not watching television

Rural Democrats . . .

I just got back from working the phones at the Democratic Campaign Headquarters in the small county seat of my rural Ohio home. Up until tonight I'd done my volunteering outside the county, phonebanking for ACT in Columbus and street canvassing for them in Newark, about 30 miles from here.

It was an interesting night. I was making second-round calls from registered-voter lists, trying to get hold of folks who weren't home the first time canvassers went through them.

I reached only a handful of voters and of those only one supported Kerry. Two were Bush supporters, one was undecided and asked to have Kerry materials sent in the mail, three declined to answer the poll questions we were asking, and two hung up.

Still, one of my fellow canvassers told me that in the past folks in our county were so overwhelmingly conservative that there would have been no point polling at all. She also said those who answered the phone, even the Republicans, were more patient and polite than would have been likely in previous years.

I'm not sure what to make of what she said. I've lived here over ten years but home-grown friends have regaled me with stories about how rabidly conservative the county has always been

This year things seem to be different, or at least more liberal-leaning folks are willing to make their preferences known. On my 8-mile drive to headquarters I saw lots and lots of Kerry-Edwards signs, while during past elections Democratic candidate yard signs were few and far between.

I'll be making more calls Monday evening and look forward to getting to know more about my fellow volunteers. One woman who worked the phones with me tonight said she was pooped because she spent part of the day singing protest songs -- from as far back as the American Revolution through Vietnam -- to an audience of brown-baggers at the county library. I told her I would love to have heard her group's program, and she said she'd let me know if they planned to perform publicly again . . .

I'm a city gal; living in a rural area dominated by a lot of religious right-wingers has often been difficult for me. So tonight was a real treat, to meet folks who have deep roots in this rural county and are Democrats down to the bone. The woman who spent the lunch hour singing protest songs is part of a family that has been here almost 200 years. She lives in a tiny farm town in the northern part of the county where more than one backroad bears her family's name. After she headed home I noticed she'd left a cartoon from The New Yorker behind: one of those great illustrations of two dowagers talking at a social gathering, the smiling one telling the grim one she should switch to the Democrats and enjoy politics for a change!

YAY! (Sorta)

Better news in my email bag this morning than yesterday. After Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell ruled that all voter registration forms must be on heavy, card-stock paper in order to be valid for the coming election, he was deluged with letters from outraged voters and seems to have reversed his position.

That sounds like good news for all the new voters who may have used online or newspaper-published forms to register. Unfortunately -- and perhaps deliberately, since Blackwell's Republican Party is far behind Ohio Dems in the voter registration race -- the secretary's flip-flop has created confusion among board of elections officials and staff in a number of counties, which will confuse voters' themselves about whether or not they're eligible to vote.

How's that for a tactic for depressing the turnout?

Here's the story that appeared in the Columbus Dispatch today:

Blackwell ends paper chase

Some could be unable to vote because of flap over registration forms
Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Catherine Candisky
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Under fire from voting-rights advocates, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell retreated yesterday from a directive that critics said would slow voter-registration efforts and even block some people from casting a ballot Nov. 2.

At issue is a reminder Blackwell issued this month to county boards of election that voter-registration forms must be printed on "white, uncoated paper of not less than 80-pound text weight," a heavy, cardlike stock.

While the Franklin County Board of Elections and others have continued accepting forms submitted on lighter-weight paper, some county elections officials said yesterday they have been disqualifying registrations because the paper was not thick enough.

Critics charged that the confusion and inconsistency threatened to prevent tens of thousands of wouldbe voters from participating in the general election and could trigger lawsuits challenging the results. They also blasted Blackwell for issuing the directive less than a month before Ohio’s voter registration deadline and at a time when elections officials are working aroundthe-clock to keep up with recordsmashing registration efforts in a presidential battleground state.

"There could be chaos on election The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 4. For information about how to register, contact your county board of elections, consult the Ohio secretary of state’s Web site at ohiospirit.org, or call 1-877-767-6446. day, and at the very least there is going to be inconsistencies," said Scott Britton, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio.

"We should be making it easier for people to register to vote, not harder."

Jocelyn Travis, Ohio coordinator for the Election Protection coalition and People for the American Way Foundation, said, "We can’t let a piece of paper stand between people and their right to register and vote."

The national coalition of more than 60 civil-rights organizations has been assisting voters and has trained 25,000 poll monitors to assist voters in black and Latino precincts in Ohio and 16 other states.

