Dick's Delighted, Barack Congratulates

Questions for The Diane Rehm Show, News Roundup, October 17, 2008

[Posted, for the first time, at www.opednews.com]

I've begun to post the questions I send, separately, in each Friday morning to the most listened-to NPR talk show. Feel free to offer some version of these same questions/comments to other broadcasters and journalists:

1. Yesterday on your show analyzing the debate, no one seemed to know what NPR's economy reporter, Chris Arnold, had just stated on Morning Edition in a segment called "Double-Checking Candidates' Claims in Last Debate". Mr. Arnold first acknowledged that if Joe the Plumber earned $250,000, ABOVE AND BEYOND his expenses and supplies, then "yes, under Obama's plan his taxes would go up."

Then he continued, "But, again, that implication that that represents middle income people is misleading. MIDDLE INCOME AMERICANS WOULD GET THREE TIMES THE INCOME TAX BREAK UNDER OBAMA THAT THEY WOULD GET UNDER MCCAIN."

These days, with excellent fact-checking websites quick responses, shouldn't analysts be discussing the accuracy of tactical accusations?

2. I am deeply concerned about the national focus on voter registration fraud or voter fraud. It is not a threat. Major studies have shown that deliberate fraud is extremely rare, and when it happens, it is even more rare for it to result in any fraudulent votes being cast.

In response to the insignificant nuisance of voter fraud, the Republican Congress passed a law ordering states to verify their voter registration lists. Now we find that in key battleground states, the Republican party is particularly aggressive about widespread purging of the lists and challenging new voters, which is highly intimidating and will be enormously time-consuming and labor-intensive on election day.

Have we already forgotten that the ugly reason behind the U.S. Attorney firings was often Republican anger at their failure to prosecute voter fraud cases just prior to the 2006 election?

Are Americans going to be fooled again by Rovian trickery?

3. Isn't purging voter registration lists to prevent voter fraud akin to treating a cold with chemotherapy?

4. To set the record straight, ACORN is a very legitimate organization, a decades-old advocate for the generally disenfranchised low-to-middle income often-minority population. Its work is irritating the McCain campaign because it is so successful in registering low and middle income voters, and these people are less likely to vote Republican. They have a very large workforce and some employees have been problems, but they are fully cooperative with election officials in finding bad apples and reporting problems. When they are accused of turning in fraudulent registrations, it should be noted that they are required by law to turn in all the registrations they collect, and in most cases, they are already flagged as fraudulent.

What good would it possibly do for ACORN to destroy their own voter registration drive?

Desperately Seeking Qualifications

This morning I received an email from Mark Crispin Miller, the NYU Professor of Media, and Election Protection author/activist, with a letter from Melissa Lammey to MCM, introducing a petition she’d created after watching one of his recent talks on youtube, in which he suggests that Palin was selected to provide an excuse for a surprise election win by Senator McCain, which, in fact, would be the result of election theft.

One way, of course, to blow that Palin excuse is to simply reveal and reveal and reveal all we learn about the Governor, so that her appeal deflates, as well it should, when knowing more about Governor Sarah Palin. Then, as the strange pair, The-Old-Man-Who-Will-Not-Reveal-His-Medical-History-But-Can’t-Stop-Revealing-His-Decreasing-Faculties, and She-Who-Will-Not-Testify-Answer-Read, are in the spotlight, and her supporters can recognize the dangers of such puppets, brought together on this ticket by the RNC Puppetmasters who seek to stay in power, they can choose to stop those who have brought so much lying and destruction over the last eight years.

As I say in my personal info at OpEdNews.com (initially regarding George W. Bush, but applying, as well, to Sarah Palin):

"I continue to write about the hypocrisies I study, believing that what the Bush administration has done goes far beyond partisan disagreement and should be known. I've learned that it isn't that hard to discover the bit of information that puts the news we see into a much greater perspective. I don't need to bash. I don't even need to convince. I simply need to reveal what is going on behind the tap dancing."

So, in agreement with Melissa Lammey’s "Petition to Alaska Governor Palin to Voluntarily Release Her College Grade Point Average!" I went to the website and signed, adding this personal comment:

If Governor Palin is the right person for this extremely important job that requires full-time character, dedication, wisdom, integrity, intelligence, willingness to learn, humility, patience, honor, compassion, and more...

Then her qualifications will be evident not only in the person we see today, but also throughout the history of her work experience and higher education.

