become vice president — but none of this makes her a populist. To the contrary, she is to populism what bear is to beer, only not as close.

You want a taste of the real thing? Try this from another woman who hailed from a town (smaller than Wasilla, Alaska) and was renowned for her political oratory:

Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street. … Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. …

There are thirty men in the United States whose aggregate wealth is over one and one-half billion dollars. There are half a million looking for work. … We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out. … We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary, and will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the Government pays its debts to us.

The people are at bay, let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware.

That, my media friends, is populism. It comes from Mary Ellen Lease, who was speaking to the national convention of the populist party in Topeka, Kan., in 1890. In a time before women could vote, Lease traveled the countryside to rally a grassroots revolt against the corporate predators of her day, urging farmers to “raise less corn and more hell.” She didn’t need to brag that she was a pit bull in lipstick, because her message, idealism and actions made her an actual force for change.

America has been blessed with populist women ever since, including such honest and insistent voices as Ida Tarbell, Mother Jones, Dorothy Day, Rosa Parks, Rachel Carson, Karen Silkwood, Barbara Jordan, Molly Ivins, Barbara Ehrenreich and Granny D. Measure Sarah Palin against these.

Populism was and is a ground-level, democratic movement with the guts and gumption to go right at the moneyed elites. It is unabashedly class-based, confronting the Rockefellers on behalf of the Littlefellers. To be a populist is to challenge the very structure of corporate power that is running roughshod over workers, consumers, the environment, small farmers, poor people, the middle class — and America’s historic ideals of economic fairness, social justice and equal opportunity for all.

“Populist” is not an empty political buzzword that can be attached to someone like Palin, whose campaigns (lieutenant governor, governor and now Veep) are financed and even run by the lobbyists and executives of Big Oil, Wall Street bankers, drug companies, telecom giants and other entrenched economic interests.

Populists don’t support opening our national parks and coastlines to allow the ExxonMobils to take publicly owned oil and sell it to China. Palin does. Populists favor a windfall profits tax on oil companies that are robbing consumers at the pump while milking taxpayers for billions of dollars in subsidies. Palin doesn’t. Populists don’t hire corporate lobbyists to deliver a boatload of earmarked federal funds, then turn around and claim to be a heroic opponent of earmarks. Palin did. Populists favor shifting more of America’s tax burden from the middle class to the superwealthy, while opposing another huge tax giveaway for corporations. Palin doesn’t and doesn’t.

Another thing populists don’t do is sneer at community organizers, as Palin did in her nationally televised coming-out party. Indeed, populists of old were community organizers, as are today’s. They work in communities all across our great land, putting in long days at low pay to help empower ordinary folks who are besieged by the avarice and arrogance of Palin’s own corporate backers. Since the governor likes to put her fundamental Christianity on political display, she might give some thought to a new bumper sticker that expresses a bit of Biblical populism: “Jesus was a community organizer while Pontius Pilate was governor.”

Environmental justice groups, ACORN, living wage campaigns, the Bus Project, clean water efforts, union organizing drives, PIRG, Fighting Bob Fest, Jobs with Justice, Apollo Alliance, United Students Against Sweatshops, the Evangelical Environmental Network, clean election initiatives, stopping mountaintop removal, USAction, community supported agriculture, Campus Progress, local business alliances, Citizens Trade Campaign, Wellstone Action — these are but a few of those doing terrific community organizing today. They embody the vitality of modern populism, doing the essential grunt-level work of democracy.

What gives Palin any legitimacy to denigrate that? She embraces none of these causes, instead supporting the rich and powerful whom grassroots folks are having to battle. She’s a plutocrat, not a populist. Big difference.

[Texas populist Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and author of the new book, “Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow” (Wiley, March 2008). He publishes the monthly “Hightower Lowdown,” co-edited by Phillip Frazer.]

Source / AlterNet

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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Threats to Voting Rights Of Low-Income Women

Posted on September 12, 2008 by RagBlog

In 2006, only 63 percent of women in households making $25,000 or less were registered to vote compared to 81 percent of women in households making $75,000 or more. Photograph by Guido Alvarez.

88 Years Later: A Promise Unfulfilled for Millions of Disenfranchised Women Voters
By Brittany Stalsburg and Scott Novakowski / September 11, 2008

All over America, there were plenty of reasons to celebrate women last month: August marked the 88th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification, which gave women the right to vote. Women’s Equality Day, which was on August 26, commemorated that victory. There are now more women in the U.S. Congress than ever (88) and 2008 was a year when a woman came within a hair’s breadth of becoming a major ticket presidential nominee.

But this year, there’s also a real threat to the voting rights of millions of low-income women, and it is in direct violation of Federal law.

