Baron Dave Romm
Suppression Watch
By Baron Dave Romm
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Is the election already lost?
It's already stolen. The GOP removes 2.7 million names from voting rolls. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast in a report for Rolling Stone. Link to the article below. Here is the text from Greg Palast's site announcing the publication of the article:
Don't worry about Mickey Mouse or ACORN stealing the election. According to an investigative report out today in Rolling Stone magazine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, after a year-long investigation, reveal a systematic program of "GOP vote tampering" on a massive scale.
- Republican Secretaries of State of swing-state Colorado have quietly purged one in six names from their voter rolls.
Over several months, the GOP politicos in Colorado stonewalled every attempt by Rolling Stone to get an answer to the massive purge - ten times the average state's rate of removal.
- While Obama dreams of riding to the White House on a wave of new voters, more then 2.7 million have had their registrations REJECTED under new procedures signed into law by George Bush.
Kennedy, a voting rights lawyer, charges this is a resurgence of 'Jim Crow' tactics to wrongly block Black and Hispanic voters.
- A fired US prosecutor levels new charges - accusing leaders of his own party, Republicans, with criminal acts in an attempt to block legal voters as "fraudulent."
- Digging through government records, the Kennedy-Palast team discovered that, in 2004, a GOP scheme called "caging" ultimately took away the rights of 1.1 million voters. The Rolling Stone duo predict that, this November 4, it will be far worse.
There's more:
- Since the last presidential race, "States used dubious 'list management' rules to scrub at least 10 million voters from their rolls."
Among those was Paul Maez of Las Vegas, New Mexico - a victim of an unreported but devastating purge of voters in that state that left as many as one in nine Democrats without a vote. For Maez, the state's purging his registration was particularly shocking - he's the county elections supervisor.
The Kennedy-Palast revelations go far beyond the sum of questionably purged voters recently reported by the New York Times.
"Republican operatives - the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics," report Kennedy and Palast, under the cover of fighting fraudulent voting, are "systematically disenfranchis[ing] Democrats."
The investigators level a deadly serious charge: "If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat McCain at the polls - they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering."
Block the Vote by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. & Greg Palast in the current issue (#1064) of Rolling Stone.
Block the Vote Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, Rolling Stone, posted for 10/30/08 issue. From page 2 of the on-line article:
Suppressing the vote has long been a cornerstone of the GOP's electoral strategy. Shortly before the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Paul Weyrich - a principal architect of today's Republican Party - scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. "Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome - good government," said Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
Today, Weyrich's vision has become a national reality. Since 2003, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, at least 2.7 million new voters have had their applications to register rejected. In addition, at least 1.6 million votes were never counted in the 2004 election - and the commission's own data suggests that the real number could be twice as high. To purge registration rolls and discard ballots, partisan election officials used a wide range of pretexts, from "unreadability" to changes in a voter's signature. And this year, thanks to new provisions of the Help America Vote Act, the number of discounted votes could surge even higher.
These are very serious charges. Not merely felonies but they rip apart the Constitution. Too many conservatives don't believe in America. You do.
Where is the outrage?
Your vote is being stolen. Republicans don't believe in Democracy. Where is the hew and cry? Why no sturm and drang? There is outrage, but it's coming from... the Republicans. As is often the case, they are accusing Democrats of a crime that Republicans are committing, and the Republican crimes are far worse than anything they are whining about.
Behind the GOP's voter fraud hysteria, a major effort at voter suppression. Salon.com 10/15/08:
But according to Lori Minnite, a professor of political science at Barnard College, who has spent the last eight years studying the role of fraud in U.S. elections, the Republican crusade against voter fraud is a strategic ruse. Rather than protecting the election process from voter fraud -- a problem that barely exists -- Minnite says the true aim of Republican efforts appears to be voter suppression across the partisan divide. According to Minnite, investigating voter fraud has become a Republican cottage industry over the last 20 years because it justifies questioning the eligibility of thousands of would-be voters -- often targeting poor and minority citizens in urban areas that lean Democratic. Playing the role of vigilant watchdog gives GOP bureaucrats a pretext for obstructing the path of marginalized and first-time voters headed for the polls.