So far, we have learned that in her work experience, she has abused her power. She has, from her very first national appearance at the Republican convention, demonstrated her willingness to lie to the people she wants to vote for her and to continue to spread lies that are already publicly exposed, which is an insult to her supporters and a significant indication of her methodology should she be trusted with power.

She has also demonstrated a Mastery of Disguise. She presents herself with a face value of friendliness, feminist, loving mother and wife, middle-class folksiness, and gutsiness, with executive skills and independence.

But a bit of Googling reveals a woman who uses her husband to provide the pressure when she doesn't get what she wants, who manipulates the system in every way possible to make the state pay for her family's life, whose management skills as Mayor caused a threat of a recall unless she brought on a functioning administrator to clean up the problems she'd already caused, who has strong ties to anti-American separationists who proudly claim to be above U.S. law, who has been happy to allow permanent irreparable damage to the land, air and water that are the essential elements that support the lives of her own large family, as well as all the people of Alaska, whose understanding of Christian faith clearly lacks its most significant lessons -- the Golden Rule and the Beatitudes, whose recent speeches appear to aim at getting the least intelligent to act on their deepest, ugliest fears, and finally, who has completely sold out her family and the people of Alaska to the Rove/Cheney Neoconservative and Corporate Imperialists who descovered her, all for the sake of appearing to be in Power.

If this isn't true, we need to see the evidence.

It should be there in her college records. I would think that Governor Palin, if she is the right person for this job, would have lots of documented evidence of the qualities of her character and intelligence, starting with her GPA.

I would think she would be delighted to have an opportunity to show off. That is something we do know about her.

I wholeheartedly support the "Petition to Alaska Governor Palin to Voluntarily Release Her College Grade Point Average!"

I also wholeheartedly thank Melissa Lammey for having the courage and follow-through to start this petition based on what she'd learned from paying attention, and Professor Mark Crispin Miller for his dedication to teaching all who are wanting to know more.

Friday Questions for The Diane Rehm Show, October 10, 2008 - News Roundup

1. If Sarah Palin becomes too much of a liability, who do your panelists think McCain will turn to at the last minute?

2. With Lehmann's CEO testifying before Congress on the executive payoffs, did we learn what Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb Bush, on its Board of Directors, or his cousin, George Herbert Walker, in charge of Global Investment, walked away with?

That Last Question: What McCain Doesn't Know. . .Ooooommmmm

Breathe, Senator John McCain, and discover your inner blankness. . .

When Tom Brokaw reached the culminating moment of the Presidential debate he had, um, well, been the "hired hand" for, he sought some kind of meaning that would make the spectacle appear more, well, worthwhile.

And so, moving away from the campaign's legacy of embarrassing spiritual End-of-Timers, Witch-blockers, and America-Damners, Tom Brokaw looked Eastward.

Well, East U.S.A.  New Hampshire, that is.  Amherst.  AAAAAAAAAAAAmmmmmmhhhhhhhhhh - erst.

And he gave, as he called it, "fair warning."  For it would be "Zen-like".

What?  Involving a Koan, perhaps? -- those succinct stories or questions Zen masters use to facilitate insight, which, according to Wikipedia, may serve to "confound the habit of discursive thought or shock the mind into awareness."

Wow. 

Whoever you are, Peggy of AAAAAAaaammmmmmmmmhhhhhhh-erst, thank you.

Brokaw speaks:  "What don't you know and how will you learn it?"

And so I, too, in that moment, look Eastward, and take three deep breaths.

Floating in the essence of spirit, I imagine John McCain taking his own three deep breaths, and from his own inner flotation, where he is suddenly centered and whole, brief though that space may be, a sudden truth is born from the emptiness.  He opens his mouth, and the uncensored words spring forth that reveal that which he does not know:

"Who Sarah Palin has selected to be her Vice President.  And I suppose, to find out, I'll have to ask Dick Cheney."

The colorful auras vibrating around McCain fall away as the audience's gasp sucks the atmosphere out of the room.

The badgering voices in his head rise up again, yelling angrily, and he sputters a correction quickly:

"I mean Steve Schmidt!"

Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

INSIGHT IS ATTAINED.

Friday Questions for The Diane Rehm Show News Roundup, October 3, 2008

On the front page of last Sunday’s New York Times was a huge story on John McCain’s gambling problems, citing both his own personal risky high-rolling gambling habits, as well as his and many of his top campaign staff’s financial ties to the gambling casino industry. It was an extraordinary story. Yet I have heard nothing about it since on NPR.

Has Steve Schmidt managed to muffle the media on this?

