Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Nader, Third Parties and GOP Dirty Tricks Here in Oregon

I’ve long been a proponent of third (and even fourth) parties - hell, sometimes in the last several years, I’ve wanted the Democrats to act like a second party, instead of moving farther and farther to the right and caving in to Bush. I’d much rather see a coalition-type government here, than two big parties that don’t address many issues.

For a long time, the Democrats have been weakened by their lack of cohesion and now even the Republican party is a rough fit for the different constituencies within it, as evidenced by the growing unease of fiscal conservatives with the skyrocketing deficits. These constituencies come from many places in the political spectrum, not just liberal and conservatives, but moderates, libertarians and others. There are religious blocs, environmentalists, cultural warriors, people who are concerned with economics, war, labor, social security, etc.

I often think that this country would make much faster progress on any number of fronts if these different groups could form coalitions to advance ideas and agendas, rather than be held hostage to partisan squabbling over otherwise unrelated issues. Coalitions that would be much more fluid and flexible than the lumbering monolithic parties we are saddled with. Coalitions that are formed and disbanded as needed.

I left the Democratic Party in the wake of the 1994 elections when the Democrats started moving to the right. It became a more and more uncomfortale “fit” for me. I voted for Nader in the next presidential election. However, I couldn’t vote for him in good conscience in 2000. It was obvious this time that with the election as tight as it was, a vote for Nader was as good as a vote for Bush - sometimes it sucks to be right. I’m still registered as an an independent.

Unfortunately, the two parties are now so polarized that they have become roughly analogous to the Soviets and U.S. during the worst of the Cold War, locked and loaded and no way to back down. This holds the rest of us as hostages, forced to swallow our objections and to vote against the worse of two evils at times, rather than for our hopes and for what we really want for our country. There’s no way in hell I can live with four more wars, sorry, years of Bush and his utterly corrupt crew.

The only way third parties will become viable is to build from the grassroots up and not try to field candidates for federal office until the third parties have weakened the major parties enough that they themselves are just coalitions of the smaller parties.

Who I have voted for:
1972 - McGovern
1976 - Carter
1980 - Anderson
1984 - Mondale
1988 - Dukakis
1992 - Clinton
1996 - Nader
2000 - Gore

- Bob Woods
And here’s one more reason why I’ll vote for Kerry this year:

WASHINGTON - A watchdog group says it will file a complaint with federal election officials, accusing two conservative organizations of illegally helping Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign, possibly with support from President Bush’s re-election campaign.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington planned to file its complaint Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. It says the Oregon Family Council and Citizens for a Sound Economy violated election laws last week by telephoning people and urging them to help Nader get on Oregon’s ballot in November.

Spokesmen for both groups denied wrongdoing.

Both groups acknowledge trying to influence Nader’s petition drive Saturday in Oregon, in hopes that getting him on the ballot would take votes away from Democrat John Kerry and help Bush win the battleground state.

But Melanie Sloan, the watchdog group’s executive director, said Tuesday that the conservative organizations are also corporations that are prohibited by election law from making campaign donations. Sloan said she also would name the Nader and Bush campaigns in her complaint because of reports that some Bush-Cheney volunteers may have made similar calls from Bush campaign offices. “If Bush-Cheney was soliciting those corporations to assist the Nader campaign, then that’s a violation,” she said.

Mike White, executive director of the Oregon Family Council, said there was no coordination with Bush’s campaign. “I had my volunteers call and encourage them to go to the (Nader) convention, but I don’t think that’s federal election activity,” he said.

Chris Kinnan, spokesman for Citizens for a Sound Economy, said an outside lawyer assured him the phone calls were proper. “We’re confident that we can answer any charge,” he said.

Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said he had not seen the complaint but called it “frivolous.” “We will respond accordingly if and when we receive it,” Stanzel said.

Sloan’s group also filed an FEC complaint against Nader last week saying the consumer advocate violated federal campaign laws by accepting office space and telephone service from a public charity he created. Nader has called all the complaints frivolous.

