Op-Ed

Of course Katharine Gun was free to have a conscience, as long as it didn’t interfere with her work at a British intelligence agency. To the authorities, practically speaking, a conscience was apt to be less tangible than a pixel on a computer screen. But suddenly -- one routine morning, while she was scrolling through e-mail at her desk -- conscience struck. It changed Katharine Gun’s life, and it changed history.

Despite the nationality of this young Englishwoman, her story is profoundly American -- all the more so because it has remained largely hidden from the public in the United States. When Katharine Gun chose, at great personal risk, to reveal an illicit spying operation at the United Nations in which the U.S. government was the senior partner, she brought out of the transatlantic shadows a special relationship that could not stand the light of day.

Michael Moore's new book is called "Mike's Election Guide 2008," and it's a nice combination of the comical and the useful. The comical comes first. Chapter One consists of Mike's answers to random election-related questions, and his answers are for the most part funny, insightful, informative, and sometimes brilliant.

The background Moore provides on John McCain's fits of temper is frightening, and includes this "statement from McCain, spoken loudly and freely while riding in 2000 with the press in his Straight Talk Express: 'I hated the gooks and will continue to hate them as long as I live,'" and this one made by McCain to his wife in response to a comment from her about his hair: "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt."

Moore also provides good answers to such key questions as "Is it true Democrats drink from a sippy cup and sleep with the light on?"

My daughters and I have cast paper ballots in the opening days of the 2008 presidential election. It was their first time voting in a presidential election.

That they have only voted with an African-American atop the Democratic ticket makes this doubly historic for them. The issue of race remains a great unknown in how things will turn out.

But so does the question of whether everyone who wants to vote can, and whether those votes will be accurately counted (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHiCFe2GBjk).

Four years ago this county tried to deny me the right to cast an absentee ballot. After four phone calls and some serious politicking, I finally did get a paper ballot, which I hand delivered to the election board. But was it counted?

My twins are now 21. On Friday, October 3, 2008, we drove to Veterans Memorial in downtown Columbus to cast our ballots under unique circumstances. For a full week, Ohio voters have been able to register and vote at the same time.

The “necessary war” in Afghanistan, which both presidential candidates support — the one, you know, that’s really about terrorists and Osama and all — raises as many troubling questions about who we are as the other war we’re fighting and losing.

Consider the details of this war. The aggregate civilian death toll, at the hands of the U.S. and NATO — between 6,800 and more than 8,000, according to economics professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire — is a start. But Herold’s about-to-be-released report on the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, “The Matrix of Death,” is a disturbing analysis not only of the collateral damage churned up by our terrorist-hunt in this broken nation, but of the attitude and rationality that are driving it. The report is subtitled: “The (Under)Valuation of an Afghan Life.”

Today's vote on the Paulson Plunder Act of 2008 may fail. It should. You should help block it by phoning your representative right now at (202) 224-3121 and promising to vote for them in November only if they vote NO on this grand larceny today. We do have a chance at winning on this and blocking this bill. Here's why.

There was only one foreign policy asked about in Friday night's foreign policy debate: war and potential wars.

Obama began the debate by allowing McCain to get away with claiming the mantle of "accountability" on the issue of a bailout that rewards fraud in financial markets. Why? Because Obama won't oppose the bailout.

Then he let McCain get away with complaining about a huge increase in the size of government, without pointing out that the larger "size" of government is wars and military spending supported by McCain (and Obama).

Obama finally spoke up on a serious and good difference with McCain on taxes, even going so far as to speak in favor of taxing businesses rather than people, but allowed McCain to seize the high ground on earmarks and "pork barrel spending."

In most cases, Obama spoke on one topic and McCain on another. This was not a debate in which both were required to speak on the same points.

Obama openly promised shock-doctrinal success for the bailout, telling us that he will have to cut back spending for useful projects. But he took the opportunity to speak about the need for all the things he may or may not fund.

As corporate media coverage of the presidential race becomes even more notably stingy with intrepid journalism, the mainstream press enthusiasm for "The Daily Show" seems more cloying than ever.

The pattern is now a routine feature of the media landscape: "The Daily Show" gets laudatory attention from major news organizations, where countless journalists watch like shackled prisoners in awe of Superman.

Look -- up in the media sky -- it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Jon Stewart!

While news accounts note how many viewers hold faux "news anchor" Stewart in higher esteem as a journalist than the "real" ones at the top of the media pack, there’s a sheepish quality to much of the coverage about "The Daily Show."

After all, many big-name journalists have earned their keep by describing and analyzing the embroideries of the emperor’s new clothes. It blows their conformist minds to see a network program that regularly exposes right-wing rulers without a stitch.

With varying degrees of confidence or even complacency, many people have assumed that the jig is almost up for the horrendous political era that began when George W. Bush became president. Always dubious, the assumption is now on very shaky ground.

The Bush-Cheney regime may be on its last legs, but a new incarnation of right-wing populism is shadowing the near horizon.

Much as modern capitalism is always driven to promote new products in the marketplace, the corporate-fundamentalist partnership must reinvent and remarket itself. We’re now seeing the rollout of a hybrid product under the McCain-Palin brand.

After watching Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech and the laudatory responses from many TV journalists, I remembered wandering around the floor of the Democratic convention in Denver. At the base, the two major parties are even more different than the speeches are apt to indicate.

What does it say about John McCain that he picked not only the least experienced Vice Presidential nominee in America’s history, but someone he really doesn’t know? Departing so far from any normal concept of appropriate background, he should at least have had a sense of why this individual is so special. Meeting Palin once at a Republican governors’ conference and having a single phone conversation on the eve of her selection just doesn’t pass muster—particularly for the oldest presidential candidate ever, who’s had four malignant melanomas.

What makes Palin such a cynical choice is that McCain doesn’t know her and doesn’t know what drives her. Until she was selected by the Karl Rove types running his campaign (like campaign manager and Rove protégé Steve Schmidt), McCain might not even have recognized her on the street. Instead, she’s a category selection, made for the crassest reasons by the same kinds of political operatives who brought us George W. Bush.

Bad bear!

Within the false outrage coursing through much of mainstream politics and the media, there is a grudging reverence for the brutality of the latest world crisis, if evinced only in the satisfaction that America has found its next enemy. Cold War sentiments stir in their hibernation, the McCain campaign has a bete noir to rail at more ferocious than Paris Hilton, and God’s in his heaven once again.

Maybe Russia is the perfect enemy, in that the country is too big and powerful to actually attack directly — not even the most unhinged neocon has so far suggested that — and therefore we can sustain rhetorical hatred and huge defense budgets without fear of a new quagmire.

Oh, what a world it would be if humanity and compassion had a collective presence that wasn’t fleeting, if a crisis of aggression somewhere in the world was followed by cries from politicians and ordinary citizens alike to beef up the peace budget.