Tonight, voters will have the ability to speak with a candidate who has recently announced her run for the presidency of the United States. That’s right, HER run.

Hillary Clinton, following in the footsteps of her husband Bill, will make a run for the White House in 2008. Now, she still has a lot of work to do. She has primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire to focus on and she must win the Democratic Party’s nomination before she runs in November 2008. Tonight, Senator Clinton will be holding her first of a series of “conversations” with voters who are interested in hearing what she will do on certain issues and what she plans on achieving if she were to sit in the highest office of the land. You can join in on the conversation at 7 p.m. tonight at her website, HillaryClinton.com

As for the candidate, we all know what she brings to the table. She has just started her second term as New York’s junior senator in the U.S. Senate and was the First Lady of the United States during Bill Clinton’s presidency from 1993-2001. That being said, many question her run and many simply don’t like Mrs. Clinton. Whether it’s because of the Whitewater scandal or the fact she stayed with her husband despite his moral ineptitude involving the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Many also question her reasons for running, considering she has achieved a lot during her time and that her run for president would simply be an added “trophy” to an already full resume of career accomplishmnets. But with all that, there’s still Hillary Clinton.

Clinton is a fine leader in one of the largest states in America. She has sought progress in New York’s upstate region when it has floundered compared to New York City and the downstate region’s wealth and expanse. She played a key role in preserving a fixture in Niagara County, the Niagara Falls Air Base. Many took credit for its survivial in western New York, but it was Clinton, along with Charles Schumer (NY’s senior senator in the U.S. Senate), who played an important role in keeping the base open and alive.

Many look at the past and see that Clinton sought a new health care plan which failed to supplant itself in the country. Yet, she has been a fighter for social change and still hopes to achieve some type of health care reform, whether she’s a senator or President of the United States.

She’s also been compared constantly to her husband. What people must understand is that the two, while sharing some similarities, have different strengths. For instance, Bill Clinton is an extraordinary public speaker, while Hillary Clinton is not. Hillary Clinton will be a different leader than the former President Clinton was, but she will no doubt be a great one, just like her husband.

So when thinking of a choice for president in 2008, think of Hillary Clinton. She represents women all across America very well and is hoping not only to become the first female president, but also hoping she can make change across this country that has been ravaged by political corruption, poor leadership and an ill-conceived war that has cost many Americans their lives abroad and many Americans here at home to sacrifice many things in the process. Change is good. Hillary Clinton IS good.

The Democrats have really seen a flood of candidates, with the recent announcements of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson. The aformentioned Vilsack is in the fray, as is former U.S. Senator John Edwards, who was the vice presidential candidate in 2004. Chris Dodd has said he will run and Joe Biden also said he would run for the second time, as he ran during the 1980’s but failed to get the party nomination. The Dems also might see Al Gore enter the race and you can’t rule out John Kerry, who might throw his name into the bidding.

The Republicans have an equally loaded race, with John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter and possibly Chuck Hagel. McCain appears to be the favorite, although Giuliani and Romney do have certain strengths but might not be able to win over the GOP’s conservative base. Brownback carries heavy conservative values and will run as a very conservative candidate, even more so than the current administration. Paul is a libertarian who doesn’t fit the GOP’s mold. He’s an outspoken critic of the war and will go against the GOP grain.

So who is a good candidate and who is a bad one? Each party has solid candidates to offer, but weak ones as well that may better serve in their current positions.

Democrats: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore (should he run) and John Edwards

Hillary is the strongest candidate between the two parties. Her popularity is strong, but she will have to answer about her stance on the war, which she’s already started to answer on different news outlets. Plus, having Bill by her side will only help, not hurt. Obama’s weakness is his experience. By the time of the 2008 President elections, he would have served only four years in the Senate. However, he’s a very strong candidate who has become a crowd favorite and loved by large numbers of people. He’s willing to work in a bi-partisan manner and is a great leader. Al Gore may or may not run, but if he does, he will no doubt provide a threat to the Clinton and Obama campaigns. Gore is very experienced and should be President now. But, his current situation may better suit him: A well-known environmentalist. John Edwards is a dark horse. He won’t draw as much media attention as Clinton or Obama but he’s definitely been down this road before in ‘04 and is a very strong candidate. His One America Committee has supported action that helps the lower to middle class of America, including support for a higher minimum wage.

