Reply to a Pseudolibertarian

Kind of like when Rush told all you dittoheads to support Hillary against Obama. Too bad you were too dumb to understand what he was trying to do.

And what WAS Rush trying to do? Please 'splain it to my Lucy, as I'm too dumb to get it. Even YOU have to admit Obama is a much worse President than Hillary ever could be.

Reply to a conservative:

I might as well respond to this, too, before you get too antsy.

"Please 'splain it to my Lucy, as I'm too dumb to get it."

I know that, Jack.

Rush wanted to make sure Hillary Clinton got the Democratic nod because he believed she couldn't win the general election. This primary switching, called primary raiding, has been common in local elections ever since states started having closed primaries. I don't think anyone but Rush ever plotted it for a national election, the numbers are way to big for it to be practical. Of course, Rush is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, nor are his dittoheads.

He is smart enough to avoid spelling it out in these terms because he knows it is unethical. Of course, Rush is not constrained by any ethical considerations himself, but he has caught his tit in a wringer enough times to realize that there are people out there that are. Sociopaths take advantage of this "quirk" of human nature.

Nonetheless, this is typical of the attitude of the Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Cheney, and Rove Republicans. Win the election by any means possible whether they are legal, illegal, ethical, unethical, by hook or by crook; it doesn't matter if the methods are undemocratic and violate the will of the people, as long as Republicans keep in power.

"Last minute party switching to impact a primary election is another problem that has been dealt with in the courts. In a 1973 precedent-setting case, Rosario v. Rockefeller, the Supreme Court ruled that states could set lengthy time restrictions related to party affiliation to prevent last minute party switching." www.infoplease.com/cig/supreme-court/switching-parties.html

Now, I wouldn't go so far as to say that Obama is much worse than Hillary ever could be, as you did. I will say that Sen. Clinton was much better prepared for the job, and would have hit the ground running. She had been in the White House, and saw how things really worked, and had a lot of programs already lined up. She had a more worldly and sophisticated view of foreign relations, and of how to vet staffers. I've never denied that.

You have erroneously accused me of being an Obama disciple for quite some time, despite being unable to provide a single shed of evidence to back up that statement. Of course, evidence to back up your screeds are as rare as moon metal. I have written very little in support of Barack Obama to anyone.  You yourself have whined endlessly that I won't come out and say what I like about Barack Obama. Then, you accuse me of being a knee-jerk Obamaphile. You seem to be quite comfortable with this doublethink. If you don't believe that, produce your evidence now. And don't give me that phony line that your computer doesn't have enough memory. Pry a gold bar out of your cold fingers and buy some decent tools.

Economists realize that employment takes about four years (or more) to recover after a major recession. And that's when the factories are sitting idle, waiting for demand to pick up, which is not the situation now. Our corporations have moved their factories to cheaper labor markets and fired the American employees, and they won't be moving back and rehiring. I don’t know if Obama knew that when he was campaigning, but I did. He has surely been told that by now. Many Republican politicians and conservative pundits also are aware of this, but they nonetheless point out how Obama "lied" about job recovery. They are the liars now, (as they were then.)

The right savaged the Clintons for presenting a complete healthcare proposal to Congress instead of letting Congress write its own. The Clinton plan was not complete, and was delayed for three years while Robert Rubin tried to pay off the huge deficit left by Ronald Reagan.  (Which coincidentally, vastly enriched Rubin's old Wall Street pals). Meanwhile, Congress had not completed a plan in 60 years of attempts. So what happens to Obama? He is savaged for not having a comprehensive healthcare plan in hand on Jan. 20, 2009.

I knew Hillary Clinton had much of her plan already; she talked about it during the campaign. I also knew Obama's people didn't have nearly as much, he didn't talk about it, but so what? The results would have been the same either way. The Republicans would have demanded hundreds of amendments, then voted against it to a man (and woman) anyway, which is precisely what happened. I knew this because it has been happening this way for 60 years. Progressive Democrats have known this all along, and knew the majority vote was crucial. Just as progressive Democrats know true reform will fail without a public option. Even your favorite source, the CBO says the current bill will not raise costs in the future any more than doing nothing, but Republicans still insist it will.

