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To announce that there should be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Knock the vote: Students could play a crucial role in deciding the next US president and influencing the outcome of next year's general election in the UK. What a shame they don't seem to care Students could play a crucial role in the election, but they do not seem to care
Give people a fish and they will eat for a day; teach people how to fish and they will eat for their lifetime and ...they will buy fishing equipment The Next Green Revolution
Speaking of October Revolutions, Daily Flute likes being rich and elitist
Matt Liddy shares with us the greatest news ever From today, the Herald no longer will endorse a political party and also links to the worst editorials ever written the Black Friday Editorials while the Duckpond paddles below the surface of Black Sunday

One and Only, Katarina Konkoly of E(l)ection Tracker fame ventures where not many bloggers dare to post ... Katarina, who is now tracked by the ASIO (irony-intended), exposes the great dangerous silence among the vote counters. Disclaimer: Media Dragon is not in any way associated with the FactCzecher.com or the E(l)ectiontracker.net. Media Dragon does not own the FactCheck.com & E(l)ectiontracker.net domain names. We are as surprised as anyone by this turn of events: Don't read this - it's illegal
[Extract: When I first found out about this way of voting, I had an argument with my father who thought I was wrong. He had been a counter, and, I think, had even been in charge of a voting room. What he, and the other counters used to do was to throw out all the ballots numbered 1233 etc as informal. It seems that learning about the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 isn't part of a counter's job description.
So, even if you vote this way now, you'll make no difference. But if you want to make a difference, as I read it, you're only not allowed to encourage people to vote 1233. There is nothing that says you can't encourage counters to count votes with repeated preferences. If anything, this enforced silence, which means I can't even encourage you to do something that's legal, means that in the past our elections haven't been as representative as they should have been as anyone who votes this way has had their votes, incorrectly, thrown out. ]
(Scrutineers from the Labour and Liberal Party insist that voting 1233 is considered informal. I bet you that most managers at the AEC have not even read the case let alone encouraged counters to count repeated preferences vote. MEdia Dragon used to be one of the many ignorant counters during the Federal Election, repeated preferences were not only considered informal by many at House of Representative level but even below the line Senate repeated preferences were considered not so kosher. However, who is to argue with electoral commission managers or party scrutineers? If you ask too many questions your part-time employment might just not be a possibility in the future (smile) Anyone out there for referendum for Electronic Voting where intelligent programmers provide a consistent and legal counting mechanism within the system?)

Eye on The Most Talked About Election Stories & Related Conversations: Sydney home of both John Howard and Mark Latham
Today Sydney will be at the epicenter of the election. The headlines scream:
Howard hits the hustings in Sydney
Latham makes last sweep through Sydney
It is getting harder and harder these days to tell the difference between headlines that counts and those that are just mere bubbles. I doubt whether any of the chess players at the Hyde Park (consisting of Eastern European taxidrivers, Aussie hairdressers, Greek cleaners and Hungarian musicians) will get excited by the headlines. It was hard to believe for some unknown reasons why Mark Latham was not considered the most popular politician with the taxidrivers yesterday ... As David Marr noted, John Howard is the confrontation with Australia many Australians have been waiting to have. We also have to have the Game invented to honour election satire called Fishty Cuffs in which John Howard and Mark Latham beat each other with a wet fish caught in Cold River.
The biggest confrontation in many migrant fathers' hearts is the absurd video episode of the children overboard affair in which the parents who wanted to save their children rather than drown them have been accused of the latter by John Howard . It is no great surprise to me that virtually every politician portrayed in video or on television over the last decade has been venal, corrupt, opportunistic, cynical, if not worse. Whether these dramatized images are accurate or exaggerated matters little. The corporatist system wins either way: directly through corruption and indirectly through the damage done to the citizen's respect for the representative system.
Somehow the chess game we happened to watch for over an hour yesterday portrayed kind yet pokerish faces of the players who dared to win and lose with dignity. A few hours of watching the migrant taxidrivers to win and lose small and major battles and to eventually hear one call out Czech Mate was more inspiring and enjoyable than the last seven weeks of watching golden streams of core and non-core promises floating past our TV screens.
NSW is always important in a federal election simply because it has 50 seats up for grabs - one third of the whole parliament.
But since 1996, when John Howard ousted Paul Keating as prime minister, the ALP has failed to make gains in NSW despite clawing back ground in other states.
The Liberal Party now holds 21 seats, which the Liberals' state director, Scott Morrison, notes is a historic high. With the Nationals, the Coalition has 28 seats to Labor's 19, with the remaining three being held by a Green and two independents.
Unless Labor reverses this trend it's difficult to see how it can win government.
• It's worth the biggest slice of election pie - and everybody wants a piece; [James Packer ]
• · States warn of federal government collapse Velvet Divorce in the Making?; [The Problem of “Dirty Hands” and Corrupt Leadership; A detective attached to the Child Protection and Sex Crimes Squad was one of two NSW police officers suspended today over allegations of child pornography ]
• · · Seven's Chief Political Reporter Mark Riley talks to Opposition Leader Mark Latham
• · · · As part of a series of debates on the big election issues Sunrise debated finance with Treasurer Peter Costello and Shadow Treasurer Simon Crean ...; [The Sunrise 'Vote for me' campaign to find Australians to run for Senate unearthed budding politicians of every hue, each with fresh ideas and original policies Alicia Curtis and James Harker-Mortlock]
Sunrise invited Defence Minister Robert Hill and Shadow Minister for Defence Kim Beazley to discuss the issues in the lead up to the poll Robert Hill and Kim Beazley
Sunrise invited Education Minister Brendan Nelson and Shadow Minister for Education Jenny Macklin to discuss the parties' policies Brendan Nelson and Jenny Macklin
• · · · · SunRise: Complete set of transcripts - Election 2004...
• · · · · · Bob Ellis once observed that Tony Jones undressed John Howard on the Lateline over a number of issues, but no one was watching. Howard to win: the media's self-fulfilling prophecy The pundits have made up their minds: John Howard's got the election in the bag ; [Each side hopes that fear of a future shaped by the opposing candidate will help win over undecided voters Yet psychologists who study the effect of emotion on voting behavior say that undecided voters are the least likely to respond to fear as a persuasion tactic]