And San Francisco!

On January 3, a rally and press conference at noon to urge
U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer to join House members in challenging the 2004 presidential election results. Petitions with thousands of signatures will be presented to a Boxer deputy. Several civic organization leaders will speak at the rally.

JANUARY 3 NOON 1700 MONTGOMERY ST. SAN FRANCISCO
or meet at Embarcadero transit stop at 11 a. and walk together
For more details:

Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club

This is the same day as the rally in Columbus, Ohio, which is shaping up to a big gathering, with union participation. Also in Columbus on the 3rd and 4th, the launching of the Freedom Winter project, which will climax on the 4th as buses leave Columbus for the rally in DC.

"We are not whining for a lost election, we are crying out for a fair one!" Rev. Jesse Jackson

Let Them Eat PR

The Bush administration has dispatched a major official---well, at least they hope he will be in 2009--Jeb Bush, plus a promise for a geometrically increased pot of money to aid tsunami victims in Asia, which the media is in the process of dutifully reporting.

Let's hope they also report on whether this amount of aid actually gets there. Usually the Bushies count on them not to. So they could announce their sweeping "No Child Left Behind Act" and then quietly de-fund it, or their tremendous aid against AIDS in Africa in a Rose Garden lovefest, and then neglect to allocate the bucks.

Their record in general is pretty poor, as reported by the This Modern World blog:

"According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.

Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disperse a single dollar."

This Modern World

D-Day the Sixth of January

Representative John Conyers has formally announced that he will object to the counting of Ohio's electors:

As you know," writes Rep. John Conyers in his public letter, "on January 6, 2005, at 1:00 P.M, the electoral votes for the election of the president are to be opened and counted in a joint session of Congress. I and a number of House Members are planning to object to the counting of the Ohio votes, due to numerous unexplained irregularities in the Ohio presidential vote, many of which appear to violate both federal and state law."

In an interview quoted in the following report, which summarizes many of the problems with the 2004 vote, Conyers says he is "confident" that Senators will join in the objection. Stay tuned.

San Francisco Bay View - National Black Newspaper of the Year

It's Not Just Ohio Anymore

More than 80% of the presidential votes in 2004 were made on or counted by machines owned and operated by two companies run by Republicans with strong ties to GW Bush. That's the U.S. presidential election.

Among the conclusions of a new study of exit polling and voting in 2004 conducted by two professors at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at University of Illinois at Chicago:
"In an accurate count of a free and fair election, the strong likelihood is that Kerry
would have been the winner of the popular vote."

That's the POPULAR vote for the entire country. Details of this study can be found in the daily kos diary linked below:

Daily Kos :: The 2004 Election Was Stolen

Who's your president?

Who is leading the western effort to aid the nations hit by the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean? Is it Bush? No, he's clearing brush and riding his bike in Texas on vacation. Is it his buddy in Britian, Tony Blair? No, he's on vacation in Egypt.

But there is a president on the job. Name of Clinton. President Bill Clinton. He's in England, and has spoken out on the disaster, and offered concrete plans and leadership on how the rich western countries might respond. The EU leaders are responding to his ideas, and are organizing accordingly.

Eventually Bush got the message. Nothing like Clinton envy to get the heart started. So a little while ago Bush finally made a public announcement and set some wheels turning on organizing aid.

Some observers are pointing out that some of the affected nations are predominately Muslim, and an opportunity to show compassion is being lost, which only reinforces the image of the U.S. as selfish and self-centered. We lose 3,000 on 9-11 and the world shakes, and it affects an election more than three years later. Upwards of 120,000 die because of a single event elsewhere, and our government's response is affectless, stingy and late (though American individuals and even some corporations are responding quickly and generously.)

Guardian Unlimited The Guardian Clinton puts onus on the wealthy

Your January Social Calendar

Protests are being organized in several cities in early January to draw attention to the abuses in Ohio and elsewhere of the integrity of the vote.

