WARNING: Bin Laden About To Weigh In?

Analysts: OBL Could Speak Out in an Effort to Prove His Relevance

OH, Bull Shit! If he "speaks out," it will be for the same reason he spoke out before; To help the Goopers, which helps him.

Does anyone really believe this guy is still alive?

By PIERRE THOMAS

Oct. 30, 2008—

Multiple senior government officials tell ABC News the intelligence community is anticipating a message from Osama bin Laden before or just after the presidential election.

As we race toward Election Day, sources say a number of intelligence analysts have concluded it is critical for al Qaeda's top leader to be seen or heard, if only for public relations purposes. Those analysts believe that if bin Laden is not heard from, he runs the risk of being considered irrelevant or impotent. (Or Dead!) The U.S. intelligence community has some indication that there is some confusion among Islamic radicals about their leadership.

According to sources, the full weight of the intelligence electronic eavesdropping and human sourcing is right now desperately looking for any hint of a bin Laden statement. So far there is only rumor, no hard evidence a message is coming, officials said.

Why are they so desperately looking? Why do we care what OBL has to say, even if he is still alive?

Interestingly, the U.S. government may be the reason why bin Laden could have some problems getting a message out, officials suggested to ABC News.

The United States is engaged in an intensive effort to disrupt the use of the Internet by Islamic radicals. Message boards and Web sites have been targeted. Some officials believe that if bin Laden is not heard from, some will conclude he may be dead.

Another source cautioned against such speculation, suggesting that bin Laden is most concerned about his own safety at the moment, and might increasingly fear for his life.

The sources tell ABC News the U.S. government is quietly engaged in a high-tempo moment attacking al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in the tribal regions of Pakistan, where U.S. officials fear the terrorists have found a safe haven from which to stage plots against Afghanistan, Pakistan and throughout the world, including the West.

A review of published reports about drone attacks in the tribal region suggests the United States may have more than tripled the number this year, compared to 2007, especially in recent months. One official tells ABC News, "We have killed a lot of senior leaders. They [radicals] are having a really bad month."

Another source agreed, noting that in recent weeks the No. 4 ranking leader in all of al Qaeda had been killed in a drone attack. The source said the hit, which was reported in The New York Times, was a huge deal and was surprised it had not gotten more play. The game plan is simple, the officials said. Keep al Qaeda off balance and scrambling.

There had been growing fears, not based on any specific intelligence, that al Qaeda has been likely plotting to attack the United States before the election, or during the transition to a new presidency. Homeland security officials are calling it a Period of Heightened Alert, or POHA, which ABC News first reported in last summer.

Sources confirm that there is an intensive effort all across the U.S. government to play offense. As of now, there is still no specific, credible evidence pointing to an imminent attack on the U.S. homeland. But that's clearly not stopping the government from being incredibly active at what it sees as a critical moment.

In 2004, bin Laden released a message in the days just before the election. Though some believe that the message affected the outcome in favor of President Bush, exit poll data do not support that notion. Among voters who called the tape "very important" in their vote, Kerry won, 53-47 percent. Among those who called it either very or somewhat important, the vote was 50-50. It was among those who called it unimportant that Bush won, by 56-43 percent.

ABC News' Gary Langer contributed to this report.

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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Obama Holds Leads in Key Swing States as Election Nears

Friday, Oct. 31, 2008

By Michael Duffy / Washington

With less than a week of campaigning left, Democrat Barack Obama is holding stable or growing leads over Republican John McCain in Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio, according to a new set of TIME/CNN battleground-state polls conducted by Opinion Research Corp.

Obama leads McCain among likely voters by 51% to 47% in Ohio, a 4-point margin that has not budged since last week's TIME's survey. But he now leads McCain by 52% to 45% in Nevada and by 52% to 46% in North Carolina, margins which are both slightly larger than those reported by TIME in its surveys a week earlier.

The new statewide surveys also show Obama leading McCain in Pennsylvania, the key blue state in which McCain is making a last-ditch, major push to score an upset, by a comfortable 12-point margin of 55% to 43%. But Obama still trails his Republican rival in McCain's home state of Arizona by a 7-point margin of 46% to 53%.

Clinging to a narrow lead in Ohio, perhaps the most closely contested state in the nation, Obama continues to perform best with women of all races, who back him over McCain by a narrow but crucial 55% to 43% margin, a slight improvement from a week before.

But while Obama's performance among women in Ohio was firming, his support among men was weakening. Men in Ohio now favor McCain and Sarah Palin over Obama and Joe Biden by a margin of 51% to 47%, compared to a gap of 49% to 47% a week before.

Among Ohio's white males, meanwhile, Obama appears to be falling faster: they now favor McCain by a 14-point margin of 56% to 42%. Just a week earlier, Obama was 10 points behind with this group. Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, who has come to represent something like a mascot or a rallying cry for the McCain campaign, hails from a suburb of Toledo, Ohio.

White men in Pennsylvania, by comparison, favor McCain too, but by a narrower 50%-46% margin, the TIME/CNN poll found. Women in Pennsylvania are more comfortable with the Democratic nominee than their counterparts in the Buckeye State to the west, though the difference is less dramatic. Keystone State women back Obama by a margin of 57% to 42%.

But the differences among key groups in Ohio and Pennsylvania are minor when compared with the demographic breakdowns in North Carolina. Though Obama leads in North Carolina by 6 points overall, McCain leads Obama among white women by an overwhelming margin of 62% to 32%, a ratio that is virtually identical to the margin reported by white men, who favor McCain 64% to 34%.