Take, for instance, the story of Dionne O’Neal. Ms. O’Neal is a resident of St. Louis, Missouri, where she works part-time while pursuing her GED. Like millions of Americans, Ms. O’Neal receives Food Stamps and government health care benefits to help meet her basic needs. If anybody has a deep concern about the future of economic policy, she does. But her right to have a say in government and what it does is being thwarted because Missouri, like many other states, has long ignored federal voter registration requirements designed to reach low-income voters.

The most disadvantaged women in our society are the least likely to express their voice in the political process. Ms. O’Neal is just one of the 32.5 million women–31 percent of all eligible women–who were not registered to vote at their current address in 2006. Low-income women like Ms. O’Neal are disproportionately represented in that number. In 2006, only 63 percent of women in households making $25,000 or less were registered to vote compared to 81 percent of women in households making $75,000 or more.

There is, though, a federal law on the books to help reverse this trend.

Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) in 1993 to increase the number of eligible citizens registering to vote in federal elections. Recognizing that an unrepresentative electorate is one of the greatest threats to a fair democratic system, the NVRA was drafted specifically to ensure equal access to voter registration. One of the law’s provisions, Section 7, requires public assistance agencies to offer voter registration services to clients.

But many people eligible to register under Section 7 don’t know it, because too many states aren’t properly implementing the law.

While over 2.6 million voters registered at public assistance agencies in the first few years of the law’s implementation, agency-based registration has declined significantly over the past 10 years even though more and more people are receiving public benefits such as Food Stamps. Field investigations conducted by Demos and our partners have revealed violations of the law in states across the country.

Women comprise the vast majority of public assistance recipients and thus are the primary beneficiaries of Section 7. A staggering 90 percent of adult recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) are women. Nearly 8.8 million Food Stamp recipients are women. Sixty-nine percent of those receiving Medicaid are women.

And women are likely to be the primary caregivers for children and receive benefits on behalf of their dependents. Not surprisingly, according to the US Census, over three quarters of those who manage to register to vote at public assistance agencies are female.

Now more than ever, implementation and compliance with the too-long ignored National Voter Registration Act is a women’s issue. The most disadvantaged members of society are least likely to participate in politics but arguably have the most to gain-low-income women lag behind in education, have less access to healthcare and affordable housing, have fewer assets, and experience more job insecurity.

The current economic downturn only makes matters worse for low income women, as single mothers have the highest unemployment rate among all men and women. Various policies, including enhanced educational opportunities and increased paid family leave, have been proposed to improve the lives of low-income women and their families. Unfortunately, politicians will not respond properly to the needs of these women if they do not exercise their political power.

There are increasing signs that states will no longer be able to ignore their responsibilities under the law. In a lawsuit brought by Ms. O’Neal, a federal judge in Missouri recently ruled that the state’s Department of Social Services is in violation of the NVRA and ordered the state to comply.

Ensuring that voter registration is offered to the millions of women who participate in public assistance programs is an effective and efficient way to draw low-income women into the political process in unprecedented numbers, providing them with the voice they desperately need.

About the Authors: Research assistant Brittany Stalsburg and Senior Policy Analyst Scott Novakowski work on the NVRA implementation project in the Democracy Program at Demos, a national public policy center. Brittany is a political science Phd student concentrating on women in politics at Rutgers University.

Source / The Women’s International Perspective

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Larry Piltz: John McCain Rhymes with Pain

Posted on September 12, 2008 by RagBlog

We are overjoyed to present, once again, with feeling and, more important, with sound and graphics, Larry Piltz’s poetic ode to the Republican Presidential candidate, John McCain Rhymes with Pain. We hope you enjoy this astounding tribute to what we all should want to avoid in November.

Thorne Dreyer and Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

John McCain rhymes with pain
4 more years of Bush Republican reign
John McCain rhymes with pain
4 more years of Bush Republican stain
it’s true McCain rhymes with pain
how many more soldiers die
how many go insane
it couldn’t be more plain
that John McCain rhymes with pain

John McCain stands for wars
countless endless with America friendless
that’s what’s in store if the Republicans win this
show them the door
it’s in all of our interests
peace is the reward
all else is senseless
McCain’s wars are endless
and John McCain stands for wars

John McCain rhymes with rage
waiting to explode on a worldwide stage
John McCain rhymes with rage
bottled up inside wouldn’t rattle his cage
Yeah McCain rhymes with rage
too set in his ways to turn another page
his mind’s of another age
we’re not dealing with a sage
cause John McCain rhymes with rage

John McCain’s time has passed
he was a brave G.I. and his memory will last
no need to ask why
but now life comes at you fast
and it’s passed him by
so we thank you John
now make room for the other guy
cause John McCain rhymes with pain

how many more soldiers die
how many go insane
while the Republicans lie
more people die in vain
it couldn’t be more plain
that John McCain rhymes with pain

Written by Larry Piltz
Vocals by Lady Legacy
Music Produced by Damp Heat

For more info, visit 1205 Productions.

