Stephen Lendman

On October 7, Venezuelans get to choose between Bolivarianism under Chavez and Henrique Capriles Radonski's corporatism they rejected resoundingly in 1998. Polls show they'll do it again. IVAD late August results show Chavez ahead 55% to 34%. Only 10% of Venezuelans are undecided. Eight major July polls showed Chavez leading by 15 - 27%. Subsequent ones weeks later revealed his support remains strong. Few doubt October's outcome. At issue is only by how much. On December 16, regional elections follow.

In late August, Chavez warned that opposition forces plan to declare victory before electoral results are announced. They'll say they won, reject National Electoral Council (CNE) totals, and claim fraud. They'll call for violence, destabilization and US help. "They are gearing up….with some allies in the world, some media, some social organizations to claim victory," said Chavez. "We know they are capable of anything." He urged respect for official results, adding:

"We will support the National Electoral Council. We call on all sectors to respect the referee, the Constitution, the laws."

Capriles' economic advisor, Ricardo Hausmann, said his campaign will announce its own results independently of official ones. Ultimas Noticias editor Eleazar Díaz Rangel said they'll "claim fraud (and won't) recognize the people's will."

Since Chavez took office in February 1999, 15 national and regional elections were held. Independent observers declared them open, free and fair. America's Carter Center calls Venezuela's electoral system one of the world's most reliable. Around 200 or more international observers will monitor October 7 voting. Expect confirmation of another exemplary democratic process. It puts America's to shame and then some. US federal and many regional ones lack legitimacy. Big money controls them. Ordinary people have no say.

Venezuelans however get the real thing. They're not about to accept pre-Chavez harshness. They want no part of corporatism at their expense.

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Patrick Martin

Code Pink anti-war protesters march before the start of the
Democratic National Convention on Sep. 2, 2012 in Charlotte,
North Carolina. (Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

President Barack Obama’s speech Thursday night accepting the Democratic Party nomination for reelection brought two weeks of political demagogy at the Republican and Democratic national conventions to a shameful and repulsive conclusion.

In its banality, hollowness, self-glorification and unadulterated lying, Obama’s address was typical of those delivered by the politicians of the two corporate-controlled parties that are vying for power in the 2012 election.

Neither in Tampa nor in Charlotte was there any serious discussion of the actual conditions facing tens of millions of working people four years after the Wall Street collapse triggered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Still less was any program elaborated by either capitalist party to provide jobs for the unemployed or alleviate the mass suffering created by the crisis of the profit system.

Perhaps the most remarkable fact of the two conventions is that not a single significant political difference was articulated by either party. In a country with more than 300 million people, riven by social and economic polarization, the two officially recognized parties proceed with unanimity on all essential questions.

To call either Tampa or Charlotte a political convention amounts to false advertising. These assemblies decided nothing and discussed nothing. The delegates served not as representatives from states and regions across a vast continent, but as spectators and props in a political infomercial featuring appearances by politicians and celebrities.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The US government represents Israel and the one to ten percent. Everyone else is
disposable. Regardless of the political party whose lever is pulled in November,
every American who votes will be voting for Israel and for their own demise.

If political conventions are ranked on a one to ten scale for intelligence, I give the Republican Convention zero and the Democrats one. How can the United States be a superpower when both political parties are unaware of everything that is happening at home and abroad?

The Republicans are relying for victory on four years of anti-Obama propaganda and their propriety programed electronic voting machines.

For nearly four years Republican operatives have flooded the Internet with portraits of Obama as a non-US citizen, as a Muslim (even while Obama was murdering Muslims in seven countries), and as a Marxist (put in power by the Israel Lobby, Wall Street, and the military/security complex).

Most Republican voters will vote against Obama based on these charges despite the curious fact that no committee in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives held a hearing to determine if Obama is a citizen.

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