Last night, a spokesman for Blackwell denied that the GOP officeholder was trying to prevent people from voting and said county boards should accept voter registration forms on paper of any weight as long as they are otherwise valid.

"We’re not the paper police. We’re not going to go to county election boards and review voter registration forms," said Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo. "We want them to process the forms."

But LoParo disputed suggestions that Blackwell was reversing his Sept. 7 directive, which states that "any Ohio form not printed on this minimum paperweight is considered to be an application for a registration form. Your board should mail this appropriate form to the person listed on the application."

Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Denny White said, "This is an antiquated rule and an unnecessary barrier to voter-registration efforts going on in Ohio."

The requirement, LoParo said, is meant to prevent lightweight registration forms from being shredded by postal equipment. Ohio election law requires that the forms be a permanent record, and the weight requirement was set about a decade ago when Gov. Bob Taft was secretary of state.

LoParo said Blackwell wants election officials to process the lightweight registration forms and send the applicants a form on heavier-stock paper to return for a permanent record.

That was news to election officials in two counties, who said they have not been processing forms on underweight papers, per Blackwell’s directive.

In Pickaway County, Elections Director Johnda Perkins said her office already has sent letters and new forms to dozens of voters who registered on lightweight paper, asking them to return the heavier-weight forms.

Voters whose forms were disqualified have quickly responded by re-registering, she said.

In Madison County, Elections Director Gloria Herrel said her office has been sending a letter with an appropriate-weight registration card to would-be voters as their lightweight forms arrive. She could not estimate the number involved.

Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said, "We’ve received tens of thousands of forms on paper less than 80-pound weight and we’re accepting them.

"Frankly, in a year like this, with this kind of volume, we don’t have time to send them a new form."

In Delaware County, elections officials have been taping any lightweight forms they receive to paper of the correct weight.

"We don’t want any disenfranchised people out there," Elections Director Janet Brenneman said. "They sent in the cards in good faith."

The paper-weight debate wasn’t the only Blackwell directive coming under fire.

Ohio Democrats filed a federal lawsuit this week challenging state guidelines that would deny provisional ballots for people who show up at the wrong polling place.

Blackwell directed election officials to issue provisional ballots only to voters who are in the correct polling location. Democrats say federal law gives voters the right to obtain a provisional ballot and have it counted if they mistakenly go to the wrong precinct.

The controversy comes during the final push to sign up new voters before Monday’s deadline as well as the start of absentee voting yesterday.

Already, 25,000 absentee ballots are on their way out the door in Franklin County, compared with 6,500 the first day in 2000.

County elections workers are staffing the office 24 hours a day, six days a week, to keep up with registration forms. The 90,000 new voters now make up more than 10 percent of the electorate in a county that Democrat Al Gore won by only 5,000 votes in 2000.

The voter-registration deadline is Monday.

"In an election year like this where clearly the race for president is going to be close and in a county where things have tended to be closer and closer, adding 90,000 to the rolls changes the dynamic in all kinds of races," Damschroder said.

The expectation of a close election also is causing enormous scrutiny of seemingly insignificant rules such as paper weight, said Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for election news created in the wake of the 2000 presidential race.

"That we’re having discussion about 20-pound paper and 80-pound card stock may seem absurd, but anything that could potentially affect a thousand voters is something that people need to pay attention to," he said. "It’s front-page news."

The Flypaper Theory . . .

From Pie over at Atrios' place:

We've now lost over a thousand American troops and a number of civilians. The situation continues to deteriorate. The Bush administration continues to send in more people.

Iraq has become the flypaper for whom?

It's a good question. I have another one. Have any of these proponents of the flypaper theory ever seen flypaper used outside of some vintage animated cartoon? Well, I have. Farmers around where I live use it sometimes, especially inside barns where the horses and cattle live. It usually hangs from the rafters and beams over the stalls; long strips of sticky paper that are covered with flies in what seems like no time at all. Replacing the bug-clogged strips of paper is a regular chore; and as far as the flies go . . . there are constantly more . . .

(E)mail Call

Most of the bills still arrive by regular mail, but it's becoming even more unpleasant to open my email mailbox each morning. Here are just two examples:

From Howling At A Waning Moon, where Bob Whitson constantly adds to his extensive archive of articles and reports on the environment, comes news that Bush&Co have initiated a gag rule for all EPA employees, and this inspite of Congressional enactments designed to prevent such non-disclosure policies.

Y'know, I watched the Dauphin's address to the UN last week and this is part of what he said:

The democratic hopes we see growing in the Middle East are growing everywhere. In the words of the Burmese democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, We do not accept the notion that democracy is a Western value. To the contrary, democracy simply means good government rooted in responsibility, transparency and accountability.