My 2008 Democratic Ticket: Hillary Clinton and John Edwards (or Barack Obama)

Republicans: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback, Mitt Romney

McCain could be the man in 2008 for the GOP. However, he was once seen as a “maverick” and a moderate in the party. If you recall, the “Straighttalk Express” was hit by the Bush campaign in 2000 and they trashed McCain’s name back then. Now, McCain is playing the game. He’s becoming more conservative on issues, just as Clinton is becoming more liberal on some issues. He might not have a hard time proving his run to the GOP, but to the whole electorate, independents might vote against him for his change in political tone. Giuliani, or “America’s Mayor”, is a social liberal who will have a hard time in the present-day GOP to win over the RNC come nomination time. If I was the GOP, I would put Giuliani on ANY ticket because with that, you can win over many independent voters who loved Rudy back in his NYC days. Romney is a flip-flopper. He’s not an appealing candidate to those outside of the GOP and to even some in the GOP. However, being a member of the GOP and succeeding in Massachusetts is a chore and admirable. His successes might help him if he were to become president or even as second in command. Brownback is the most conservative of all, but his party just might like that. If a Giuliani presidential run were to succeed, don’t be surprised to see Brownback right there with him. The “best of both worlds”, if you will. The GOP needs to recover from its image as a partisan conglomerate that needs to open up to more independents and moderates.

My 2008 Republican Ticket: John McCain-Rudy Giuliani

Who wins? This is tough. Most Americans don’t want to see a George W. Bush again, so it will be the job of all candidates involved to prove that they won’t be a “Dubya” in the White House. I see many conservatives supporting McCain, regardless of how his views are shown come 2008 and it doesn’t matter if Giuliani is his running mate. Rudy can win over that moderate base who might not be able to vote for a Hillary Clinton. Just imagine how history might be different if Rudy Giuliani could’ve ran in 2000 against Clinton in the NY U.S. Senate race. It’s interesting to think about.

That being said, I think Hillary will win a lot of support from moderates IF Giuliani isn’t involved in the race somehow. McCain has somewhat betrayed moderates with his increasingly conservative views. So without Giuliani involved in the race, I say a Clinton presidential race would succeed. With Giuliani involved, however, it’s too close to call.

2008 will be very interesting to watch as the many months before November 4, 2008 unfold. This will no doubt be a historic race that will involve an electorate seeking more change, even after 2006.

Robert

My first thoughts, just by reading the title, were “what?” Then I remembered that his father is of Kenyan descent and his mother is white. The argument made by those in the black community is that he can’t relate with them. He doesn’t descend from a slave that worked on the plantations during the early years of our country right on through the Civil War.

Personally, I’ve been ready for a black president or a woman president. I recall hearing that the hardest would be for a black woman to become president. While that may be true, this shows how our country still hasn’t overcome anything remotely racial and that even with our presidency, we will still question one’s race in judging that person’s character or leadership capability. Yet, we have no problem with hiring 42 straight white men to the office of President of the United States and half of them turned out to be nothing but average (at least half, probably more).

This leads me to a few questions for you all:

1) Are you ready for a black president?

2) Would you vote for ANY black candidate from any political party?

3) Would you vote for Barack Obama?

4) Are you ready for a woman president?

5) Do you agree with the black community that Obama is “less black” than a man like Jesse Jackson or a woman like Oprah Winfrey?

Obama’s toughest sell for White House bid may be to other blacks
by Stephanie Griffith
Thu Dec 21, 4:01 AM ET

US political darling Barack Obama has received enthusiastic support for a possible 2008 presidential bid — except from fellow African-Americans, a group many believed would be among his staunchest backers.

In contrast to the effusive reception Obama has received from white Americans, many US blacks so far have been cool, saying that while they may share skin color with Obama, they do not have a common culture or history.

“Obama did not — does not — share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves,” wrote African-American newspaper columnist Stanley Crouch last month in an article entitled “Barack Obama — Not Black Like Me.”

Radio host George Wilson, whose nationally-broadcast talk show tests the opinions of a cross-section of African-American listeners, said response to the Illinois senator so far has been “lukewarm.”

“He’s not getting as much of an enthusiastic send-off from black people as he is from whites,” Wilson said.

Obama draws enormous, mostly white crowds, even though the first presidential primary election is more than a year away, and is he seen as a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But Crouch said that the first-term US senator — the bi-racial progeny of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother — does not share with most American blacks the painful legacy of slavery, repressive Jim Crow laws, and civil rights struggles.

“While he has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own — nor has he lived the life of a black American,” Crouch wrote in his New York Daily News column.

“If we then end up with him as our first black president, he will have come into the White House through a side door — which might, at this point, be the only one that’s open.”

Political analyst Ron Walters said that Obama is a black whom many whites find reassuring, with his Harvard pedigree and law degree rounding out his half-European ancestry.

“If you take this in almost anthropological terms, there’s a sense in which whites are more comfortable with blacks who they believe reaffirm them,” Walters said.

He said other whites apparently view Obama not so much as a black trailblazer but as a multicultural figure, with his racially-mixed parentage and childhood spent in Hawaii and Indonesia.

African-Americans however, who are are accustomed to leaders who emerge from the civil rights movement, sometimes appear to struggle to relate to Obama.

“For some African-Americans, he has not really affirmed their identity. He has affirmed his own mixed identity, but he has not strongly affirmed the right and the claim of African-Americans in this society to equal treatment,” said Walters, a professor at the University of Maryland.