The one with the most definition at the moment is in Columbus, Ohio on January 3. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is behind this one, and a bevy of organizations are signing up, including Moveon.org. It starts at 2p., at the Riffe Center across from the Ohio State Capitol. More info from Rainbow/PUSH.

There's a rally at Fanueil Hall in Boston also on January 3. San Francisco is just starting to organize one for January 4. And Washington, D.C. will hold a noon rally on January 6, the day Congress is scheduled to say yea or nay to the election of GW Bush. Info on these as they develop can be found at ReDefeat Bush, which is organizing a counter-Inaugural in DC on January 20.

If you can't be in DC on the 6th, I'd be hanging around the TV set, tuned into C-Span. There are unconfirmed reports that at least 14 Representatives will refuse to validate the Bush victory, and several Senators have received thousands of emails requesting that they do the same in the Senate. It takes just one member of each house to open debate.

At the moment it seems unlikely it will get any further than that, and the GOPer majority will prevail, but even debate will be an amazing thing. One assumes that as this becomes a serious possibility, elements of both sides are quietly but feverishly strategizing on all that could happen that day.

The likelihood of something significant happening may depend on how many people turn out for these rallies. The media needs faces to take pictures of, and politicians need to know they've got supporters and political cover.

And this younger generation badly needs some new leaders out there, holding their elders' feet to the fire. So far they don't seem to understand that cyberspace isn't visible to TV cameras, let alone the public. Better camera fodder than cannon fodder, boys and girls.

Tsunami

The news continues to develop concerning the magnitude 9.0 earthquake in the Indian ocean that generated tsunamis responsible for some 60,000 deaths and counting in several Asian nations. It is a disaster unparalleled in recent times and will test the responsiveness of the world in preventing the death toll from rising due to disease from bad water and lack of healthful food. Already the UN humanitarian aid chief has criticized wealthy nations for being stingy in their first response. But as the news trends towards showing that many victims were American and European tourists, the efforts at rescue and relief are apt to intensify.

In the coming weeks, as the world begins to absorb the dimensions of the effects, there will be some sober assessments of what's needed both to warn populations of danger (the tsunami took several hours to reach shore) and to organize response and relief. It should be a wake up call, though there's no guarantee much will be done about it, once the story is displaced or descends into soap opera about individual victims and the video they left behind.

It may perhaps provide some imagery to the warnings of scientists about the effects of global heating as sea levels rise in some places, and storms become more frequent and violent, and show up where they are not expected, like the rains that would otherwise be making headlines now pummeling central and southern California.

But it will probably be a long time before people begin to wonder why the nations of the world, especially the richest and most powerful, are so intent on pouring resources and expertise into vast armies and armadas and technologies of destruction, when that effort, that organization, that commitment and those resources are needed to provide relief and anticipatory protection from the many kinds of destruction that don't require the direct participation of humanity in causing them, though indirectly we contribute to them or even precipitate them.

Here in the U.S., it might re-focus our attention on what it means to be sending our National Guard troops away from where they are the traditional resource for disaster response, and further what the sharply declining enrollments in the Guard because of Iraqnam will mean to the future, when the tsuanmi hits these shores.

Investigate the Vote

Here's today's link to a blog, which uses the same template as this one so don't be freaked out, that explains the significance of the latest move by the Kerry-Edwards campaign to support court fights to challenge and investigate the vote in Ohio. He does a nice job of putting it all in context, suggesting that while the votes involved are enough to turn the election to Kerry, it's likely that the investigation will extend far beyond the upcoming official awarding of the election to Bush, and become Bush's Watergate. (Unfortunately, that would leave us with Cheney instead of Kerry, if the analogy holds.)

Election Scam-o-rama

There are other intriguing events unfolding in Ohio, including the attempt of the secretary of state in charge of the election there to avoid answering any questions about it, under oath or otherwise.

