Clippings for Friday, 24 October

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F Is for Failure: The Bush Doctrine
Tom Engelhardt writes for TomDispatch.com: "On the brief occasions when the President now appears in the Rose Garden to 'comfort' or 'reassure' a shock-and-awed nation, you can almost hear those legions of ducks quacking lamely in the background. Once upon a time, George W. Bush, along with his top officials and advisors, hoped to preside over a global Pax Americana and a domestic Pax Republicana - a legacy for the generations. More recently, their highest hope seems to have been to slip out of town in January before the you-know-what hits the fan. No such luck."

Communication Scholars Speak Out About Negative Campaigning
A group of top American communication professors have crafted and signed a statement calling on the McCain campaign, primarily, to stop its negative campaigning. “The purposeful dissemination of messages that a communicator knows to be false and inflammatory is unethical. It is that simple,” the statement says.

The Future of the Internet - Call to Action
A huge decision is going to be made on Election Day that could change the lives of millions of Americans. And it’s not about Obama or McCain. On Nov. 4, the Federal Communications Commission will vote to open unused television airwaves to provide affordable, wireless Internet services nationwide. Find out how you can help.

Could the US Election Be Stolen?
Agence France-Presse reports: "With John McCain and Barack Obama already swapping accusations of widespread voter fraud, experts warn that a bitter and protracted fight could ensue if the race to the White House is decided by a narrow margin. The legal battle over election rules has already made it all the way to the Supreme Court as Republicans fight to block potentially false registrations from being validated and Democrats struggle to prevent voter disenfranchisement."

Police Prepare for Post-Election Unrest
Alexandra Bolton reports for The Hill: "Police departments in cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day, preparing for possible civil unrest and riots after the historic presidential contest. Public safety officials said in interviews with The Hill that the election, which will end with either the nation's first black president or its first female vice president, demanded a stronger police presence.... Democratic strategists and advocates for black voters say they understand officers wanting to keep the peace, but caution that excessive police presence could intimidate voters."

Recommended Audio: New America Now: Border Special
New America Now (formerly UpFront Radio) is New America Media's award-winning radio show about dispatches from the new majority - inter-ethnic, international and intergenerational news for the new America. This episode from October 10th looks at issues of "borders" and the United States. It features: Navajo Times in Arizona covers the border and is also a link to home for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan; Edward Alden on his book "The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration and Security After 911"; David Danelo on his new book "The Border: Exploring the US Mexico Divide" about the complicated issues of immigration and the way we view Mexico; and, Robin Goldfadden, Attorney for the ACLU explains why some Americans near the border can't get passports.

McCain Banking on a Confederacy of Duces
David Sirota writes for Truthdig.com: "Is John McCain stupid, or does he believe we are? That’s the question as he criticizes Barack Obama for allegedly trying to 'redistribute the wealth' with a plan to lower taxes on the middle class and raise them on the super-rich."

Bush Authorizes Record Defense Budget
Maya Schenwar writes for Truthout: "Last week, Bush signed the 2009 Defense Authorization Act, allowing $611 billion to be spent this fiscal year on defense. Though the number was not a surprise - the money in the bill had already been appropriated over the last few months - this bill makes it official, placing ceilings on spending, granting authority on who gets to spend what, and nailing the 2009 defense budget into place. It is the highest defense budget since World War II, and Pentagon officials estimate that it will increase by $450 billion over the next five years."

Wealth Gap Creating a Social Time Bomb
John Vidal writes for The Guardian UK: "Growing inequality in US cities could lead to widespread social unrest and increased mortality, says a new United Nations report on the urban environment. In a survey of 120 major cities, New York was found to be the ninth most unequal in the world and Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington, and Miami had similar inequality levels to those of Nairobi, Kenya Abidjan and Ivory Coast. Many were above an internationally recognised acceptable 'alert' line used to warn governments."

Wrecked Iraq: What the Good News From Iraq Really Means
Michael Schwartz writes for TomDispatch.com: "Even before the spectacular presidential election campaign became a national obsession, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression crowded out other news, coverage of the Iraq War had dwindled to next to nothing. National newspapers had long since discontinued their daily feasts of multiple - usually front page - reports on the country, replacing them with meager meals of mostly inside-the-fold summary stories. On broadcast and cable TV channels, where violence in Iraq had once been the nightly lead, whole news cycles went by without a mention of the war."

Obama, McCain Views on Unequal-Pay Case Are Revealing
Kia Franklin writes in Newsday: "Roe v. Wade wasn't the only important Supreme Court case mentioned during the final presidential debate at Hofstra University last week. The candidates also had a tense exchange over a less-famous case, Ledbetter v. Goodyear, which involved a woman named Lilly Ledbetter, who received unequal pay at her job for years without realizing it."

Creationist Declare War over the Brain
Amanda Gefter writes for the New Scientist: "'YOU cannot overestimate,' thundered psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, 'how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down. You're gonna hear a lot in the next calendar year about... how Darwin's explanation of how human intelligence arose is the only scientific way of doing it... I'm asking us as a world community to go out there and tell the scientific establishment, enough is enough! Materialism needs to start fading away and non-materialist causation needs to be understood as part of natural reality.'"

Net-neturality May Not Be Exciting, but Don't Ignore It
Dustin Michael Harris writes in an opinion piece for the Napervill Sun: "Net Neutrality is not something you'll hear a lot about on CNN. It's not a hot button issue, but it is very important and could have lasting effects on how the Internet shapes and delivers information."

Winning the Media Campaign: How the Press Reported the 2008 Presidential Campaign
The Project for Excellence in Journalism reports the media coverage of the race for president has not so much cast Barack Obama in a favorable light as it has portrayed John McCain in a substantially negative one, according to a new study of the media since the two national political conventions ended.

The Idiots Who Rule America
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig.com: "Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good. "

National Security: Women Must Define the Priorities Debate
Lorelei Kelly, The Women's Media Center: "The 'guns versus butter' debate is on the way out. Even the US military has realized the importance of providing the latter. For this election and beyond, women leaders are learning how to recast the conversation and set new priorities to measure the nation's security."

Obsession with Controversy
Seth Hettena writes for the Columbia Journalism Review: "Editors and publishers of newspapers who distributed an inflammatory DVD about radical Muslim activities have defended their decisions to distribute it as principled ones. But the missed opportunities for meaningful civic dialogue in the aftermath of the distribution say otherwise."