In Nevada, by contrast, Obama has seen his lead overall grow from a 4-point margin in late August to a 7-point margin in the latest TIME/CNN poll. Most of that growth, the data shows, comes from independents, white men and voters making less than $50,000 a year. McCain's overall support in the state — 45% – is only 1 point higher than it was two months ago.

The polls were conducted over the phone from Oct. 23-28. In Arizona, 807 likely voters were surveyed; in Nevada, 684; in North Carolina, 667; in Ohio, 779; and in Pennsylvania, 768. Arizona, Ohio and Pennsylvania had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, while Nevada and North Carolina had a margin of 4 percentage points.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Abu Nidal, Notorious Palestinian Mercenary, 'Was A US Spy'

Why Does This Not Surprise Me In The Least?

Secret papers claim the feared assassin was hired to find links between Saddam and al-Qa'ida.

By Robert Fisk

October 25, 2008 "The Independent" -- -Iraqi secret police believed that the notorious Palestinian assassin Abu Nidal was working for the Americans as well as Egypt and Kuwait when they interrogated him in Baghdad only months before the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Hitherto secret documents which are now in the hands of The Independent – written by Saddam Hussein's brutal security services for Saddam's eyes only – state that he had been "colluding" with the Americans and, with the help of the Egyptians and Kuwaitis, was trying to find evidence linking Saddam and al-Qa'ida.

President George Bush was to use claims of a relationship with al-Qa'ida as one of the reasons for his 2003 invasion, along with Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. Western reports were to dismiss Iraq's claim that Abu Nidal committed suicide in August 2002, suggesting that Saddam's own security services murdered him when his presence became an embarrassment for them. The secret papers from Iraq suggest that he did indeed kill himself after confessing to the "treacherous crime of spying against this righteous country".

The final hours of Abu Nidal, the mercenary whose assassinations and murderous attacks in 20 countries over more than a quarter of a century killed or wounded more than 900 civilians, are revealed in the set of intelligence reports drawn up for Saddam's "presidency intelligence office" in September of 2002. The documents state that Egyptian and Kuwaiti intelligence officers had asked Abu Nidal, whose real name was Khalil al-Banna, to spy for them "with the knowledge of their American counterparts". Five days after his death, Iraq's head of intelligence, Taher Jalil Habbush, told a press conference in Baghdad that Abu Nidal had committed suicide after Iraqi agents arrived at the apartment where he was hiding in the city, but the secret reports make it clear that the notorious Palestinian had undergone a long series of interrogations prior to his violent demise. The records of these sessions were never intended to be made public and were written by Iraqi "Special Intelligence Unit M4" for Saddam. While Abu Nidal may have lied to his interrogators – torture is not mentioned in the reports – the documents appear to be a frank internal account of what the Iraqis believed his mission in Iraq to be. The papers name a Kuwaiti major, a member of the ruling Kuwaiti al-Sabbah family, as his "handler" and state that he was also tasked to "perform terrorist acts inside and outside Iraq". His presence in the country "would provide the Americans with the pretext that Iraq was harbouring terrorist organisations," the reports say.

"Coded messages indicate that the Kuwaitis asked him indirectly to find out whether al-Qa'ida elements were present in Iraq. Our conclusions were confirmed when he [Abu Nidal] started to mitigate his actions with irrational answers when asked about the data against him. He attempted to sidetrack his answers by not being specific and referring to historical matters. It was noted by the investigators that he went from short, ambiguous and unclear replies to generalities ... he seemed perturbed ... But once he became convinced of the weight of the evidence against him concerning his collusion with both the American and Kuwaiti intelligence apparatuses in co-ordination with Egyptian intelligence, he realised that his treacherous crime of spying against this righteous country had been exposed ..."

Abu Nidal was no stranger to Iraq. He had operated from Baghdad, Damascus and the Libyan capital of Tripoli when the regimes wanted to use him as a "gun for hire". It was Iraq which paid him to organise the attack on the Israeli ambassador to London, Shlomo Argov, in 1982, an attempted assassination which prompted Israel to accuse Yasser Arafat of responsibility and to begin its disastrous invasion of Lebanon, and Colonel Muammur Gaddafi later established a close relationship with Abu Nidal. In 1985, his crazed gunmen attacked Israeli-bound passengers at Rome and Vienna airports, killing a total of 18 people. His biographer Patrick Seale, who suggests that for some time Abu Nidal even worked for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, has written of how, when he feared treachery in his own ranks, a suspected spy would be buried alive, fed through a tube for days and then – if Abu Nidal's "court" deemed death appropriate – a bullet would be fired down the tube.

His own interrogation at the hands of Saddam's secret police, will therefore appear equally appropriate punishment for so cruel a man. Among the other crimes of which he was accused in the Iraqi intelligence report was the preparation of 14 booby-trapped suitcase bombs to be used on foreigners – Swiss and Austrian, according to the intelligence file – in the northern Kurdish area of Iraq, at the time a US-supported "safe haven", and an attempt to recruit new members for his so-called Fatah Revolutionary Council among Palestinians wounded by the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza who were recovering in Baghdad hospitals.

There are some oddities in the report and some unanswered questions. It says, for example, that Abu Nidal originally infiltrated Iraq from Iran on a false Yemeni passport years earlier, but that this was facilitated by his own representative in Kuwait, named as Nabil Uthman. Abu Nidal was said to have communicated to Kuwait via coded messages sent through Lebanon and Dubai. The papers give his date of birth as 1939 – he is believed to have been born in Jaffa in what was then Palestine in 1937 – and state that he resided in Libya in 1984 but "had no links with the Libyan authorities". He is also stated to have been imprisoned by the Egyptian security services for two months. The man who is said to have provided Abu Nidal with a "safe house" in Baghdad was interrogated in 2002 alongside the Palestinian and is named as Abdulkareem Mohammed Mustapha.