Others said Obama is simply an unknown figure to many African-Americans who are almost reflexively suspicious.

“There’s a feeling that if white folks like him so much he must not be good for us. For some blacks it’s a turn-off,” said Wilson.

If he does run, Obama would be the first African-American candidate for president who does not come out of the civil rights movement. US Representative Shirley Chisholm, of New York, was the first African-American to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972.

Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson was a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988.

A CNN poll last week found that 60 percent of Americans said they have no reservations about voting for a black president, although experts caution that polls are not always a reliable measure of racial bias. Some wonder whether whites who now are urging him to run will be as enthusiastic in the voting booth.

“There are individuals who say one thing publicly, but time and time again has shown that when … they’re in the privacy of the voting booth, they do something else,” said Wilson.

Despite the adulation he has received from Democrats around the country, some blacks said it will be nearly impossible for Obama to win the White House in 2008 without massive support from the African-American community.

“The American population is not ready — despite of what Barack says — to have a black man be the president of the United States,” Wilson said.

“When it’s all said and done, if he declares, then he will have to convince African-Americans to support him, and just his color alone is not going to be enough,” he said.

Article: Marines charged in Iraqi civilian deaths

Eight Marines were charged Thursday in the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians last year during a bloody, door-to-door sweep in the town of Haditha that came after one of their comrades was killed by a roadside bomb.

In the biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths to come out of the Iraq war, four of the Marines — all enlisted men — were charged with unpremeditated murder.

The other four were officers who were not there during the killings but were accused of failures in investigating and reporting the deaths.

The most serious charges were brought against Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, a 26-year-old squad leader accused of murdering 12 civilians and ordering the murders of six more inside a house cleared by his squad. He was accused of telling his men to “shoot first and ask questions later,” according to court papers released by his attorney.

The highest-ranking defendant was Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, 42. He was accused of failing to obey an order or regulation, encompassing dereliction of duty.

At a news conference to announce the charges, military officials would not say what they believe prompted the killings. But investigators have raised the possibility that the men went on a rampage in a fury over the roadside bombing that killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas of El Paso, Texas, and wounded two other Marines.

Defense attorneys have disputed that, saying their clients were doing what they had been trained to do: responding to a perceived threat with legitimate force.

Terrazas’ father denounced the charges, saying his son was murdered by insurgents. “What they are doing to our troops … it’s just wrong,” Martin Terrazas said in Texas. “I feel for their families. They are in my prayers.”

Wuterich and two comrades charged with murder could get life in prison. The military is not seeking the death penalty. The other men face shorter prison sentences.

The Marine Corps initially reported that 15 Iraqis died in a roadside bomb blast and that Marines killed eight insurgents in an ensuing firefight. That account was widely discredited, and later reports put the number of dead Iraqis at 24.

A criminal probe was launched after Time magazine reported in March, citing survivor accounts and human rights groups, that innocent people were killed.

Lt. Gen. James Mattis, commanding general of the Marine Corps Central Command, said Thursday that the Corps’ initial news release, which stated that the civilians in Haditha had been killed by an improvised explosive device, was incorrect.

“We now know with certainty that the press release was incorrect, and that none of the civilians were killed by the IED explosion,” Mattis said.

As word spread that charges were imminent, some Iraqis said Thursday that American troops should face justice in Iraq.

“They committed a horrible crime against innocents,” Naji al-Ani, a 36-year-old laborer, said by telephone from Haditha.

Other residents of Haditha agreed.

“Are they terrorists or are they fighting terrorism?” said Jamal al-Obaidi, a 40-year-old teacher. “The trial is not fair because it is taking place in America. Executing them is the minimum penalty.”

Besides Wuterich, Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz, 24, was accused of the unpremeditated murders of five people and making a false statement. Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, 22, of Carbondale, Pa., was charged with the unpremeditated murder of three Iraqis. Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, 25, of Edmund, Okla., was accused of the unpremeditated murders of two Iraqis, negligent homicide of four Iraqis and assault.

The other officers charged were 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson, 25, Capt. Lucas McConnell, 31, and Capt. Randy Stone, 34, a military attorney.

The men are not being locked up for now because they are unlikely to flee and are not a danger to themselves or others, said Col. Stewart Navarre, a Corps spokesman.

In Meriden, Conn., Frank Wuterich’s father, Dave, said his son was out Christmas shopping. The father said family members believe his son’s version of events.

“He says they followed the rules of engagement,” Dave Wuterich said. “They were taking small arms fire. They did what they had to do.”

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061221/ap_on_re_us/marines_haditha&printer=1

Cheney to be defense witness in CIA case
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
Tue Dec 19, 6:04 PM ET

Vice President Dick Cheney will be called to testify on behalf of his former chief of staff in the CIA leak case, defense attorneys said Tuesday, ending months of speculation over what would be historic testimony.