The Rag Blog

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Gerry Storm on Obama and McCain’s Sun Signs; Alaskan Rednecks; and the Finer Points of Slaughtering a Moose

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Getting your moose cooked in Alaska…

‘It is hard to maintain a red neck in Alaska
since there is no sun in winter’
By Gerry Storm / The Rag Blog / September 12, 2008

Obama is a Leo, thus during the time when the Sun is passing through Leo (most of August) his attraction was strong, and so were his ratings in the polls. Leo expired for this year in late August and the Sun went into Virgo. John McCain is a Virgo.

We are in the Virgo season at present and so John McCain is looking good, all the same kind of attraction that Obama had last month. So all the current skirmishes will mean that when the dust settles in October no advantage will have been won by either. And, as always, in reference to elections, the switch goes down in late October/early November. That’s when the Sun goes into Scorpio. This transit can aid or ruin all the work done previously by the campaigns. The Obama summer and the McCain early autumn will be old memories by then. A perfunctory study shows no significant advantage for either by this transit.

I feel like the McCain operatives have so poisoned the landscape (and will continue to do so) that it will leave an unprecedented odor to the election process, yes, even worse than the present. On the other hand they are exposing themselves and McCain to a lot ridicule, turning a lot of people off. Could be that by the end they will have disgraced themselves to the point that lots of fence hangers will go the other way. I don’t think the polls include a lot of people who will vote for Obama. I do think that he has a majority and will keep it. He is cool enough to hold his base.

A word about rednecks and Alaskans, I have known quite a few of both tribal groups. They are not the same. This phenomena works on the minds of Alaskans and transforms them into very strange human beings. It is a huge space and not many of our species live there. The laws that are observed by the rural people are not the same laws recognized by those in the towns, but they all one thing in common, they are strict and conservative. Conversely, the loners of the backwoods tend to be very kind and generous with one another on the few occasions when they gather or happen upon another soul on the trail. Their gut feeling is to oppose any restrictions which might inhibit their ongoing rape of nature (all Alaskans live off harvesting nature on one level or another) or threaten the flow of oil (even more sacred than nature). Beyond these concerns they have little use for government. There is a lot of fear in Alaskans, they are in the food chain of a number of beasts and live in a cold zone where the weather catch one off-guard, whole forests can die of insect infestation, the permafrost is melting, etc. You can see it in their eyes. Lots of superstition too, seeking to explain phenomena such as the colors in the Alaskan sky.

Most Alaskans went there to make money and most do pretty well in this department. My neighbor, Sam (RIP), told me he could make $100K a year fishing there, back when that was a lot of money. His brother still lives there and is a fishing/hunting guide, has his own plane, etc. Oil company wages are very high, there is still a gold mining industry, a healthy marijuana industry, lots of ways to score if you can handle the hardships. Not many women there so they can find many opportunities and a wide of choice of places to spend the winter.

When a moose is killed there is a party similar to a hog killin’, people get together to help out. Slaughtering a moose is a ton of work, bloody hand work. I personally doubt if Sarah ever slaughtered one although she may well have participated at the party. I believe she said that she went moose hunting with her father when she was a little girl, hardly the same as slaughtering one of those giant critters. Her husband, Todd, on the other hand, is the real deal. Winning the big snowmobile race makes him a hero amongst his brethren. He has won it 4 times. Must be quite a strong fellow. My neighbor Joe Runyan won the Iditarod race a couple of times. He is a dog man. Raising dogs is another way to make lots of money in Alaska, especially if your dogs win the Iditarod.

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Towers of Light : 9/11 / 2008

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Photos by Jenny Ross / Fourthway Photography / The Rag Blog.

Since the first anniversary of 9/11, the “towers of light” have marked the occasion, beaming skyward from the actual footprints where the World Trade towers stood.

Almost unheralded among all the pomp, circumstance and political photo ops, they are perhaps the most beloved symbols of the day for those of us who were here. Silent, wordless reminders of the extraordinary shock, followed by the extraordinary sense of human community that flowed through the city that day and in the smoldering weeks that followed. This photo was taken by a friend and photographer Jenny Ross, from the roof of her Brooklyn apartment building.

Sarito Neiman / The Rag Blog / September 11, 2008

Click for larger images.
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