Could Abu Nidal really have entered Iraq from Iran, whose own intelligence services, would surely have questioned him? Could Abu Nidal have lived in secret in the Baathist state of Iraq without Saddam's own mukhabarat finding him? And for how long was he interrogated? The documents give us no answers to these questions.

His end is, however, recorded bleakly. "Upon being asked to accompany those charged with guarding him to a more secure location to continue the interrogation procedures, he requested that he be allowed to change his clothes. On entering his bedroom, he committed suicide. Unsuccessful attempts were made to resuscitate him ..." Nothing is known of the fate of Abdulkareem Mustapha, only that he was "submitted to court". But we do know where Abu Nidal now lies.

"The corpse of Sabri al-Banna", the final report concludes, "was buried on 29/8/2002 in al-Karakh's Islamic cemetery [in Baghdad]. Until a final resting place is found, a marker designates the place of burial and it was documented on video as well as on still photographs as 'M7'." No "final resting place" for this savage man appears ever to have been found.

Years of terror: A man as feared as Bin Laden

Abu Nidal, was once as feared as Osama bin Laden. His most notorious attacks included:

*1978 His "Black June" movement blamed for murdering PLO members in London, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, Kuwait and Rome.

*1982 Israeli ambassador to Britain, Shlomo Argov, shot in Mayfair, leaving him permanently paralysed.

*1984 Jordanian airliner attacked by rocket on take-off from Athens. Assassinations included the British cultural attaché in Athens and the British deputy high commissioner in Mumbai.

*1985 Egyptian airliner hijacked – six passengers murdered and 60 killed when the plane is stormed by Egyptian commandos

*1985 Gunmen massacre 18 and wound 120 in attacks on El Al ticket desks at Vienna and Romeairports, bottom left.

*1986 Machine-gun attack kills 22 in a synagogue inIstanbul; at least 20 passengers and crew are killed when Pan Am jet hijacked in Karachi, bottom right.

*1988 Nine killed and 98 wounded when gunmenattack the Greek cruise ship the City of Poros.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

OPEC Cuts Oil Output

Surprise, surprise!

All the more reason to get off our addiction to oil!!!!


CNN) -- The Saudi Arabian Stock Exchange began the week Saturday with its largest decline in four years, a reaction to the world's tumbling markets and oil prices, an economist said.

Gulf Cooperation Council financial officials met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday.

The index for all stocks finished the day down 536 points, or 8.7 percent, and several sectors dropped almost 10 percent, according to the Web site for the exchange, known as Tadawul. Saturday is the first day of the week according to the Saudi Arabian calendar.

But there's little reason to worry about the drop, according to John Sfakianakis, chief economist for the Saudi British Bank. The precipitous drop in stock values is probably related to the tumbling U.S., European and Asian markets, as well as the falling price of oil, the economist said.

"It shouldn't be a benchmark for the well-being of the economy," Sfakianakis said.

After the markets closed, the state-run news service reported that King Abdullah announced that he would deposit 10 billion riyals ($2.67 billion) into the Saudi Bank of Credit and Saving. The "royal gift" will be used for loans to citizens, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Under Saudi law, no company or sector can lose or gain more than 10 percent of its value in one day, Sfakianakis said.

Don't Miss

• Stocks bomb as dire warnings shake markets
• OPEC cuts oil output to halt price collapse

Saudi stocks fell as financial officials from Gulf Cooperation Council states met in the Saudi capital of Riyadh to discuss the international economic crisis. King Abdullah also met Saturday with U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt and U.S. Ambassador Ford Fraker.

Insurance agencies, banks and oil refineries were among the Saudi companies to hit the 10-percent threshold in Saturday trading, according to the Tadawul site.

Trading was cut off for companies whose values dropped 10 percent, in accordance with Saudi law, Sfakianakis said. Any purchases or sales of those companies' shares made after the cutoff will be represented in Sunday's transactions, he said.

Also, several sectors came within fractions of a point of hitting the threshold, including hotel and tourism (9.93 percent), real estate development (9.9), media and publishing (9.89) and retail (9.86).

Although all indices fell, according to the Tadawul Web site, the energy and utilities sector fared the best, losing only 6.4 percent of its value in Saturday trading.

Despite the stock plunge, Sfakianakis said, the Saudi economy remains strong and is showing signs of real growth in its gross domestic product.

Oil prices -- a staple of the Saudi economy -- will probably rise again, and the Saudi banking system is healthy and "one of the best capitalized financial sectors in the world," he said.

Light crude closed Friday at $64.15 a barrel, down $3.69. It was trading at more than $130 a barrel over the summer.

Investors are expected to jump back into the Saudi markets as the declining stock prices yield more and more bargains, he said.

"The news is not that bad," Sfakianakis said. "I'm very optimistic about the Saudi economy."

Gulf Cooperation Council financial officials released a statement Saturday saying they had taken precautionary measures to stem the effects of the world financial crisis and stood ready to confront further developments, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

The group also announced that it would sign a free-trade agreement with the European Union by year's end, the agency reported.

"The growth of the economies of the GCC countries is expected to continue with good rates," the agency reported.

The GCC comprises Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

More Gooper Outrages of The Week............

What the hell is wrong with these people?

They have run the country into a ditch at about 150 mph. They are screaming about socialists while their fascism is what has brought about this catastrophe for the American people. If there is socialism in this country it seems it is for the CEOs and other "deciders" at the top of the multinationals and American corporations, who are are benefiting from the government bailout.