On Sept. 10, the 240,000 Wisconsin voters who had registered by mail since 2006 found their voting status up in the air as the state's attorney general, J.B. Van Hollen -- a McCain campaign co-chair -- sued the state's Government Accountability Board. In Michigan that same week, Macomb County GOP party chairman James Carabelli allegedly told a reporter that he would use publicly available lists of foreclosed home addresses to "make sure people aren't voting from those addresses." In early October, the Montana Republican Party challenged the eligibility of 6,000 voters in university towns and heavily Native American counties.
And last week, Nevada officials raided a Las Vegas office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a 38-year-old grass-roots political group known as ACORN that advocates on behalf of low-income Americans. News of the raid, following allegations that ACORN workers had submitted fraudulent voter registrations, prompted cheers from many on the right and objections from many on the left -- as did an announcement last Friday, by ACORN itself, that 2,100 of 5,000 registrations forms submitted by ACORN workers in Lake County, Ind., were invalid.
But Minnite says that the latest Republican uproar over ACORN is part of "a far broader effort to corrode public confidence in the electoral process." Minnite is a co-author of the forthcoming book "Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters" and a research fellow at Demos, a public policy think tank based in New York. She predicts that as Nov. 4 approaches, Republican allegations about voter fraud are certain to continue. Minnite spoke with Salon by phone recently from her office in Manhattan. [rest of story is the interview]
Voter suppression is in many states, especially swing states
States 'Action to Block Voters Appear Illegal NYTimes 10/8/08:
Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.See also also CatM's DailyKos diary.
These are important. You need to be on watch. Sometimes the good guys win.
Supreme Court Hands GOP Loss in Ohio Voting Rights Case Talking Points Memo 10/17/08:
The Supreme Court a short time ago vacated a temporary restraining order issued by a federal district judge in that big Ohio voting rights case. The TRO had required the Ohio Secretary of State to identify mismatches between information on new voter registration forms and state DMV records and provide those mismatches to county election officials.
As we've been reporting this week, the GOP brought the lawsuit as part of its strategic effort to disqualify voters in swing states. Once the mismatches are identified, the process of trying to disqualify voters can begin. By one estimate, one-third of the voters who registered this year in Ohio might have such mismatches, some 200,000 voters. Mismatches include things like ... typos.
The district court initially sided with the GOP, a three-judge appeals panel overturned the district court, then the entire 6th Circuit Court of Appeals took up the case and upheld the district court.
On one level it's surprising anytime the Supreme Court takes up any one case simply because they don't step in very often, especially in election cases (with notorious exceptions), especially on an issue that has not been previously heavily litigated. But it's less surprising how the court came down here.
YOU need to be on watch
Write your newspaper, whether for the print edition or you're participating in on-line forums.
Look up the action in your state, in your area.
Participate in Get Out The Vote efforts in your area. One of the ways to counter voter suppression is with high voter turnout.
Bring a camera on voting day. Watch for intimidation or other untoward signs. Are the cops stopping people heading to the polls? Are the polling places friendly? Are the polling places overwhelmed?
We need adults in charge, but we're not going to get it if we just sit back and let evil people have their way.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
--////
The Weekly Poll
Now With Working Link!
This week's poll:
Unisex Selective Service Registration
OK, Poll-Fans, here it is...
Senator Barack Obama has gone on record that females aged 18-25 be required to register with the Selective Service as males in that age group are required by law to do.
He also is in favor of opening up all 'Combat Arms' positions that women are not currently not allowed to participate in...
Candidates differ on female draft
Are you in favor or opposed to these positions?
BadtotheboneBob
Send your response to BadtotheBoneBob (BCEpoll (at) aol.com)
Results tomorrow
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
FROMA HARROP: Katrina for the Rest of Us
For a while, I had expected to emerge mostly unscathed from the eight years of George W. Bush. I managed not to be in New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina awaiting rescue by a blundering federal agency.
Ted Rall: STOP THE BLEEDING
The previous week, a 90-year-old Ohio woman tried to commit suicide when cops tried to evict her from her foreclosed house. Fortunately, the gunshot wound wasn't fatal.
FROMA HARROP: The Price of Extinction (creators.com)
What price would you place on the beautiful, musical and probably extinct ivory-billed woodpecker? Of course, all the world's gold couldn't bring the bird back. But suppose you could time travel back 60 years to the shrinking Southern swamps, where the last pairs were definitively seen. And suppose you made an economic argument for saving the birds' habitat. How much would you say the ivorybill was worth? Come on, let's hear a bid for the bird.
