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From beforeitsnews.com:
“Dr. Stein and Ms. Honkala walked with supporters toward the Hofstra campus at 2:00pm EST today. There they were met by three ranks of police officers in uniform and plainclothes. At this point, the Green Party candidates held an impromptu press conference in which Dr. Stein called the CPD debate a “mockumentary,” saying that, “We are here to bring the courage of those excluded from our politics to this mock debate, this mockery of democracy.”
Dr. Stein and Ms. Honkala then turned and began walking onto the debate grounds, at which point the rank of police officers physically stopped them and pushed them back. The two women sat down and the police arrested them, saying that Stein and Honkala would be charged with “obstructing traffic,” a charge Jill Stein for President staffer and lawyer Alex Howard called “bogus” in that there was no through-traffic visible at any time during the incident. “
Stein and various other third party candidates will participate in four other debates to which the 99% have been relegated.
[Updated]: Peasant Party just reminded us that Stein, Anderson and Goode are on Democracy Now! answering debate questions and…debating. ;o)
Thursday, October 18 – The Independent Voter Network debate between Jill Stein and Gary Johnson can be viewed live on October 18, 2012 beginning at 7:00 PM EST on http://ivn.us/, or on IVN.us’ Google+ and YouTube page. More information at: http://ivn.us/ca-election-center/2012/10/11/ivn-us-to-host-first-online-presidential-debate/
Monday, October 22 – Time TBA: Democracy Now continues its “Expanding the Debate” series with a live broadcast during the third presidential debate with real-time responses from Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson. For full details: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2012/10/10/expanding_the_debate_upcoming_democracy_now_election_specials
Thursday, October 23 & Tuesday October 30 – Free and Equal Election’s Alternative Debate will be available live online, streaming from http://freeandequal.org/live on Oct. 23 and Oct 30 at 9:00 PM EST. The first of thses two debates will include Jill Stein from the Green Party; Gary Johnson from the Libertarian Party; Virgil Goode from the Constitution Party; and Rocky Anderson from the Justice Party. More information at:http://action.freeandequal.org/debate-rsvp/
Meanwhile, Inter Press Service reports is reporting that:
~ 20.5 million U.S. citizens live in extreme poverty. This means their family’s cash income is less than half of the federal poverty line, which corresponds to about 10,000 dollars a year for a family of four.
~More than 46 million U.S. citizens currently rely on the federally-funded food and nutrition assistance programs to help meet their nutritional needs, with senior citizens, families with children and minority groups among others.
~An especially vulnerable group is children, with as many as 17 million children nationwide who are currently struggling with food insecurity.
~In the world’s wealthiest nation, rising unemployment compounded by unprecedented high food prices are contributing to worsening living conditions. Persistent poverty and growing inequalities rather than scarcity of food is the main cause of hunger in the U.S.
Did the Red/Blue Candidates really switch tie colors this time, or was that just appropriate and telling snark showing further collusion (‘Of course government doesn’t create jobs!’ or… ‘No! I’ll issue more drilling permits than HE will!’ bullshit)?
120 Comments
CPD needs to be dissolved and replaced by a citizens’ organization like the League of Women Voters.
Meanwhile, inside the University, people were entertained with this
http://youtu.be/YW3MIixEps4
My guess is any more inclusive and honest organization would need some pretty strong assurances that they could have control, no collusion among candidates. LWV was sincerely pissed when they withdrew their debate sponsorship in Oct. 1988.
Sham candidates, sham theatrics, sham ‘choice’, and enough evidence that black box with no paper trail results are sham too invite much confidence in the system, snapdragon.
But yeppers, I’ll vote. Had the No Vote movement organized long ago, it might be different. But it’s not, imo.
Rolling and laughing, walkinboots! And this puppetry, too. ;o)
I’m thinking – let’s take a page from how Americans already love to express their interest on a variety of matters. Let every candidate debate who has a mathematical chance of winning. At the end of the debate, voters call in and vote one of the contestants off the stage. Next debate, same thing. Lather, rinse, repeat. You finally get down to the candidate who is the least objectionable. Thus, we’d have a winner!
Thank you. My response to the Hosts of the ‘D&R franchise’ debate is below:
O the silence of the churches and the intellectuals who petition the lawmakers for a “circle of Protection” for not the poor, but really, for themselves,…….
Who ask, ” Let this bitter austerity cup pass to the poor, to the jobless, to the old ones who have already enjoyed a full life and let us take ‘fairly’ what is theirs, and apportion it……
To warriors, to F-35s…to drones, to spying, to Military Manuals specifications for torture….. don’t forget those in need on Wall St. who lost so many ‘marks’ in 2008, Oh..
And re-elect King O, so
he will fill up the coffers of the non-profits……and so filled, we will bless him..
For we make a circle of co-Protection and let the re-elected enter
And take some comfort with us there”/s
Another priceless scene. Loved that movie.
Stein and Honkala have no chances of winning, but one can hope that their campaign, which includes arrests, are bringing a spot light to some of the – erm – um – glitches within our electoral system.