Socialism for the wealthy and capitalism for the rest of us. I don't think that's going to work very well.


On the heels of Michele Bachmann channeling McCarthy when she called Barack Obama anti-American, another Republican has decided to say something truly offensive and outrageous. Enter Republican Robin Hayes of North Carolina at a McCain rally...



And after he said it – taking a cue from GOP'ers before him, he did what any desperate Republican might do – lie and deny he said it!

Problem is, just like Bachmann, he was caught on tape.

This is GOP outrage #2 of the week and it has never been clearer that in these last 13 days Republicans will do or say ANYTHING to hold onto their power. Democrat Larry Kissell – who fell just 329 votes shy of beating Rep. Hayes two years ago – is up right now in the polls and on the verge of winning this seat. We all know it's time for Republican Robin Hayes to go.

However, we could lose in this seat if we aren't prepared to fight back. Kissell is being hit from all sides with dishonest attacks from Hayes and national Republicans. We need urgent resources to expose their lies and continue our hard-hitting ad campaigns in these districts. We can't yield an inch or back down. Contribute now.

A gift from you today could make the difference in too-close-to-call races.

Contribute $20, $35, or more to get urgent money into these districts and others like them to fight the lies.

We have to make an immediate decision if we are all in to defeat these two Republicans and others like them. With your support, we can commit to defeating Bachmann and Hayes right now and removing them from Congress.

Thanks,


Brian Wolff
Executive Director, DCCC

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Civil War on the Right

This is one time a circular firing squad is in order!

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, October 24, 2008; A19

Conservatives are at each others' throats, and here's what's revealing about how divided they are: The critics of John McCain and the critics of Sarah Palin represent entirely different camps.

Surprise, surprise!

One set of critics, skeptical social conservatives, are precisely the people McCain was trying to mollify by picking Palin as his running mate. This includes the faithful of the religious right who remember McCain as their enemy in 2000 and parts of the gun crowd who always saw McCain as soft on their issues.

That McCain felt a need to make such an outlandishly risky choice speaks to how insecure his hold was on the core Republican vote. A candidate is supposed to rally the base during the primaries and reach out to the middle at election time. McCain got it backward, and it's hurting him.

A Pew Research Center survey this week found that among political independents, Palin's unfavorable rating has almost doubled since mid-September, from 27 to 50 percent. Whatever enthusiasm Palin inspired among conservative ideologues is more than offset by middle-of-the-road defections.

Even on the right, she hasn't done the job. In The Post tracking poll released yesterday, Barack Obama drew 22 percent of the vote from self-described conservatives. That's a seven-point gain on John Kerry's 2004 conservative share.

Yet the pro-Palin right is still impatient with McCain for not being tough enough -- as if he has not run one of the most negative campaigns in recent history. This camp believes that if McCain only shouted the names "Bill Ayers" and "Jeremiah Wright" at the top of his lungs, the whole election would turn around.

Much more of the religiously insane and I would vote for Bill Ayers!

Then there are those conservatives who see Palin as a "fatal cancer to the Republican Party" (David Brooks), as someone who "doesn't know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin" (Kathleen Parker), as "a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics" (Peggy Noonan).

These conservatives deserve credit for acknowledging how ill-suited Palin is for high office. But what we see here is a deep split between parts of the conservative elite and much of the rank and file.

For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war against "liberal elitists" and "leftist intellectuals." Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.

The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity -- and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.

And then there is George W. Bush. Conservatives once hailed him as creating an enduring majority on behalf of their cause. Now, they cast him as the goat in their story of decline.

The conservative critique of Bush is a familiar rant against his advocacy of big government and huge deficits -- now supplemented by horror over his embrace of actual socialism with the partial nationalization of big banks. And, yes, a fair number of conservatives were never wild about the adventure in Iraq.

Things are so bad that the internecine warriors on the right have begun copying the rhetoric of the old left. In a Washington Times column this week upbraiding dissidents such as Brooks and Noonan, Tony Blankley, the conservative writer and activist, fell back on an old left slogan, asking them: "Whose side are you on, comrade?"

This is a revelatory question. It arises when a movement has lost its sense of solidarity and purpose, when the "sides" are no longer clear. There is no unified "right" or "center-right," which is why we are no longer a conservative country, if we ever were.

Conservatism has finally crashed on problems for which its doctrines offered no solutions (the economic crisis foremost among them, thus Bush's apostasy) and on its refusal to acknowledge that the "real America" is more diverse, pragmatic and culturally moderate than the place described in Palin's speeches or imagined by the right-wing talk show hosts.

Conservatives came to believe that if they repeated phrases such as "Joe the Plumber" often enough, they could persuade working-class voters that policies tilted heavily in favor of the very privileged were actually designed with Joe in mind.

It isn't working anymore. No wonder conservatives are turning on each other so ferociously.

postchat@aol.com

Read more from E.J. Dionne on washingtonpost.com's political opinion blog, PostPartisan.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Polls Show Bleak Outlook For McCain-Palin

I might be ecstatic if I didn't know about the voter roll scrubbing that's going on in battleground states. A huge turn-out will be necessary along with exit polls in order to make a stolen election obvious to a blind man.

People like Joe "the puke" Scarborough are already laying the groundwork. Double digit leads don't matter because of the "Bradley effect." No one knows what the numbers really are. So says Joe, this morning. He's not alone. Other far-right wingnuts are claiming the same.