So what needs to happen next? There's the possibility of something breaking before Congress convenes to validate the results in a few weeks, resulting in some high drama on Capitol Hill. But in the long run, while the Kerry people stay low-key and the major news media do likewise, what's needed is (1) some youthful rabble-rousing, some twentysomething leaders to emerge at the head of vast numbers of demonstrators, to give the media something to take pictures of, and (2) some hungry young journalists eager to make their names by exposing election fraud and corruption in the dark heart of Bushness.

What would Buddha do? Happy holidays 2004

A Christmas Message
from Phineas Dash

Here in far northern California it is sunny and warm, the air is like spring. There are birds everywhere, feeding for the oncoming winter.

It is getting warmer and drier here year by year. Short term it's good. An unusually good crab season offshore. But in the longterm the wildlife, the flora and fauna, aren't built for this. The place will change, and there will be traumas.

The effects of global heating, whatever they will be, are now inevitable. There is always the possibility of some mitigation, and though time may clarify the specific problems, its passage may also render possible remedies either impossible or beyond the resources and will of that time.

If global heating were all we faced, if we were a society up to that kind of challenge as it appeared even a few years ago we could be, then the future would be less bleak. But the election last month revealed to at least this observer that America is truly in the grip of something that transcends science and politics, and reason. Not even religious differences explain it. History is being shaped by psychological forces that perhaps only Jung approached understanding. He contended that the apocalypse of this civilization was inevitable, though he could not predict the form. But his dreams towards the end of his life weren't comforting. He was, however, reassured that his dreams told him that at least some members of the human race would survive.

I try to discount the waning of hopes inherent in my advancing age. But of course I cannot. Yet it seems to me the signs are there. The decline of civilization has been going on for some time. At the same time, advances in understanding were being made, and spreading to more people. Europe, the source of so much violence in the 20th century, moves awkwardly yet insistently towards a political unity based on reasonably sound principles, and should be the hope of the world.

But America's fall may trump that force. There have been many periods of crisis and troubles in human history, but there are a few things different now. First, the power over life is much greater, and is in a small set of uncertain but arrogant human hands. That's the life of individuals, of groups, of human civilization and of at least the "higher" forms of animal and vegetable life on the planet. Second, we are as individuals more dependent on interlocking phenomena that we don't understand. The grid. The system of food distribution. Water. Few Americans or citizens of other westernized countries are close to basic resources, or have any experience in obtaining them directly. Societal breakdown does not have to be very large to be incredibly extensive and costly in human suffering and human life. A house of cards is far too simple an analogy, yet it is apt in the sense it gives of a precarious interconnection.

What are we to do? Perhaps we will have time to work on the answers. In preparation, I'd say, tend to your psyche, learn to help each other---and this is perhaps the greatest threat to us as individuals, that we are so separate---and keep representing what you believe in. Perhaps our convictions and actions will help. Perhaps they will be remembered as an example to those who survive.

In my generation we've been expecting sudden apocalypse, instant karma, since the late 1960s. In a sense the last 30 years or so have been a bonus, and we may have 30 more, who knows? But the fact that some have cried wolf before doesn't mean the wolf won't finally come. The signs are here. It may be more of a slow motion apocalypse, though things do bend before they suddenly break. Hope is a committment, so we work in hope. But for those who are enjoying this Christmas in relative prosperity and peace, it's worth taking a moment to appreciate it more fully, more sharply. Because next year may be very different.

Christmas Horror Story
as told by Theron Dash

In case you missed it, here's a heartchilling tale to contemplate, as we Wal-Mart our way to the bottom.

There are 3,066 counties in America; just about all of us live in one. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an American who works full time at the federal minimum wage cannot afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment in 3,062 of those counties.

So except for three counties in Illinois and one in Florida, a minimum wage worker, on his or her own, with or without a family to support, will likely be homeless.

That's assuming that 70% of the income goes to trivialities like food, clothing, transportation, medicines, etc. The rule of thumb used to be that housing should take no more than 25% of total income, but the government figures that 30% is good enough.