Friday, June 25, 2004

Fahrenheit 9/11

This morning Sam and I went to see Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11." The theater was packed on a weekday morning. I think this movie will be seen by a lot of people, much to the displeasure of the Bush partisans.

The movie starts off with the Florida vote debacle and the sorry spectacle of Al Gore, who won the popular vote by half a million votes, having to preside over the certification of the vote in the Senate. Overruling the objections of several black members of the House because they had no Senator (required by the rules of the Electoral College) to sign off on their objection. Moore doesn’t just lambast the Republicans here, he also doles out a healthy dose of disdain for the leadership of the Democrats, who caved when they should have fought tooth and nail.

The next section starts with the 9/11 attacks, in which the screen is dark for the first couple minutes, while the soundtrack is a compilation of sounds from that event. This is a masterful stroke of filmaking, because Moore knows that the visuals of that day are seared into the minds of everyone. You can’t help but see it in your mind as you listen to the horror. You never see the burning towers directly, but only reflected in the glasses, eyes and the anguish of the witnesses in New York.

While this is happening, you see Bush entering a Florida classroom for a photo-op after he has been informed of the first jet striking the WTC north tower. Shortly thereafter, an aide steps in and informs him of the second strike. There is no longer any doubt that we are under attack. Bush sits there for 7 more long minutes, something that no one, not even his most fervent supporters can justify. He looks lost and confused, like a deer in the headlights, not at all like a decisive leader. Is he waiting for someone to tell him what to do? Why isn’t he trying to get ahold of his national security people? Where is the commander-in-chief? Missing in action, AWOL again…

By the way - I remember when Showtime did a movie on 9/11 with the cooperation of the White House, it portrayed Bush as being totally in command of the situation, slinging tough talk like “If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come on over and get me - I’ll be home!” Yeah, right. More swaggering cowboy talk.

Well, let’s see the administration try to spin the actual footage of what he did. No wonder the right-wingers are still trying to put a lid on this movie. This is the kind of stuff they’ve managed to keep out of sight for years.

Then on to an exposé of the cozy relationship between the Bush family and the Saudis, especially the Bin Laden family. Bush actually had dinner with the Saudi ambassador 2 days after the attacks, after it was known that 15 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. This was on the same day over a hundred Saudis, including 2 dozen members of the Bin Laden family were allowed (with Bush’s OK) to leave the U.S., while everybody else was still grounded. Moore doesn’t say that Bush had prior knowledge of the attacks, despite many warnings, all ignored. What he does do is to question who Bush is working for, the people of this country or the Saudis who made his family rich.

Some of the next section has to do with the rampant fear-mongering that followed the attacks and the Patriot Act. Here he does some “street theater”, commandeering an ice cream truck and driving around the Capitol building, reading parts of the Patriot Act to the members of Congress, who never got a chance to read it before it was rammed through both houses.

The other piece of humor here was a clip of Ashcroft singing a patriotic song he had written. Here is the one and only nice thing I will ever say about Ashcroft - he actually has a good voice. However, he shouldn’t take up songwriting. It was excruciatingly bad. I normally would say something snide to him, like “don’t give up your day job”, but I’ll make an exception here. Please, please give up your day job…

There’s a little about Afghanistan, and how quickly that was dropped, along with the imperative to find Osama Bin Laden, and on to the real goal, the invasion of Iraq. There’s a few scenes of Baghdad in the days immediately before the invasion. Then there’s a number of gut-wrenching scenes of wounded and dead civilians and soldiers, all the stuff that the tamed U.S. press hasn’t been showing you.

Then Moore goes back to his home town of Flint, Michigan. After noting that the Army is running short of cannon fodder to toss at Iraq, he talks to a group of young men, who are faced with the choice of joining the military or likely not finding work in their hometown. He then follows a couple of Marine recruiters as they try to get young men to join.

You are left with the sense that they are little more than predators, as the small talk they make with their “prospects” seems just as hollow and insincere as a snake-oil salesman’s pitch. They keep trying to “connect” with the people they are trying to recruit, saying “you can do that in the Marines”, “that” being whatever their prospect’s interests are. What they studiously avoid is mentioning that what they will do is promptly send them into hell’s maw, with the likelihood that they could die messily, or come home minus limbs, like some of the soldiers you see in this film.