Vote early, says Bobby Kennedy, Jr. Make sure you have a government issued I.D. Raise mortal hell if they turn you down because of your name being different on voter rolls than on your I.D.. for example Robert F. Kennedy on one and Robert Francis Kennedy on the other. This is total b.s. and we all know it. Let these Democracy thieves know that it isn't over until we. the people, say it is.

No taxation without representation!

By Steven Thomma and Marc Caputo | McClatchy Newspapers

INDIANAPOLIS — A series of new polls released Thursday found a bleak outlook for John McCain, even in traditionally Republican states, and a potential landslide victory for Democrat Barack Obama on Nov. 4.

The polls found McCain trailing Obama in the battleground states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania and suggest that he's behind even in solidly red states such as Indiana, and they also suggest that his talk about "Joe the Plumber" has done little to help his cause.

"Senator Obama is no longer the candidate of the young, the well-educated and minorities. He is now virtually the candidate of the 'all,'" said Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, which conducted one of the polls. "He is winning among all age groups in all three states. He wins women by more than 20 points in Ohio and Pennsylvania and is competitive among men in all three states. Whether voters went to college or not, they are voting for him.

"If these numbers hold up, he could win the biggest Democratic landslide since Lyndon Johnson in 1964," Brown said.

A new CBS News/New York Times poll found that a number of groups that supported President Bush in 2004, including married women, suburban voters and white Roman Catholics, now prefer Obama to McCain. Even white men, long solidly Republican, favor Obama, according to the poll, which overall found Obama leading McCain by 51 percent to 38 percent.

In Florida, where a Mason-Dixon poll earlier this week suggested that talk of the economy had helped McCain, a new Miami Herald poll Thursday found the Arizona senator trailing Obama by 49 percent to 42 percent.

The Herald poll, done in conjunction with the St. Petersburg Times by Republican and Democratic polling companies, was one of four surveys out Thursday that found the election map becoming more unfavorable to McCain.

Perhaps the most alarming of all, from a Republican perspective, was one sponsored by universities in the eight states that make up the Big 10 Conference of college sports teams. That survey found Obama ahead in all eight Big 10 states, including Ohio, Indiana and Iowa, three states that Bush carried four years ago. That was a dramatic shift from September, when the Big Ten Battleground Poll found the race a dead heat in all the states except Illinois, Obama's home state.

Now Obama is leading by double digits in all eight states, including Indiana, long a GOP stronghold, where the new poll found Obama ahead by 10 points. The last Democrat to carry the Hoosier state was Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

"If the Republican is only winning Indiana by 1 or 2 points, he's in serious trouble," said Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the director of the Big Ten Battleground Poll. "McCain still has a chance to get to 270 electoral-college votes, but it's a narrow one."

The Big 10 poll found Obama up by 11 points in Pennsylvania, 12 points in Ohio, 13 points in Wisconsin and Iowa, 19 points in Minnesota and 22 points in Michigan. In his home state of Illinois, according to the poll, Obama is up by 29 points.

The Quinnipiac survey of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania found similar results. That survey found that:

• In Ohio, Obama leads by 14, up from 12 at the beginning of the month.
• In Pennsylvania, Obama leads by 13, down slightly from 14 points.
• In Florida, where Obama led by 8 points at the beginning of October, he now leads by 5 points.

Obama's lead in the Quinnipiac and Miami Herald polls is too small to say with certainty that he leads McCain in Florida, but the Herald poll found some key indicators that McCain may be falling behind in that key battleground:

• McCain trails Obama in Southwest Florida, long a reliable Republican base, and he leads in only one region, conservative North Florida — by 7 percentage points.
• Obama has tied McCain among Florida voters over 65 years old. McCain had a 7-percentage point lead in the over-65 group a Herald poll taken last month, just as the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy precipitated the economic crisis.
• Only 35 percent of Floridians said that McCain has demonstrated more leadership during the crisis and has a better plan to fix it, while 45 percent said Obama has demonstrated better leadership and 49 percent said the Illinois Democrat has a better plan to fix the economy.

The Herald poll also found that Obama's biggest boost in Florida came from independent voters, who now back him over McCain by a 57 percent to 22 percent margin. That's a 38-point shift toward the Democrat since the last poll in September, which was also conducted for the Herald, the St. Petersburg Times and Bay News 9 television by SEA Polling and Strategic Design and The Polling Co.

The fate of McCain's campaign in Florida and elsewhere was damaged by troubles that are out of his hands, said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican who owns The Polling Co.

She said the ''superseding events" of the financial crisis hurt McCain, who led by 2 percentage points last month. But, she said, McCain's campaign is also to blame for his troubles because it's focused too on attacking Obama for his alleged ties to a Vietnam-era radical terrorist.

''Trying to connect Barack Obama to Bill Ayers rather than trying to connect McCain to the average voter on the economy has also been dubious," Conway said.

The growing importance of the economy and Obama's success in talking about the issue appear to be deciding factors in winning independent votes, which comprise about a fifth of Florida's electorate. Independents have grown increasingly worried about the economy, making them more like Democrats than Republicans.

Compared with about half of all Republicans, just under two-thirds of independents and Democrats reported experiencing big financial troubles — from losing a job to missing a mortgage payment. Of those who've experienced economic duress, 55 percent back Obama and 34 percent support McCain.

Tom Eldon, a Democrat and pollster with SEA, said that Obama has used the economy to improve his standing with nearly all types of Florida voters. In the case of senior citizens, it was his ''pounding" of McCain in television ads about Social Security, Medicare and health care. Obama has outspent McCain on advertising in Florida by 3-1.

McCain's initial response — rapping Obama for his ties to Ayers and the vote-registration group ACORN — missed the mark, Eldon said, because the attacks were geared toward firming up the Republican base, but they alienated independent voters, to whom the self-described maverick once appealed.

