Burton of proof. Civil rights lawyer John Christopher Burton, Socialist Equality Party candidate for governor in the on-again, off-again Califronia recall election, speaks to younger voters. As if they counted, no less.

It is important that you understand what each of the two major parties represents today. The Republican Party is dominated by political reactionaries and represents the most rapacious and unrestrained sections of the corporate elite. It is epitomized by the crimes of the Bush administration, which is led by a very stupid and petty man, who owes his office to the outright theft of the 2000 election.

The Democrats, on the other hand, constitute the semi-corpse of liberalism, no longer able to offer any sort of meaningful alternative. The power of the Republicans is due far more to the collapse of liberalism than to any popular support for their policies.

In the end, both political parties represent the interests of the same ruling elite, leaving the vast majority of people with no political voice. The political consequences are brutal colonial-style wars abroad and the massive misallocation of resources and increased repression at home.

Any candidate who tells you that the crisis in California can be solved without challenging the Bush administration’s so-called “preemptive” wars of aggression and its huge tax cuts for the rich is lying to you. I am the only candidate who is campaigning in opposition to US militarism. I am the only candidate calling on the masses of Californians to transform the recall election into a referendum against the Bush administration and the policies of war and social reaction of both the Republicans and Democrats.

American Musharraf. Kick this clown Clark to the curb and end the DLC takeover of the so-called Democratic Party.

The latest trick of the neo-cons is running retired General Wesley Clark for President as a Democrat. But not just any Democrat -- a "New Democrat." The same bunch that are pushing Joe Lieberman's candidacy are obviously hedging on their bets and want to have Clark in the race as a potential vice presidential candidate (to ensure their continued influence in a future Democratic administration of Howard Dean, John Kerry, or Dick Gephardt) or as a "go-to" candidate in the event that Lieberman stumbles badly in the first few Democratic primaries next year.

The "New Democrats" (neo-cons) are as much masters at the perception management (lying) game as their GOP counterparts (Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld). Clark's presidential candidacy announcement in Little Rock is one warning sign. This city is a sort of "Mecca" for the neo-con Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and its main nurturers, Al From and Bruce Reed. It was from Little Rock where the DLC propelled a little known governor named Bill Clinton into the White House. And although Clinton did not turn out exactly as conservative as the DLC hoped for, his support for globalization and selected use of U.S. military power abroad were neo-con keystone successes.

Roots of fascism. The vindictive, richer-me-than-you, radical right movement owards modern fascism can be tracked in California back to the Howard Jarvis crowd and Proposition 13 in 1978. About the same time period in a different part of the realm...

[John] Newhouse traces the right's bid for power to the attempt to take over the Ford administration in the so-called Halloween Massacre of 1975, when Donald Rumsfeld was White House chief of staff and Cheney his deputy. Rumsfeld maneuvered Secretary of State Henry Kissinger out of his dual role as national security adviser, got Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger fired to be replaced by Rumsfeld himself, with Cheney promoted to chief of staff. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was told he would not be on the ticket when Ford ran for president the following year. Rumsfeld was not interested in Kissinger's efforts to limit nuclear weapons -- he wanted a harder line -- nor did the right want the moderates associated with Rockefeller's branch of the party.

Ford lost the election. But the right wing tried again during the first Bush administration with a proposed doctrine "cobbled together" after the first Gulf War by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy today, and Lewis Libby, now Cheney's chief of staff. The new doctrine spoke of not just remaining number one in the world but of destroying any state that might in the future challenge the United States -- i.e., preemptive offense without benefit of allies, without UN sanction, with a stress on raw military power over containment, persuasion, and diplomacy. It was not a doctrine that gained any purchase with Bush senior's administration. But after 9/11 in a new Bush administration, its day has come. Rumsfeld and others were angling for an attack on Iraq before Afghanistan, a suggestion which Bush wisely rejected. But it is now clear that for this administration, regime change always trumped disarming Iraq -- thus the intelligence skewing that has now been exposed.