We just gotta keep rockin’ on till it tips.
LOL!
Or…viewers phone in votes, and X number of votes cause a trap door under each candidate to open, and… (oops)
Soberingly bitter, my friend. Post-election, people of good conscience will have a lot of work to do, among other things caring and sharing for and with and each other. And of course, goosing up OWS and parallel movements.
Our ecumenical church thrift store closed this year, and it was the only place in town that fed the hungry in emergencies. Now we can’t even run into folks needing help while we shop there.
Yeppers; the campaign is where you can make you mark, imo. ‘Rockin’ till it tips’: Yes. ;o)
(Bad news is brewing that Ken Salazar may try to ram that dastardly SB 2109 thru during the lame duck session. I’ll try to write up details as they emerge, but I did send the news to the woman I know at traditionalhopi.org)
Bugger, it was supposed to have been dead. More Zombification of the planet, more Ecocide, more Sociocide…unless we can stop it.
Oh, and I also love ‘He Had It Comin’ and ‘Cellophane Man’. ;o)
(((WENDY!)))
I am currently watching Amy Goodman. She has Jill on along with the other two third-party candidates. They are doing a real debate on the replay of last night’s fake one.
Jill said they had the two of them tied to their chairs in a warehouse that set up to house arrested protesters. For EIGHT HOURS!!!
Oh, cripes; I forgot. Here’s the link to watch... Stein, Anderson, and Goode.
Thank you, PP. TWOOOP to you!
If Occupy, what’s left of it, had half a brain, they would crash the last debate with every last supporter and demand a voice for every candidate.
Assholes.
There have been many calls to Occupy the Debates, wanderindiana. The thing is, it’s easy to say what THEY should do, but in the end…WE are all THEY.
Rec’d, wendydavis. Still trying to decide whether to vote but my magic 8 ball keeps reminding me of the death penalty and Monsanto (actually two different propositions here in California), not to mention the shredded safety net that will fall all the way apart without the tax hike that Jerry Brown is pushing.
And if am voting, I might as well vote for Stein and Honkala. PeasantParty, are you fucking kidding me? They kidnapped them and tied them to their chairs? I don’t why I am shocked but that’s just . . . appalling.
I don’t think such things ever really die. If there is enough money behind it they just get recycled with a new something – name, provision, yada yada, yada. And this is what can make the task of stopping things so exhausting at times …. the constant vigilance that is needed, as well as the constant attention to the details, on so many different fronts.
But the tip will arrive – probably in a small way, like the straw that broke the camel’s back. Perhaps, it will not be seen until hindsight points it out. Those of us ahead of these times, need to keep patience at the ready.
With three daughters going through boyfriends and breakups, heart thralls and heart aches, those last two songs often filled our home. Its kinda how mr.boots and I would figure out that someone was “done wrong”.
Most occupiers that I know have long since given up faith in the current electoral system, at least at the presidential level. It’s a rigged game and we know it. Crashing the debates with anything other than that message would be pointless. As many here have said, in the utterly unlikely event that a third party candidate won, he or she would be disappeared for more than just eight hours. The Revolution will not be moderated by Candy Crowley. :)
Eight hours??
Holy Moly.
[Video] Green Party Candidates Arrested, Shackled to Chairs For 8 Hours After Trying to Enter Hofstra Debate | DemocracyNow.Org, October 17, 2012
What hotflashcarol said…
If it looks like Fascism, and acts like Fascism, then…
I did not know that. Thanks for pointing it out.
Do you see men as Romney and/or Obama detained thusly for attempting to participate in a debate? What century is this?
Agreed, and that includes me. But the illegitimacy of this crapitude by the Debate Commission has caused some calls to Occupy both that group and the debates, more as further evidence of the Corporate Uniparty as much as anything else. Toward that end, it’s fine wit me.
But yes, I see votes for third party candidates as repositories or placeholders for post-revolution/spiritual insurrection times. ;o)
Well, then I would say Occupy is dead, and the best thing to happen would be to follow the quickest path to complete collapse so the system could be rebuilt from the ground up.
OWS isn’t dead, but working behind the scenes and readying for the collapse you mention, or at least the tipping points that will cause massive resistance, imo.
Heh. I told one of the NO VOTE people that I’d vote, especially since I wanted to vote for MJ legalization (made a case for it as a harbinger of other states legalizing, that’s effect on shrinking the black/brown-skinned cradle-to-grave industrial prison system, and mentioned CA voters being able to force GM food labeling, etc.
He told me that my voting would mean more brown-skinned people would be drone-killed. ‘Oy’ was all I could say, although it took sixty more words… ;o)
Last I heard, CA voters were still polling YES on Prop 37, and I think they’re running the $30 million in NO ads already.
Added: Argg; support is slipping, now 48-40:
Ok… IMO it is dead and we see the memory of it kept alive by individuals with a personal stake or other ulterior motive, i.e. those who milk the idea for selfish reasons.
Even if I am terribly wrong and there are still some altruistic physical beings gathered together 24/7, the movement is dead or guided by other malevolent forces — again, in my very, very humble opinion… What we saw happening a year ago is gone.