Why do Republican politicians hate the American people so much that they want to saddle them with outrageously overpriced medical procedures and drugs? Actually, the answer is quite simple. It is because politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, openly accept bribes from the insurance and drug company lobbies, and claim it is their First Amendment right to do so. And the Gods roar with laughter!

Obama's war? LOL!

On Rumsfeld, 12/18/02:

KING: What’s the current situation in Afghanistan?

RUMSFELD: It is encouraging. They have elected a government through the Loya Jirga process. The Taliban are gone. The al Qaeda are gone.

On May 2, 2003 Bush claimed major combat operations in Irag were finished.

President Bush echoed Rumsfeld’s comments in Sept. 2004, saying the “Taliban no longer is in existence.”

So why are we still there? Bush, Cheney, et al., walked away leaving the American people and the US Army holding the bag. Who are the liars here? Obama will go down in history as a typical campaign promise breaker. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney will be remembered as some of history's greatest liars, and their supporters as some of histories greatest fools and charlatans.

Of course, none of this is Bush's fault. He didn't make any mistakes. He just had an eight-year run of bad luck! His good luck in life is that his daddy's rich.

When Obama makes a speech of high ideals and hopes, he is slammed by the right for being an empty teleprompter reader, able only to dish out platitudes of no substance. Then, when he presents substantive facts and proposals in measured tones, he is excoriated by the right-wing claquers for not being a great orator like Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln.

And you dare call me an Obama apologist? You who have excused every calamity visited upon us by the Bush Administration. You who claims that what Bush did is no longer relevant or important because he is no longer President? Tell that to the families of the dead and maimed American soldiers and the dead and maimed Iraqis.

President Obama and we will have to clean up the Republican messes, just like Roosevelt and Clinton did before. And if Obama doesn't succeed in one year, it proves he is a liar? How pathetic you people are: Dittoheads, praying that all the administration's programs will fail so we can be taken over by the robber barons again.

You claim you are terrified of Obama because he is Bush III. Why would you be afraid of that? You loved every minute of the Bush Administration. To this day you cannot bring yourself to criticize any part of the Bush Presidency. You are one of the biggest Bush apologists alive.

My goal has always been to kick the Neo-cons out of power because their goal is to return this nation to the so-called "Golden Era", where a handful of immensely wealthy individuals control all wealth, and all branches of government, including mayors, governors, Senators, and Congressmen, police commissioners, judges, D.A.s, the lot. I was not a Bush hater, as you repeatedly accused me of being. I have consistently maintained the position that George W. Bush is a witless pawn of the Neo-cons. I was against all the Neo-cons that had hijacked the Republican Party, whether they were criminal masterminds or simply wretched toadies.

Why do you think the real movers and shakers didn't run for the top office themselves, but instead put up buffoons like Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Palin? (Even McCain was a know-nothing playboy, much like the hapless George Custer. Both of them should have stayed in Washington, D.C. haunting the ballrooms, instead of going out west to seek fame and fortune, then screwing things up for everyone else).

They stayed in the background because they knew that voters would instinctively reject creepy cold fish like Rove and Cheney.

Why didn't the Neo-cons support intelligent conservative leaders?

Because they didn't trust honest conservatives to carry out their plans. They felt they could control puppets whose ability to think critically had been negated by blind adherence to an ideology. Puppets that would follow "suggestions" of their advisors. Suggestions like breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters and then denying it. Suggestions like arming guerillas in direct violation of federal law. Suggestions like lying to the world about WMD and Iraqi-Al Qaida alliances. Suggestions like Obama will set up "death panels" to cull the lame and elderly from our ranks.