"He served up red meat for his base but he starved independents," Eldon said. "McCain has run a base campaign and it's a race right now that is all about the independent voters."

The McCain campaign also took heavily Republican Southwest Florida for granted, Eldon said, by not doing enough to appeal to the region's elderly voters who've lost a lot in the stock market. Obama opened up field offices in the Republican area to keep the pressure on McCain, a tactic that the Republican Conway said was an example of Obama's nearly "flawless" campaign.

However, Conway cautions, "Florida's still in play" in a politically and financially volatile atmosphere. Indeed, though the Quinnipiac poll's findings resembled those of The Miami Herald survey, three statewide polls this week found Obama losing momentum in the face of McCain's renewed attacks over the Democrat's recent statement that he wants to "spread the wealth around" by raising taxes on families that earn more than $250,000 a year.

(Caputo reports for The Miami Herald.)

ON THE WEB

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Quinnipiac University poll

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CBS News/New York Times poll

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(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

McCain Volunteer's Claim of Attack Unravelled, Online and Off

By Jose Antonio Vargas

Online, no one has control over presenting an event. If something smells fishy, all the bloggingheads are on deck.

Just ask McCain-Palin volunteer Ashley Todd.

Less than a day after Todd's story of being mugged by a dark-skinned man first hit the Web, the student from College Station, Tex., told police that she'd made it all up. At a news conference this afternoon, assistant police chief Maurita Bryant said the 20-year-old said she had prior mental health problems.

Too bad all of the desperate citizens of Wingnuttia can't get help for their mental problems.

But on Wednesday night, Todd claimed, she had been robbed at an ATM in Pittsburgh. After seeing a McCain bumper sticker on her car, she said, her assailant -- enraged -- had pinned her down and cut a backwards "B" onto her cheek. Todd, who is white, described the robber as a tall black man.

The Drudge Report picked up the story from a local television Web site and gave it a big headline Thursday afternoon. A photo of Todd's face soon surfaced. Gov. Sarah Palin gave her a call; the McCain campaign issued a statement, as did the Obama campaign.

Palin really is an idiot! Did it never occur to her to resist the urge to pick up that phone until the police gave this woman some credibility? Yep, she would listen to a drunk guy named "curve ball" and start a freaking war.

And, it seemed to many, a combustible moment rife with political, racial and class tension had arrived. "It had to happen," John Moody, a news executive at FOX, wrote on his blog Thursday night.

"If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee," Moody wrote. "If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

No matter how this thing turned out, I hate to think that the election could be determined by one loon in Western Penn. I must say that I doubt seriously that the McCain campaign put Todd up to this. Palin is just an idiot that fell for it. Just another example of Palin's poor judgment and her not being ready for prime time, let alone the presidency.

But the moment Todd's tale -- and especially its accompanying photo -- went viral, the Web went into typical vetting mode. Is she for real? Where's her MySpace page? (Bloggers found it.) Her Facebook profile? (That, too.) How about her Twitter feed? (Yep.)

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin was skeptical. One of her readers wrote Malkin: "Notice how the 'B' is backwards on the right cheek ... if you were looking in a mirror and put it on your own face ... she put it on her own face but forgot it would show up backwards." When Malkin posted her blog item at 6:43 p.m. Thursday, she wrote: "Why that McCain volunteer's 'mutilation' story smells awfully weird." Then she updated it later, after police reported inconsistencies in Todd's story. "Police to administer polygraph; conflicting evidence at scene," Malkin wrote.

The backwards "B" is why we never reported on the incident. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out.

Steve Huff at True Crime Report said he smelled "a rat" when he saw the photo. He started blogging about Todd on Thursday afternoon, minutes after reading about her on Drudge. By 1:06 a.m. Friday, he wrote: "Will Ashley Todd's Story Implode Tomorrow?"

"Before the Internet age, her story would have had traction for weeks. She could have spun this out for a while, even if the cops said they don't believe her," Huff told The Trail. "But on the Web people started investigating her right away. And it wasn't just bloggers on the left doing it. It's bloggers on the right, too."

This is Sooo true. Bloggers have made a tremendous difference in many ways, often forcing the ACM to report on issues they would rather not.

"But here's a fact -- Todd set up her own crash."

This is one in a series of online columns on our growing "clickocracy," in which we are one nation under Google, with e-mail and video for all. Please send suggestions, comments and tips to vargasj@washpost. com.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Standing Amid The Ruin Of Regressive Politics

Of all the statistics among all the political polls released this week, this rather obscure one, from Pew Research, spoke loudly and, to me, most unambiguously about why the presidential race stands where it stands:

"Voter interest in the campaign remains extraordinary: fully 81% continue to say that they have given a lot of thought to the presidential election, the highest ever measured at this stage in a campaign."

There you have it. Like Samuel Johnson's observation about hanging, it seems that nothing concentrates the electorate's mind like an acute recession and the threat of a chronic depression.

We tell ourselves that foreign wars are indeed a matter of grave concern, what with all their bloody loss of human life and public treasure, but let's face it: one's own pocketbook trumps other people's far more horrendous problems any old election year.

And it's then that the electorate runs home to mommy, the Democrat.

If only we had seen rude upticks in the price of gas and crashing home values and creeping layoffs and etc., etc., etc. in 2004 rather than 2008, perhaps we could have spared ourselves this needless surfeit of economic pain.

But we didn't see it then, even though virtual platoons of high financial analysts were frantically clanging the bells of alarm. Hey, as long as we had what's ours, everyone else -- including our country's sons and daughters marooned in desert or mountainous wastelands of tribal conflict -- and everything else could just by-God wait on the sidelines.

