Tom Hanks on history and Obama

Beware: Celebrity Endorsement

Robo calls traced to Clinton supporter

Deceptive robo-calls which have reportedly targeted black voters in North Carolina have been traced to Women’s Voices Women Vote, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit. Women’s Voices founder and President Page Gardner has made substantial contributions to the Clinton campaign.

The calls suggest that one cannot vote unless one returns a signed statement to be found in a registration packet that the listener received in the mail. Women’s Voices has been implicated in similar illegal voter suppression efforts in multiple states across the country. The NC NAACP has filed a formal complaint with Attorney General Roy Cooper.

Numerous voters in WNC have reported getting the deceptive calls.

For more, click here.

Moyers right about Wright

Why I endorsed Obama

GM crops fail their own test

If you’re among the many gardeners and farmers who have entertained suspicions that corporate claims for Genetically Modified crops were overblown, congrats. You were right. Recent research has established that crop yields fall when farmers switch to GM seeds. The only thing that gets greener is corporate profits.

Exposed: The Great GM Crops Myth

By Geoffrey Lean

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

Read more, click here.

Michael Moore endorses Obama

My Vote’s for Obama (if I could vote)
by Michael Moore

April 21st, 2008

Friends,

I don’t get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.) couldn’t get their act together, and thus our votes will not be counted.

So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote — and yours — on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama?

I haven’t spoken publicly ’til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don’t give a rat’s ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there’s a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word “Democratic” next to the candidate’s name.

Seriously, I know so many people who don’t care if the name under the Big “D” is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.

Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I’ve watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name “Farrakhan” out of nowhere, well that’s when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the “F” word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama’s pastor does — AND the “church bulletin” once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

Yes, Senator Clinton, that’s how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can’t win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry “Uncle (Tom)” and give it all to you.

But that can’t happen. You cast your die when you voted to start this bloody war. When you did that you were like Moses who lost it for a moment and, because of that, was prohibited from entering the Promised Land.

How sad for a country that wanted to see the first woman elected to the White House. That day will come — but it won’t be you. We’ll have to wait for the current Democratic governor of Kansas to run in 2016 (you read it here first!).

There are those who say Obama isn’t ready, or he’s voted wrong on this or that. But that’s looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what’s going on is bigger than him at this point, and that’s a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

I know some of you will say, ‘Mike, what have the Democrats done to deserve our vote?’ That’s a damn good question. In November of ‘06, the country loudly sent a message that we wanted the war to end. Yet the Democrats have done nothing. So why should we be so eager to line up happily behind them?

I’ll tell you why. Because I can’t stand one more friggin’ minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I’m almost at the point where I don’t care if the Democrats don’t have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain’t “Bush” and the word “Republican” is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that’s good enough for me.

I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled senseless for 8 long years. That’s why I will join millions of citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters — that big “D” on the ballot.

Don’t get me wrong. I lost my rose-colored glasses a long time ago.

It’s foolish to see the Democrats as anything but a nicer version of a party that exists to do the bidding of the corporate elite in this country. Any endorsement of a Democrat must be done with this acknowledgement and a hope that one day we will have a party that’ll represent the people first, and laws that allow that party an equal voice.

Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout at the TV, “Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for ’spiritual counseling?’ THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!”

But no, Obama won’t throw that at her. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be decent. She’s been through enough hurt. And so he remains silent and takes the mud she throws in his face.

That’s why the crowds who come to see him are so large. That’s why he’ll take us down a more decent path. That’s why I would vote for him if Michigan were allowed to have an election.

But the question I keep hearing is… ‘can he win? Can he win in November?’ In the distance we hear the siren of the death train called the Straight Talk Express. We know it’s possible to hear the words “President McCain” on January 20th. We know there are still many Americans who will never vote for a black man. Hillary knows it, too. She’s counting on it.

Pennsylvania, the state that gave birth to this great country, has a chance to set things right. It has not had a moment to shine like this since 1787 when our Constitution was written there. In that Constitution, they wrote that a black man or woman was only “three fifths” human. On Tuesday, the good people of Pennsylvania have a chance for redemption.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MichaelMoore.com
MMFlint@aol.com

Times investigation blows lid off Pentagon propaganda in U.S.

A New York Times investigation has exposed the fraudulent activity of “military analysts” employed by the mainstream media to push the White House and Pentagon agenda in their misguided “war on terror.”

No. Really? The U.S. government propagandizing its own citizens? Peel me from the pavement.

An excerpt:

” Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley. In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.”

To read more, click here.

Obama Ahead By Too Much, Leading Bloggers Call For His Withdrawal

With Barack Obama surging in the Gallup tracker, which shows him up by 10 points over Hillary Clinton and 2 over John McCain, influential voices renewed their calls for him to withdraw across this site today.

Great fun. To read the rest of this one, click here.

Newspaper priorities: exonerated death row inmate, not important

The following letter was sent to the Asheville Citizen-Times by local attorney Frank Goldsmith. We should all be paying attention.