Oh, yeah, it’s fugly out there and the arguments are getting pretty stupid. Just ducked out of a shootin’ match with a loved one who posted this lovely little nugget: You should have to pass a drug test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to be able to work my ass off to earn it for you.
I went ballistic on her and then deleted all my comments; my hands are still shaking. As I said, I dunno if I will make it through this election. What is it, three more weeks? I want to carve the days in the wall like you do in prison.
It’s not gone, it’s still out there. When I can force myself to be calm and hope, I imagine it to be a million little iron filings waiting for some big magnetic thing to draw us all back together. It will happen, sooner or later. When we do all gather back together in the commons, the good news is that so many of us have learned how (and how NOT) to take care of each other.
You’re right that permanent Occupations are gone, except for actions like the Tent City Austin is trying to erect to spotlight the vast homeless issue there. But flash actions are happening, though with far fewer participating than is encouraging.
But that whole conversation is a long one, so I’ll just say that I hope you’re wrong. Would the various actions like labor strikes and the Tarsands XL Blockade, etc. have happened without the spirit of OWS? As I often say, I believe in the revolution both because I do, and because…I must.
And…did you look at the link I gave you?
There aren’t 24/7 gatherings because they got peppersprayed, beaten, arrested, their food,shelter,books,first-aid supplies,etc. thrown in dumpsters, etc. But many of the people who were part of Occupy are now engaged in organizing and activism, around local issues, or networking on common issues with people in other locations. This is the hard work of movement building. This has to be done without the advantage and focal point of an encampment, but that’s the work that needs to be done.
Booyah! Answers to wanderindiana from Three Inconvenient Women!
“Its kinda how mr.boots and I would figure out that someone was “done wrong”. L-bloody-OL! (‘He had it coming’ freaked the socks offa our son, lol)
Yes, the flicker that ignites it will be known in hindsight.
And really there are too many fronts where the Perfidous Profiteers and Greedsters are working their dark magic that keep our heads swiveling to watch, inform ourselves, fight back against…
x 2
We knew ahead of time that it would get ugly and crazy, with more crazy rage on display. But as that came from ‘a loved one’, that has to rankle large. Remember that you know you you are, what you value, and that what you fight for…is also for the loved one. (Might help a wee bit…)
I’m sorry, mzchief; I’d thought you were addressing the Barbarian. I’d answer, ‘Maybe other men, but surely not OBomba or Romney’.
But the Police State serves its masters in the system (may it not always be so).
The other thing is that the Occupy Revolution is Global, not American, and we are looking at the Indignados, the Canadian Casserole movements, the Greek general strikes as some of the movement originators, and now they are far superseding US efforts. By global standards, we are behind.
But they are also experiencing vastly worse unemployment, food and energy prices, fake ‘austerity measures’, etc. My belief this is just the beginning of The Great Awakening, and things may roll more swiftly soon.
Fat chance.
The PTB will never do anything remotely like that voluntarily and Americans will never make them do anything.
I fervently hope you are correct.
Yup, I occupy my ass off so that she’ll have a tent to live in when her vote for Romney doesn’t result in a bigger portion of magic beans for those who work hard and only use “legal” drugs.
Thanks especially wendydavis for including above the links to three third party debates – I’ve noted them down and expect the candidates will have a bit more time than they have had so far. (I really think Amy did a good job – this time she didn’t spend so much time saying what she was doing.)
It’s amazing to me that Jill Stein was able to speak effectively the day after eight hours handcuffed to a chair. I really cannot imagine what that would feel like, and indeed the poor treatment she outlined at the beginning of Amy’s show, where in fact the two seemed to have been just abandoned at the end of it all to fend for themselves will hopefully have future remedial results. This reminded me of Jane and Scarecrow’s arrest, and also particularly tarheeldem’s experience, which he described for us in an excellent diary on FDL, and which, as I remember, he could only do after some recovery time. Bravo, Jill!
You are neither wrong nor right, just not well informed. Websites are up in different cities detailing activities and events.
Here is an example: http://www.occupyboston.org/
Pup tents are not still on the streets–did you imagine they would be over a year later?–but the work continues.
Love this imagery, hotflashcarol. I feel like that’s what is happening too. Almost every city has an Occupy cell remaining in it, and some continue to have very active Occupations. The focus is very much on outreach, network building, and global solidarity these days.
The movement is growing, actually, in my opinion, but in ways not easily perceivable to the MSM. Take September 17: we probably caused hundreds of thousands of dollars of disruption to Wall Street through nonviolent civil disobedience, yet the manner of the action was hard to perceive for the press (except the NY Daily News, who had a headline like ‘CHAOS IN THE FINANCIAL DISTRICT’).
You can bet your bottom dollar that any switch in ties would indeed be coordinated.
I think this subliminal messaging dressing is so embarrassingly transparent and stupid.
Let’s outlaw flag pins and ties containing red or blue for anyone running for office or holding office and see what happens.
