Watch:
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
*****
Just a little appropriate music for the times, don't you know. For the times they are a-changin'.
Election day, November 4th! It’s going to be D-day, deliverance day from the insane neo-con nightmare of the last eight years.
The moon is in Aquarius on election day, that’s gonna be some kind of revolution there for sure. I think we really have a chance to turf out the incumbents, and replace them with actual living ,breathing, and, most importantly, thinking beings. Right now it’s looking up to be a landslide for Obama, but the Rethug-dirty-trick-vote-suppressing-vote-flipping-central-counting-computer-techno-chad-fiasco-machine is still active, and waiting in the wings to take a stake in how it all shakes down. I must say, however, that it actually looks like we-the-people are on the move. Stay tuned, stay awake folks, and don’t go to sleep now. ALL HANDS ON DECK!
We need a landslide for Obama, a clear mandate against monkey-business-as-usual. We need a clear mandate against the rape of our commonwealth. Obama, and the rest of America, have done a heck of a job getting out the vote. We the people need to follow through, and exercise our democratic mandate. We can’t stop there though, we have to make sure our votes are counted and counted correctly.
Back in the bad old days when they were stealing the second election for dubya, I about dropped my jaw to my knees when I heard some politician quote, just prior to the election, on national TV, (in front of the white-house no less!) “it doesn’t matter who votes, it matters who counts it.” I thought for sure the media would pick it up then, but apparently Cheney had all their kids in his undisclosed location or something, because we never heard a peep about it until the mighty blog-o-sphere started adding up all the bits and pieces of the coup. So remember this, and make your vote count; check in with your neighbors, and make their vote count. Then check in with the county, and then the state. Keep watching, and keep them honest.
Don’t take no for an answer. Don’t believe them when they say the election is too close. It’s really not. I’ve heard things in the last couple of days from dyed in the wool red-necks, lumberjacks, loggers, farmers, housewives, business people, gas station workers, waitresses, you name it, everyone is talking about it. I’ve had life-long republicans say to me I can’t vote for McCain Palin, I don’t know who else to vote for, so I’ll vote Obama. People are tired of politics as usual, and they are voting for change. Let’s see that they get it.
Democracy isn’t a one day event, folks. First we have to get the vote out, get it counted, and get Washington to stick to it. That’s why we need that landslide on November fourth. But then we have to make sure Obama takes office. Someone’s gotta get Cheney outta that bunker. I don’t care if you believe in the invisible cloud being or not, I figure we should all utilize our powers of visualization, and visualize Obama taking office. (Is it too much to ask for to have the thugs indicted on the way out of office?)
Obama was not my first choice for president. But he’s our only choice right now, so after we get him into office, we gotta hold his feet to the fire. We need him to act, not to shift the war over the border, but to shift to war over, and bring the troops home. Let’s hold his feet to the fire over the bailout, just so he can pass it on to wall street. Trickle down economics is some Republican bathroom humor, so tell Obama not to let the corporations piss all over us. If we’re going to have welfare for the rich, then Obama needs to take away their non-essential toys. Let’s give the taxpayers the golden parachutes, and tell the greedy CEOs to go to hell, or, better yet, to get a job.
We’re going to have to do our part as citizens and voters, and make our mandate heard. We are America, of, for, and by the people. And you know what? We the people have a chance to take our country back. So, Obama? We’re holding your feet to the fire. We don’t mind sacrifice, so long as everybody makes one. We don’t mind working for the common good. But we aren’t going to take politics as usual, ’cause we’ve got no place left to go, our backs are against the wall. So, stay in it folks. Vote, make your voice heard, make it stick and keep the President’s (and Congress’s) feet to the fire. Democracy is both a participatory and a contact sport. Place your bets, and take your places!
Astrologically, this election’s all about revolution. These are exciting days— E-day, D-day, let’s go get ‘em!
*****
From over at BartBlog
From www.breadwithcircus.com#votefraud/
There are only a couple of days until the US Election, and I’ve become convinced of one thing: if the vote is fair, Barack Obama can not lose. Obama is way ahead both in polling and general public sentiment. Poll after poll in state after state shows him carrying enough of the electoral college to easily win Tuesday’s election. There’s just one thing. The election is not going to be fair. Republicans have stolen the last two elections and are actively working to steal this one too.