“We’re calling the vice president,” attorney Ted Wells said in court. Wells represents defendant I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who is charged with perjury and obstruction.

Sitting presidents, including Clinton and Ford, have testified in criminal cases, but presidential historians said they knew of no vice president who has done so.

William Jeffress, another of Libby’s attorneys, would not say whether Cheney is under a subpoena to testify. Issuing a court order to a sitting vice president could raise separation-of-powers concerns, but Jeffress said it was not an issue.

“We don’t expect him to resist,” Jeffress said.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who said last week he did not expect the White House to challenge his witnesses, said Tuesday he did not plan to call Cheney.

Wells immediately said he would.

“That settles that,” Fitzgerald said.

Neither Jeffress nor Wells would say whether they expect Cheney to testify in the courtroom or offer videotaped testimony to avoid infringing on the separation of powers.

“We’ve cooperated fully in this matter and will continue to do so in fairness to the parties involved,” said Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president. “As we’ve stated previously, we’re not going to comment further on a legal proceeding.”

Libby is accused of lying to investigators about what he told reporters regarding former CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame’s identity was leaked to reporters around the time that her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly criticized the Bush administration’s prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Libby says he was focused on more important issues — including terrorism, Iraq and nuclear proliferation — and didn’t remember his conversations regarding Plame.

Cheney could bolster that argument by testifying about the many other larger issues Libby was responsible for. During cross-examination, Fitzgerald likely will press Cheney to acknowledge that Plame was a key concern for him, and thus would have been important to Libby.

The trial could offer a behind-the-scenese look at the Bush administration’s march to war and U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said he planned to ask potential jurors whether their feelings on the administration’s policies would interfere with their ability to serve.

Cheney and Libby got to know each other when Cheney was defense secretary under the first President Bush. Libby has been extremely loyal to Cheney and, in return, had the vice president’s unwavering trust.

By 2000, Libby was working as a top adviser to Cheney in the presidential campaign and then followed him to the White House. In the White House, he was known as “Cheney’s Cheney” for being as trusted a problem solver for the vice president as Cheney was for Bush.

Even after Libby’s indictment, Cheney called him “one of the finest men I’ve ever known.”

In addition to Cheney, other government officials and journalists are expected to be key witnesses in the trial, which is scheduled to start next month.

Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller and NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert are expected to be prosecution witnesses. Libby’s lawyers said in court papers that several reporters will testify on Libby’s behalf.

Two unidentified reporters may resist testifying, Libby’s attorneys said, but they expect to resolve that issue before trial.

The Bush administration wants to put 15,000 to 30,000 more troops into Iraq for six to eight months and the Joint Chiefs believe that this is due to “limited alternatives” and that the White House has “latched” onto this plan, which according to the article, could provide a distinct disadvantage to the military.

This follows a Pentagon report that says Iraqi violence has reached record levels and President Bush’s approval ratings in dealing with the Iraq war has dipped to 28%.

The plan for attack in Iraq should be to gradually withdraw troops out of the country. We should not stay until 2008 as the Iraq Study Group recommended. We should be out of the country by March 2007, but with the administration’s stubborn attitudes toward the country and its belief that we can still be “victors” in Iraq, troops will probably remain in Iraq until January 2009, when Bush leaves office.

Corporate radio, in the corporate media age that we’ve been witness to, will thrive over homegrown radio in 99% of all circumstances. WHLD was homegrown. Its investors believed that progressive radio could survive in Buffalo and that without riding the coattails of a corporate payroll, the could make it. Unfortunately, WHLD fell short. I recently attended the event at UAW Region 9 where Randi Rhodes appeared, as did Joe and Grady. I’m sure then they knew of what their fate was, or at least, had some idea that they might have to go off the air. For now, WHLD 1270AM will become an “inspirational” channel, hosting a variety of church-related music and talk shows.

I applaud those at WHLD 1270AM: The Voice of Reason for attempting to do what is nearly impossible. It CAN be done, but only in the right atmosphere. Also included below will be the statement provided on the WHLD website about the departure of progressive talk radio from Buffalo. It’s a sad day for progressive radio and for radio start-ups everywhere.

“The Voice of Reason” has been silenced.

Beginning today, WHLD-AM News Talk 1270′s short-lived experiment in progressive programming – featuring locally produced broadcasts and syndicated shows from Air America Radio and Pacifica – has been converted to an urban inspirational station.

Brian Brown-Cashdollar, WHLD’s president and general manager, said the station’s ratings were “respectable” for a start-up station and advertising revenue shot up “tenfold” during the 10-month effort. But ultimately, it was not enough to satisfy investors concerned about cash flow.

“We’ve done a lot of things right, but in the end we fell short. We had a business opportunity to protect the shareholders, so we took it,” he said.

The station’s license is owned by Citadel Broadcasting Corp. and will continue to be operated by Niagara Independent Media. Brown-Cashdollar said there will be layoffs but could not yet say how many.