Just to add that I thought Rocky Anderson did really well also, and whilst I disagreed with Virgil Goode on the issue of ‘immigrants taking our jobs’ and guns, I found solid reasons for including him in the debate in what he had to say on trade and Romney/Obama equivalence – so his participation was a plus in my book.
Right on. I think it’s growing too. The efforts to shut it down have been redoubled so that means something, right? The MSM has a sort of template for reporting about these things now, and it’s apparent that template involves minimizing all news except the arrest count, the cost to the city for police activity, and any random vandalism that may occur. They are not allowed to report on the fact that Wall Street may have been disrupted.
Here’s something for you, my fellow Coup fan. Occupy Whoville. :)
Mathematical chance of winning would pretty leave things as they are, only the Republican nominee and the Democratic nominee.
Anyone who qualified for federal funding should be be included, along with with the Republican and the Democrat, or even in a debate of their own. Some way to get publicity and get your ideas heard without having hundreds of millions in corporate donations is a necessity.
Speaking of qualifying for federal funding, is the Federal Elections Commission still withholding matching campaign funds?
Every federal election is rigged.
It is no accident that the only liberal in the Senate is an independent and the ranks of the House Progressive Caucus went from 100 to 70 in the 2010 election alone.
P.S. I bet it has been the same on state and local levels as well.
The money aspect of downticket campaigns is definitely rigged. How corrupt the vote counting is from state to state, I dunno. I suspect everybody has their price.
Heh. I said *should* not *would*. A girl can wish.
It was good to have Virgil Goode in the debate, not that I liked much of anything he said. At least Goode seemed authentic and mostly unscripted, unlike O and R.
Heh. BAR’s newsletter just came in, and the top post is Glen Ford’s ‘The Duopoly Debates Itself‘. ;o)
First 2 graphs, my bold:
Glen reckons that OBomba’s never mentioning the poor or poverty once means that he discounts OWS as a threat any longer. I heartily disagree, obviously.
We need good dreamers, YSD, and you are one. ;o)
I just went and looked; OBomba wore wine red, Romney blue with white stripes. Ah, such bipartisan collusion!
And I noticed as I flipped by the coverage on CSPAN that the little ladies both wore Pepto pink – which at first made me laugh until I realized it was their nod to the Breast Cancer Industrial Complex. (We went to see the movie Seven Psychopaths last night instead of watching Two Psychopaths debate.)
Jill did exhibit some equanimity, didn’t she? I haven’t watched the debate yet. I liked the just of Cheri’s chin in the video at the top as she leaned her head toward Jill and said, ‘Stay right here’ or close, then they were manhandled to the sidewalk fence. I mean, they’d have to have reckoned they’d be arrested, but chained to chairs? Yikers, what thuggery.
Well, as Dave Seaton said today, ‘In politics, style is everything’. He must be right!
(had me gaggin’ and stickin’ my tongue out on Pepto…ish…) I won’t ask about the 7 psychopaths, though. ;oP But these two are just garden variety sociopaths, aren’t they?
Genetically Modified gardens, that is.
I really liked Cheri Honkala in her interview Moyers. She is a tough cookie and has been through a lot in her life.
The oligarchy has gone beyond just enforcing the rules (in this case, that the Green Party candidates were not allowed to participate in the debate) to using every opportunity to make their point: do not defy us, or we will beat/arrest/detain/kidnap/imprison you. Very chilling.
^^her interview with Moyers . . .
Thanks, Wendy. You do good work, and it’s appreciated.
Forty years ago, their arrest and chained detention would have been leading stories in every media account, and with such legs that it would have dominated every news cycle for weeks. Well, no: 40 years ago the cops would not have arrested them. Rather, 40 years ago they would have shared the stages in the debates.
Yes, GMO-variety sociopaths is a better description.
Neither were Gary Johnson, Virgil Goode, Rocky Anderson, Stewart Alexander, et.al….but point taken.
But I do like Cheri’s face. Stein, eh. But then I got so used to chirren of color, and our friends of color…I sometimes ‘eek!’ inside when folks bring their white babbies by. And seriously, I’m not trying to be racist. (I eeep at my own white skin, too cooked in the Southwest sun to have anything fresh or appealing about it, lol.)
Jill Stein and and Cheri Honkala, two politicians walking the talk. I’m in love.
Meanwhile, Romney and Obama, two prima donna sociopath suck-ups to the rich and powerful, are engaged in the quadrennial celebrity fake death-match of contemporary American
politicspolitical theater.I couldn’t agree more.
You couldn’t be more right, AitchD. Shoot, though, I forgot to go hunting for coverage of this; maybe I should, but even if it’s online, it won’t be on their teevees tonight.
Remind me, though, forty years ago (1972, oh, boy), past primaries, were there multiple candidates at the debates? I wasn’t even around teevee or radio in those days…
But many ugly/evil things are being ‘normalized’ now, besides. ‘New normal millions unemployed’, ‘creative destruction of jobs’, drone kills of brown and black people, mass foreclosures, closing schools, no textbooks in schools, zero percent savings rates, pension plans losing half their values… And folks are just taking it, or oblivious to so much of it. Where’s the curiosity? Has not enough of it hit them personally?