Meanwhile, half-attentively we'd stick with old tough-love dad, the Republican.

I generalize and simplify -- but not, I think, oversimplify -- to highlight a distressing but demonstrable point: Americans are "exceptional" all right, just like Sarah Palin insists we are. But our exceptionalism isn't always in the form we'd care to confess: we are, that is, exceptionally self-interested, self-centered and self-absorbed.

It takes something like this -- a gargantuan global crisis of concentric design in which we, individually, are the bull's eye -- to slap us into that greater reality. Two insanely conducted foreign wars -- three, if you count the amorphous one against a tactic -- weren't enough to quite do the trick.

By and large we were willing to just stumble along with that apodictically clueless stumblebum in the White House, he of historic inattentiveness and downright epic in curiosity. Problems? What problems? Everything was humming right along. We could take his word for it. And we did.

Which, in 2004, forever painted the American electorate itself historically and epically irresponsible.

The question now isn't whether we'll change course (unfortunately, within the inexorable constraints handed to the next president). That, it would seem, is an arithmetical given. Mommy has daddy backed into an electoral-count corner whose already narrow territory continues to shrink by the hour. Talk about your concentric circles and the ultimate bull's eye.

No, that's no longer the question, or should I say, the trick. Because the trick is going to be whether or not we concentrate our minds to learn something from all this pain -- that of the past, present, and even predictable future if we don't.

In short, we have got to grow up. We have got to accept that we are not the biggest kid on the block or the smartest kid in the class any more. We forfeited all claims to those exceptional honorifics -- if real they were -- some time ago.

In fact we threw them away. We were too engaged in self-celebratory, infantile chants of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" to notice that the good old U.S.A. was going down the tubes. And it was headed south because we weren't paying attention to what our leaders were doing, or, rather, what they weren't doing -- looking down the track.

Because we -- most of us -- had ours. Everything was just peachy, as long as both we and our leaders kept our eyes tightly shut and our minds hermetically closed to that blinding light of that oncoming train. Just permit us our iPhones and cable tv and toss in the occasional "U.S.A.!" and all would remain well.

Or so we thought. But as the conservative intelligentsia (such as it is) began insisting decades ago, "ideas have consequences." And now we're paying the consequential price of years of mostly its ideas, which we fecklessly signed off on, because, simply, we weren't really paying attention to anyone but ourselves.

There were many a voice in the wilderness standing athwart our unfolding history, just as Bill Buckley encouraged us to do, "yelling Stop!" Excuse me, pardon me, coming through -- can't anyone else see that big ugly train speeding our direction down the track? We heard that aplenty, but shut it out.

Maybe, this time, we'll learn. There's always hope, however much hope itself stands athwart the history of human folly.

Maybe we will grow the hell up and not need Mommy or Daddy anymore. What are the chances?

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

NYT Endorses Obama

New York Times endorses Obama for president

reuters.com — NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for U.S. president on Thursday, saying he had ''met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change.'' The Times...More… (World News)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Gates Warns Of Dire Consequences In Iraq

SecDef Gates has stated that there will be dramatic consequences if the Iraqi government fails to sign on to the security agreement (status of forces agreement) which allows the U.S. military to remain in Iraq for another three years.

The U.N. Mandate expires this December.

Gates did not elaborate on what he means by "dramatic consequences."

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7012748415

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Do U.S. Elections Matter?

Linda makes some very good points. There was a a time I would have agreed with her on even more of them. That was before 2000. Can anyone really say that election 2000 didn't matter? If Al Gore had won that election would we be embroiled in Iraq and nearly bankrupt, morally as well as economically? If Al Gore had won the election, would there have even been a 9/11? I guess we'll never know with any certainty about the last question.

I would bet that we would be well on our way to more eco-friendly life-styles and less dependent on middle-east oil. Instead, we're just getting started with the long hard slog of finding better ways of producing energy, in earnest. Never mind that we have known what the continued use of fossil fuels would eventually do to the planet and our health since the early 70s.

Well paid lobbyists will kill us all if we don't change this lousy, corrupt system in Washington and on Wall Street.

Instead, many of us saw no difference in Gore and Bush. Bush was the compassionate conservative, remember? By now all but the most intellectually challenged among us know what an oxymoron that is, but it's way too late.

It's true that no matter who is elected this November it will take years to clean up the mess Bush, Cheney and a Republican majority have made. It is also true that that process won't even begin if we are, as a nation, insane enough to elect them again.

So, I would beg, plead and cajole...vote for Obama/ Biden and give them a congress they can work with and then, as Linda says, raise hell about the issues you care about. If the Democrats can't get the job done, let's organize a third party. As a matter of fact, why not start now? When a third of the eligible voters are too disenchanted or disgusted to bother to vote, something is very, very wrong. Part of what's wrong is the corrupt duality of the two party system.

Maybe this year will be the turning point. It's for sure that Barack Obama has excited the electorate to a degree I haven't seen in my lifetime of close to 60 years.


100 million nonvoters send a stinging message of disenchantment

By Linda Averill


October 22, 2008 "FSN" - -Legions of people opt out of voting in the U.S. But they are not civic slackers. They’re on to something. Whether disinterested or disgusted, they are casting a vote of no confidence in the electoral system. And it is entirely justified.


The real point of elections is to get enough people voting to legitimize the authority of politicians. Then, they can drag us into wars, bail out bankers in the middle of an economic meltdown, and “earmark” tax dollars to their biggest donors. It happens at every level of government, from City Hall to the White House.


