An estimated 40 million USD has been spent on parties to commemorate the re-coronation of King George II and Queen Laura. Not one cent of this was given up to assist victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami. Nor, indeed, to the residents of Fallujah displaced by the US Army’s scorched earth pursuit of “freedom” and “liberty”.

The Washington Post did an extensive photo blog of Thursday night’s load of balls. The evening, of course, is a thank you for all those people and organisations who bankroll the GOP version of “freedom” and “liberty”. Check out whitehouseforsale.org.

Mike Carlton has said his bit on the coronation in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. But for classic fairandbalanced journalism, watch the video of Fox “News” Channel anchor Brigitte Quinn as a fluff interview with Vanity Fair contributing editor Judy Bachrach about coronation day fails to follow The Party Line.

Some interesting discussion of the Quinn-Bachrach exchange at newshounds.us.

Friday’s Democracy Now! has a wrap of the counter-inaugural protests held in Washington on Thursday, including footage of a speech by Ramsay Clark calling for George W Bush’s impeachment.

I couldn’t be bothered watching any of the telecasts of the load of balls yesterday. It was an appropriate time for me to go out and see a film about another great warrior for freedom and liberty, Ernesto (Che) Guevara. But more about “Diarios de motocicleta” later.

How many hereditary monarchies hold a second coronation for their King four years after the first one?

King George II was re-crowned today in Washington, DC. The full text of his inaugural speech can be found on the White House website, and of course many other places. Dubya invoked the word “freedom” 27 times, and “liberty” 15 times. How ironic.

Rahul Mahajan has commented on the day’s events in his excellent Empire Notes. I’m currently listening to the talkback on Pacifica Radio.

It’s barely 6pm in Washington. The night is young.

Today’s the day for King George’s second coronation. No expense is, of course, spared in providing this event of GOP extravagence.

The whole obscene day can be followed on the web with video coverage on C-Span1, starting from 8am (midnight here in Sydney). On C-Span2 there will be coverage from 10.30am ET of a protest rally being conducted across town by ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), while C-Span3 is dredging archives for Presidential inauguration speeches of the past.

Another way to follow all the action on audio is through Pacifica Radio’s 13 and a half hour coverage of the day’s play from both sides of the fence. WBAI’s website has the complete day’s lineup, and they have a live audio stream in realaudio. KPFA Berkeley streams Pacifica’s coverage in ogg vorbis, which is becoming my audio streaming format of choice.

He seems to have secured a mandate based on his policies of pre-emptive war, war on the environment, crony capitalism, veiled racism, homophobia and a fundamentalism that would make the Taliban proud… our country is split down the middle creating a cultural civil war that is not going away any time soon. It is a fight over values in which there is very little middle ground remaining. The stakes are extremely high for all we hold dear.
- John Passcantando, Executive Director, Greenpeace, 4.11.04

The best thing I can say about the US presidential election is that there will be a Scottish terrier in the White House for another four years. Dogs aside, the US result is almost a carbon copy of the Australian election result a month earlier. A far right-wing leader, who took his country into a questionable war, gets re-elected with an increased majority and gains control of both the upper and lower houses of parliament.

The world is a less safe place as a result of this election. John F Kerry, for all his faults (particularly become more and more hawkish about Iraq as the campaign went on), was undoubtedly the better option, though if I were American and the US had a preferential voting system (which they call IRV), I would have given David Cobb of the Green Party first look.

There are stories of irregularities coming to light in the election, with recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire looking possible. Despite some very suspicious looking results, eg Bush getting approximately 300% of the vote in some precincts, I’d be surprised if any serious errors are allowed to be brought to light. But it is truly astonishing, looking in from the outside, at just how shambolic the US presidential election process is. For goodness sake, each state has their own responsibility for running the election, and some of the methods are wildly different.

And the election on November 2 wasn’t even directly for the President… just for the members of the Electoral College in each state who will go on to choose the President and VP. Each Electoral College will meet on December 13 to cast their votes, which will be sealed and delivered to the President of the Senate to open on January 6. The identity of the president for the next four years won’t officially be known till then, fourteen days before his inauguration.

An old-looking page on the Federal Election Commission website explains how the electoral college works.

But getting back to those irregularities: Greg Palast wrote on November 5 about problems in Ohio and New Mexico and followed that up on November 12. Keith Olbermann at MSNBC has picked up the story. Best of all is Votersunite.org, which is assembling a database of press reports of problems in the November 2 elections.

See the campaign websites of David Cobb and Michael Badnarik for details of the campaign to obtain a recount in Ohio. Ralph Nader, meanwhile, is pursuing a recount in New Hampshire.

On the other hand, the Democrats seem uninterested in upholding democracy in the US. Even Howard Dean, writing on his Democracy for America website, seems unperturbed. Why do the major parties have such a vested interest in the appalling electoral system as it currently stands?

We’re going away on holiday to Adelaide for the next eleven days. Mother-in-law’s birthday party next weekend. It’s unlikely that I will be updating my websites till then (apart from the dynamically changing stuff), in which case I’ll see you all on November 10.