But imagine if this had happened to Pat Schroeder?
Shucks, Evelyn; this one was fun, plus easy, but thank you. A glorified PSA, really.
The hard ones can take days, and can cause pain. Been reading about stuff going on in the streets of Haiti today. Anyway…thanks for reading and watching.
Yeah, but my output’s down these days. ;D
John Anderson was in the presidential Debate in, what, 1980 was it? That was really before my political experience. Were multiple candidates allowed at the LWV debates *ever*?
Well, now I love you, threetimessomethingerother, since you didn’t say the (Shhhh…) Japanese K-word with ‘theater’, darlin’. ;o)
Well, Perot, too, come to that. Thanks for that one. So odd, I remember being at one State Democratic Convention in Denver and seeing Anderson concede to someone in the foyer, but I can’t for the life of me place any of it in time. But my stars, he was a good head shorter than I am. Good threads, though. ;o)
The coverage is pretty pathetic and limited to the lefty websites and blogs, mostly. If only they had been in one of those binders full of women, we might be hearing more about them.
Can’t find it, YSD. He must have run for gov of CO against Roy Romer, but he *was voted* ALEC’s ‘Legislator of the Year’ recently, the little pri*k.
Thanks for checking; small wonder I guess, proving HiDef’s point. What was it about the binder of women? I saw a cartoon, didn’t get the allusion (haven’t watched any debates yet…just cannae do it).
My son had to ‘splain it to me, but here it is in a nutshell (pun intended):
It has quickly become a meme on Facebook – the best one I have seen is a picture of Patrick Swayze that says “Nobody puts Baby in a Binder.”
LOL, and thank for the background. The one that came in with the LUV newsletter I dug up; it’s here, for now at least. I wondered WTH?
On that question, I think you’ll have fun (I did) at the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_debates
It certainly brought back memories for me – I won’t say how far back they went!
Just finished reading WikiStuff. Entry about POTUS debates states unequivocally that (so-called) third-party candidates did not participate until 1992 (Perot), but of course the entry is wrong. However, it correctly points out that POTUS general election debates weren’t held in 1964, 1968, or 1972.
The wiki for John Anderson says LWV approved Anderson for participation (per their threshold rules), but President Carter protested and refused to participate. So, only Anderson and Reagan participated in the first debate in 1980.
Personal Footnotes: Anderson ran without any party affiliation, as an independent candidate with a small i. Later, citizens could register as Independent, and candidates could ‘affiliate’ as such, with a capital I. Our crackerjack press and news media referred to Anderson as a third-party candidate, mainly because the media consisted of craven schmucks even 30 years ago.
Perot’s presence (in the debates, natch) prevented any candidate from receiving anything close to 50% of the popular vote, but (very personal footnote of the footnote), most important, he prevented vote-flipping of the electronic machinery. Bonus Footnote: Perot knew computer software very well, his wealth depended on it. He probably knew (like everyone else who cared) that Bush had done flipping in the 1988 Primaries, and possibly decided to run to screw Bush. Bush dirty-tricked Perot to get Perot to drop out, which he did. But he re-entered late — too late for the vote-flipping tricksters to rewrite code that would be other than simple binary flipping. Perot’s disruption of the DemRep coup d’etat was the reason the DemRep seized complete control of the debating circus.
Final Footnote: Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for preventing Hillary Clinton’s presidency.
I am with you in each word you say.
Still, I take some comfort in the fact that Stein and Honkala were actually attempting to stir up some shit.
Every other week, some person in America is killed for the sin of being at the wrong address when the Nazi Storm Troopers and DEA go out to do their drug raids. And so intoxicated are they with the thought of seizing a marijuana growers’ plantation, the Storm troopers forget to go to the right address, and then Concussion bombs smashed through the front door. Plus: Explosions! Killed family dogs! Toddlers thrown to the floor! The elderly shoved around, and if anyone looks too sassy, BANG, they are dead. For no action at all!
This nation is such a friggin’ police state. I salute the alt candidates, all of them. And I damn those two “One Big Money Party” Hacks pretending to offer us us a choice.
That reminds me, while you quoted someone using the ubervogue term, systemic, I have to ask if you’ve used it.
Follow-up: If you haven’t, would it be a paradigm shift if you use it?
You are nailing it. And yet, my “librul” friends greet with much shock and awe my announcement that I will not vote for Mr Police State to be Re-Elected, because to their way of thinking, how could anyone miss how he is so friggin’ fabulous – all democracy-like, and sweet wife and two cute girls and doggie.
LOL! I read it, too, juliania, at least until either or my phone rang…again, or building dinner called (Chinese noodles, yum-ola). Trip down memory lane for certain. I may have run county (then statewide as a paid staffer) for a whole hell of a lot of em. (Senate candidates, too, but…somehow Presidents became ‘the thing’, eh?
Remember when we counted on the Three Branches balancing each other (before Unitary Executive Decisions became The Thing (as in: ‘The Blob’, or ‘The Eggplant That Ate Washington, DeeCee’)? Or when SCOTUS wasn’t so freaking partisan and…right-leaning?