I nearly fell off my chair when I heard him say that. The restrictions on EPA employees speaking with the press are further examples that, by Bush's own borrowed definition, we're no longer living in a democracy.

For further evidence of just what it is we are living in there's this horrific plea, which arrived from a frantic woman out in Nevada County, California:

There's something wrong, very wrong in California. The Chair of the California Democratic Committee resigned without warning and left no one in their place. We're horrible disorganized.

In my county, the threats are getting bigger and bolder. There are
written threats and phone threats to all democratic candidates for
all offices, including school board! Our last democrat was
pressured to become republican.

Our best candidate for supervisor (Nevada County) is a contractor,
and his business is being threatened if he runs.

Our local paper is doing nothing to report this! We've called the
ALCU, but are still waiting to hear back.

THIS IS MADNESS!

We are having a fundraiser for the Democratic Party this Friday, and
we plan to have protesters from the Repug side. We need all the
help we can get! We are offering to let people come for free (my
partner and I are paying for the band and catering the event out of
our pocket) so that there is a strong showing.

Most of our county democrats are senior citizens, and they are
afraid to put bumper stickers on their cars, ride in cars with Kerry
or local Dem stickers on it, etc.

If you are anywhere near Northern California-give me a sign! We
need your help! We are being terrorized for participating in the
political process. I have not seen politics this ugly since Nixon.

. . .

Desperately in Nevada County, CA

I've written to the sender for any documentation, verification or futher contacts s/he can provide. It's not that I doubt the story, but I'd like to know more so I can help disseminate information beyond my little blog perch in the boonies of Ohio.

If anyone who knows more about what's happening in Northern California -- or elsewhere, for that matter -- please send me email or post a comment here.

I've read a couple of blogger posts lately (sorry, no time to trace back to where) that argue we should start using the term "corporatism" -- the merger of State and corporate power -- to describe what's going on here these days. Maybe so. But these examples of censorship, repression, bullying and out-right terror sound more like creeping fascism to me . . .

Reading out loud . . .

An Old Soul's question, "Did Anyone Read to You?", has got me ruminating on the experience of reading aloud and how it has shaped my family . . .

My mom read to us from very small, Shari, and yes, teachers read to us in the classroom -- including some of the books you mention, though I'm probably at least a tooling gen older than you are -- but also Homer Price stories, and tales of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill (read-aloud selections were heavily weighted toward Scholastic Book Club selections and toward keeping the boys in class from squirming in their seats).

Amazingly, at the public grade/jr.hi school I attended one of the coolest things you could do was join the library club. Miss Maurice, the librarian, was a glamorous grey-haired eccentric who dressed in vibrating reds and purples and greens; and wore huge diamond (or diamond-like) rings on the nail-lacquered hands she waved expressively as she read to students during library period each week.

Under her supervision, kids in library club actually ran the library: the circulation desk, the bindery, the reading displays; and we each had a section of books to keep in order and weed. Part of my section was Dewey 927, the sports biographies. By the time I graduated I knew more than the average girl about baseball players like Billy "Pepper" Martin, Dimaggio, Roy Campanella and Phil Rizzuto -- which came in handy with shy 8th-grade boys back then.

There were books for almost every possible interest and taste in her library -- and it was her library -- all numbered on their spines according to the Dewey Decimal System in special, durable inks (another task the calligraphy-gifted among us were trained to do). Miss Maurice steered students toward quality through the selections she read aloud, but ultimately our choices were our own; preferrences didn't matter. The important thing was that we read . . .

So that's how I became a reader. Before our children were born my husband and I read big, fat books aloud to each other -- Moby Dick; The Lord of the Rings; An American Tragedy; even The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged. (We've been apart a long time now, but some of my best memories are of reading that last: acting out the Hank 'n Dagny sex scenes while laughing hysterically; slogging through Galt's Speech, then looking at each other and simultaneously saying, "What a load of crap!" And to think, Alan Greenspan was once an Ayn Rand acolyte . . .)

After our daughters were born we read to them, almost from day one. By that time my older sister, inspired in part by memories of the school librarian, had become a children's librarian, serving twice on the Newberry-Caldicott Committee that awards medals for the best children's and young-adult books each year. Since she passed all the books she received as a committee member on to us -- along with lots of her personal-favorites recommendations -- there were always plenty of books to read to the kids.