WHLD’s left-of-center format evolved out of an effort in January 2004 by the Buffalo Coalition for Progressive Media that brought Pacifica’s “Democracy Now,” hosted by Amy Goodman, to Buffalo. It was the first time the nationally syndicated program landed on a commercial station. “Democracy Now” will remain on the air in a 1 p.m. time slot and soon air at 9 a.m. on WBBF-AM 1120, which is also owned by Niagara Independent Media.

Air America Radio programming included three-hour weekday shows hosted by Al Franken and by Randi Rhodes. Locally produced shows included “The Newsroom,” which aired mornings with Joe Schmidbauer and Grady Hawkins,” “Radio Civil Liberties,” “The Einach Report” and “Speakeasy radio.” Schmidbauer said his abrupt dismissal came “with about five minutes notice,” and expressed disappointment for “all the people whose hopes and dreams rode with us.”

The new station will include gospel music, talk radio and brokered time, in which churches buy air time and produce their own shows.

- Buffalo News article, written by Mark Sommer

The Voice of Reason, NewsTalk 1270 is Off the Air

It is with great sadness that I have to inform you that we are no longer able to offer our listeners the Voice of Reason NewsTalk 1270. Even after overcoming many hurdles, rebuilding the station, growing our sales revenue (10 fold in less than 6 months) and steady growth in ratings, we weren’t able to sustain it. We came close to pulling off this nearly impossible task, but in the end we had to make a move to protect our investors. As to why we had to make this move, the short answer is cashflow. The long story is much more interesting, and one day soon we’ll tell it. Start-ups face a huge up hill battle to get established, and it’s almost unheard of for a start up to launch a station with a format as expensive as the news/talk format. And it’s extremely rare for local investors to buck the trend of the corporate consolidation and launch an independent locally controlled broadcast outlet. But 20 individuals thought it was so needed that we did it anyway, and came close to pulling it off.

As a small consolation we will still carry Democracy Now on WHLD at 1 PM and in the coming days on WBBF AM 1120 in the mornings, check back here for more details.

However there is something you can do to preserve progressive talk in Buffalo. Call Entercom or make an appointment and pay them a visit. Tim Wenger is the GM of WWKB as well as WBEN. Give him a call at 716-843-0600 and let him know how important a progressive talk station is to you. Also let him know what you want on it. I think your input could be very helpful to make KB a station progressives can call their own. You better act fast though, because rumor has it that they’re going to dump their “progressive line-up” in the very near future. For more contact info click here. Over the last year Entercom, Buffalo has shown their general lack of respect for progressive talk and progressive talk listeners by devoting almost no resources to the station (reportedly they even powered down the station to 10,000 watts to save money). A ton of phone calls and visits could help change that, heck you might even convince them to offer real local shows. It’s not much of a consolation, it’ll never be the Voice of Reason, but it could be better than nothing if you let them know how you feel.

I want to thank our staff who helped create one of the most unique radio stations seen in recent years. Everyone of them went above and beyond and made the Voice of Reason the amazing station that it was.
Joe Schmidbauer Grady Hawkins
Ruby Thaler Mike Brummer
John McMahon Jerome Lindberg
Nicole Thomas Frank Miller
Laura Heine Dave Polito
Todd Espinosa Gerard Morina
Alex Blair Jim Smith
Joe Polito Ray Marks

I also want to thank our Investors who put their assets on the line to make this happen:
George Alex Blair Brian & Tracey Brown-Cashdollar
Richard Lipsitz, Sr. Carl Kustell
Michael Niman Mo Saladin
John Lipsitz Bill Metzgers
Elliott Niman Laura McClusky
Ralph & Lucia Cashdollar Roger Cook
Robert & Roberta Grimm Michael Brummer
Andres Lugris Leta Dentan
Bill Wachob Patricia Wachob
David Polito

I would also like to thank our bondholders, who also invested to make progressive radio in Buffalo.

Charles Keil Martha McCluskey
Joel Huberman Susan Udin
Ray Broniszewski Tom Potts
Bill Wachob Patricia Wachob
Judy Bello Diedre Hodosy
Jim Parker Nancy Johnson
Walter & Nan Simpson Drew Eaton
Manny Fried Joe Kazuba
Robert & Roberta Grimm Bob Sienkiewicz
Doug Butler John Lipsitz

I also would like to thank the producers of the radiofreebuffalo shows, who helped make sure that community was front and center in our programming:

Native News, Views, and Reviews
Subjective Realities
Prospering in America
The Real Deal
Umoja Presents
Hip Hop in Action
Citizen Action Radio
Radio Civil Liberties
Radio Roxanne
Speakeasy Radio
The Einach Report

MOSTLY THOUGH I WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU OUR LISTENERS. You embraced the station and made it your own. You understood why Western New York needed the Voice of Reason. I’m sorry we couldn’t get to a point where it was sustainable.
As for Niagara Independent Media, we look forward to our partnerships going forward. The response from the leadership of the African American community has been tremendous, they get it. They understand the importance of having a voice on the radio, and we look forward to working with them, and we’re equally excited about our other partnerships that we’ll be announcing in the very near future.

