J. Patrick O’Connor is the author of the new book The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal. During O’Connor’s SF Bay Area book tour this October, he was a guest on the ‘Other Voices’ television show, produced by the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center. The one-hour show can be viewed here.
Voters in California and several other states will be asked on Tuesday to add enforced bigotry to their state constitutions. If you have an ounce of justice and liberty in your soul you will reject these radical attempts to install the distorted views of Biblical misinterpretation into a document intended to protect liberty for all.
I just read a great essay in the HuffPo by journalist and mother Mary Lyon. It is a response to McCain’s bitter complaints about Obama’s Informercial last nite and the funding that provided it.
Here’s a quote:
The piece of film that just made the biggest impression on me on this particular night, when Barack Obama aired his half-hour TV special, was not anything Obama presented. It was the sour grapes John McCain squeezed in reaction.
Democrat Barack Obama has opened a 7-point lead over Republican rival John McCain with five days left in the race for the White House, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Thursday.
Obama leads McCain by 50 percent to 43 percent among likely voters in the three-day national tracking poll, building on his 5-point advantage on Wednesday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
It was the second consecutive day Obama’s lead has grown as the two-year presidential battle draws to a close. McCain is struggling to overtake Obama’s lead in every national opinion poll and in many battleground states.
As promised, Senator Barack Obama infotained Americans for thirty minutes, starting off with amber waves of grain. Hope, change, plus incredibly coincidental family spotlights in several “battleground” states – that seemed to be his basic message.
A new ethics complaint has been filed against Sarah Palin, accusing the Alaska governor of abusing her power by charging the state when her children traveled with her.
The complaint alleges that the Republican vice presidential nominee used her official position as governor for personal gain, violating a statute of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. It follows a report by The Associated Press last week that Palin charged the state more than $21,000 for her three daughters’ commercial flights, including events where they weren’t invited, and later ordered their expense forms amended to specify official state business.
In some cases, Palin also has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.
Every day we hear Senator McCain say that Obama will raise taxes and he will cut them. Except by their own words, that’s a lie. In reality, McCain will raise taxes on the middle class and cut taxes for the richest Americans, AGAIN!
McCain’s health care plan will TAX the health care benefits that are provided by your employer.
ANY WAY YOU LOOK AT IT, THAT’S A TAX INCREASE!
Now this isn’t any anti-McCain spin. You can go to McCain’s website, and read it for yourself.
It’s been debated for more than a century. But when this historical presidential campaign comes to a close next week, will we know the answer to the following question with any degree of certainty: which more fervently permeates the fabric of American society, racism or sexism?
I think we will and I think the answer will be sexism. The 2008 campaign has demonstrated it is more politically correct to be sexist than racist. American culture tolerates sexism to a degree it would never tolerate racism.
Just when things seemed darkest for the journalism racket the news gods smiled — only briefly, as it turned out — and bestowed Sarah Palin upon us.
However the campaign turns out, we can’t let her go back to Alaska. She’s too much fun.
Just recently she was the cause of a great new contribution to our political vocabulary — "gone rogue." As in a McCain campaign insider’s observation that in Palin’s increasing tendency to depart from the script prepared for her the vice presidential candidate "has gone rogue on us."
In the standard metaphor of the presidential election race, it is the candidates who are said to be running. My friends, to borrow John McCain’s phrase because soon he will not be needing it, we are all runners.
Over and over, we have slogged up one side of a debate and down the other, we have pushed hard against unfavorable political headwinds, we have stopped for liquid refreshment (energy drinks, i.e., beer), we have laughed, we have cried and we have seen our brains turned into mush by ridiculous TV commercials and robo-calls.