Susan Estrich: The Reilly Rule (creators.com)
The night before the Labor Day launch of the 1984 Mondale campaign, John Reilly called a meeting of all of us who would be traveling for the coming months on the plane with the nominee. Reilly's formal title was "Senior Adviser," and while that title is often used in politics to denote 30-somethings with no specific responsibility, in Reilly's case it was accurate.
Susan Estrich: Say Goodnight, Jesse (creators.com)
A Barack Obama victory in less than three weeks will mean many things at home and abroad. It will mean a new team on foreign and domestic policy and new political leadership for both the Democratic Party and the country. And it will mean, finally, the end of any excuse to listen to the self-involved, selfish and stupid rantings of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Shirley Manson leaves Garbage for the Terminator (timesonline.co.uk)
Craig McLean meets rock-star and advanced-model cyborg Shirley Manson to discuss the Scotswoman's first acting role.
Farhad Manjoo: The 18 Things You Need for Your Computer (slate.com)
MY FAVORITE PROGRAMS AND WEB SERVICES.
Rick Kogan: William Petersen is leaving 'CSI' for the city - and the theater scene - that spaw (Chicago Tribune)
The 14th hole at the Highland Park golf course is a 443-yard par four, slightly uphill from the tee before twisting right and heading downhill toward a green that is protected by a winding creek. It is a cruel hole, and one afternoon in the late summer of 2000 four men were playing it: the reporter, who would be me; Keith Moore, a lawyer married to actress Natalie West; Will Zahrn, a Chicago stage actor with some minor movie credits; and William Petersen, a legendary Chicago stage actor and movie star of modest magnitude.
Craig McLean: Why Miley Cyrus is the world's biggest-ever teenage star (timesonline.co.uk)
She's the world's biggest-ever teenage star, thanks to Hannah Montana, a TV show about a girl called Miley with a pop star alter ego. But where does fiction end and real life begin? Craig McLean is sucked into a whirlwind of wholesome ambition.
"Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography" by David Michaelis (timesonline.co.uk)
The "Sunday Time" Review by Tom Shone: few cartoonists have been as popular as Charles Schulz. The secret of his success? Crippling shyness and a lifelong ability to hold a grudge.
ROGER SUTTON: Annie on My Mind
"Annie on My Mind" and I grew up together. Published twenty-five years ago in 1982, this now-canonical lesbian-coming-of-age novel was one of the first books I ever reviewed. Sally Holmes Holtze was then assistant editor at School Library Journal's book review section, working with Pam Pollack, and I was a new SLJ reviewer. I was interested in gay-themed books and earlier in the year had reviewed Larry Hulce's Just the Right Amount of Wrong, whose depiction of homosexuality resembled a combination of "That's the Night That the Lights Went Out in Georgia" and "Deliverance."
John McCain: I'm Not President Bush? (Video)
Charlie replied:
Reader Suggestion
cool site
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Beautiful fall day.
Benson, Thielemans Honored
Jazz Masters
Guitarist George Benson had a chance to reconnect with his jazz roots when he was honored by the National Endowment for the Arts as one of its 2009 Jazz Masters. But it was another newly minted Jazz Master, Belgian-born Toots Thielemans, who provided the most moving moment at the NEA's annual ceremony to present the nation's highest jazz honor.
Thielemans, 86, accompanied by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, played a moving version on harmonica of "What A Wonderful World," which he dedicated to his "musical guru," Louis Armstrong.
Thielemans, whose harmonica has been heard by generations of children on the "Sesame Street" opening theme, said he got hooked on jazz during the German occupation in the 1940s, when he first heard recordings of Armstrong with the Mills Brothers.
Thielemans is the first European-born musician, harmonica player and baron (he was given the title in 2001 by King Albert II of Belgium) to be named an NEA Jazz Master. He recalled the warm welcome he received from African-American jazz musicians after he settled in the U.S. in 1952 - from singer Dinah Washington, who cooked him a soul food dinner, to pianist Billy Taylor, who let him sit in with his band at a New York club while he was waiting for his musicians' union card.
Jazz Masters
Visits Venezuela
Sean Penn
U.S. actor Sean Penn is visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - again.
