The Right Wing Gears Up to Suppress the Vote

Peacenik hopes Peacenik can avoid the news today, and for a while. Watching vote suiciders vote is not pleasant. Watching the results of vote suiciders is not pleasant. Today will illustrate what is wrong with the U.S.A...again...

There are lots of reasons to lament the missed opportunities of the last two years. Peacenik watched the Bush crime administration commit crimes for two terms. And Peacenik watched the bankers and Wall streeters commit crimes. But no one has been punished. Remember how Karl Rove just ignored a subpoena. And Harriette Myers ignored a subpoena. The Democrats didn't investigate anyone while they had control of Congress. Will the Tea Partiers and Republicans return the favour. Peacenik doesn't think so. Obama couldn't even get his appointments of judges approved even though the Democrats were in control. Now Obama won't be able to get a dog catcher approved. Now the Republicans can investigate whether Obama is a muslim and whether Obama was born in the U.S.A. While the country circles down the toilet.

by Laura Stampler

On November 2, GOP and Tea Party election observers will be coming to a polling center near you. Although Republicans cry “voter fraud” almost every year, this election is unique in that the GOP now has an army of Tea Party foot soldiers to man the polls.

Numerous reports have documented how state GOP chapters, local Tea Party groups and organizations like Americans for Prosperity are mobilizing across the country—holding training sessions and posting instructional videos on their websites about how to challenge suspicious voters. But the right’s concern about widespread voter fraud has virtually no basis in empirical reality; a 2007 study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that “an American is more likely to get struck by lightning than impersonate another voter at the polls.”

Yet many conservatives believe that voter fraud is all the rage among progressives. Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin announced recently that “We are all voter fraud police now.” The 600 people who attended California’s Central Valley Tea Party coalition meeting on August 5^th were urged to join an “Army of Republican Poll Watchers” because (according to their website) “it’s not just Bosnia that needs election observers to keep voter fraud in check.”

Read on...

Honduran Coup: The US Connection

As you read this story you will recognize all the crazies from the last 30 years of Latin American unrest who were probably involved in the Honduran coup. Peacenik did. And what is really scary is that these crazies are entrenched in American politics, society, academia, and military. And lets not forget the media. The media treats these fascist nutjobs with deference. Opus Dei might have been involved. Supreme Court Justice Scalia is a member of Opus Dei. That's right folks. Being a fascist,or a member of an extreme right wing organization doesn't dis-entitle you from participating in American leadership. It is probably an asset. Hell, it's probably a requirement.


Honduran Coup protest

by Conn Hallinan

While the Obama administration was careful to distance itself from the recent coup in Honduras — condemning the expulsion of President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica, revoking Honduran officials' visas, and shutting off aid — that doesn't mean influential Americans aren't involved, and that both sides of the aisle don't have some explaining to do.

The story most U.S. readers are getting about the coup is that Zelaya — an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez — was deposed because he tried to change the constitution to keep himself in power.

That story is a massive distortion of the facts. All Zelaya was trying to do is to put a non-binding referendum on the ballot calling for a constitutional convention, a move that trade unions, indigenous groups, and social activist organizations had long been lobbying for. The current constitution was written by the Honduran military in 1982, and the one-term limit allows the brass-hats to dominate the politics of the country. Since the convention would have been held in November, the same month as the upcoming presidential elections, there was no way Zelaya could have remained in office in any case. The most he could have done was to run four years from now.

Read on...