Here's a very interesting take on the voting patterns in the U.S., which so many of us assume to include poor people voting against their own economic interests. My main quibble is that he doesn't seem to consider the effect of the pervasive Republican propaganda machine, or the fact that election results can be drastically altered by convincing even 2% of former Democratic voters to switch because of the so-called "values" issues.  But still worth reading. From Gary Younge in today's Guardian (U.K.):

Lee and I always debate things, among them, how is it with massive deficits, a failed "war", poor health care, terrible low-paying jobs, well, how are the folks so fooled by Texas Hat? Join me now for some Six history....

Kudos to The Economist magazine for at least telling the truth about the current state of things in the course of its cheerleading for globalization and free markets.

File this under "we sort of knew that", but the hard data is all the same........

The trick that our political leaders have played on us is to confuse the real threat from certain groups such as al-Qaida, its sympathizers and their ideological allies with an imaginary threat from selected countries. This gives them a workable justification, for political and public relations purposes, to pursue military and other actions against governments that they find inconvenient to their plans for any particular region.

Leapin' lizards, Daddy Warbucks, say it ain't so!...

It's easy to look at the environment at Guantanamo and see nothing but the negative: indefinite detention without proof or charges, torture and other "harsh" treatment, uncertainty as to your fate and safety, and other stuff.

But the Department of Defense, under the able leadership of Donald ("love that homily") Rumsfeld is here to remind us that everything has a sunny side.

If you were foolish enough to think that the thousand serious problems facing our ever-diminishing country had distracted the free marketeers from their push to privatize everything that does and doesn't move, think again.

One consequence of swinging to the absolute extreme of the political spectrum is that you put the moderate members of your party a lot closer to your opponents than to you.

Just ask Ohio Republicans, who are now sniping at each other over the decision of several prominent Repubs to support the Dem candidate for Governor over the Republican choice of Kenneth ("keep down the vote") Blackwell.

Tom Noe, the leading figure in Ohio's disgraceful "coingate" fiasco, has also been convicted of illegal campaign contributions to George Bush. Now the national Republican committee says the illegal funds will be donated "to charity" (emphasis added):

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