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The data is in, and young voters had an incredible impact on the Presidential race:

By Dave Lindorff

Now that the street dancing is over, and President-elect Barack
Obama is measuring the drapes for the new Oval Office (let’s hope he
loses the mounted Saddam Hussein matching pistol set and that he has
the direct hard-wired link between the Vice President’s Office and the
Pentagon severed), it’s time to start focusing on how to make this new
president live up to his mantra of “Change We Can Believe In.”

Well over 65 million people voted Obama in on the belief that he
meant what he said with that largely empty slogan. They are going to be
hugely disappointed if he doesn’t deliver.

Democracy in the United States is clinging by its fingernails. The Bush administration has spent the last eight years laying the “legal” foundations for fascism. Significant measures along this dark road include the Patriot Act, the FISA bill, the repeal of habeas corpus, and a host of executive orders giving the president frightening dictatorial powers. At the same time, the Bush administration has been building the physical machinery of fascism, including domestic detention centers, a network of overseas prisons and torture centers, and most recently, the establishment of Northcom, a division of the US military with orders to serve within the United States (formerly prohibited under the Posse Comitatus Act).

By Dave Lindorff

By Dave Lindorff

I’m ready to call this election. It’s going to be a big win for Barack Obama.

I know this because of a story I heard from an employee of a major
polling organization. He tells of a poll worker who was interviewing
homeowners in a small town in central Pennsylvania, part of that “real”
American hailed by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
The man knocked on the door, and when the woman of the house answered,
told her he was a pollster and wanted to know how her household planned
to vote in November.

The woman turned and yelled into the house, “Honey, how are we voting this year?”

From inside the house, a male voice yelled back, “I guess we’re voting for the nigger.”

The woman turned to the stunned pollster and, without a hint of embarrassment, said, “I guess we’re voting for Obama.”

By Dave Lindorff

Okay, I was going to vote for Ralph Nader this November 4.

It was an easy decision. I live in Pennsylvania, which is now,
according to all the polls, reliably in the Obama column, with the
Democratic candidate holding an insurmountable lead in the polls of 14
percent over Republican John McCain—enough to overcome even the most
devious Republican vote suppression techniques and voting machine
chicanery.

By Dave Lindorff

I’ve been getting some emails that refer to Barack Obama as a
“Manchurian Candidate,” a guy who is somehow hiding a secret radical
and/or Muslim jihadist agenda that will burst forth if he’s elected
president. There is a certain idiot factor at work here, since if Obama
were a closet Weatherman, who somehow learned of and adopted that 1960s
college dropout organzation’s creed at the tender age of 8, it would
have clashed badly with any Muslim teaching he might have picked up as
a student in an Indonesian public school at the same time (he attended
an Indonesian public schoolfrom the age of 6 to 8 before transferring
to a Catholic-run institution).

But since some low-wattage and conspiracy-minded people seem ready
to believe this kind of stuff, let’s consider John McCain’s early
background, and the possibility of his being a Manchurian Candidate
too. Fair’s fair, right?

By Dave Lindorff

The Congressional switchboard is jammed. You can get through, but it
takes a dedicated finger on the redial button of your phone. Operators
at the Capitol say it's been that way for a week now, as Americans
across the country have been flooding their Congressional delegations
with phone calls (and emails) urging them to vote "No" on the
Bush/Paulson Wall Street bailout.

That today is no exception, after Democratic Party leaders (and both
major party presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama)
bought into the plan after adding some window-dressing measures
designed to make it look more palatable. This shows that the public is
not fooled.

By Dave Lindorff

That deafening silence you hear coming from the McCain campaign is
straight-talkin’ John touting his plan for privatizing Social
Security...not.

With Wall Street banks falling like dominoes, a hundred billion dollars vanishing overnight, and the Treasury
Department scampering about trying to prop up failing enterprises
from Bear Stearns to Fannie Mae, and with domestic and global equity
and bond markets swooning, Americans are afraid to open those envelopes
that come every quarter telling them the value of their hard-earned
401(k) retirement plans.

No wonder John McCain isn’t touting privatizaton these days.