Prairie Weather

Better strategery

This is a comment about Kerry posted this morning on the Daily Kos blog

I see both Kerry and Bush as withholding themselves from open contact with others. (Reagan and Clinton, two recent examples, were just the opposite.)

Bush is notable for his staff's and his campaign's ability to keep him insulated from people in general -- he has contact only under strictly controlled circumstances. Bush depends on conveying just the opposite impression -- that he's a friendly good ol' boy with a spine of steel who's saving the world.

Kerry's withholding may be more of a New England personality trait -- he plays the reticent, quiet leader. He really needs to Clintonize his connection with voters and shed the DNC/RNC-style manipulation techniques which people are tired of and which, if Kerry were smart, he'd leave behind now.

Given Kerry's wise, frankly conservative and people-friendly policies, a more open, committed, and less risk-averse personal connection with prospective voters would nail the election for him I believe. (Hamsters aren't gonna do it.) No one is talking about Kerry's genuine, old-fashioned conservatism; no one is kicking him in the butt and telling him to be as funny and charming as he is on the bus and at home.

There are so many aspects of Kerry which remain unexploited, withheld, and which could win him this election, that it frustrates and alienates even this ABB voter.

Can you trust if you can't verify?

From a speech given by Ronnie Dugger and reporter in Common Dreams:

On next November 2nd about 30%, 35 million, of all the votes will be cast on touch-screens and then counted invisibly inside direct-recording electronic computerized voting systems with no paper ballots. This gives the programmers working for the four major voting business corporations the ability to rig the outcomes specifically among those 35 million unverified votes in ways that nobody can see, audit, or recount. There can and will be no manual recounts of those 35 million votes because there will be no paper ballots to recount. Only Congressional passage of bills by Holt in the House, or Graham-Clinton or Boxer in the Senate, early in September, could require paper-ballot trails on these systems, and while a handful of Republicans are among the Holt bill's 145 co-sponsors, not one Republican backs either of the Senate bills. The coming national election is set up to be stolen.

UPDATE: Common Cause is "launching a bold new national campaign" to "TAKE ACTION FOR ELECTIONS, to mobilize voters monitor polling places, and track voting problems on election day through our nationwide, toll-free number." They have already mailed out a plea to members for funds: "$25... will really help"!

This is as good a way as any being proposed to 1) put the Administration and Congress on notice that we're serious and we're watching, and 2) monitor our polls on Election Day, polling place by polling place.

Another mysterious oversight

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that Sandy Berger had been exonerated. I googled this interesting piece of news at intervals during the day and found nothing to suggest the news had been picked up by the networks or mainstream print media. Daniel Schorr, on NPR this morning, reports he's found nothing beyond the WSJ.

It's all very well to change administrations, but unless we impose a serious change on our information sources -- using our economic leverage, not much is going to change in this Home of the "Free."

Slight changes expected in weather

I've modified this page a little and am waiting for the "new look" to appear. You won't notice any big differences -- just a little space added along the side columns and a change in color for "links" to make them easier to read.

80% by gum!

Here's a statistic from Eric Alterman at the convention which, honestly, surprises me: eighty percent of the delegates oppose the war.

Well, dang. I'm so seldom part of the vast majority.

Anybody but...

I'm going to vote for Kerry, but I'm not going to dish out false praise for an only intermittently worthy accceptance speech (and that's being generous!). No, I'll vote for him, but then I'm going to work for a Democratic Party (or a third party) which looks like and sounds like Barack Obama. He's the only politician at the convention who showed independence and political savvy. Not to mention that he's someone who looks like and sounds like an intelligent, 21st century citizen of the US and of the world -- and a born leader.