Oh, and if you’re in the US, get out there and vote on Tuesday, and vote out of office the GW Bush administration that threatens us all. There’s only one practical way to do this, and that is to vote for John F Kerry. And if you have Green Party candidates running for local office on your ballot, give them your consideration.

There, that’s my interference in another country’s domestic politics out of the way

Now I know why I am always refused a connection to GeorgeWBush.com. I was sure that there weren’t that many computer-literate Republicans out there to deluge his site with hits.

Here’s a Netcraft report on access response times (complete with graphs) on access to the Bush website from within the US and beyond. Several news reports on the web since the Netcraft release, here is the Free Internet Press report.

BoingBoing.net has a great collection of observations on the situation, including ways to get around it - although they now appear to be blocked as well.

I am impressed by the person who registered georgewbush.co.uk. Click on the link and see where you end up (no it’s not porn). But in the absence of any overseas access to georgewbush.com, I recommend georgewbush.org.

According to the BBC, Netcraft president Mike Prettejohn speculated that the Bush/Cheney campaign office might have decided to “cut costs”. In an election campaign where more than a billion dollars has already been flushed down the toilet, yeah right…

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?
- Charlie Brooker, The Guardian, 23.10.04

Really I don’t know what all the fuss is about, do you? John Hinckley Junior did not kill Ronald Reagan, and we all know that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill John F Kennedy (who, in any case, was a Democrat). Surely not even at Fox “News” do they really think any Charlie Brooker afficionado would go out and do the deed on GWB, even if he could get within ten kilometres of him?

The quote above comes from the final paragraph of Brooker’s weekly, and generally flipped out, TV preview in last Saturday’s edition of the Grauniad. It’s the fact that those paragons of American society looking out for Left Wing Bias Everywhere spotted it on the web that caused such a stir. Such a stir that the Guardian actually pulled the original article from its website. (It has been reproduced here and no doubt many other places.) In its place they left this apology, of sorts.

It’s a pity that The Guardian withdrew the complete article from the web, but also good that they didn’t completely abandon him.

Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand.

As I’ve heard Bill O’Reilly on Fox “News” say, “Hey that was satire! My viewers know that.”

This query of the Guardian’s archive brings up a list of Brooker’s earlier columns for them.

Plenty of blog coverage out there, as you’d imagine. Check the search lists from Feedster and Technorati.

All I will say is that it is a pity The Chaser’s lift-out guide to assassinating President Bush, published before his Australian visit last year, is not on line.

What does Leon Czolgosz have to do with all this? Read Wikipedia’s entry on the man who shot President William McKinley in 1901.

(Footnote of the bleeding obvious: I do not advocate the taking of human life under any circumstances, assassination or otherwise. I think Charlie Brooker and/or his Guardian sub would have been better served to have removed the last sentence of his article, but I defend their right to publish it. - Rick.)

The Green Party of the United States, who will be represented by David Cobb in the presidential election, issued a list last Thursday of issues that George W Bush and John F Kerry failed to discuss at their three Mass Debates. I reproduce their press release in full:

GREENS LIST THE TOP 12 ISSUES CENSORED FROM THE BUSH-KERRY DEBATES

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Green Party leaders and candidates charged that the presidential debates, limited to the candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry, have effectively censored numerous issues important to Americans.

“This is what Green presidential nominee David Cobb was protesting when he was arrested for trying to enter the second presidential debate,” said Gray Newman, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. “When the Commission on Presidential Debates limited the participants to Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry and barred third party candidates, it forced major issues into tiny Democratic vs. Republican pigeon holes.”

“Voters deserve to learn about all the candidates on the ballot, and they deserve to hear a wide range of political opinion and options for U.S. policy — not just those sanctioned by the two establishment parties and their corporate benefactors,” Newman added.

Mr. Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik were arrested on October 1 after attempting to enter the Washington University auditorium in St. Louis where the second presidential debate took place.

Greens listed the top twelve issues censored from the Bush-Kerry debates:

(1) When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it violated international laws against “preemptive” and “preventive” war (enacted after Hitler used these excuses to justify invading Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France); and violated the U.S. Constitution’s limit on the deployment of armed forces to immediate protection of U.S. borders (Article I, Section 8 ), and requirement that the U.S. adhere to international treaties (Article VI).

(2) When Sen. John Kerry and a majority of Congress voted in October, 2002 to surrender Congress’s power to declare war over to President Bush, they violated the constitutional separation of powers (Article I, Section 8 ) and set the scenario for President Bush’s abuse of power when he ordered the invasion of Iraq.

(3) When the Bush Administration deceived the American people about the need to invade Iraq (Mr. Bush’s January 28, 2003 State of the Union address; Secretary of State Powell’s address to the U.N. on February 5, 2003), it was already known that Saddam Hussein probably didn’t possess WMDs, there was no plausible link between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks, allegations over aluminum rods and nuclear weapons materials from Africa were fraudulent, and Iraq’s own neighbors claimed Saddam had no capacity to invade other nations.