Brian Brown-Cashdollar

From WHLD 1270AM’s website

See all of Keith’s Special Comments at his website: Countdown with Keith Olbermann

“This hole in the ground”- Special Comment on 9/11

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and — as I discovered from those “missing posters” seared still into my soul — two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are “soft,”or have “forgotten” the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds — none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country’s wound is still open.

Five years later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial — barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field — Mr. Lincoln said, “we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. “We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground.” So we won’t.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they’re doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

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And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, “bi-partisanship” meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, “validate the strategy of the terrorists.”

They promised protection, and then showed that to them “protection” meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ‘something to do’ with 9/11 is “lying by implication.”

The impolite phrase is “impeachable offense.”

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by — the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you — or those around you — ever “spin” 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called “The Twilight Zone” broadcast a riveting episode entitled “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.”

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An “alien” is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, “they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves.”

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: “The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

“For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn.”

When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have “forgotten the lessons of 9/11″… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

“Feeling morally or intellectually confused?”

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence — indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants — our employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s — questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience — needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute — and exclusive — in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count — not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we — as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note — with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that — though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism – indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.”

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

And so good night, and good luck.

“A Special Comment about Lying”

While the leadership in Congress has self-destructed over the revelations of an unmatched, and unrelieved, march through a cesspool …

While the leadership inside the White House has self-destructed over the revelations of a book with a glowing red cover …

The president of the United States — unbowed, undeterred and unconnected to reality — has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats.

Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said, ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.’”

The hell they did.

One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president’s seizure of another part of the Constitution.

Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn’t be listening to the conversations of terrorists.

President Bush hears what he wants.

Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said, “Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we’re attacked again before we respond.”

Mr. Bush fabricated that, too.

And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind reader.

“If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party,” the president said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, “it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is — wait until we’re attacked again.”

The president doesn’t just hear what he wants.

He hears things that only he can hear.

It defies belief that this president and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.

Yet they do.

It is startling enough that such things could be said out loud by any president of this nation.

Rhetorically, it is about an inch short of Mr. Bush accusing Democratic leaders, Democrats, the majority of Americans who disagree with his policies of treason.

But it is the context that truly makes the head spin.

Just 25 days ago, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this same man spoke to this nation and insisted, “We must put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us.”

Mr. Bush, this is a test you have already failed.

If your commitment to “put aside differences and work together” is replaced in the span of just three weeks by claiming your political opponents prefer to wait to see this country attacked again, and by spewing fabrications about what they’ve said, then the questions your critics need to be asking are no longer about your policies.

They are, instead, solemn and even terrible questions, about your fitness to fulfill the responsibilities of your office.

No Democrat, sir, has ever said anything approaching the suggestion that the best means of self-defense is to “wait until we’re attacked again.”

No critic, no commentator, no reluctant Republican in the Senate has ever said anything that any responsible person could even have exaggerated into the slander you spoke in Nevada on Monday night, nor the slander you spoke in California on Tuesday, nor the slander you spoke in Arizona on Wednesday … nor whatever is next.

You have dishonored your party, sir; you have dishonored your supporters; you have dishonored yourself.

But tonight the stark question we must face is — why?

Why has the ferocity of your venom against the Democrats now exceeded the ferocity of your venom against the terrorists?

Why have you chosen to go down in history as the president who made things up?

In less than one month you have gone from a flawed call to unity to this clarion call to hatred of Americans, by Americans.

If this is not simply the most shameless example of the rhetoric of political hackery, then it would have to be the cry of a leader crumbling under the weight of his own lies.

We have, of course, survived all manner of political hackery, of every shape, size and party. We will have to suffer it, for as long as the Republic stands.

But the premise of a president who comes across as a compulsive liar is nothing less than terrifying.

A president who since 9/11 will not listen, is not listening — and thanks to Bob Woodward’s most recent account — evidently has never listened.

A president who since 9/11 so hates or fears other Americans that he accuses them of advocating deliberate inaction in the face of the enemy.

A president who since 9/11 has savaged the very freedoms he claims to be protecting from attack — attack by terrorists, or by Democrats, or by both — it is now impossible to find a consistent thread of logic as to who Mr. Bush believes the enemy is.

But if we know one thing for certain about Mr. Bush, it is this: This president — in his bullying of the Senate last month and in his slandering of the Democrats this month — has shown us that he believes whoever the enemies are, they are hiding themselves inside a dangerous cloak called the Constitution of the United States of America.

How often do we find priceless truth in the unlikeliest of places?

I tonight quote not Jefferson nor Voltaire, but Cigar Aficionado Magazine.