And read them aloud we did. The only mistake I ever made reading to Kate and Jo at bedtime was when my sister sent us a copy Roald Dahl's Matilda. I can still see them, ages 5 or 6, incensed at the injustices Matilda and Miss Honey faced and jumping up and down on their beds in fury.

After that we used Roald Dahl books for waking them up instead of putting them to sleep. But somehow that participatory impulse has stayed with them ever since. Even when they're home now, both grown women, if I hear them muttering out loud in another room, it's a safe bet they're talking back to some book held in their hands . . .

"An Unmitigated Disaster"

. . . That's what retired Air Force Col. Mike Turner, a former strategic policy planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff specializing in Middle East/Africa affairs, called the war in Iraq in a commentary published in Newsweek this week. Turner couldn't be more blunt in presenting his argument that Bush's mantra to "stay the course" is not an option. Indeed, he goes so far as to say that "[i]fBush is elected, there are only two possible outcimes in Iraq:

* Four years from now, America will have 5,000 dead servicemen and women and an untold number of dead Iraqis at a cost of about $1 trillion, yet still be no closer to success than we are right now, or

* The U.S. will be gone, and we will witness the birth of a violent breeding ground for Shiite terrorists posing a far greater threat to Americans than a contained Saddam."

Over at The Left Coaster, Pessimist hears the fat lady warming up in Taylor's commentary. I think I'm beginning to hear her, too.

Made my day . . .

Thanks, Dr. Menlo . . .

FOR THE SUBLIME:

AND THE REDICULOUS(ly satisfying):

Go ahead. Click the pic and give the man a smack!

Saturday's child . . .

According to the nursery rhyme, Saturday's child works hard for a living*. In the world of journalism, it's the day some folks print the truth for a living, too -- when other folks are least likely to catch them at it, apparently.

In my earlier post I noted that the NYTimes actually called a spade a spade in an editorial today, labeling the latest Bush campaign tactics against John Kerry "un-American".

Well, at the Washington Post, Dana Millbank actually managed to get a bit of faint Bush-in-gutter analysis on to Page One yesterday, while deeper in Dan Froomkin said the election comes down to whether you take Bush at face value -- or not. Of course, Friday's known as bit of a slow news day as well . . .

This morning AP even chimed in with a lengthy rundown of ways Bush&Co are "mischaracterizing" what Kerry has actually said.

Unfortunate, so far it's all weekend news. If the press and the rest of the media don't start hammering away at what's happening in this election, in this country, in Afghanistan and Iraq -- now, continually and constantly -- we're all gonna be Wednesday's children real soon . . .

UPDATE: Over in the comments section at Atrios site, Justin pointed out that AP changed the headline on the story from "Bush twists Kerry's words on Iraq" to ""Bush, Kerry twisting each other's words". I used the media guide at Congress.org to get email listings for the AP president, editors and reporter Loven so I could let them know what I thought about caving in to what was likely an astro-turf email campaign from right-wing groups. You may want to do the same

Catch 22

Tribal elders in southeastern Afghanistan have told their members to vote for Hamid Karzai in the upcoming elections or face having their homes burned to the ground.

So much for fair elections. But it gets worse. The Taliban, supposedly defeated but still operating in the area, have warned those same residents that they will be killed if they participate at all in the voting.

Our ersatz president keeps telling us freedom is on march. Frankly, it feels a lot more like democracy is on the run . . .

Inheritence

More or less substantiated stories about business connections between the Dauphin's grandfather and one-time US Senator Prescott Bush and the Nazis have been available around the Internet for some time now, but it's gratifying to see the links reported on in the mainstream press (Well, maybe not exactly mainstream, but in the UK Guardian, which is pretty close . . . ).

If you haven't followed the stories elsewhere, the Guardian piece provides a pretty concise overview of the charges, which include the claim that ol' PB profited mightily from investments in a German coal and steel company that used Auschwitz slave labor in its operations.

Two Auschwitz survivors are trying to bring a suit the Bush family and the US government under international law -- to the tune of $40 billion -- for having benefitted materially from Auschwitz slave labor during the war.

Of course I have no way of judging the merits of the case, though the Guardian article does describe some pretty strong evidence and arguments. Still, regardless of the legal validity of the plaintiffs claims, I will say this: the Bush family cannot be held responsible for the actions of their ancestors. But I have ancestors who were slaveowners, and while I'm not responsible for that I've felt responsible to it all my life. Bearing the burdens of our history is our destiny; how we bear them shapes the destiny of those who follow on . . .