There have already been reports of voters (mostly in low-income or ethnic neighbourhoods) being “purged” from the voting list for no apparent reason. If you are one of these people, it means that you’ll show up at the polls, and the official will tell you that you’ve been removed from the voting list, and that in order to correct this, you should have sent paperwork away last week. This happened in Florida in 2000. If someone called John Smith committed a crime, and you are a John Smith in a predominantly black neighbourhood, you’ve been purged. Names with a certain ring about them were also taken off the list. If your name is Shaniqua, Jamal, or DeShawn, chances are good that there’s going to be an issue when you finally get to the front of that long line on Tuesday. I recommend going early if you can.
There have been reports of voting machines (why in the hell do you Americans still use those things?) “flipping votes.” It works sort of like this. I encourage people to watch Hacking Democracy to see how easy it is to tamper with the machines.
There are also many cases (again in low income and ethnic neighbourhoods) where there are not enough voting booths. This leads to very long lines that discourage people from voting. If a vote costs many hours waiting in line, many people will walk away from the poll. Votes are also suppressed through demanding perfect matches in identification. If your name is Herschel Johnson and the bureaucrat who filled out your voter registration form misspelled it as Hershel Johnson, you don’t get to vote. This is disenfranchisement by clerical error. Also if you’ve moved in the last little while, even within the same neighbourhood, and your new address doesn’t match up with the one on the voter form, (even if you can prove who you are through your driver’s license, social security number, birth certificate etc) you don’t get to vote. Consider all of those whose houses have been foreclosed in the last months. They all have new addresses. Do you think they were going to vote Republican?
Keep in mind that these measures seem to be introduced only in neighbourhoods that tend to vote Democratic. Add them all together, and then consider the fact that the McCain campaign, along with the mainstream media, has been questioning the accuracy of polls in the last few days. “Never mind that Obama has a 15 point lead,” they say “maybe some people are secretly racist so they lied to the pollsters about their intention to vote for Obama.”
Perhaps the most disturbing talking point has been along the lines of “you can’t trust polls because in the last election, John Kerry was leading but then on election day he lost.” Given what we now know about the ‘04 election theft, they might as well quote Joseph Stalin. “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” The campaign is trying to plant the idea that the vote will be much closer than polls indicate. If people start to believe this, then they won’t be surprised if they are told that the vote was actually about 50/50, and McCain won a narrow victory.
A close election is more easily stolen. In previous elections, the margin of victory has been small enough that the purging/flipping/suppression of maybe one hundred thousand votes in key states was enough to have Bush carry the day. However, an Obama land-slide can not be overturned. If enough of the voters who say they were going to vote for Obama
actually show up at the polls, he will win, simple as that. My message is, don’t be complacent. Drag friends and family to the polling station. Even though you may think that Obama has this one locked up, make sure that you and everyone you know gets out and votes. Obama must win big to overcome the fraud that will take place.
Now, the what if. If somehow the story on Wednesday is McCain’s last minute surge, the low turnout of likely Obama voters, and strange circumstances leading to a McCain win in Pennsylvania, DO NOT SURRENDER. Democrats rolled over twice before and look what it did to their country. They may have to call in the lawyers. You may have to take to the streets and protest. Be prepared to do this! There is no way that McCain can win legitimately. You may have to fight this time, and no matter how ugly it may look, this is what democracy demands. The whole world is counting on you not to screw this one up. Only you can prevent election fraud. Yes you can.
*****
From BartBlog
Liddy Dole deserves to lose for so many reasons. But, in the end, Dole really did herself in with that "godless" ad she ran against Kay Hagan. Public Policy Polling's blog, (PPP is based in North Carolina) had this analysis:
It is pretty clear to me based on our polling this weekend that Kay Hagan will be headed to the US Senate unless something very bizarre happens in the next 72 hours. While numbers in the races for President and Governor are basically unchanged from last week there has been clear movement away from Elizabeth Dole, a sign that her 'Godless Americans' ad is blowing up in her face.
Gotta love those faith-based initiatives:
A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery by Islamic militants, a human rights group said.Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death Oct. 27 in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo, Amnesty International and Somali media reported, citing witnesses.
The Islamic militia in charge of Kismayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said.
Most Americans believe that fighting climate change will help boost the economy, a survey released by the Climate Group shows. And a majority are more committed to combating global warming than ever before, despite the financial crises on Wall Street. The survey yields some surprisingly positive results—and offers evidence that climate change has evolved into a truly important issue to most Americans.
The popular Montreal comedy duo Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel, aka "The Masked Avengers" ( Les Justiciers Masqués ) are notorious for prank-calling heads of state and celebrities who take themselves a little too seriously. Surely none take themselves so seriously as Sarah Palin. She was pranked by the pair today when they social-hacked their way past security and convinced her she was speaking to Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France.
Fake Sarkozy tells Palin that his wife is "hot in bed," drops plenty of hints it's a fake call, and suggests Palin would make a good president "one day you too." She replies, "well, maybe in eight years!"