On Sept. 11th, 2003, the editor of that publication interviewed General Tommy Franks, at that point, just retired from his post as commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command — of Cent-Com.

And amid his quaint defenses of the then-nagging absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or the continuing freedom of Osama bin Laden, General Franks said some of the most profound words of this generation.

He spoke of “the worst thing that can happen” to this country:

First, quoting, a “massive casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western World — it may be in the United States of America.”

Then, the general continued, “the Western World, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years, in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

It was this super-patriotic warrior’s fear that we would lose that most cherished liberty, because of another attack, one — again quoting General Franks — “that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in fact, then begins to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.”

And here we are, the fabric of our Constitution being unraveled, anyway.

Habeus corpus neutered; the rights of self-defense now as malleable and impermanent as clay; a president stifling all critics by every means available and, when he runs out of those, by simply lying about what they said or felt.

And all this, even without the dreaded attack.

General Franks, like all of us, loves this country, and believes not just in its values, but in its continuity.

He has been trained to look for threats to that continuity from without.

He has, perhaps been as naïve as the rest of us, in failing to keep close enough vigil on the threats to that continuity from within.

Secretary of State Rice first cannot remember urgent cautionary meetings with counterterrorism officials before 9/11. Then within hours of this lie, her spokesman confirms the meetings in question. Then she dismisses those meetings as nothing new — yet insists she wanted the same cautions expressed to Secretaries Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.

Mr. Rumsfeld, meantime, has been unable to accept the most logical and simple influence of the most noble and neutral of advisers. He and his employer insist they rely on the “generals in the field.” But dozens of those generals have now come forward to say how their words, their experiences, have been ignored.

And, of course, inherent in the Pentagon’s war-making functions is the regulation of presidential war lust.

Enacting that regulation should include everything up to symbolically wrestling the Chief Executive to the floor.

Yet—and it is Pentagon transcripts that now tell us this—evidently Mr. Rumsfeld’s strongest check on Mr. Bush’s ambitions, was to get somebody to excise the phrase “Mission Accomplished” out of the infamous Air Force Carrier speech of May 1st, 2003, even while the same empty words hung on a banner over the President’s shoulder.

And the vice president is a chilling figure, still unable, it seems, to accept the conclusions of his own party’s leaders in the Senate, that the foundations of his public position, are made out of sand.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But he still says so.

There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida.

But he still says so.

And thus, gripping firmly these figments of his own imagination, Mr. Cheney lives on, in defiance, and spreads—around him and before him—darkness, like some contagion of fear.

They are never wrong, and they never regret — admirable in a French torch singer, cataclysmic in an American leader.

Thus, the sickening attempt to blame the Foley scandal on the negligence of others or “the Clinton era”—even though the Foley scandal began before the Lewinsky scandal.

Thus, last month’s enraged attacks on this administration’s predecessors, about Osama bin Laden—a projection of their own negligence in the immediate months before 9/11.

Thus, the terrifying attempt to hamstring the fundament of our freedom—the Constitution—a triumph for al Qaida, for which the terrorists could not hope to achieve with a hundred 9/11’s.

And thus, worst of all perhaps, these newest lies by President Bush about Democrats choosing to await another attack and not listen to the conversations of terrorists.

It is the terror and the guilt within your own heart, Mr. Bush, that you redirect at others who simply wish for you to temper your certainty with counsel.

It is the failure and the incompetence within your own memory, Mr. Bush, that leads you to demonize those who might merely quote to you the pleadings of Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

It is not the Democrats whose inaction in the face of the enemy you fear, Sir.

It is your own—before 9/11 – and (and you alone know this), perhaps afterwards.

Mr. President, these new lies go to the heart of what it is that you truly wish to preserve.

It is not our freedom, nor our country—your actions against the Constitution give irrefutable proof of that.

You want to preserve a political party’s power. And obviously you’ll sell this country out, to do it.

These are lies about the Democrats — piled atop lies about Iraq — which were piled atop lies about your preparations for al Qaida.

To you, perhaps, they feel like the weight of a million centuries — as crushing, as immovable.

They are not.

If you add more lies to them, you cannot free yourself, and us, from them.

But if you stop — if you stop fabricating quotes, and building straw-men, and inspiring those around you to do the same — you may yet liberate yourself and this nation.

Please, sir, do not throw this country’s principles away because your lies have made it such that you can no longer differentiate between the terrorists and the critics.

“Election Eve Special Comment”

We are, as every generation, inseparable from our own time.

Thus is our perspective, inevitably that of the explorer looking into the wrong end of the telescope.

But even accounting for our myopia, it’s hard to imagine there have been many elections more important than this one, certainly not in non-presidential years.

And so we look at the verdict in the trial of Saddam Hussein yesterday, and, with the very phrase “October, or November, Surprise” now a part of our vernacular, and the chest-thumping
coming from so many of the Republican campaigners today, each of us must wonder about the convenience of the timing of his conviction and sentencing.

