Are You Registered to Vote?

Friends,

Our attention has been consumed with Wall Street drama and the comedy event of the season -- tonight's vice-presidential debate -- but many people don't realize that in most states if you're not registered to vote by Monday, you cannot vote for president in November. In some states, the deadline is as early as this Saturday!

Will you do me a favor? Beginning right now, will you start asking everyone you know if they are registered to vote? Before you say hello, will you ask, "Hey, are you registered to vote here in (name of town)? 'Cause the deadline is Monday, and you have to be registered where you live." (Click here to find out what the deadline is in your state and click here to find out what the procedures are to sign up and vote. If you are a college student and want to find out where your vote counts most, click here.)

For the next couple of days, each of us has to do whatever we can to get people registered. Especially people who have recently moved, or students who are at college (students can vote where they go to school). Obama's two strongest bases -- young people and African Americans -- are traditionally the two groups who have the lowest voter registration and the lowest voter turnout. For Obama to win, this must change -- and it has to change today or tomorrow, not next week.

So send an email to everyone in your address book and attach this link so they know how to register and what the deadline is. Call the local Obama headquarters or the NAACP or black pastors or student Dems and offer your time to register people this weekend. It's called "the ground game," and it's where we always lose to the Republicans. Each of us need to commit to doing something in the next 48 hours to get the unregistered registered.

The more enlightened states allow you to register the day you vote. But in most places the deadline to register is this Monday, October 6th at 5pm.

Thanks for taking the time to make sure everyone you know is registered, and for helping them out if they're not.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Tonight, the Senate passed an even worse "bailout" bill than the one the House defeated on Monday night. Only 25 Senators (and most of them for the wrong reasons) voted "No." It now moves to the House for a vote, possibly on Friday. Why did Obama and Biden vote for it? I think we all know the answer. Let's keep our eye on the ball of removing the Republicans from the White House, but let tonight be our first reminder that our work is not finished on November 4th when Obama wins. The struggle between what is best for the people and what is best in order to line the pockets of Wall Street will continue. 150 million Americans combined can't even match the wealth of the richest 400 Americans. All we have is our vote. And there will always be more of us than them. We will all need to become more politically active if we are going to get our democracy back.

P.P.S. Bill Maher's new film, "Religulous," opens tomorrow. It's hilarious and it raises some important and controversial questions. Go see it if you have a chance. It's directed by Larry Charles, the director of "Borat."


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VICIOUS: Sarah Palin's War on Wolves

Vicious: Sarah Palin’s War on Wolves

September 11, 2008 |
by Marybeth Holleman
Anchorage, Alaska

This past June, on a cool morning in southwest Alaska, fourteen wolf pups were pulled from their dens and shot in the head, one by one, by state biologists sanctioned by Governor Sarah Palin. At a month old, these pups had opened their eyes and ears less than two weeks earlier. They had ventured from the dark safety of the den once or twice. They had grown into rolling, tumbling, play-fighting puppies for whom their only care was, when would they next get to nurse?

They still depended entirely on their parents and their packs for food, shelter, protection. But every single adult member of their packs had already been gunned down from above by the Alaska state workers who shot them. These pups did nothing to deserve such a malicious early end to life other than to be born a wolf in Alaska in the era of Sarah Palin.

To most Americans in this day and age, this is atrocious. But to those of us who have watched Sarah Palin at work for the past two years, it’s not at all surprising. As Governor, Palin has expanded Alaska’s aerial hunting further and faster than any predecessor, since anything seen since territorial days, when=2 0all predators were targeted for extermination as worthless vermin.

I’ve lived in Alaska for nearly 25 years, long enough to see the on-again off-again cycles of predator control. But never has the killing of wolves and bears in order to inflate the numbers of moose and caribou been so widespread and mean-spirited as under Palin’s reign.

Under Palin, private citizens kill wolves from planes under the guise of predator control. They run the wolves to exhaustion, and then shoot them. Under Palin, for the first time in 20 years, wolves are also gunned down from state-chartered helicopters. Palin authorized $400,000 in state funds for advertising to persuade Alaskans to vote against a ballot initiative that would have curtailed aerial hunting. Her propaganda was successful; the ballot measure failed.

Under Palin, for the first time since Alaska’s statehood in 1958, it’s legal to do land-and-shoot killing of bears and their cubs. Under Palin, predator control has spread from one to five regions of Alaska, to over 60,000 square miles, more than at any time since statehood. Nearly 800 wolves have been shot from planes, and some 2,000 are killed every year by other methods. And that’s just the reported deaths. Palin even went so far last year as to put a bounty on wolves—she wanted to pay $150 for a foreleg of each dead wolf. Thanks to Friends of Animals, Alaska Wildlife Alliance, and Defenders=2 0of Wildlife, her wolf bounty was ruled illegal by the courts.

Wildlife scientists from around the country are dismayed at Palin’s predator program, noting it doesn’t meet the standards recommended by the U.S. National Research Council to justify, implement, monitor, and evaluate. Last year, 172 scientists wrote to Palin, warning her that if she did reach the “unsustainable historically high” moose and caribou numbers she sought, it would ecologically backfire in a huge way: not only would she put at risk the long-term health of Alaska’s wolves, but of the very moose and caribou she sought to increase.

Palin would have the rest of Americans believe that this massive slaughter is acceptable, indeed necessary. She points to fifty years of statehood in which wolves have not become extinct. But the extent of the kill now far surpasses anything we’ve ever seen.

Even many Alaska hunters have grown outraged over Palin’s out-of-control wolf control. Most recently, she’s tried to give even more power to the Board of Game—the one that she appoints. This, wrote Alaska Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, would give her Board “more leeway without any scientific input to do whatever the hell they basically wanted.” This program has been a true black eye for all hunters in Alaska, and for our state.