Here is a partial transcript:
He tells Palin one of his favorite pastimes is hunting, also a passion of the 44-year-old Alaska governor."I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun," the fake Sarkozy says.
He proposes they go hunting together by helicopter, something he says he has never done.
"Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together while we're getting work done," Palin counters. "We can kill two birds with one stone that way."
The comedian jokes that they shouldn't bring Cheney along on the hunt, referring to the 2006 incident in which the vice-president shot and injured a friend while hunting quail.
"I'll be a careful shot," responds Palin.
Playing off the governor's much-mocked comment in an early television interview that she had insights into foreign policy because "you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska," the caller tells her: "You know we have a lot in common also, because ... from my house I can see Belgium."
She replies: "Well, see, we're right next door to different countries that we all need to be working with, yes."
(...) He also tells the Alaska governor that he loved the "documentary" made about her and referred to a pornographic film with a Palin look-alike made by Hustler founder Larry Flynt. She answers tentatively, "Ohh, good, thank you, yes."
In Pueblo, Colorado, Obama had this to say about the endorsement:
"I'd like to congratulate Sen. McCain on this endorsement, because he really earned it. That endorsement didn't come easy," he said. "George Bush may be in an undisclosed location now, but Dick Cheney's out there on the campaign trail because he'd be delighted to pass the baton to John McCain."
"He knows that with John McCain, you get a twofer: George Bush's economic policy and Dick Cheney's foreign policy. And that is a risk we cannot afford to take."
Both candidates are hoping to reap the lion's share of more than 23 million votes that have been cast nationwide. They're targeting states where polls remain open through the weekend -- and, in some cases, into Monday.
Polls indicate that many, if not most, of the early votes in more than 30 states are being cast by registered Democrats.
Of 23,298,564 total in-person and mail-in ballots in 25 states, at least 6,057,527 -- or 26 percent -- were cast by Democrats or repugicans, according to election officials.
Of that 6 million, 57.8 percent were Democrats, and 42.2 percent were repugicans.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said Friday that the campaign has been successful motivating voters to cast ballots early, thanks to a vast national network of neighborhood captains, whom he said will be out in full force this weekend in North Carolina and Florida.
"We are confident that we have a lot of good voters left," Plouffe said, adding that Obama plans to stump hard this weekend in western states such as Colorado, where the campaign is targeting independent voters.
Michael McDonald of George Mason University predicted that McPain will have a "very tough time in some of the western states like Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, just because we're seeing that Democrats are apparently casting a lot of ballots in those states."
Early voting is handled differently in every state. But in general, it allows voters to cast ballots in person before Election Day using either voting machines or so-called absentee ballots, without having to provide an excuse.North Carolina topped 2 million in-person early voters Friday, said election officials, about twice the previous record since the state began no-excuse early voting in 2000.
About half the state's 100 counties have voted to extend voting Saturday by two hours, said state election board deputy director Johnnie McLean.
The entire $3 million early voting project, she said, "will enable voters who come on Election Day to vote without staying until midnight."
To the south in Georgia, officials in Fulton Countysaid that they are considering extending early voting through the weekend.
Georgia also has set records in the past two weeks of early voting, and the Obama campaign boasts 4,800 captains who were recruited during the summer and early fall.
|
Vick's lawyers had requested that he be allowed to enter the plea from federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan., where he is serving a two-year term since admitting he bankrolled a dogfighting operation and helped execute dogs.
But citing high public interest in the case, Surry County Circuit Judge Samuel Campbell said it would be better for Vick to appear in person.
"I know from my conversations with Mike and, more importantly, his family that he's looking forward to getting this behind him," said Lawrence Woodward, an attorney for the former Virginia Tech and Atlanta Falcons star.
Prosecutor Gerald Poindexter preferred that Vick's plea wait until his release from federal prison. He objected to the video conferencing motion on grounds that it has never been used in Virginia and he didn't want the county to set a precedent.
Vick, 28, is set to enter his plea on Nov. 25. Under the terms of his plea deal, he would receive only a suspended sentence and a year of probation. If he is able to resolve the state dogfighting and animal cruelty charges, he would be eligible to transfer to a halfway house for the final six months of his term, according to court papers.
*****
He should have received the same treatment he gave to the dogs!
"Here the entire economy of America is shrinking, and the oil companies ... one, in fact, made the largest profit in its history in a quarter," Biden said at a rally in Arnold, Missouri.
