off the agenda

Take a look at some of the posts over the last year on gregpalast.com or blackboxvoting.org, and you'll see part of the problem I have with the US Presidential election season, namely, that the whole question of whether we actually get to vote is unanswered. We have the chair of the Kansas GOP actually putting to print his brag that he has successfully "caged" (i.e. stolen) votes in a wholesale manner. It's the tip of an ongoing 50-state Republican antidemocracy effort, started and previously supervised by a certain Mr. Rove. That's on top of the already exposed thrown election in 2004 Ohio, on top of all manner of vote "spoilage," topped off by outright theft, like Diebold machines that switch votes right in your face.

Shall I make a list of other things off the Obama/Huckabee agenda? There's:

Socialized medicine

The vicious and escalating air war against Iraq

The planned-for-Spring air war versus Iran

Accountability for torture, Presidential signing statements, illegal war we were lied into, etc. (no impeachments, all pardoned)

Global climate change--the polar ice cap is to melt by 2013, is anyone awake? Hello?!

Millions of new Americans without documents or access to their own Social Security payments (Bienvenidos, indeed!)

--And that's just a start.

Oh, did I say "millions of new Americans?" Yes, I meant that. I didn't sign on to Left and progressive ideas just to select a class of people and sneer at them as "illegals." It was illegal to free slaves once here, but now we celebrate those who did it. We on the Left need to show some BIG solidarity for Hispanic immigrants or else admit that we have lost our hearts and our ideals. Writer and professor Aviva Chomsky points out in her book "They Take Our Jobs!" that nuestra hermanas y hermanos put $7 BILLION per year into Social Security. They have to leave it here, too. We can take a snot-nosed attitude towards millions of working class people and say they have to leave, or we can admit that they're already US Americans, stand up for their inalienable human rights, and form an unstoppable coalition. Not a tough choice if you ask me. Who's with me? (Is that a cricket?)

I didn't say it would be easy; I'm talking about by-and-large Catholics, and yes, the Pope's a Nazi (see my previous post). So what. We either have the guts for revolution, or we don't.

But to return to the point: With all these items off the agenda, the Presidential elections serve mostly as a mind-control forum conducted by the corporate media. Wherever their corporatist agenda is threatened, they attack--as in the Howard Dean audio-manipulated "scream," as in asking Dennis Kucinich about freaking UFOs, as in keeping Ron Paul off the FOX debates even though he outranks Giuliani in any poll (no, I'm not for Ron Paul).

The TV stays off.