This is the United States of America. Not just the country where social justice became a political principle. But the richest nation in the world. The richest nation the world has ever seen.

And it only gets worse. Rent and utilities for a two-bedroom apartment---crowded, but enough for a mother and father and a couple of kids---requires three fulltime incomes at minimum wage. Which is probably how many families do afford it: one parent works 80 hours, the other 40.

We aren't talking here about the unemployed. Or the underemployed. We are talking about the overemployed, the dead on their feet. And with two people working, that's even more for transportation, and then there's daycare.

As for the single person, good luck. Sleep in a ditch and dream of being one of that glorious top 1% that has seen its income rise by 200% since Reagan's election. Die without health care. We don't actually care. Come back as an "unborn child", then we'll talk.

Our evangelical moralists apparently don't believe in Darwinism when it comes to nature, but they sure seem to believe in it fervently when it comes to their fellow Americans.

This story would make Scrooge cry. But not our Republican rulers and their rich and morally bankrupt friends. For them it is the best of times.

May they and their bankers meet the ghosts of Christmas Past (say, the Great Depression) and Future (the Bush Apocalypse). Not that the threat of a sparsely attended funeral cuts any ice with them. They'll be Raptured by then, right?

It's a far, far righter thing we do than we have ever done before.

In the meantime, everybody enjoy The Little Match Girl on Christmas night. Just be sure you're looking at the TV set, and not out the window.

Cause next year you might be looking in the window, and into the mirror.


The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Report cites scarcity of low-income housing

Man of the Year?

After a brief boost after the "election," GW Bush's approval rating is once again below 50%, according to GOP-favoring Gallup.For the first time, more than half of Americans surveyed say the Iraq invasion was a mistake. Most disapprove of how the Bushies are mishandling Iraqnam now.

Now the Civil Liberties Union has uncovered FBI emails referring to an Executive Order that suggests our moral values prez ordered "inhumane interrogation techniques"--i.e. torture, of prisoners in Iraq.


American Civil Liberties Union : FBI E-Mail Refers to Presidential Order Authorizing Inhumane Interrogation Techniques

Void the "Vote"

"The epic legal battle over Ohio's presidential vote count is back in the state Supreme Court, with an election challenge claiming George W. Bush was wrongly declared the winner on Nov. 2 and seeking a court-ordered reversal of that victory. "

"Meanwhile, efforts to recount Ohio's vote may have been fatally tainted by the Republican Party, raising questions of what the GOP has to hide, and prompting demands for criminal prosecution. "

The Free Press -- Independent News Media - Election 2004

In the mood for a grumpy Winter Solstice column? A Letter from the Dead Novel office? Try Blue Voice. (Prohibited where void.)
Neat photo, too.

In case you missed the SF Chronicle review of James Hillman's A Terrible Love of War, selected as a Best Book of 2004 by the SF Chronicle, you can find it along with many other fine reviews at Books In Heat. Neat photos, too.

example: election racism in Ohio

Ohio and the Future

by Phineas Dash

The Ohio recount is proceeding, and reports are that the bureaucrats are doing their best to subvert it. I learned the ways of petty bureaucrats while serving on the faculty committee on student affairs as a token student representative. They wear you down. They use technicalities when it suits them, and ignore the rules when it suits their purposes. If there is a hue and cry and something gets passed they don’t like, they accept it quietly, and when everybody is exhausted after the fight, they subvert it, then change it back at the next opportunity.

So it goes in Ohio. You expect that from bureaucrats. But there has to be some countervailing power. There are activists there. Apparently some of the Democrats are gaining respect for the sheer stubbornness of the Greens. Greens certainly can be stubborn.

But the activists have lives and eventually they have to earn livings, take finals, feed the baby. The bureaucrats are forever, especially when the Republican fat cats finance them.

