Guest Blogger of the Week

Courtesy the Media Consortium's McCain NewsLadder

Just days before the second face-to-face, nationally televised meeting of presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain came a torrent of accusations and innuendo against Obama, the Democrat, by McCain, the Republican, and his GOP surrogates--especially his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.  By week's end, Palin would be standing with egg on her face, chided by the Alaska state legislature for abuse of power in violation of the state Ethics Act., and to have relationships with a couple of anti-government (as in anti-United States Government) types in her home state.

Before the week officially began, accusations against Obama that had months earlier failed to make a splash were urgently regurgitated by McCain and Palin--most especially an inference that Obama's acquaintance with a Chicago figure who was active in the Weather Underground in the 1960s proves a disregard for his own country by the  
Democratic candidate.

As the McCain campaign tried to link Obama to former Weatherman William Ayers, respectable news organizations, Truthdig reports, questioned the claims as racially charged and misleading:

<blockquote>"Americans need to ask themselves if they've ever befriended an unrepentant terrorist," says McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds. The AP called similar remarks by running mate Sarah Palin "racially tinged" and Time said the claim was "simply wrong," but the McCain campaign shows no signs of backing down from its new  
strategy.</blockquote>

Election Day is less than a month away, and our efforts to make sure that low-income and minority voters have a voice and vote on November 4th are in full swing. Unfortunately, just as we've seen in previous election cycles, the more success we have in empowering these voters, the more attacks we have to fend off from partisan forces making unfounded accusations to disparage our work and help maintain the status quo of an unbalanced electorate. We want to take this opportunity to separate the facts of our successes from the falsehoods of our attackers.

On Monday, October 6, as voter registration deadlines passed in most states, ACORN completed the largest, most successful nonpartisan voter registration drive in history. In partnership with the nonpartisan organization Project Vote, we helped register over 1.3 million low-income, minority, and young voters in a total of 21 states. Highlights of this success include:

We collected over 151,000 registrations in Florida, 153,000 in Pennsylvania, 215,000 in Michigan, and nearly 250,000 in Ohio.

An estimated 60-70 percent of our applicants are people of color.

At least HALF of all are registrations are from young people between 18-29.

We are proud of this unprecedented success, and grateful to everyone who supported us in this massive effort, from our funders and partners to the literally thousands of hardworking individuals across the country who dedicated themselves to the cause and conducted the difficult work of registering 1.3 million Americans, one voter at a time.

And this work is far from over: now begins our effort mobilize these new voters around local and national issues, getting them to the polls and helping to channel their commitment and conviction into an ongoing movement for change in our communities.

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin’ redneck," like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re "untested."

Forgive my exasperation but I am stunned that main stream media is doing such a poor job investigating the security (or exposing the lack thereof) of the American elections. I have worked in the technology and networking industry long enough to know that NO electronic vote is safe.

Even voter-verified electronic votes with a paper receipt are subject to electronic theft. Think of this: The country votes on November 4th. Barring any massive errors, we know the name of the newly elected (or selected) President on November 5th. There’s no time for audits, no time for recounts, no time for security checks. The number that the electronic boxes report is the number CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, and MSNBC will report. Changing the results of an election after calling the winner would be catastrophic for the country. Riots galore. Therefore it is vitally important that we have—and are counting—the ACTUAL results on November 4th.

There is no way to do this using electronic machines. Technologists can tack all the safeguards they like onto an electronic voting machine (paper trail, voter verification, locks, glass cases, beeps, whistles, etc.), but it is still—pardon the expression—putting lipstick on a horrendously ugly, vomit-spewing, farty pig. Once the vote is digitized it can be changed with zero evidence. One million anonymous votes can be changed in three seconds. That’s simply the nature of digital data. (Try changing one million paper ballots! I’ll give you … six seconds! Betcha can’t.)

"The sliver of sky that keeps me alive." That was the phrase I'd mutter to myself throughout my year on Wall Street as I walked around downtown Manhattan amid the skyscrapers on my breaks. That's what got me through that year about twenty years ago.

I had recently graduated from college with a co-major from the math and philosophy departments. The market had crashed, but I managed to land a job at Moody's Investors Service. Aspects of the job were interesting--I got to play with SQL database and C, which was moderately interesting. But mostly it was doing mundane fixes for the software that ran Moody's records of various companies.

The software was used by an entire floor full of clerical workers, "the poor shleps," "the people upstairs," who typed in data all day long, whose jobs were more boring than my own, but who I suppose at least got to commiserate with scores of co-workers.

After a while my boredom compelled me to barely work at all. I was stunned as I'd get paychecks I didn't feel were earned. Then it occurred to me: They weren't paying me for the work I was doing, they were paying me for work I wasn't doing. They were paying me for my passivity. They were paying me for my silence. They were paying me NOT to do certain things. To NOT apply my skills in certain ways that might threaten their interests.

My boss was actually a relatively decent guy. When I told him I was resigning, he seemed genuinly curious about my feelings. Told me about one time he quit a job and wanted to shout "Free at Last" a la Martin Luther King. I told him it was a Henry David Thoreau quote from "Civil Disobedience" that was echoling through my mind:

 
Joe Biden

1. Don’t grit your teeth and say, ”I am too a patriot!”
2. Don’t plagiarize Sarah Palin.
3. Prove you are Joe Six Pack.
4. Throw jabs. Don’t go for the knock out.
5. Smile but don’t be smug.

Sarah Palin
1. Remember the name of whatever publication or website you read.
2. Remember what you read.
3. Stay away from Russian stuff, and Canada too!
4. Smile. A lot.
5. Don’t look like a moose caught in headlights.

You

1. No laughing.
2. Keep score.
3. Drink heavily.
4. Txt often.
5. Blog when appropriate.