But let us give history and coincidence the benefit of the doubt—let’s say it’s just “happened” that way—and for a moment not look into the wrong end of the telescope.

Let’s perceive instead the bigger picture:

Saddam Hussein, found guilty in an Iraqi court.

Who can argue against that?

He is officially, what the world always knew he was: a war criminal.

Mr. Bush, was this imprimatur, worth the cost of 2,832 American lives, and thousands more American lives yet to be lost?

Is the conviction of Saddam Hussein the reason you went to war in Iraq?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the connection between Iraq and al-Qaida that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to break the bonds of tyranny there, while installing the mechanisms of tyranny here?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because you felt the need to wreak vengeance against somebody, anybody?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to contain a rogue state which, months earlier, your own administration had declared had been fully contained by sanctions?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to keep gas prices down?

How startling it was, sir, to hear you introduce oil to your stump speeches over the weekend.

Not four years removed from the most dismissive, the most condescending, the most ridiculing denials of the very hint at, as Mr. Rumsfeld put it, this “nonsense.”

There you were, campaigning in Colorado, in Nebraska, in Florida, in Kansas — suddenly turning this ‘unpatriotic idea’ into a platform plank.

“You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources,” you told us. “And then you can imagine them saying, ‘We’re going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following.’”

Having frightened us, having bullied us, having lied to us, having ignored and rewritten the Constitution under our noses, having stayed the course, having denied you’ve stayed the course, having belittled us about “timelines” but instead extolled “benchmarks,” you’ve now resorted, sir, to this?

We must stay in Iraq to save the $2 gallon of gas?

Mr. President, there is no other conclusion we can draw as we go to the polls tomorrow.

Sir, you have been making this up as you went along.

This country was founded to prevent anybody from making it up as they went along.

Those vaunted Founding Fathers of ours have been so quoted up, that they appear as marble statues: like the chiseled guards of China, or the faces on Mount Rushmore. But in fact they were practical people and the thing they obviously feared most was a government of men and not laws.

They provided the checks and balances for a reason.

No one man could run the government the way he saw fit — unless he, at the least, took into consideration what those he governed saw.

A House of Representatives would be the people’s eyes.

A Senate would be the corrective force on that House.

An executive would do the work, and hold the Constitution to his chest like his child.

A Supreme Court would oversee it all.

Checks and balances.

Where did that go, Mr. Bush?

And what price did we pay because we have let it go?

Saddam Hussein will get out of Iraq the same way 2,832 Americans have and thousands more.

He’ll get out faster than we will.

And if nothing changes tomorrow, you, sir, will be out of the White House long before the rest of us can say we are out of Iraq.

And whose fault is this?

Not truly yours. You took advantage of those of us who were afraid, and those of us who believed unity and nation took precedence over all else.

But we let you take that advantage.

And so we let you go to war in Iraq to oust Saddam or find non-existant weapons or avenge 9/11 or fight terrorists who only got there after we did or as cover to change the fabric of our Constitution or for lower prices at The Texaco or…?

There are still a few hours left before the polls open, sir. There are many rationalizations still untried.

And whatever your motives of the moment, we the people have, in true good faith and with the genuine patriotism of self-sacrifice (of which you have shown you know nothing), we have let you go on making it up as you went along.

Unchecked and unbalanced.

Vote.

Gaughan, in his article, compared Erie County’s number of different governments, politicians, judges and elected officials (the total number of politicians and judges elected), population and population change since 1990. He compared Erie County to Greater Charlotte, Greater Baltimore and New York City. Here are the results, which you can find at his website (see above).

New York City
Governments: 1
Politicians: 64
Judges: 184
Elected Officials: 248
Population (as of 2003): 8,115,135
Population change since 1990: +792,571

Greater Baltimore
Governments: 3
Politicians: 33
Judges: 62
Elected Officials: 95
Population (2003): 1,670,119
Population change since 1990: +54,643

Greater Charlotte
Governments: 8
Politicians: 60
Judges: 75
Elected Officials: 135
Population (2003): 752,366
Population change since 1990: +240,933

Erie County
Governments: 45
Politicians: 341
Judges: 98
Elected officials: 439
Population (2003): 941,293
Population change since 1990: -27,239

Source for this information: www.TheCost.org

Now I have never been an inhabitant of Erie County. I reside in Orleans County and I go to college in Chautauqua. But why does Erie County require 98 judges, which is more than Baltimore (Baltimore has almost twice as many people as Buffalo)? Why does Erie County require 45 governments when New York City has a single government? Why does Erie County require 341 politicians, which is more than NYC, Baltimore and Charlotte combined (and then some)?

And yet, Erie County is the only location on the list that is LOSING people. Why are they losing people? Well, you have to pay those 439 officials somehow, and it’s at the cost of other citizens.

Welcome to Erie County… Home of the Elected Official.