I invite reader comments on my new e-book “For a United America – An Agenda For Change” available for free download at www.aamerica.us.

The book hypothesizes that the political challenges faced by the United States will not go away, regardless of which presidential candidate is chosen, because the political system itself has been weakened and the people have lost confidence in it. Unless the integrity of the political system is enhanced, the issues facing the nation are unlikely to be resolved.

The book pinpoints the disconnects that exist between the constituents and their representatives, and how partisan forces prevent progress on the issues. It outlines a comprehensive agenda for change that can strengthen the political system with the active support of the people, discusses how power-sharing arrangements in Congress can improve its outlook, and suggests how various political protocols can be strengthened to deal with political emergencies.

Loser Take All is a wakeup call at 3 a.m. from a screaming relative. Take heed.

SOURCE: InTheseTimes.com

The Great Election Robbery of 2008? By LAURA S. WASHINGTON

Come Nov. 4, the elephant in the polling booth is the possibility that the 2008 presidential election will be stolen - again.

Loser Take All is a new collection of essays edited by Mark Crispin Miller. Subtitled "Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008," the book reviews a contemporary slew of electoral mischief, hubris and thievery.

Miller has been around this block before. A professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, Miller authored the 2007 book, Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform. He is a leading voice on media activism and electoral reform.

Miller wastes no time diving into the gloom and doom. By page three of his wide-ranging, sarcasm-laden introduction, he suggests that the United States is headed toward a fascist state. While "the guardians of the establishment" on both sides of the aisle crow that American Democracy is a shining beacon for the world, Miller writes, our so-called free and fair elections are seriously corrupted. He argues the American media has done its darndest to rewrite history and that the Bush/Cheney "re-election" of 2004 was a "masterpiece of fraud."

Entire chapter viewable here

McCain and the Media

New Chapter - How the media has covered McCain since Free Ride went to press

John McCain is now the presumptive presidential nominee of his party, a position that is accompanied by increased scrutiny and skepticism from the nation's political press. Or at least that's what ordinarily happens. But as we know by now, the rules are different for John McCain. Just a few months ago, McCain had cratered in the polls, and few thought he could bounce back. Yet there was one group of people who had not only the desire but the ability to give McCain the boost he needed, just when he needed it....

About the Authors:

David Brock is the author of four political books, including The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. In his preceding book, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, a 2002 New York Times bestselling political memoir, he chronicled his years as a conservative media insider. Brock currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Come ring in the Iowa caucus vote with progressive political author Glenn Hurowitz.

Glenn will be speaking at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, NH on Thursday, Jan. 3rd, 2008 at 7 p.m. His new book, "Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party," challenges Democrats to show more political courage and embrace confrontation.

SOURCE: OpEdNews OpEdNews

August 12, 2007

By Joan Brunwasser A Timely Second Look at Mark Crispin Miller’s Fooled Again – Introduction to a Multi-Part Series by Joan Brunwasser, Voting Integrity editor, OpEdNews July 12, 2007

Let’s face it, computers sometimes just don’t work.

I have much anecdotal evidence to prove my point, a selection of which I will share with you now.

O’Hare

When I returned from the Take Back America Conference in Washington DC one evening earlier this summer, I flew into Midway Airport, the pint-sized cousin of world-class O’Hare. When my husband came to pick me up, he told me that O’Hare, one of the largest airports in the world, had been shut down for several hours because a computer breakdown kept personnel from calculating how much baggage each plane could safely carry. Planes were not permitted to take off, causing a domino effect of hundreds of delayed and cancelled flights. It didn’t reach epidemic proportions because there was a backup computer that eventually kicked in. But the damage was done, and I was grateful that, for a change, O’Hare hadn’t figured in my plans that evening.

SOURCE: WorkingforChange.com

The Right Gives Away Its Guidebook - Will We Listen?

By David Sirota

During my recent two-week vacation, I read seven nonfiction books, each one of them about American history, politics and culture (I am a huge nerd). During the non-vacation parts of my year, I probably complete a grand total of three books, but when I am on vacation and unplugged from the world, I get a chance to read books all the way through. And the seven I picked this time around were some of the best books I’ve read in a long time – books that every progressive and/or aspiring writer should pick up because they teach us lessons on all the things we think we know, but clearly do not. This is the first of three posts I will do on the books I read. (This one is devoted to only one of the books I read, because it was such an important book – but the other two posts will include groupings of books).

Armed Madhouse, the new book by Greg Palast

THE CON

Kerry Won. Now Get Over It . . .

...because they're putting '08 in their pocket. Republicans just seem to have that winning spirit. They also have caging lists, felons of the future, rotting ballots, snuffed canaries, and a lock on the votes of Kissinger- Americans and the undead.

WARNING! There are cranks and kooks and crazies out there on the Internet who say that George Bush lost the 2004 election, like one titled, "Kerry Won" published on the TomPaine.com web site two days after the election. I wrote it.