***

Dear AC-T Editors and Publishers,

On Friday I was contacted by a nice young woman who is working as an intern for your newspaper, who asked if I would agree to be interviewed about the case of Glen Edward Chapman, the Catawba County man who was recently released from Death Row after being incarcerated for over 15 years for crimes he did not commit. I agreed because of the importance of the story, which exposes the substantial frailties of our system of justice. When I arrived for the interview, I was surprised to learn from the intern that her editor – I do not know which one – had decided that the story was not sufficiently newsworthy to merit inclusion in the weekend edition. The young lady did not tell me that in order to criticize the editor or the paper, but simply to let me know why I would not be reading the story in the Citizen-Times over the weekend.

I find this baffling – all the more so after weighing the significance of the stories that turned up in the weekend edition. This case is about a man who was very nearly sent to his death because police detectives lied at trial, covered up the existence of a confession by the real killer, ditched the results of a photo lineup in which someone else was positively identified, hid witness statements that pointed to innocence, and altered other witness statements to make them better fit the officers’ theory of guilt (it was those fabricated statements that were disclosed to the defense lawyers, to throw them off the track). It is a case of official corruption so striking that I cannot see how any responsible journalist could decide that it is not “newsworthy.” The deceit was compounded by the complete ineptness of the lawyers assigned to defend Chapman at his trial, as well as by other flaws, including forensic medical evidence that questions whether one of the victims’ deaths was actually a homicide at all.

I realize the Asheville Citizen-Times is a small regional paper that gives prominence to items of local interest. But even if locality is the criterion for coverage, this case has connections to Western North Carolina, if only any of the paper’s editors had bothered to inquire. Most people in the state consider Hickory, where the alleged crimes occurred, to be part of Western North Carolina. Every member of Chapman’s post-conviction defense team is from Asheville or Marion. Our mitigation specialist and investigator, Dr. Pamela Laughon, is a well-respected professor of psychology (and chair of that department) at UNCA. Several of her UNCA psychology students worked on the case under her supervision. Our other investigator, Lenora Topp, lives and works in Asheville. Jessica Leaven, my co-counsel, formerly practiced in Asheville and has family here, although she recently took a job in Chapel Hill. I practice in Marion and live in Buncombe County. Of course, I would hope the paper would not exclude any story that has significance for our system of capital punishment merely because the news is not sufficiently provincial.

I am not raising this issue merely to see my name in print. Frankly, having been interviewed about the case by all of the major newspapers in the state and by several television stations (including WLOS), as well as by CNN, NPR, and other media, I would be just as happy if a story ran about this case and omitted any mention of me. On the other hand, I am very concerned that our criminal justice system lacks any meaningful safeguard against the possibility that the truth-finding process will be perverted by unscrupulous officers bent on justifying an arrest, even when the result is to send an innocent man to his death in the execution chamber. I believe your readers need to understand the gravity of that flaw through a story about a man who was unjustly robbed of 15 years of his life. If such a story is not newsworthy, I do not know what is. The state’s major newspapers, including the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer, have each written excellent editorials (in addition to their front-page news coverage) about the case and its exposure of the frailties of our criminal justice system, yet all the Asheville Citizen-Times chose to do was bury a very small story taken entirely from a wire service in the inside pages of Section B. Even The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ran stories with more information.

If this were an isolated failure on your paper’s part, perhaps it would be understandable. But last November, after Judge Robert Ervin of Morganton issued his ruling finding that the officers had lied and concealed evidence, on the basis of which he awarded Mr. Chapman a new trial, your paper was completely silent, despite the statewide coverage at that time, including pointed editorials in the News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer. On that occasion I made sure you knew about this significant ruling by a respected judge, because on the day after it appeared, I e-mailed to you a copy of a press release from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (which you should already have received from the Center the day before), as well as links to some of the other news articles. I followed that up with another inquiry to make sure my messages were received. I heard absolutely nothing in reply, and your newspaper completely ignored the story.

I gave an interview to the intern anyway, since she genuinely seemed interested in the case. She appears to be very competent and has, I believe, a bright future as a journalist. I can only hope that she succeeds in finding a position with a paper capable of recognizing news worth reporting.

Sincerely yours,

Frank Goldsmith

The very best thing about Barack Obama

by Mark Morford

Nope, it’s not what you might think. The best thing about Barack Obama has almost nothing to do with him as a person or as a leader or even as Oh My God The First Black President Who Could Really Change Everything I Mean Wow. It’s not even the wondrous oratory power or the charisma or the sweet sense of deeper change overlaid with all kinds of sparkly utopian futuriffic goodness.

There is, I think, something more. Something richer. And it’s rather startling.

See, I’ve read the profiles and the liberal fawnings and the intelligent analysis, the attempted takedowns and the right-wing smears, all the valiant attempts to dig up something dirty or problematic or frightening about Obama and his family, his past, his middle name, his beliefs and his pastor and his favorite flavor of ice cream — attempts that, rather amusingly, have all failed.

Read the rest (click here).

My campaign is delivering free Obama ‘08 signs in Buncombe County. Click here.