Only the rump of the Republican Party, which is made up mostly of Neo-cons and other extremists, want to run Sarah Palin. Not because she can win, (though they hope she can) but because they know she is a clueless, easily manipulated moron like George W. Bush, and because she is good at whipping up more fear into people that are already miserable and afraid.

Of course I knew Obama had to go through a learning curve because he responds to the people, and to changing conditions around him. He listens to other people, something the Neo-cons never do.

Bush, Rove, Cheney, Nixon, Reagan, all felt free to violate federal law and never varied from their paths, even when faced with the horrific consequences of their actions, because they considered themselves to be Masters of the Universe, and above mere mortals. How did you put it?

"Now, I'm jumping into my $77,000 car and making a completely unnecessary trip into town so I can waste gas, pollute the environment, and piss off some more liberals, while I sneer at the peasants I pass along the way."

"I call them "peasants", and I don't just drive around them, I roar at full throttle so they can eat my dust and breathe my exhaust fumes."

Oh! Of course! It's satire!

You know that old saw, "Full many a truth is oft told in jest!"

December 8, 2009


Addendum:

In her book, “The Sociopath Next Door,” psychologist and author Martha Stout describes in the course of more than two hundred pages the characteristics and dangers of sociopaths. She writes on page 9:

“About one in twenty-five individuals are sociopathic, meaning, essentially, that they do not have a conscience. It is not that this group fails to grasp the difference between good and bad; it is that the distinction fails to limit their behavior. The intellectual difference between right and wrong does not bring on the emotional sirens and flashing blue lights, or the fear of God, that it does for the rest of us. Without the slightest blip of guilt or remorse, one in twenty-five people can do anything at all.”

Ms. Stout is concerned about how to classify sociopaths. On page page 13 she writes:

“Singular in its ability to unnerve even seasoned professionals, the concept of sociopathy comes perilously close to our notions of the soul, of evil versus good, and this association makes the topic difficult to think about clearly. And the unavoidable them-versus-us nature of the problem raises scientific, moral, and political issues that boggle the mind. How does one scientifically study a phenomenon that appears to be, in part, a moral one? Who should receive our professional help and support, the “patients” or the people who must endure them? Since psychological research is generating ways to “diagnose” sociopathy, whom should we test? Should anyone be tested for such a thing in a free society? And if someone has been clearly identified as a sociopath, what, if anything, can society do with that information? No other diagnosis raises such politically and professionally incorrect questions, and sociopathy, with its known relationship to behaviors ranging from spouse battering and rape to serial murder and warmongering, is in some sense the last and most frightening psychological frontier.”

Before the Election

Dateline: Provence, France, August, 2004

I turned 21 in August 1965. At that time the legal voting age in the United States was 21. In 1970 the Voting Rights Act dropped the voting age for national office to 18. In 1971 the 26^th Amendment made voting age 18 for all elections. Because of this, the first election I could vote in was the 1968 Humphrey-Nixon contest. I had decided against Humphrey because he supported "Johnson's War", and I thought he would pursue the war in the same way LBJ had. Humphrey was the leader of the ADA (Americans for Democratic Action) and as such was one of the truest liberals the country has had in high public office. Too many Democrats turned against him on the war issue, allowing Nixon to be swept in. (Naturally, I did not vote for Nixon, either)

I did support Mcgovern, but Nixon won again by a landslide. I did not vote for Ford or Carter. I had no idea who Carter was, and thought he was someone the Party grabbed because he was from the deep south, and they had no national figure that would look good to the undecided voters. I did vote for Carter the next time, but Reagan won. I didn't vote for Dukakis, but did vote for Clinton twice, and Gore once. In the past, I had voted for Dick Gregory once and Ralph Nader once.