So nice to see you, stranger. Hope all is well, or…as well as things can be…
The Nation magazine full-out endorses Obama notwithstanding the list of his disappointments.
If Romney is elected, it will have been the most important election of my lifetime. If Obama wins, the least important.
hotflashcarol, I have been laughing and laughing at how this thing has gotten legs … so many are truly, truly funny and things get so dire some days, that I really can use the laugh.
One of the posts I saw asked, “What kind of woman are you and which binder are you in? (or something close.) She then gave a list of things that included:
Gun-Toting, Drug Dealing Single Mothers”
“Not That Kind of Woman”
Legitimately Raped
Illegitimately Raped
Slutty Entitled Whiners
Cheap Labor
Super Cheap Labor
Invisible Women (Clue: no kids)
Self-Deporting Breeders
Raped and Pregnant (Pshaw! “Just Another Method of Conception”)
To her list I would add, what wd said up above at, #34 –
Inconvenient Women also called “bitches”.
The rethugs, imho, have a problem with how they are perceived by those of us of the “weaker sex”.. ahem.
May I rec your rage, elisemattu, whilst my present psycho/emotional/cognitivelychallenged self…tries to maintain some semblance of…equanimity? (Full disclosure: I recently consulted the I Ching after a long hiatus, and received indication how I needed to proceed…shoot, never mind. I just came back half an hour later…and saw I’d never pressed Submit; RL is more important, as it should be.
Didn’t Shakespeare say so? Or was it Sartre? ;o)
#73??!?? That was about the theatrically over-used, should be assigned to the dust bin… ‘K-theater’ word!
Wot? These are not arch and white-faced *musicals* the faux political class is engaged in: Comedy ad Absurdum…or worse.
So sorry; today is not a good day for pain, and I may have exceeded the limits of MMJ and cheesy vodka to alleviate some it. Time for a hot soak.
Krypes, I hafta s,p,e,l,l everything o,u,t? ;o) Yes, you cryptically alluded to the k- word’s over- and misuse @ (at) # (no. [number]) 73. Because of your comment I wondered and explained (yeah, right) that I’d noticed in your @ 55 you quoted Glen Ford, who used ‘systemic’, which prompted my @ 83. Never mind.
;o)
‘Never mind’ works for me…as I have no mind left. How about a song? I’m feelin’ rode hard n put up wet; beat up n battered around. Life is full, then ya die. Srsly. ;o)
Those are hilarious! I saw another one today that showed a photo of Romney with Obama behind him, and Romney is saying, “Wait, he has an iPhone full of women?”
And I think you’re right, most of us here would go in the Inconvenient Women binder.
I love that they are stirring things up, for sure. And I hear you about the police state. It has to change, somehow.
(o; .desrever si erutcip ebuTuoY tahT
?
Dream better dreams tonight, everyone. G’night.
K-word? Hmmmm… Are you referring to karaoke?
Seriously, wouldn’t it be a trip if they added a karaoke segment to the the debates? To hell with even a whiff of the issues, let’s see ‘em go head to head on “Moves Like Jagger”. While we’re at it let ‘em have an air guitar segment as well.
It wouldn’t be any less relevant than what most people go by when figuring who to cast their vote for.
Righteous segue, timesthree. ;o)
Let’s see, though. OBomba channeled Al Green’s ‘Let’s Stay Together’ at the Apollo, and according to Al, ‘he nailed it’. (Disclosure: I totally missed the whole Al Green phenomenon.)
So…in a spirit of bipartisan collusion, Romney might wanna go with ‘Come Together’, and all John Lennon could do is roll over in his grave.
And lucky us; since no other candidates are allowed, we don’t have to think up songs for any others (not that it’s not tempting).
But seriously: No Dancing, please. Those images are just too shiver-inducing to be borne.
Wendy, Thanks for posting this. I’m voting for Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala. Those two ladies have guts! I’m sure they knew they would be arrested, but handcuffed to chairs in a warehouse for eight hours, yikes! When the Dems and Repugs work so hard at closing the debates to third parties, that indicates there is some real fear there. And where there is fear, there is vulnerability. If we can get third party candidates on the debate stage, the Dems and Repugs records might be held up to more intense scrutiny, and they know it.
Welcome, Janet Rhodes, and yes.
I just watched a video of Cheri on RT, explaining her take on the event. It’s a faulty video, but she is advising that we ‘bring democracy to America’, which is what many of us, and certainly OWS want.
I’m thinking of posting it, but still poking around for mainstream coverage, and some bits about the CPD to flesh it out. She says that both hands were cuffed, and somehow that took my rage over the top. Wish we knew if they were even allowed bathroom breaks.
Anyhoo, I’m trying to think what’s next.
They were arrested and “would be charged with ‘obstructing traffic’.”
Were they charged with any misdemeanor or crime?
There is (new and improved this year) legislation (PDF), H.R. 347 (also passed by unanimous consent by the Senate), probably not applied to Stein and Honkala, though it could have been applied.