Venezuela's state-run news agency reports that Penn accompanied Chavez during the inspection of a natural gas pipeline on Sunday.
Chavez has praised Penn for his criticism of the U.S. war in Iraq, but he did not mention Penn's visit during a televised address. Nor did state media broadcast images of the Oscar-winning actor.
Sean Penn
Request Mediator
SAG
The Screen Actors Guild's national board of directors has voted to bring in a federal mediator to intercede in its contract dispute with studios.
The board also agreed to ask its 120,000 union members if they want to authorize a strike.
If 75 percent of members vote in favor of a labor action, it would then be left to the national negotiating committee to call a strike.
SAG
Chargers-Bills Game
CBS
Power was restored at Ralph Wilson Stadium after 45 minutes with the Buffalo Bills and San Diego Chargers having played about 16 minutes of game time Sunday.
The electricity went out at the stadium about a half-hour before the game after three helium balloons became entangled in power lines across the street from the facility.
The outage occurred at about 12:29 p.m. while both teams were practising on the field. The stadium lights and scoreboard blinked off, as did the power in the press box. The main scoreboard was the last to power up, about five minutes before the start of the game.
The CBS TV feed was out until 2 p.m., or about five minutes after the power came back on in the stadium. The game, which had been delayed for 15 minutes in the first quarter, resumed with on-field officials keeping time while shouting out the time left on the play clock.
CBS
Big Numbers
'Saturday Night Live'
Sarah Palin was a big hit on "Saturday Night Live." NBC scored its highest ratings for the late-night show in 14 years, in an estimate based on the nation's biggest media markets. Nothing has done better since skater Nancy Kerrigan visited after her Olympics drama with Tonya Harding in 1994.
Palin played along as Tina Fey gave another impersonation of the Alaska governor.
Nielsen Media Research won't have a complete count of Saturday's audience until later in the week. It will likely be around 14 million people - and 17 million for the first half hour, when the opening skit happened.
'Saturday Night Live'
Full Season Pickup
'Sarah Connor Chronicles'
Fox has picked up "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" for a full season.
The network has ordered nine more episodes of the show's second season from Warner Bros., sources said.
Earlier the network picked up a full-season order of "Fringe" and has "Dollhouse" planned for midseason. Both are sci-fi shows. Since "Dollhouse" is undergoing creative reworking, having fresh episodes of "Terminator" also provides additional insurance should "Dollhouse" be delayed.
'Sarah Connor Chronicles'
NASA Sees No Quick Fix
Hubble Telescope
NASA's efforts to get the ailing Hubble Space Telescope working again have hit a snag, and engineers are trying to figure out their next step.
Officials had hoped to have the 18-year-old observatory back in business Friday, after it stopped sending pictures three weeks ago. But a pair of problems cropped up Thursday, and now recovery operations are on hold.
It's unclear how long the telescope will be prevented from transmitting its stunning photos of the cosmos.
The soonest it could be operating fully again is late next week, said Art Whipple, a Hubble manager. At worst, the observatory might remain inactive until astronauts arrive with a replacement part next year.
Hubble Telescope
Giverny, France
Museum of American Art
In the lush countryside painted by Claude Monet lies an unusual gem: a museum of US art in the cradle of French Impressionism. Now after 16 years, it is shedding its American label to tell a wider story.
The Museum of American Art in Giverny (MAAG) closes as usual for the winter at the end of October. When it reopens in May, museum staff told AFP, the focus will shift, with US art making room for Impressionist works from France and beyond.
"The new museum will present the larger story of Impressionism as a worldwide phenomenon," said Elizabeth Glassman, president of the Terra Foundation which in 1992 set up the museum in Giverny, Monet's former home village, an hour from Paris.
Museum of American Art
Portrait of Francis Bacon
Lucian Freud
One of only two portraits of painter Francis Bacon by his friend and fellow British artist Lucian Freud sold at auction for $9.4 million Sunday, Christie's said.
The auctioneer said the painting, the only one of the pair whose whereabouts are known, "offers a tangible and intimate glimpse into the inspirational friendship of two of the greatest British artists of the 20th century."
The other painting, made in 1952, was stolen from an art gallery in Berlin in 1988 and has never been recovered.