Where are the leaders? You might well ask. They are arguing over whether Ohio is worth it. Some say Ohio is the past. It’s time to organize for the future. The real fight is over the party chairperson. Reform in the state parties. The election is so over, so last month. Time to get serious about the nitty gritty, the block chairperson, the state blog.

The conflict is in some ways just the usual reflexive either/or. Some people are appropriately concentrating on organizing for the next elections. They're obsessed with who the next chair of the Democratic party will be. Other people are fighting it out in Ohio, with many supporters obsessed with what's going on there. There's plenty of people to go around.

But there's a more crucial point, and it has many facets. It is this: Ohio is the future.

As someone said in a daily kos diary comment, what's the point of party reform if the votes aren't counted?

There is nothing more important in American politics than the integrity of the vote. It all starts there, it all ends there.

It is a question of justice. It is specifically a question of civil rights, and even more specifically a question of voting rights for African Americans.

At this point I mention for those who don't know it, that although Republican crimes may have been very widespread, at the moment it is particularly clear that it was concentrated in the African American neighborhoods and precincts in Ohio and in Florida, and other less publicized states. That's why you're seeing a black congressman, John Conyers, leading the fight there, and one of the last of the 1960s Civil Rights leaders, Jesse Jackson, who still speaks with the authority of someone who was at Selma, when he says this is the same as Selma.

The Democratic party committed itself to fighting for voting rights for African Americans many years ago, certainly in 1963. It was a political decision, and it was a principled decision. The Kennedys knew that if they supported voting rights, the Democrats would lose the South for a generation or more. They did it anyway.

But if the effort stopped there, it was in vain. If Democrats don't fight for voting rights in 2004, in Ohio, in Florida and elsewhere, then we dishonor our past, we dishonor ourselves, and incidentally, we throttle the future of our party.

I say this as a non-African American Democrat, who as a teenager marched behind Martin Luther King in Washington in 1963. One reason I marched was so that my President would know he had political support to do the right thing. He did.

We keep a focus on Ohio because justice demands it. Injustice in the recent past becomes the cause of the present, and if we don't rise to this occasion, we subvert the future.

We subvert the future in another, very practical way, for those of you who are concerned with the nuts and bolts of the Democratic Party's future. Here in California we begin to see the future that the rest of the country will soon see. There used to be a majority called white. But today there is no majority. And there will be no majority race in America pretty soon.

We are a multiracial society, with a growing number of people who are themselves multiracial. If we can't consciously commit to a common cause of justice regarding African Americans, who have been subject to injustice for most of our history, we aren't going to be ready for that future.

Moreover, if the Democratic party does not aggressively recruit more leaders of many racial backgrounds, we will be a party of only the past.

Ohio is crucial to our credibility as a party, with the African American community and with other communities outside the usual power structures.

It is crucial to the party's credibility with voters of all races who cared so much about this election. I made phone calls as a volunteer for the Kerry campaign, and talked to people in battleground states in every region. People were passionate. They were doing everything they could. They were absolutely determined to have their vote count.

We pay attention to the 2004 vote for the people who stood for five hours in the rain in Florida to vote early. We pay attention to Ohio for the people who stood for ten hours and still didn't get to vote on election day.

We do it for the people who were told at the polls by men in dark suits that Democrats vote on Wednesday, come back then.

We do it for people who don't speak or read English well, but who have the same right to vote, but who were either badly served or more likely, taken advantage of.

We do it because America deserves better than the scandal of a banana republic, where the voting machines are owned and operated by a partisan of the party in power.

We do it because all of this was wrong. And we do it because the people who were determined to vote and were denied, are the future.

And we must do it. I don't know why more prominent Democrats aren't visibly in this fight. I do know the impression it is leaving with people: that the Democrats must have committed just as much fraud as the Republicans, so they are afraid of being exposed if they question what Republicans did.

But as important as celebrity voices these days in capturing media attention, we should not depend on them. We are a little too dependent on daddy. If it's not Daddy Clinton then it's Daddy Kerry. Sometimes I think so many people voted for Bush, not for President (because they would have had to consider competence) but for Daddy.