Like many of my generation, I had felt for a long time that the choice between the two parties was "Tweedledum or Tweedledee". I have never voted Republican (except for a few local officials). I always felt this country needed more choices for President, like most European countries have. I voted for Clinton and Gore because I saw a real danger from the Republicans. Clinton was not a liberal. He sucked up to big business and let the Pentagon do as they pleased, but he did work to help the economy, and kept politicians from ruining it while he was in office. He paid back Reagan's debt, and had good relations with other countries, although he allowed a huge failure in intelligence. His worst legacy was his personal life that caused the Democrats to lose the 2000 election. (I know Gore won, but if only one other state had gone Democratic, Gore would be President) Bush won by getting 20% of the Black vote. (Clarence Thomas was one of the five Supreme Court Justices that voted for Bush).

When I lived in New York, the ballots had Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Communist, and Progressive Labor Party (Maoist).  Talk about freedom of choice!

I followed the Libertarian candidates for several years, and listened to their platforms, but decided they were just another conservative group, along the philosophical lines of Objectivists Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Brandon, i.e., unrestrained free enterprise. To them, the only “sins” were physically harming another, or taking someone else’s property by force.

What we have settled on is the two-party, winner take all, Mandate-of-the-People system that encourages lying, personal attacks, and simplistic, emotional issues. Politicians search for single-issue voters and woo them with sound bites, and by making political hay out of moral issues that should not be part of the political landscape.

I get quite a bit of US news coverage here. (France) We get eight full time news shows from Britain. Two of them are financial, one is Parliament, and the rest are hard news, including CNN and Fox news, (featuring that asshole, Bill O’Reilly, and The Beltway Boys.) We don’t get Rush, and don’t miss him, but we do get NPR, and virtually any foreign news radio, many of them English, including Voice of America. We get Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and many other countries on TV. We even get Al Jazeera, but most of that is in Arabic.

I used to listen to Rush on the radio when I was test driving customer’s cars, and I heard more than I wanted to even then.

What I don’t get is the overall feeling of the country, how angry or determined people are to support or kick out Bush. Americans talk about free speech, but many are afraid to express themselves, in their own country, about important issues. I think it’s more a fear of getting into an angry argument with friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc, than fear of official suppression. I don’t discuss it that much, either, because so many people will fight to hold onto their beliefs, even in the face of contradictory facts.

It’s been said that Americans don’t want any political concept that can’t be expressed on a bumper sticker. This is why campaigning and debating depends so much on quips and sound bites. It is just about impossible to reason with someone over complex issues when they simplify all concepts into a single sentence. Thinking is hard work, and people avoid it when possible. Americans can think, but most avoid thinking when it is not absolutely necessary.

I started reading the Washington Evening Star, and later, The Washington Post, as a teenager delivering them in Alexandria, VA. I read only the front page, but I knew who was who, and I was amused by the gaffes and faux pas committed by our leaders, and the flaps that resulted from them.

In high school and college I discovered I had a talent for research, and a great memory for small details. I also discovered I was able to reverse my opinions if the information I uncovered contradicted my original beliefs. I could put together facts from completely different sources, picked up years apart, and fit them into a complete picture.

I would also remember when and where I read the information. Imagine this if you can. Thirty years ago, I could read something in a book. I can still see the book, approximately where in the book I was reading, whether it was the left or right page, and how far down on the page I read it. This is not an occasional thing, but the norm for me. Of course, my 60-year-old brain is nowhere near as good as it used to be.

Turning 18 in 1962 gave me good reason to pay attention to what our government was doing. I didn’t become a dove until 1966, and then never wavered on the Vietnam issue. I read editorials in newspapers and magazines, and still do. I didn’t care if I agreed with the writer or not, I could always sort out the differences later. I studied Economics in college, and as a result have always read business and economic news, along with political and diplomatic news, and evaluated events with a more economically oriented viewpoint.