Sarah Palin and the Closed Door Energy Forum where Her Water Broke

It did not take long for people to discover the strange circumstances surrounding the birth of Sarah Palin’s youngest child, Trig, widely reported to be a Down Syndrome baby.

Ms. Palin only revealed that she was pregnant one month before his birth, when she was in her 7th month, and in the midst of a very busy schedule, with recent trips to Washington, DC and Los Angeles. She bragged about going back to work as a Mayor the day after giving birth to her daughter, Piper, and, sure enough, in April, when Trig was born, she was back in her office in three days (it might have been earlier, but this birth was on a Friday, so there was a weekend following).

That is enough to make many of us squirm, but it gets much stranger when we learn that Governor Palin’s water broke while she was attending an energy forum in Texas on Thursday, April 17th, but that she stayed for the event, made her own 30 minute speech, and then, rather than going to a hospital, she chose to board an Alaska Airlines plane for what must have been at least a 9 hour flight, according to their current schedule, then drove another 43 miles to give birth at the Mat Su Regional Medical Center in Palmer, Alaska.

Her choice to not respond to her water breaking has led to an internet uproar at www.BuzzFlash.com and elsewhere, especially regarding her priorities, her decisions, her parenting, and her character. . .
But to me, they’re missing the point.

I return to the question of why Sarah Palin was chosen by McCain, especially when he hadn’t even spent any time with her?

The reasons can't be good. And, in truth, the reasons aren't just his. At one time in his life, McCain may have been his own man, but that time has passed. He is in the hands of Rove and Cheney's people, or he wouldn't be where he is today. They may not be thrilled with the candidate they got, but given the other choices of a flipflopping Mormon, an evangelist, or a lazy actor, McCain appeared to be the most electable. So they picked up from his failing campaign, dusted him off, and assigned their people to him as consultants. They settled, and so did he, and he is cooperating.

So, now we have a vice presidential candidate who came out of nowhere.

No, not nowhere -- Alaska. Where Ted Stevens is old and busted - so the oil companies can't use him any more.

But Sarah Palin? Oh my. Known for that odd combination of being both a Christian and a bully, and for her support of giving up both the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and polar bears, she fits the Bush/Cheney/McCain transition perfectly.
In this light, I ask,

"What was she doing in Texas that was so important that she couldn’t leave, and that she didn’t want to highlight by giving birth in Texas?"

Reported to be a "forum on energy with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and executives from four other states", it took a little digging to find that this forum was a closed-door affair hosting a select group of nine Republican governors and such notable corporate energy VIPS (and polluters) as Greg Boyce, chairman and CEO of the Peabody Energy Corp.; John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil; Robert A. Malone, chairman and president, BP America; Anthony Orlando, president and CEO, Covanta Energy Corp.; and John Somerhalder II, chairman and CEO, AGL Resources.

It is important, too, to understand that the host, Governor Rick Perry, is the governor neatly trained to take Bush's spot in the Texas Governor's mansion. Before that, Perry defeated Jim Hightower for Texas Agricultural Commissioner with the help of Karl Rove and his scurilous tactics.

Perry is also the father of Dick Cheney's son-in-law, the lawyer Phillip Perry, who has bounced back and forth for the last several years between lobbying for Lockheed Martin and working for the White House. His wife, Elizabeth Cheney, though a mother of five herself, is a hawk for attacking Iran and has worked in the Bush Cheney State Department.

So, while the pregnancy story does bring up questions about Sarah Palin's character and priorities, I still think the far more relevant information for voters is what was going on behind closed doors in Texas that day?

This is what we deserve to know.

Shining the Blues -- With Diligence

It is actually more possible than ever before for this kind of whole-nation response.

All that is needed is:

1. Thorough reporting on the hypocrisy, lies, and damages of this Republican Bush Cheney administration, and how the same people and entities are working to put McBush, er, McCain in the front-man position (and crushing any of the maverick tendencies that once gave him credibility).

2. Diligent attention to make sure that all eligible voters are allowed to vote and that their votes are counted. This means that we not only need to make sure voters are registered AND that there are frequent checks in every state to make sure that voter registration lists include all new registrations and that no names are removed without documented evidence that the voter is no longer a legal voter in that precinct.

It's that simple. If the people know the truth about who has taken over the Republican party, and how they have thwarted the principles Americans believe make this country great -- and the election results reflect the choice of the majority of this informed citizenry. . .

All 50 states will shine BLUE next November.

So, now we know our job, right?