That revised legislation needs to be tested (and struck down).
The image that has stayed with me is a split screen of the suit guys strolling and orating, parading around their circle of stonefaced chairsitters (fortunately without plastic handcuffs, but just as equally restrained except for being allowed to cheer the Benghazi ‘moment’ that must have brought some kind of curse onto all who made much of it – while in a dark warehouse somewhere two ladies sit chained for eight hours virtually muzzled. It’s a striking parallel – the obfuscations being sliced and parried a la Douglas Fairbanks (showing my age, well, think Johnny Depp) whilst truth sits below decks gagged and bound as the sea trickles in through badly caulked seams…
Split your screens, you TV impresarios! There’s theatre for you!
They were charged with disorderly conduct, and Cheri says they face a trial; we’ll see how that plays out.
Yes, I thought that was far more than a ‘kerfuffle’, and wrote about it back in March. Sadly, a commenter who disagreed, and did lots of her/his own research and brought it in grew peeved with me, and never posted again here. Very sad, and I even tried to make it right.
But a quick look at the pdf you linked, given that it was Secret Service that held them, this creepy, overly broad section seemed to be possibly applicable:
I’d thought of it yesterday, and couldn’t remember the bill, this, not the title of this post. So thank you so very kindly!
I read the Nation piece, and was amazed in many directions, but especially at the editors’ rewriting or misunderstanding recent political history. My stars.
I was surprised to see the limited appearances at debates by third parties that wiki lists, because I certainly remember lots of third party ‘debating’ going on all through the years since Kennedy – and I would put that memory down to the access third parties have always had to the general media, especially tv, and those were days without cable as well, so for us who can’t afford pay tv, such conversations are really closed to us now,( if indeed there are as many going on after corporatization, which I very much doubt.)
Those were the days when the Sunday morning talk shows were actually full spectrum debates in themselves, by reporters without corporate skin in the game. With plenty of access as well for candidates to do newspaper editorials or essays for a public that still read newspapers! I used to love the electoral season, believe it or not, because you got to hear those new ideas from third parties, and they did make a difference to the mainstream parties as well.
It was as these avenues closed that it became more important for third parties to gain access to the debates, since they were being monied out of the arena of public discourse, the debates being the one area the general public trying to earn a living might in fact notice them and listen to their positions.
One point on wikipedia I really liked was that Eleanor Roosevelt thought debating on tv was a great idea to educate the youth – she was no shirker!
Arrgh. Looks like I didn’t speak to all this info you brought; thank you, and the editorial comments were stellar, plus funny. ;o) OTOH, it turns out that I hadn’t messed myself up with pain products. I woke with it all, and it seems to be a bout of BPPV, inner ear vertigo: lots of dizzy the products can make, but none of the relief. ;o)
I’ll just paste together stuff to go with Cheri’s interview on RT; I’d wanted to hear more from her in any event.
This country really has become unrecognizable in our lifetimes, hasn’t it? I’ve been a hardcore political junkie since I was a senior in high school, due almost entirely to my amazing world history and civics teacher, Mr. Stout. He told us to leave our books in our lockers; instead he wrote our lessons on the blackboard and gave us The White House Transcripts to read. And he was also hella cute. He went on to be a civil rights attorney. I wonder if he knows how many little radicals he is responsible for? Anyway, that was back in the days when even a small town in Texas thought it was important for school kids to have civics lessons.
Friends my age who are on the Obama bandwagon are still totally appalled at the treatment Jill and Cheri received. And of course, they didn’t know about it until I told them. I see little cracks in the walls of denial and it makes me just a tiny bit hopeful.
Good morning, wendydavis. Sorry to hear about your vertigo. That is so debilitating; nothing you can do but wait for it to subside (at least in my experience).
Looking forward to your Cheri Honkala interview.
Yes, I sure do remember! The very first rift in my devotion to exceptionalism came as I drove home from work listening on radio to the Supreme Court give away the farm. That was a ‘Kennedy assassination’ moment for me, where I was, how I felt – frozen in time. (Remember, I was a newbie citizen at the time – they took that away from me!)
As to my secret life, I hereby make all known to all – I have been wendydavising in the Capital City, got myself one copy of ‘The Master and Margarita’ and read it on the plaza, and now awaiting a second translation, plus a big Russian dictionary (on order) – I see black cats and other nightmarish manifestations ’round every corner, so it must be getting close to Halloween (oh no, that was the town hall debate, sorry.)
In the vein of ‘you had to be there’, you had to be me.
I wish (and wish again) that ‘funny’ gives some relief. Breathing in only through the nose can also be helpful.
The Nation endorsement sounds like it’s written by the editor, Kristina low-expectations-high-cheekbones Vanden Heuvel. They eat a different kind of grits in New York.
Bugger all; so much good stuff to answer. But if I do it now, I’ll never get this next one pasted together (still in my nightshirt, too, but no Cheetos, so I’m still barely okay…)(the Dizzy Ditz sayed hopefully…)
“Don’t fall in the garbage disposal!” say the websites on vertigo. (Whew; we don’t have one…we compost.) ;o)
We can wait. Be well.