We don't have any daddy. I admire John Kerry, and I wish he was more visible on this issue, but he seems to feel it isn’t appropriate, or at least not yet. He’s done some things, but some things are never enough. Because one problem with depending on daddy is that daddy can never do enough. If he issues statements of support, then daddy should go to court. If he goes to court, then daddy should go on television.

When we marched on Washington in 1963, JFK and RFK could look out the window and see 300,000 people, and they knew that the world could see them, too. When we marched on the Pentagon in 1968, LBJ ignored us. When we marched on Washington in 1971 behind John Kerry, Nixon circled the school buses around the White House. But in 1963, JFK invited the leaders of the March on Washington into the White House. That was the difference. That was the leadership.

Of course we hope that the efforts in Ohio would lead to a just change in the outcome, because our country's future would immediately be brighter if John Kerry were President. But if this election wasn't stolen, there were serious attempts made to steal it. The crime is in the commission, not in its success.

In 2000 we left it up to daddy to fix the problems before 2004. But our quiet only enticed our cynical adversaries whose only morality is that their side wins.

There’s a march scheduled in New York this weekend. I hope people show up for it, and there are many more. Maybe we should all march to Ohio. Kent State would be a good place to meet.

We have to let them know, we won't be fooled again. That's about the present, and the future.

The Faith-Based Missile

While global heating threatens the world, and Homeland Security can't even agree on a list of places to protect from terrorism, at least we've got a missile defense system.

Apart from no missiles it can defend against, the system has another notable flaw:

It don't work.

Yesterday there was yet another test of our Star Wars shield missile. It failed.

What's new about that? You might well ask, since every test has failed.

Well, those were tests of missiles in development. This was a test of a missile like the ones that are already in the ground. Yes, there are seven of them. It's part of the new strategy, probably learned from those friendly pharamaceutical companies, of putting the stuff on the market before it's tested for effectiveness and safety.

The Bushies have poured $15 billion into this so far. That's a lot of armor some guys and gals didn't get over in Iraqnam.

The test alone cost $85 million. That's your Social Security right there; yours and all your relatives.

The world's most expensive scarecrows. And they're buried in the ground.

A whole other meaning to faith-based.

$85-million U.S. missile test goes nowhere

The U.S. Leads the World---Towards Apocalypse

With evidence mounting that global heating is leading to disasters even faster than predicted, with costs in disaster relief, reconstruction, etc. mounting rapidly as well, the latest climate conference seems poised to do...not so much. (As Jon Stewart would say.)

The conference is divided into two camps, this report says, the U.S., and everybody else. But among everybody else are those loathe to offend the nation with most of the bombs and missiles, which is also a big greedy customer for oil. So the world burns.

Science News Article | Reuters.com

Investigate the Vote: Alerting the FBI

Rep. John Conyers has requested an FBI investigation into possible tampering with voting machines prior to the Ohio recount.

This link is to a dubious site but the letter is reproduced in full.

The Blue Lemur - Progressive Politics and Media News ? Conyers? letter to FBI in response to allegations of Triad tampering

It's Not Who Votes That Counts

It's who counts the votes.

This link is to a diary on the daily Kos blog site which summarizes the main suit filed in Ohio alleging purposeful fraud, and maintaining that Kerry won the state by nearly 150,000 votes.

Further down in the comments you'll find several people involved in the suit or even tangentially in support of it who have been threatened by right wing goons, and in one case, apparently followed and forced off the road by well-heeled goons who seem to have sophisticated survelliance equipment and skills.

The establishment politicians and media ignoring it, evidence of serious wrongdoing and efforts to expose it championed by marginal figures, threats and intimidation...it has all the earmarks of the kind of scandal that eventually will define this time. It's Love Canal, Karen Silkwood and Watergate rolled into one.

Daily Kos :: Arnebeck Lawsuit: Summary, Explanation