Truthout Headlines: 02-11-10

Tuesday 02 November 2010

Balance of Power 2010: Truthout's Live Election Blog
Welcome to Truthout's Election Day blog, Balance of Power 2010. Here we'll document the details of this historic election as it unfolds. Stay with us for up-to-the minute coverage and state-by-state analyses, problems at the polls, voter turnout updates, commentary on the voter climate in various parts of the country, candidate faux pas and finally, tonight - results!
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Free Speech TV: Live Coverage of the Midterm Elections (Video)
Free Speech TV will begin broadcasting live coverage of the midterm elections at 8pm EST from broadcasting centers in New York, Washington, DC and from their headquarters in Denver. The coverage will be hosted by several progressive media veterans, including Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Laura Flanders, Thom Hartmann, David Sirota, Gloria Neal and Marc Steiner. The historic coverage will feature analysis and commentary from social activists, community organizers and thought leaders, including, Herb Boyd, Rosa Clemente, Jim Hightower and John Nichols. There will also be correspondents' reports from The Nation, Mother Jones and Yes Magazine and special guest appearances by NAACP’s Ben Jealous, filmmaker Michael Moore, former Denver mayor Wellington Webb and many more.
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Michael Moore | Today Is the Day
Michael Moore, MichaelMoore.com: "This letter contains (almost) no criticisms of how the Democrats have brought this day of reckoning upon themselves. That - and where to go from here - will be the subject of tomorrow's letter. Today, we have one job and one job only: Stop the return of the bigger criminal class, the Party of War, the people who (with a few Democratic enablers) manufactured the very mess we are in."
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Ballot Box Blues
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com: "By the time you read this, I'll already have voted - the single most reflexive political act of my life - in the single most dispiriting election I can remember. As I haven't missed a midterm or presidential election since my first vote in 1968, that says something. Or maybe by the time you've gotten to this, the results of the 2010 midterm elections will be in. In either case, I'll try to explain just why you don't really need those results to know which way the wind is gusting."
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House Takeover Would Give GOP Ways to Attack Health Law
Marilyn Werber Serafini, McClatchy Newspapers: "If Rep. Joe Barton becomes the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee next year, the Texas Republican vows to make life miserable for Democratic defenders of the health care overhaul law. He'll drag Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Medicare chief Donald Berwick to Capitol Hill for regular grilling. Democrats, he says, essentially have shielded the two key figures from answering tough questions about the new law."
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Torture Orders Were Part of US Sectarian War Strategy
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service: "The revelation by Wikileaks of a U.S. military order directing U.S. forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis has been treated in news reports as yet another case of lack of concern by the U.S. military about detainee abuse. But the deeper significance of the order, which has been missed by the news media, is that it was part of a larger U.S. strategy of exploiting Shi'a sectarian hatred against Sunnis to help suppress the Sunni insurgency when Sunnis had rejected the U.S. war."
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Tea Party Politics and the Dixiecrats of 1948
Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, Truthout: "This Tuesday, November 2, as Americans go to the polls they face a real challenge. Making an intelligent informed decision amid all of this partisan, ideological, rhetoric is a daunting task. Many attribute this dissension and rancor to the election of President Obama, the rise of the Tea Party and the refusal of most Republicans to work with the president on any level that would result in positive policy output for the country. It's much, much deeper than that. When you take a step back and look at our political landscape from a broader historical perspective, what you see is that our current dysfunctional situation is not a recent development, but the culmination of a conservative backlash that can be traced back to 1948 and the rise of the States' Rights Democratic Party, which quickly became known as the Dixiecrats."
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The New York Times Gets Women Voters Wrong
Rose Aguilar, Truthout: "New York Times Los Angeles bureau chief Adam Nagourney can't seem to figure out why the latest polls in California show that Republicans Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, a 'new breed of tough female corporate executives looking to shift into public office,' have failed to gain the support of women voters. 'At one point, it appeared that 2010 might be the year of the female Republican chief executive in California,' he writes in an October 29 piece. 'But less than a week before Election Day, both Ms. Whitman and Ms. Fiorina find themselves struggling.'"
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Paul Krugman | Debunking the Myth of the Big Spender
Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.: "While I have written about this topic recently, there is a bit more to the story on how government spending has not, contrary to what you may have heard, surged in the United States under President Barack Obama. Cue the usual suspects, shouting that I am lying. Cue the usual suspects, shouting that I am lying. Here is a calculation that should make things a bit clearer. If there had not been an economic crisis and a change in which party had control of government over the last three years, what changes would we have expected to see in total government spending - federal, state and local? Probably that spending would follow a growth trend in the economy - that is, real gross domestic product, which accounts for inflation, would grow with the economy's potential, and government spending would grow at the pace of real G.D.P."
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US vs. Brazil: A Tale of Two Elections
Robert Naiman, Truthout: "This week the Western Hemisphere will see a tale of two elections: two elections that have a number of key features in common, and some key points of divergence. In common: the incumbent center-left faces a challenge from the right. The head of state, the incumbent leader of the center-left, will not be on the ballot, but the election is widely viewed as a referendum on his policies. Election Day is 'the poll that matters,' but the key divergence is that on Sunday, in Brazil, the center-left is forecast to coast to victory, while on Tuesday in the US, the right is widely forecast to make big gains, with better than even odds of taking the House."
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TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

As we go to the polls today, with a rollback to the right on forecast, it is worthy of note that many South American nations are moving to the left - and staying there for awhile.

As Michael Fox, a journalist based in Brazil, notes, "Worker's Party (PT) Candidate, Dilma Rousseff, will be the first woman president in Brazilian history. She was elected into office this Sunday, October 31st, with just over 56 percent of the votes, defeating conservative candidate Jose Serra by twelve points."

Rousseff made history in other ways besides her gender. Rousseff will enter office with her party holding a decisive majority in the legislature. Fox reports, "this is the first time in democratic Brazil that a political coalition has held such a substantial majority in both the executive and legislative branches." She succeeds President "Lula" da Silva, a leftist populist who has an 80 percent approval rating.

Rousseff was running against a corporate media committed to serving the interests of the wealthy. Fox believes that the use of the Internet at the grassroots level helped Rousseff counter the attacks of the mainstream Brazilian press.

Is there a lesson to be learned here?

Perhaps the lesson is that even nations that have known long periods of military dictatorship and authoritarianism, such as Brazil, can create a stable government that is committed to the common good.

That's a lesson worth learning.

Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout

One Last Snapshot of Polls in All the Key Races
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Unions Fear Rollback of Rights Under Republicans
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Michelle Obama Stages an 11th-Hour Campaign Marathon on Behalf of Democrats
Read the Article at The Washington Post

Is Tuesday Harry Reid's Last Stand? We'll Find out
Read the Article at The Hill

And 2010's Biggest Winner Is ... Dark Money, Shadowy Groups and Secret Millionaires
Read the Article at Mother Jones

Testimony to Resume in Tom DeLay's Money Laundering Trial
Read the Article at The Washington Post

The War the Election Forgot
Read the Article at The Los Angeles Times

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