Economists and politicians don’t see eye to eye very often. Most economists analyze and form their conclusions from information and concepts based on economics, which is not an exact science. Politicians are fond of saying, you can put two economists in a room, and they will come up with three mutually exclusive conclusions. Be that as it may, Pres. Clinton put economists in Treasury and Labor, and basically told them to do what was good for the country. The results to the US economy are still legendary, and not always good. Clinton took Rubin’s advice too often over Reich’s, and as a result, instead of reversing the slide towards plutocracy, he actually accelerated it.

The Bush record was not so good either. He has hired two Treasury Secretaries in 3 years. His first, Paul O’Neill has written a scathing book about the Bush Administration. (Bush’s economy is also the source of modern legend.)

Most Americans do not think any more deeply about economics than the next paycheck, or the next credit card payment. As the old saw goes, recession is when your neighbor is unemployed, depression is when you are unemployed. This ignorance and apathy allows the politicians to manipulate the economy for political gain, with disastrous results to the country as a whole.

It’s heartening to see young people come out in droves, willing to challenge conventional wisdom. I hope it grows. I have seen it before, with JFK, RFK (my guy), Eugene McCarthy, and others. The two party system is hard to change, however.

The French do not blame the American people, only the leaders. About 90% of the world’s citizens disagree with the policies of George W. Bush. Bush doesn’t seem to mind this, however. Bush may lose in November (not likely), but I don’t think the Republicans will lose many seats in Congress, or many Governorships. They have been gerrymandering at a frantic pace for the last few years, and it will take the Supreme Court to undo that. (But not a Supreme Court that supports Bush and his beliefs.)

So what is the common denominator of the Republicans, the conservatives, the rich and powerful, the right wing nuts the, warrior class, the entrepreneurial class, the tie that binds them together so loyally, even when there appears to be so much diversity within the conservative ranks?

They are bound together by the common philosophy called social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is the brainchild of Herbert Spencer. It posits that human societies have evolved through time in the same way that individual species evolved. That is, through natural selection and individual competition for scarce resources and reproductive advantages. The phrase "Survival of the Fittest" is a phrase invented by the social Darwinists - Charles Darwin did not use it.

If you grant the basic tenet, then it follows that those that rise to the top of society do so because they are biologically superior. They belong there, and any attempt to unseat them is a violation of natural law. (The divine right of kings, The cream rises to the top, etc.)

It also follows that a dominant culture is also biologically superior, and has the right, the duty, to colonize inferior, less competitive societies, for their own good. (Manifest Destiny, White Man's Burden, etc.)

It follows that a dominant race is also biologically superior, and has a duty to rule over inferior races. (I won’t add examples to this; there is a chance they may be politically incorrect!)

As Bill Moyers puts it, to accept social Darwinism you have to believe that some people are born to ride, and some are born to wear a saddle.

All you have to do is add your favorite collective nouns to this. Sexes, nations, religions, economic systems, armies, you name it, any thing goes. The mind boggles.

The proof of this philosophy is self-evident. The superior beings have indeed risen to the top, and the dross has indeed been left behind, all brought about by the inexorable laws of natural selection.

However, not all nature is harshly competitive. Just as in human interactions, there is a lot of co-operation going on, but this is not included in social Darwinism, because after all, they are talking about society, not the natural world. Thus, they can conveniently pick and choose the "evidence" they want to use to bolster their arguments.

There is nothing within social Darwinism that can prevent it from evolving into Feudal Aristocracy, of its modern day equivalent, Fascism. Social Darwinism cannot stop itself from creating slavery, male dominated societies, strong man dictatorships (the political equivalent of racketeering), or any authoritarian society. Social Darwinism is not an ideology, it is an argument employed by sociopaths to justify the exploitation of their fellows that operate within moral constraints. It has no positive goals, other than the naked abuse of power for it’s own sake. The Republican Party (and many Democrats as well) have embraced the tenets of social Darwinism to legitimize political lobbying and outright corruption of our legislatures and courts. It seeks to restrict freedom of choice to those that can afford to buy what they want. They claim that giving unlimited sums of money to politicians is a constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech, and they believe it.