"Ladies and gentlemen, what more evidence do we need that the Exxon Mobils of the world don't need a tax break?" he asked, speaking to supporters in a half-empty high school gym. "That $4 billion should go to middle class taxpayers, people who need the money. John [McCain] and governor [Sarah] Palin have this upside down. They literally have it upside down."
Exxon Mobil set a quarterly profit record for a U.S. company Thursday, saying its third-quarter net profit was $14.83 billion.
*****
That feeling you are feeling folks is the urge to toss you cookies and the pain from the hosing you have been getting for the last eight years at the obscenity that is the unholy union of repugicans and big corporations.
“All of a sudden his picture came up and (Ashlee) said, ‘Oh my god, Mom, that’s him and that’s the shirt he had on,’” Christine Hutchens said.
“I get very upset when the elderly, kids or handicapped people become victims of these offenses,” said Officer Tamar Skelly, who is with Crime Stoppers.
"Boulevard du Temple", taken by Daguerre in late 1838 or early 1839 in Paris, was the first photograph of a person.
The image shows a busy street, but because exposure time was over ten minutes, the traffic was moving too much to appear.
The exception is the man at the bottom left, who stood still getting his boots polished long enough to show.
"According to expense reports, Sarah Palin charged the state of Alaska over $21,000 for her children to travel with her on official business.
In fairness to Governor Palin, when she leaves them home alone, they get pregnant."
Researchers have found evidence of psychoactive drug use in the hair of ancient mummies found in Chile's Azapa Valley. The scientists detected harmine, an ingredient used in the psychedelic brew ayahuasca, in hairs from an adult and baby who lived between 800 and 1200 years ago."These individuals probably ingested harmine in therapeutic or medicinal practices, some maybe related to pregnancy and childbirth," said study co-author Juan Pablo Ogalde, a chemical archaeologist at the University of Tarapacá in Arica, Chile.
"However, it is possible also that consumption of harmine was involved in religious rituals, said Ogalde, whose research appeared online October 14 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
X-rays showed that the adult male—who was buried with items of social prestige such as panpipes, a four-pointed hat, and a snuffing tray—had damage near the nose, perhaps from sniffing.
As for the baby, Ogalde speculated that the mother had consumed the drug and passed it on to her offspring during pregnancy or breast-feeding.
"The fact this mind-altering substance was found even with a one-year-old shows how much a part of their life it was," said archaeologist Alexei Vranich of the University of California, Los Angeles, who did not participate in the study.
Yaron Svoray scrapes caked layers of dirt from a shard of glass, revealing a sunflower at the heart of a Star of David.
He carefully turns it, speculating it may have been a bowl used for Passover ceremonies in pre-World War II German Jewish homes.
The fragment is one of a handful of artifacts Svoray has pulled from mounds of debris in this former dump about an hour north of Berlin that locals say was used by the Nazis to deposit rejected loot from the 1938 pogrom known as Kristallnacht, or "The Night of Broken Glass."
"Most of the people in Israel I know who went through the Holocaust, if I take this to Israel, to Yad Vashem, you'll get every visitor who is a Jew will say: 'Oh this is what was in our house 50 or 60 years ago,'" Svoray said recently at the site.
"For me as a Jew, if this turns out, and I'm not saying it is, but if this turns out to be a Jewish bowl from before the war, it's a treasure."
Svoray was hunting for a downed Nazi plane in the area's vast stretches of woods when a former forester tipped him off to the dump, used from 1935 to 1945, outside the village of Klandorf in the largely rural eastern state of Brandenburg.
After two hours of digging with his bare hands and a rusty spade found among the refuse, Svoray had unearthed what appeared to be a beer bottle stamped with a Star of David and a plate-sized alloyed metal swastika. Several weeks later he returned and found the jagged shard of the bowl.
"I don't claim to say this is from Kristallnacht, I claim there is enough evidence here to provoke a further investigation," said Svoray, 54, an Israeli journalist who made his name infiltrating German neo-Nazi groups in the 1990s. He would like to see the dump excavated.
Thomas Kersting, an archaeologist employed by the state of Brandenburg to care for buried memorials and archaeological sites, said Svoray's finds - which he has yet to examine - may give the area historical value.
"A place like this where we have objects with a Star of David directly next to a Nazi swastika, that is of course meaningful ... that gives it a certain quality of a memorial," Kersting said.
But Kersting played down the likelihood of an archaeological dig, citing a lack of funds and arguing that such a disruption would be in direct opposition to his bureau's aim to maintain the sanctity of such sites.
Arno Gielsdorf, who owns the strip of land where the dump sits, said his father told stories the arrival of "garbage" trains after Kristallnacht.