Contrary to what Palin would have Americans believe, only 14 percent of Alaskans hunt. Of those, a small percentage are true subsistence hunters. Palin wants wolves and bears scraped from the landscape so it’s easier for urban hunters to get their kill in a weekend.

Don’t let her fool you: Wasilla has just as many big-box and fast-food stores as any place in America, and just as many opportunities to make money to buy food. Alaskans haven’t paid income tax for decades, and instead get over $1000 a year—for every man, woman, and child—in oil dividends. It’s not economic necessity that drives the killing of wolves.

During Alaska’s gubernatorial debates, Palin spoke with such passionate hatred about the need to kill wolves and bears that it sounded like we were thrown back into the dark ages of wildlife management, when bounties were paid for the feet of bald eagles, the fins of seals and sea lions, the skins of fox, coyote, wolf, and bear. Yes: bald eagles. They were blamed for eating too many salmon.

I was raised Catholic. I learned early on that if someone persecutes one group that’s different from them, they also persecute others who are “different.” It has taken the national media spotlight and her vicious statements on national stage to show Alaskans what we didn’t know when Palin ran for Governor—to expose her disdain not only for non-human life, but also for those of different races, nationalities, and religions.

As a Catholic, I also learned that we have a responsibility to all living things. Not just human life, but all life. Which is, as we all now know, inextricably linked to all that we need in order to survive. Food, air, water, shelter. Safety. All that those wolf pups wanted from life. And all that was taken from them.

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No Impact Man: What's Wrong With Domestic Drilling

Drill here, drill now, get nothing but an opinion poll point or two

The Democrats are caving on offshore drilling.

As reported by the Christian Science Monitor (emphasis added):

"... In a shift on Saturday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the House will take up comprehensive energy legislation next month that includes partially lifting the 1981 ban on offshore drilling...

"... On Friday, Senate majority leader Harry Reid said that the Senate will also examine lifting the ban, which now covers all but central and western portions of the Gulf of Mexico and some parts of Alaska...

"... Until Saturday, Speaker Pelosi called the notion that more drilling would lower prices at the pump a hoax and said that there would be no votes on this issue on her watch.

"With the US controlling some 3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, drilling in protected sites won't solve the problem of high gas prices in the short term, if ever, Democrats said.

"... In a bid to force an offshore drilling vote, GOP senators blocked votes on all other elements of an energy plan, including a popular measure to extend tax breaks for renewable energy."

What's happened is that the Democrats are losing political ground on this issue and the Republicans are holding to ransom the rest of the Democrats' energy agenda. For reasons of politics, therefore, the Democrats have decided to let the offshore drilling slide.

Over on ClimateProgress, Joe Romm, for whom I have great respect, has written repeatedly about how offshore drilling is a crock and won't make gas cheaper, but he has also written that he thinks the Democrats may as well compromise with the Republicans on this point.

I disagree. And this is not a party political point I'm making. It's not even a savvy policy point. This is a plain old disappointed citizen's point.

The disappointment comes from the fact that politicians on both sides of the aisle still don't really get that climate change is a planetary time bomb. They still think it's a political football.

The Republicans are using offshore drilling to score political points. The Democrats are relenting in order to avoid those Republican points being scored.

Neither party is exhibiting the type of leadership needed by the people of the United States and the rest of the world on this offshore drilling issue. It's a simple repeat of the gas tax pandering from earlier in the present election cycle--except that this time we can't be proud of the outcome.

Here's the thing. There is no question that high gas prices are killing people at the pumps and that this is awful. But what we absolutely don't need are false solutions that do nothing but perpetuate the illusion that we can continue to depend on fossil fuel.

When does a leader who cares about climate change draw a line in the sand? If not offshore drilling then where? Do we let the debate proceed next to shale oil extraction and coal liquification or do we begin the battle for hearts and minds now?

Instead of pandering to short term opinion trends, we need to expand on the vision of a better life for Americans and citizens of the planet that doesn't depend on oil.

A vision where our city kids don't suffer from asthma, where our lakes and rivers don't die of acid rain, where we preserve the great heritage of our beautiful land, where we aren't forced to spend upwards of 15 percent of our incomes on owning and fueling our cars, where we are independent of foreign oil and where we don't allow our planet to literally melt.

What would leadership towards that kind of vision look like when it comes to offshore drilling?

It would look like our Democratic and Republican politicians siding with the truth and with the people. It would look like leading from principle instead of leading from opinion poll figures. It would look like drawing the line in the sand on climate change now instead of later.

A principled political leader on this issue would say that high gas prices make life hard, but that offshore drilling won't help and explain why. A principled leader would do the right thing and use the opinion polls to help them figure out what needs to be explained to the people rather than what direction the policy wind should blow.

We are going to have to face some hardship on energy. And the reasons they are going to be difficult is that we didn't heed the warnings sooner which would have allowed us to make the transition smoother.

But the good news is that, if we don't get diverted by political hoaxes like trying to squeeze a small amount of oil out of our coasts and instead invest in renewable energy and efficiency, we will soon have an energy system that is clean, long-lasting, independent of foreign oil, and will save the planet for our grandchildren.

What's happening today, with Pelosi's decision, is that the politicians of both parties have exhibited their lack of faith in the people's ability to understand the issues and the possibilities.

If the politicians pander on offshore drilling then all they do is postpone the conversation, allow it to move one step closer to shale oil and liquified coal, and confuse the voters with their double-talk. They forgo their responsibility to lead.

That's sad. It's disappointing. And it's wrong.

Photo courtesy of Socius in Daejeon.