Yes, and now they are calling in the chips – Daniel Ellsberg is the latest of the ‘o noes’.
I guess they are saving Amy for last.
Very inspiring, though, the pushback these affronts are precipitating. Independent thinking is becoming fashionable again. It may take a while, but it is definitely catching on.
The Golden Age of black & white teevee and the nascent Peacock allowed no dissent from the Corporate State’s party line. Not that I ever paid any attention to ‘the news’ or to electoral politics until I reached draft age in 1962 and found Indochina on my World Book globe at home. On teevee, the animators were making Indochina bleed red from falling dominoes. Or did I see that in the Warner-Pathe newsreels at the movies? It all looked the same, like the 16 mm movies we were shown in public school. At noon on Mondays the community’s air-raid sirens blasted away, we ducked under our desks and covered our heads because the Soviets could drop a bomb that would shatter the windows of our classroom and everywhere else in The Free World.
CBS’s William Paley and NBC’s David Sarnoff were patriots and believed it was their duty to allow the CIA (and Hoover’s FBI to a lesser extent) to participate (the word is ‘infiltrate’) in their networks’ news divisions, much as the major newspapers and magazines were also allowing, for the serious purpose of “manufacturing consent” (Noam Chomsky) and “inventing reality” (Michael Parenti).
An underground press (Rolling Stone, Ramparts, Evergreen, etc.) had developed during the 1960′s and had reached sub-mainstream during Nixon’s first term. He got Congress to raise postal rates and restrict size, which had the effect of downsizing Life Magazine (which shut down for a few years), and putting Ramparts and Evergreen out of business. He also removed several hundred millions of federal funds from higher education support, which had the effect of keeping new, young (rambunctious) hires out of academia. (It was customary for elite universities to hire, for a year or two, recent Ph.D.’s on the cheap and send them on their way with a strong CV.) The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964-65 made it awkward and then impossible for news sources to continue to peddle their deceptions.
The nearly-ineffable economic turmoils of the post-Watergate, later 1970′s shifted the so-called news focus to gas prices and out-of-control inflation. Maybe we know the rest, maybe not.
Anyway, by the middle of Reagan’s first term, US policy makers had determined (correctly) that public opinion was chiefly made via teevee, displacing that role held by newspapers and magazines. 1980 or so is when CNN revolutionized the news cycle into the 24/7 Thing we’re familiar with.
Just today I read that Newsweek is discontinuing its print edition.
And…The Village Voice, 1955. ;o)
Thank you, hfc; I have a few tricks from my bodywork days. Hard to do on myself in this condition, but… ;o)
Have me laughin’ dear one. And I’m soooo glad you got your books. You deserve everything in life.
Love to think about Johnny Depp, especially in Wonderland.Benny and Joon.
But what a wonderfully stark image; there should be a video. ‘Both hands cuffed while candidates on stage fiddle Rome’.
I also omitted my all-time favorite: Paul Krassner’s The Realist. ;o)
I feel it is super important that we support all and any third party candidates. (Although of course, if we vote, we can only chose one.) But Rocky is making a good contribution to the efforts to return the nation to its ideals, and I hate dividing us indie voters up over minor points.
I hope someday to go into a poling place on election day, and see six or seven or more parties on the ballot, with no one knowing who will win.
Well, I’m certainly no expert, AitchD, having been a new arrival in the late ’50′s and then four years of college, which really was the ivory tower then – no media of any kind. So, my memory only goes back to 1962 for ongoing exposure, though somehow I was aware of the Kennedy/Nixon debates and Eisenhower did visit our campus Freshman year – (bodies appearing unexpectedly on rooftops round about.) There’s certainly plenty of history that’s come out since then, but I think we did get informed enough (remember McNeil/Lehrer, no similarity to the current lot?) to know enough to object to the Vietnam war. (Ah, the Smothers Brothers, and all that – sure CBS was a meanie, but it did get covered.)
But as I say, no expert me. No doubt there was plenty of hoodwinking going on as well.
The 1960 televised debates impressed me because I had no idea what anyone was talking about, but to this day I can assure anyone that “Quemoy and Matsu” must have been important. It’s all I remembered and remember, other than Kennedy’s famous accent.
As you probably know, the teevee viewers thought Kennedy won, while the radio audience thought Nixon won. Maybe today’s digital FM radios can hear an upper lip sweating over a five-o’clock shadow. Kennedy had good hair, but Nixon had that baritone, the prerequisite voice for on-air gravitas.
Most important, in 1960 their neckties and lapels were very narrow, I’d say the narrowest in the history of electoral politics. The next televised debates were in 1976, but I still had a small, cheap TV. Carter’s and Ford’s neckties were huge, and their lapels were too wide for my screen, so I missed a lot
By 1992 I’d got a 20″ Sony Trinitron (couldn’t even afford that), which I needed for Clinton’s wide shoulder pads, Gore’s too. But in the early 2000′s that TV burst its sides when the news talk shows would put on Jerry Falwell.