But the most powerful section of the film is that of Lila Lipscomb of Flint, filmed in 3 or 4 segments over a period of several months. She is first seen to be very supportive of young people going into the military, as her daughter had previously and her son was at the time. She was shown to be religious and patriotic, very Middle American and conservative. Later she is seen talking about the Vietnam war, and how she thought that all antiwar protesters were disgusting and against our troops. In the next segment, she reads from the letter her son sent her from Iraq a few days before he was killed when his helicopter was shot down. He hoped that Bush isn’t re-elected and said “Bush sent us here for nothing, why are we here?” She is devastated.

Finally, while in Washington on business several months later, she goes to the White House. Here the pent-up grief overwhelms her. She recovers and says it was still a good thing to go there, because she finally has a place to put her anger, a focus. All through her segments, Moore treats her with respect and this makes it all the more powerful - this is cinema verité, and it’s up close and personal. Although in other sections of the movie, he leavens the heavy import of the footage with well-timed humor, this section stands on its own.

One of the things Moore does here is to bring this all home to the middle-class audience. He starts with the power-brokers and officials, the elite who make decisions, but ends with the results of those decisions - what happens to ordinary Americans (and Iraqis) when the president and his advisers lie, dissemble and ignore any evidence that conflicts with what they want to do.

The movie closes with a chilling quote from Orwell’s “1984” - “The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous.” Just like the “War on Terror” that “may not end in our lifetimes”...

One of the more memorable clips was Bush, cynically speaking at a black-tie fundraiser. “This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some call you the elite, I call you my base.” These people are are the ones who have gotten the lion’s share of the tax cuts, over half of the trillions in tax cuts went to the top 1%. They are his constituency, and as the movie goes on you get the feeling that to the Bush administration, everyone else is just a consumable - expendable, cheap and easily cowed by periodic threats of imminent terrorist strikes.

I think that after the opening weekend, you’ll see the audience broaden beyond those who already agree with it’s premise. Part of the reason why this movie is becoming hugely popular is because of the hunger out there for the news we have been denied by an American press that has self-censored in complicity with the administration. I’ve been reading the European press for the last several years, and there’s so much more there than you read in the papers here. Much of what you see on American TV is an uncritical, almost fawning take on whatever garbage the administration wants to shovel out there for public consumption.

It’s not without flaws, but it’s a powerful and entertaining film and leaves an impression that hopefully will be remembered on November 2nd. Just go see it.

- Bob Woods

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

More then and now...

Then:
“Governor Bush and I are also absolutely determined that we will restore a tone of civility and decency to the debate in Washington.”
- Halliburton CEO and Vice Presidential candidate Dick Cheney, August 4, 2000

Now:
“Go fuck yourself’’
- Vice President Dick Cheney to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate, June 23, 2004

- Bob Woods

Saturday, June 19, 2004

That was then, this is now...

Then:
Acting pursuant to the Constitution and the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
- President Bush, in a letter to Congress outlining the legal justification for commencing war against Iraq, March 18, 2003

Now:
“This administration never said that the 9-11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaida.”

“The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.”
- President Bush, in an exchange with reporters, June 17, 2004

- Bob Woods

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Free Tre Arrow

I played harp Saturday night at a fundraiser for Tre Arrow, who is now in Canada applying for political refugee status. We were trying to raise money for his legal fees to do so, and so he can defend himself against trumped-up charges of arson instigated by someone else’s plea-bargain. You can read the details of this at his website.

He is another victim of the misguided aims of this administration, to label all who dissent as terrorists and traitors. He has always stood for nonviolence and awareness of the devastating effect we have on the Earth.

We had an art auction, with the proceeds to be donated to his legal fund. His sister Shawna, and friends Kyr and Michael helped put it on. Tre called from Canada to talk, and to tell us how much he appreciated it.

- Bob Woods