On November 11, a week after TomPaine.com published it, I received an e-mail from The New York Times Washington Bureau. Hot on the investigation of the veracity of the vote, The Times reporter asked me pointed questions:

Question #1: Are you a "sore loser"?

Question #2: Are you a "conspiracy nut"?

There was no third question. Investigation of the vote was, for The Times at any rate, complete. The next day, the paper's thorough analysis of the evidence yielded this front-page story, "VOTE FRAUD THEORIES, SPREAD BY BLOGS, ARE QUICKLY BURIED."

read more and listen to the audio book below the fold

-----

http://www.earth-policy.org/

Check out the Earth Policy Institute Site. There are several great videos of Lester Brown's idea of how to lower individual taxes and to raise environmental taxes. This is definately an idea whose time has come! His new book Plan B, 2.0 will be a best seller.

Grist Magazine has a good interview with Lester Brown here.

A must read for all, in a conservative magazine!

It’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism

Last month, Scott McConnell caught up with Associate Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, whose book on suicide terrorism, Dying to Win, is beginning to receive wide notice. Pape has found that the most common American perceptions about who the terrorists are and what motivates them are off by a wide margin. In his office is the world’s largest database of information about suicide terrorists, rows and rows of manila folders containing articles and biographical snippets in dozens of languages compiled by Pape and teams of graduate students, a trove of data that has been sorted and analyzed and which underscores the great need for reappraising the Bush administration’s current strategy. Below are excerpts from a conversation with the man who knows more about suicide terrorists than any other American.

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html

Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press
by Kristina Borjesson (Editor), Gore Vidal (Foreword)

List Price: $26.00
rice: $16.38 & Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
You Save: $9.62 (37%)
Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours from Amazon.com


Buy it at Amazon.com and a portion of the proceeds benefits Democracy for New Hampshire.

In this classic text, the first full-scale application of cognitive science to politics, George Lakoff analyzes the unconscious and rhetorical worldviews of liberals and conservatives, discovering radically different but remarkably consistent conceptions of morality on both the left and right. For this new edition, Lakoff adds a preface and an afterword extending his observations to major ideological conflicts since the book's original publication, from the impeachment of Bill Clinton to the 2000 presidential election and its aftermath.

Buy it at Amazon.com and a portion of the proceeds benefits Democracy for New Hampshire.

DFA Grassroots,
My name is Scott Goldstein. I am 19 years old, and was a very active member of the Dean campaign. I volunteered for the campaign in over 5 states, interned, and worked for Generation Dean from American University in Washington D.C. I spent last summer in Burlington, VT as an intern for Democracy for America.

My new book, The Tea is in the Harbor, discusses the fight for Democracy in America, the role of the Howard Dean Presidential Campaign, and the work still ahead to take back our democracy.

One of “our most insightful social observers”* cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans

With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the “thirty-year backlash” — the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the Republican Party’s success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers.

In asking “what ’s the matter with Kansas?” — how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union — Frank, a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where’s the outrage at corporate manipulators? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? The questions are urgent as well as provocative. Frank answers them by examining pop conservatism — the bestsellers, the radio talk shows, the vicious political combat—and showing how our long culture wars have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders’ “values” and down-home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy.

by Joe Trippi

When Joe Trippi signed on to manage Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, the long-shot candidate had 432 known supporters and $100,000 in the bank. Within a year, Trippi and his energetic but inexperienced team had transformed the most obscure horse in the field into a front-runner, creating a groundswell of 640,000 people and raising more money than any Democrat in history — more than fifty million dollars — mostly through donations of one hundred dollars or less.

This is the story of how Trippi's revolutionary use of the Internet and an impassioned, contagious desire to overthrow politics as usual grew into a national grassroots movement and changed the face of politics forever. But it's also more than that.

It's about how to engage Americans in real dialogue, how business leaders, government leaders, and anyone else can make use of the most revolutionary idea to come along since man first learned to light a fire. No ... not the Internet. Or computers. Or telecommunications.

Democracy.

For those who thought the Dean campaign ended with a screaming speech in an Iowa ballroom, this book is a wake-up call. Joe Trippi explains how — right now — Internet democracy is trans forming every aspect of American life by evenly distributing power. He reveals innovations that are on the horizon, which companies are poised to become first-movers in this new era, and which are in danger of being left behind.

From his behind-the-scenes look at Dean's shocking rise and fall to his "seven inviolable, irrefutable, ingenious things your business or institution or candidate can do in the age of the Internet that might keep you from getting your ass kicked but then again might not," Joe Trippi offers an inspiring glimpse of the world we are becoming.

And he shows how power, in the hands of all of us, changes everything.

Buy it at Amazon.com and a portion of the proceeds benefits Democracy for New Hampshire.