Without something to counteract the elitism of social Darwinism, it will inevitably bring about in tyranny. That counterbalance exists, and is called liberalism, and also progressivism. Conservatives claim that religion gives morality to government, but this doesn’t wash because many of the self professed faithful are the worst social Darwinists of all. They claim to have the true afterlife as well as all moral authority in this life. I don’t need to rehash the crimes excused in the name of God throughout the centuries, or the authoritarian nature of so many religion-controlled societies. And just because Hitler and Stalin were atheists does not let religious leaders off the hook.

The current administration abuses the religious viewpoint by constantly referring to terrorism, and to terrorists, as evil. Reagan’s "Evil Empire", and Bush’s "Axis of Evil" are attempts to make our side the side of pure good, i.e., God’s side, and the side of anyone disagreeing with us as pure evil, or Satanic. The leaders in Iran and Iraq call the US the "Great Satan", and refer to Americans as infidels (Godless.)

Bush was closer to the truth when he said that Al Qaida were the enemies of democracy. The leaders of our enemies are not religious fanatics. They are men with an agenda to take power from the current leaders and keep it for themselves. They use religious fanatics to do their bidding. They have no interest in freeing their countrymen from tyranny; they only want to rule over them. The Taliban are one of the most repressive and antidemocratic groups in the world. They claim they do everything in the name of Allah. They don’t get up in the morning and say, "What evil can I do today?" They more than likely ask themselves, "How can I best defend myself from my enemies?" Their perceived enemies being: The US, Israel and their allies, and infidels.

I have bad feelings about the religious right in the US and the way that it wields political power. I also am concerned about the way the political right courts the religious right. (It is reminiscent of the feudal monarchies of the Dark Ages.) They both use each other shamelessly, and the result is loss of freedom to most Americans. (I can’t say this any more nicely.) This is a subject that no sane politician will bring into public debate today. The risks are too great.

When each side demonizes the other, the result is holy war, good against evil, and, as a result, the good guys can use all means at their disposal. To paraphrase Barry Goldwater, "Extremism in the defense of God is no sin." The Bush administration is not only defending America, it is defending God, whether He needs defending or not.

This policy is the philosophy of Strict Dualism, a discredited belief that the material world consists of two powers; good and evil, and that everyone in the world belongs to one side or the other. This philosophy has caused so much religious conflict in the past that it was outlawed in France. Indeed, it is the reason for secularism in modern day France. The final irony is that Dualism originated in…Persia.

How many times have you heard the Bush administration talk about "those that are either with us or against us?" As if there cannot be any other position. How many people that criticized Bush’s decision to invade Iraq without UN or other sanctions, or question the credibility of his claims of WMD, have been called, "soft on national defense", or "pro terrorist?"

Bush ran his campaign on a platform of reuniting America, but his actions have been the most divisive in history. More divisive that the policies of the Vietnam War. Americans are now divided over the Iraq War, the income tax cuts, the sanctity of marriage, affirmative action in college admissions, gays in the military, immigration, and, the hiring and firing (mostly firing), of teachers. George W. Bush deliberately turned each one of these issues into national controversies, and he presents his side of the arguments at every opportunity.

The President of the United States is going out of his way to divide Americans against each other for the sole purpose of keeping himself in power. Americans are dying almost every day in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the leader of our country repeatedly talked of changing the Constitution of the United States to say that marriage can only be between one man and one woman. He must champion this belief because heterosexual, monogamous, marriage "is the most fundamental institution of civilization." Bush has pursued this issue as vehemently as some of his other favorites. Perhaps he has decided it is more profitable to please the religious right, and has given up on getting the electoral votes from the liberal, sinful, Sodom and Gomorrah of New York and California.