Since the collapse of communism in 1989, he said, bands of scavengers have picked over the area, selling their finds at weekly flea markets in Berlin.
But he is convinced the dump holds valuable artifacts.
"The things from Kristallnacht were buried in the deepest places," Gielsdorf said. "They are still there."
The gap between the nation's ceos and average workers is now ten times greater than it was a generation ago. And while bush's tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. In fact, once all of Bush's tax cuts take effect, it is estimated that those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year -- the richest five percent of the population -- will pocket almost half of the money. those who make less than $75,000 a year -- eighty percent of America -- will receive barely a quarter of the cuts. in the bush era, economic inequality is on the rise. ...so where did all the economic growth go?The wingnuts are foaming at the mouth because they fear "redistribution of wealth" and calling Obama a socialist.
It went to a relative handful of people at the top. the earnings of the typical full-time worker, adjusted for inflation, have actually fallen since Bush took office. Pay for CEOs, meanwhile, has soared -- from 185 times that of average workers in 2003 to 279 times in 2005. And after-tax corporate profits have also skyrocketed, more than doubling since Bush took office. those profits will eventually be reflected in dividends and capital gains, which accrue mainly to the very well-off: more than three-quarters of all stocks are owned by the richest ten percent of the population. -
Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McPain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.
Nina williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake county, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."
Talking Points Memo Election Central
*****
It's really bad when telemarketers won't lie for you!
First the facts about ACORN. Months ago, we obtained, as part of our investigation for Rolling Stone magazine, the Republican's list the GOP alleged were the very worst cases of vote and registration fraud by ACORN and similar groups. We went through the names the GOP asserted were "obviously, undeniably and clearly fraudulent" voter registrations.
First, there was Melissa Tais, a dubious ACORN registrant. Her two voter registration forms show, admittedly, suspiciously different signatures. Republicans suggested Melissa was part of a massive fraud to allow Democrats to vote twice. They were wrong. Ms. Tais, a Cerrillos, New Mexico, waitress, told us she had signed one form on a table and one form holding the paper in her hand. Hence, a second, wobbly signature.
Then there was Patricia White, who Republicans claimed was a fictitious voter. When we filmed her at home in Albuquerque, she seemed real enough. And so on, through the entire GOP list -- not one fraud. And these were their best cases out of the five million "illegal voters" who Republican leaders claim have infiltrated America's voting rolls.
The overblown histrionics about ACORN do not surprise those of us who have been watching the RNC's election manipulation antics. For eight years White House operatives have been trying to gin up press stories about voter fraud. David Iglesias of New Mexico was one of seven U.S. Attorneys fired by the White House for their refusal to bring voter fraud prosecutions. "We took over 100 complaints," from the GOP, he told us, "We investigated for almost 2 years, I didn't find one prosecutable voter fraud case in the entire state of New Mexico." Iglesias, a McCain supporter, has, for the first time, leveled a new and serious charge: Despite finding none of the 200 voters guilty, he says the White House nevertheless ordered him to illegally prosecute baseless cases against innocent citizens, just to gin up voter fraud publicity. His refusal, he says, cost him his job. "They were looking for politicized -- for improperly politicized US attorneys to file bogus voter fraud cases."
Certainly ACORN collected some bad signatures. But despite McCain's claims, now morphed into media theology, none of ACORN's actions will have any impact on any election. ACORN hired 13,000 canvassers to register new voters. A small number of these workers defrauded ACORN by handing in phony registration forms using names they had invented (e.g. Mickey Mouse), or copied from phone books. In one case ACORN canvassers used cigarettes to bribe a homeless man, now a Fox News regular, to register 17 times. None of these activities constituted voter fraud. It is no crime to register 17 times; only the final registration counts. His multiple registrations would not allow the tobacco lover to vote 17 times. Nor is there any evidence the phone book registrants will cast multiple ballots.
Finally, the removal by GOP officials of hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters from voting rolls over the past year provides ACORN with a sound rationale for obtaining new registrations, even from voters who believe they are already registered. ACORN took pains to screen its registrations and cull out those it considered dubious.
However, federal laws make it a felony for voter registration groups like ACORN to discard registrations even when it believes them fraudulent. So ACORN flagged the forms it considered doubtful and handed them in to the registry. Ironically, it was those flagged forms -- the fruits of ACORN's diligence -- that have been flogged by Republicans as their best evidence of widespread election fraud.
Voter fraud is a phantom according to Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voting crime at Columbia University. Only 24 cases of federal voter fraud have been uncovered between 2002 and 2005 despite massive government efforts devoted to uncovering evidence of a voter fraud crime wave.