Just as riot is the language of the unheard, abstention has become the vote of the unrepresented. In a debate on voter apathy, blogger Bud Wood put it this way: “It just doesn’t make much difference who or what gets into office. The results are more of the same.”


Whose democracy? There are 100 million nonvoters in the U.S., and they are overwhelmingly people who are economically disenfranchised. They are poor, young, disabled, unemployed and foreign-born, especially Asian and Latino.


Only 48 percent of folks in the bottom income bracket go to the polls. Compare this to 77 percent among those with annual incomes above $50,000. Those earning over $100,000 per year make up 15 percent of eligible voters, but 19 percent of actual ballot-casters. And this percentage rises on up the wealth ladder.


But even active voters are turned off. A study called the “Vanishing Voter” showed disenchantment among voters and abstentionists alike. More than 75 percent felt that “candidates will say almost anything to get elected.” Over one third agreed that “most politicians are liars or crooks.” The only statement that doubled in support among nonvoters was that “Republicans and Democrats are alike.”


It’s true. Big bucks dictate the agendas of both parties. In 2008, Obama and McCain will set new records for spending —over a half billion dollars. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, champions of banking and investment deregulation, are top donors to Obama and Biden, a darling of credit card sharks. Exxon and Chevron back McCain and Palin, a proselytizer for drilling in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge.


Even new Democrats and Republicans find it difficult to enter government. In 2006, 407 House seats were up for reelection, with 383 held by incumbents. Of these incumbents, 94 percent prevailed, because they got all the money and media. A good many ran unopposed! This helps explain why turnout drops well below 40 percent during midterm elections.


Meanwhile, workingclass voters are kicked to the curb. Take Latinos for example. Voter forums showed that their concerns include basics such as “buying gas or buying food,” insufficient medical care, soaring war costs, and immigration. So what do both parties offer? Nothing.


In June, the Senate voted 92 to six for $257.5 billion in unrestricted war funds. The House vote was 416 to 12.


On healthcare, McCain and Obama leave untouched the sacred profits of the medical/pharmaceutical industry. On immigration, they offer more crackdowns.


It’s rigged! Actually, many abstainers would vote if they could. Other countries give people a day off to go to the polls, but not the U.S.


In 2004, 45 percent didn’t vote because they were too busy or exhausted, disabled or ill. Another 12 percent were stopped by registration problems, inconvenient polling locations and transportation issues. Translation? This means millions of workingclass voters face insurmountable obstacles, from electoral incompetence to outright dirty tricks on the part of politicians.


In Florida, the notorious ballot software is still flawed, and polls close by 7 p.m. A county in Virginia recently misled students to believe they could lose dependent tax status — and the benefits that bestows — if they registered to vote at their school address. In Wisconsin, the attorney general wants to cross-check every voter who registered since January 2006. This means long voting lines and disenfranchisement for those who can’t resolve discrepancies, including typos.


The list goes on. And systemic, undisguised racism explains why the overwhelming majority of those denied the vote each election are workingpeople of color.


Another 4-5 million are disenfranchised by states that deny the vote to ex-felons, 36 percent of them African American. Non-citizens have no representation, even though they are affected by everything the government does and may have lived here for years.


Minor parties? With such a gap between politicians and people, third parties should flourish. Instead they are blockaded by the money and might of the Democrats and Republicans. Election laws, written by the major parties, make it extremely difficult for minor parties even to appear on the ballot.


Outrageous rules, media censorship, private financing of campaigns, and sheer thuggery have marginalized political parties that compete with labor’s fake friend, the Democratic Party. This includes even parties like the Greens, who simply want to reform capitalism.


It’s not people who vote socialist or Green who throw away their votes. The system does it! U.S. elections are “winner take all.” If a socialist gets 20 percent of the vote, a Green gets 15 percent, and a Democrat gets 51 percent — all votes go to the Democrat.


Things weren’t always so sewn up. At the start of the 20th century, socialists ran on explicitly pro-labor, anti-capitalist platforms. And they won seats — more than 1,200 offices nationwide.


To eliminate the threat this posed, the Democrats and Republicans launched a political witch-hunt. Socialist party offices were raided, pro-labor representatives were denied their seats, radicals were tossed in jail, and restrictive ballot laws were passed.


Raise hell, whoever wins! After this country revolted against the English king, only a few white men with money and property could vote. The fight to gain the franchise by workers without land and Blacks and women was long and brave. It presumed that voting equals democracy and is the path to making society better.


If only it were true. Instead, wealth has concentrated into the hands of fewer people, alongside political power.


The economic elite write the laws to meet their needs. Karl Marx called it bourgeois democracy: by and for the capitalists. Its opposite is democratic socialism: the economic and political rule of the majority, the working class.


Today, politicians may look and sound more like ordinary working people; history is being made with the first Black Democratic presidential nominee and female Republican vice-presidential candidate.


But the empire under the make-over hasn’t changed.


Both parties put on quite a spectacle during elections to persuade voters of how different they are. Election 2008 is no exception. And true, there are minor differences. But whoever wins, things keep getting worse for working and poor people — whether they vote or abstain.


The answer is ringing in a whole new social system, and the way to get there isn’t at the ballot box. The route is through mass radical action that will settle for nothing less.


But your vote isn’t worthless. Send a message — use it to protest your false choices and demand real ones!



Then follow the advice of union organizer Mother Jones. More than a century ago, she declared, “I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country. You don’t need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!”


Linda Averill, a bus driver and union activist, has twice run for Seattle City Council on the Freedom Socialist Party ticket. Email her at LindaEAverill@peoplepc.com .


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.