(4) When Iraq administrator Bremer decreed in 2003 that Iraqi business could be owned up to 100% by foreign companies, the resulting mass loss of jobs and small business drove thousands of Iraqis to join the anti-U.S. insurgency. Bremer’s mandate violated international laws against pillage; the Bush Administration’s reckless plan to use Iraq as a lab experiment for
its corporate-friendly ‘free-trade’ ideology placed U.S. troops in Iraq at great risk.

(5) Whether Mr. Kerry or Mr. Bush wins, it will probably be necessary to institute a draft in order to maintain the occupation of Iraq.

(6) The USA Patriot Act violates numerous rights afforded by the U.S. Constitution, especially freedom of speech, freedom from search and seizure without a warrant, and guarantee of due process. Whether Mr. Kerry or Mr. Bush is elected, if another terrorist attack occurs there are already plans to extend the USA Patriot Act even further, effectively nullifying the Constitution.

(7) If we intend to avert catastrophic global climate change, the U.S. must rejoin the Kyoto agreement, strengthen and adhere to its provisions, and make conversion to nonfossil and nonnuclear energy the great project of the 21st century. (Mr. Bush withdrew the U.S. from Kyoto, Mr. Kerry is silent about rejoining the accord.)

(8) Republicans and Democrats have abandoned working people, while coddling CEOs and major shareholders with a $137 billion tax break package for corporations. Neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Kerry mentioned a national guarantee of livable wages, repeal of Taft-Hartley limits on workplace organizing, or the Million Worker March, planned for October 17 in Washington, D.C. (http://www.millionworkermarch.org).

(9) Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry rejected “government-run” coverage, but Congress’s General Accounting Office has determined that the only health care reform that will save money is single-payer national health insurance. Under single-payer, all Americans would be guaranteed quality treatment and medicine regardless of income, employment, age, or prior
medical condition, and patients will enjoy choice of physician. Middle and lower income Americans will pay far less for single-payer coverage than they do now for private coverage through profit-driven HMOs and insurance firms.

(10) The ‘War on Drugs’ has not only failed to stem drug abuse, it has resulted in the highest number ever of Americans incarcerated (over 5.6 million have served time, the highest percentage in the world) — especially young people, poor people, African Americans, and Latinos.

(11) Thanks to the 1996 Telecommunications Act and other deregulation measures, fewer and fewer corporations own more and more of the media and regulate our news and entertainment. Democrats who voted for the Telecommunications Act have only themselves to blame for the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s plan to air an anti-Kerry documentary on 62 TV stations.

(12) At-large winner-take-all elections have allowed two parties corrupted by corporate lobby money to dominate our political system. We can restore our democracy through various reforms: Instant Runoff Voting, Proportional Representation, “clean election” options that enable candidates to run without taking corporate money, free time for candidates on our publicly
owned airwaves, and auditable paper ballots. More information on election reforms: http://www.fairvote.org

MORE INFORMATION

The Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org
1700 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 404
Washington, DC 20009.
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193

Cobb/LaMarche 2004 http://www.votecobb.org

2004 Green candidates and elections http://www.greens.org/elections/

With the intensity of the Australian election and other committments I have only fleetingly watched parts of Friday night’s presidential Mass Debate II and Wednesday night’s Mass Debate III, which ended about ninety minutes ago. Bush had clearly improved on his horrendous performance in MD1, even make a joke about scowling during MD2.

The fact that these Mass Debates involved only the two leading candidates has been a bit of a running sore, and in St Louis before MD2 there was a demonstration at which two of the second-tier candidates, David Cobb of the Green Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarians, were in fact arrested! More about this, and more about the minor candidates when I write up my presidential endorsement a bit later.

For Mass Debate II took place in a sanitised “Town Hall” environment, which means GWB and JFK stood and walked around a circular stage in the middle of a sanitised audience answering sanitised questions from sanitised audience members, and having the occasional unsanitary argument with each other. MD3 was back to the lectern and moderated by CBS’ Bob Schieffer, who appears to have been handling such occasions since Lincoln/Douglas in 1860.

The Washington Post has the transcript and video of Mass Debate 2. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann did a live blog, as did Rahul Mahajan.

I’ll use the same sources for a good encapsulation of Mass Debate 3: Washington Post’s video is in HTML hell as I write this, but hopefully will be fixed shortly. They have the transcript. Keith Olbermann, such a legend from his ESPN Sportscenter days, has transformed into Bloggerman and debuted his new title in his Mass Debate 3 live blog, and Rahul has been in action as well.

Of greater relevance to most American voters tonight is the fact that St Louis beat Houston 10-7 in game one of the NLCS, while the Yankees beat Boston 3-1 to take a 2-0 lead in the ALCS. Come on the Cards!

October 8, 10:55 pm.
http://www.empirenotes.org/#08oct047
October 8, 10:55 pm. Apparently, the scales remain firmly in place. ABC News, polling a rather small group that was 35% Democrat, 32% Republican, 29% Independent, got results of 44% thinking Kerry had won, 41% Bush, and 13% a tie. The fact that neither Bush nor Cheney has answered a single one of even the feeble attacks levied by Kerry and Edwards on how they have conducted the occupation seems n …