Lucian Freud
British Poll
Accents
Pipping Prime Minister Gordon Brown's brogue and Colleen Rooney's Liverpudlian lilt to the top spot, the Londoners proved the most unpopular in the poll commissioned by hotel chain Travelodge.
Cockney Lilly Allen joined fellow Londoners in the blacklist along with Charlotte Church's Welsh accent, Ozzy Osbourne's thick Birmingham twang and loud-mouthed Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles' Leeds accent.
However, it was better news for the north east, with the Geordie accents of pop singer Cheryl Cole and TV presenters Ant and Dec topping the poll for the nation's favourite celebrity accents.
Other popular regional accents included Bolton comic Peter Kay, Northern Irish actor James Nesbitt and Fife-born presenter Edith Bowman.
Accents
Weekend Box Office
'Max Payne'
Movie-goers elected a "W," but it was Mark Wahlberg, not George W. Bush. Wahlberg's action flick "Max Payne" debuted with $18 million to outdo Oliver Stone's film biography of George W. Bush, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Stone's "W." actually ran fourth, opening with $10.6 million to finish behind the family comedy "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" (No. 2 with $11.2 million) and the chick flick "The Secret Life of Bees" (No. 3 with $11.1 million).
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Max Payne," $18 million.
2. "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," $11.2 million.
3. "The Secret Life of Bees," $11.1 million.
4. "W.," $10.6 million.
5. "Eagle Eye," $7.3 million.
6. "Body of Lies," $6.9 million.
7. "Quarantine," $6.3 million.
8. "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," $3.9 million.
9. "Sex Drive," $3.6 million.
10. "Nights in Rodanthe," $2.7 million.
'Max Payne'
In Memory
Dee Dee Warwick
Dee Dee Warwick, a soul singer who won recognition for both her solo work and her performances with her older sister Dionne Warwick, has died. She was 63.
Warwick had several hits on the soul and R&B charts in the 1960s and 70s, including "Foolish Fool," "She Didn't Know (She Kept on Talking)" and a version of "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" that was later covered by Diana Ross and The Supremes.
Warwick also was a two-time Grammy Award nominee and sang backup for Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and others before starting her solo career.
Born in Newark, Warwick was a teenager when she began singing with her older sister in the late 1950s. The two performed as The Gospelaires and also collaborated and sang with the Drinkard Singers, a long-running gospel group that also featured some of the Warwicks' aunts and uncles and was managed by their mother.
Most recently, Warwick provided background vocals for her sister's recent one-woman autobiographical show, "My Music & Me," which played to sold-out crowds in Europe this year. She also performed on the title song from Dionne Warwick's gospel album, "Why We Sing," released January 2008.
Dee Dee Warwick
In Memory
Mr. Blackwell
Mr. Blackwell, the acerbic designer whose annual worst-dressed list skewered the fashion felonies of celebrities from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Britney Spears, has died. He was 86.
Blackwell, whose first name was Richard, was a little-known dress designer when he issued his first tongue-in-cheek criticism of Hollywood fashion disasters for 1960 — long before Joan Rivers and others turned such ridicule into a daily affair.
Year after year, he would take Hollywood's reigning stars and other celebrities to task for failing to dress in what he thought was the way they should.
Being dowdy was bad enough, but the more outrageous clothing a woman wore, the more biting his criticism. He once said a reigning Miss America looked "like an armadillo with cornpads."
Blackwell had started out as an actor himself, having been spotted by a talent agent while still in his teens. He landed a job as an understudy in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's heralded drama "Dead End."
Although he got to the play the role of the Dead End Kids' leader on stage only one time, it led him to Hollywood where he landed bit parts in such films as "Little Tough Guy" (uncredited) and "Juvenile Court" (as Dick Selzer).
He abandoned his acting career in 1958 after failing to make it in movies and switched to fashion design. He claimed to be the first to make designer jeans for women, and his salon had begun to attract a few Hollywood names when he issued his first list covering the fashion faux pas of 1960. (Italian star Anna Magnani and Gabor were among his early victims.)
It quickly brought him the celebrity he had long coveted, and he quickly became a favorite on the TV talk show circuit. He also became for a time, in his words, "The worst bitch in the world."
Born Richard Sylvan Selzer in 1922, Blackwell recounted in his autobiography, "From Rags to Bitches," a troubled, poverty-ridden childhood in which he was variously a truant, thief and prostitute.
Mr. Blackwell
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