(End of excerpt)

This brings up the issue of whether or not the Democrats can do better. Although I am not an apostle of Howard Dean, I could identify more with his pugnacious, outspoken attitude. Kerry is soft-pedaling so much that he may start losing votes. He has lost a number of opportunities to denounce Bush's position. He could say that he was fooled by Bush's false reports of WMD and uranium from Niger, as were many of his colleagues and millions of Americans. (I was one of them.)

I believed Saddam Hussein was hiding WMD. It seemed logical and reasonable. When Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union Address that Saddam Hussein was buying uranium from Niger, I considered this to be a clear and present danger, and an imminent threat to the US. Of course, Bush had been told the truth about the uranium, but he kept the lie going.) If I were John Kerry, I would hammer on the Niger lie, and the Valerie Plame outing at every opportunity. (You may have noticed that the press only seems interested in defending the 1^st Amendment rights of the reporters involved, but not in finding out who outed Valerie Plame. This would require investigative reporting, and may jeopardize the inside tips that reporters rely upon. I. F. Stone is truly dead.)

The Democratic National Committee feels that they need to play low-key to get the undecided vote. Maybe Kerry should say, "Can't decide for sure? Neither can I, so vote for me." The important thing now is to win the election. As the cynical Bill Clintonesque candidate said in the movie Primary Colors, "You can't help anybody if you don't win the election."

It is clear that most members of the media don't even attempt to check facts on their own. The simply repeat other's statements as if they were fact. When I read about some of Bill O'Reilly's statements, I know instantly they are lies, but people on his show let them slide. Occasionally, Alan Colmes will correct him, but since Colmes is essentially the "house liberal", he does not press the issue, and allows O'Reilly to shout him down.

Kerry is defending himself against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, but he originally made the mistake of bringing up Vietnam, and making his war record too big a part of his campaign. This issue will be brought up again just before the election, and Kerry needs to drive a wooden stake through it now. However, even if he proves all the SBVFTs are liars, it will not rehabilitate his campaign to many people. At this point, he will have to listen to Bush at the RN convention and counterattack Bush's speech. The Democrats will have their hands full defending against all the lies that will come out of the convention. That will take up all the time to the election.

Here are a couple of websites that concentrate on the media: campaigndesk.org/

Mediamatters.org/ dailyhowler.com/ These sites check out statements for veracity that other reporters have repeated without checking. I know Bruce insists that any political mail sent to him be either personal observation or verified fact. I just wish our news people felt the same before they repeated stories. It was only a few months ago that I saw newspapers repeat unverified facts by qualifying them with lines such as "According to so-and-so," Or "A rumor circulating." The editors know perfectly well that people will not notice these disclaimers, and include them only to protect themselves against libel charges.

One of the things I have noticed already is the theory that the anti-Bush demonstrations will blowback on the Democrats. Everyone is repeating this story as if it has already happened. My prediction: The Republicans will indeed claim that the demonstrations "backfired" on the Democrats, and the media will spread it around as if it were true. Comparisons with the DNC of 1968 don't wash. The Yippies went there expecting violence, and the Chicago cops obliged them. Neither the anti-Bush crowd or the NYPD are planning violence, although I suspect some Republicans would like to see some. Certainly some reporters would like to see violence; it would save them a lot of legwork.

It's possible that the last few elections will galvanize enough people to want to trash the Electoral College altogether. It was created because people in Colonial times could not directly hear or read what the candidates were saying. Now, all it does is nullify the vote of most of the sparsely populated states. Perhaps enough people have been forced to seek out the truth for themselves during the last few elections that they will seek a multiparty system to get real choice. There is little opting of the other party's planks in this election, although Kerry vaguely refers to fighting the same war on terrorism as Bush, only doing it better. Most of the issues are clearly different from the opponent's views.

The fence sitters will most likely forget about the politics once the campaigning is over. The losing party will surely re-trench for another battle. I don't think either side will give up on the future, the stakes are too high.