Don't fool yourselves, we may be the good ole' US of A, but we need international election monitors as much as any third-world government today.

I received an email yesterday from my book agent. One of her clients is Connie Rice, not Condi, but Connie. Connie is Conoleeza's cousin, but the connection ends there. She may be family but she's Condeleeza's polar opposite in political beliefs and actions. Anyway, Connie has been been working on the legal side of voter registration and fighting disenfranchisement in both south Florida and Ohio, and apparently she's shocked by what she's facing in those two battleground states.

Robert Kennedy Jr. has written articles on the disenfranchisement of voters. And I know, as I write this, that the GOP is doing everything they can to disqualify Hispanic and African Americans from voting in this election. I was an election monitor in Miami-Dade in '04, and even then, with Miami-Dade, already notorious as a hot-spot for voter disenfranchisement (especially in the election of 2000), the hand of the GOP was palpable. I saw polling stations not opening up on time, or at all. Directions for alternate sites were vague or non-existent, leaving people confused. Many black voters had received calls that has misinformed them as to polling and voting rules.

So as we face this contentious election, election monitors who know the rules, who help voters find their polling stations, and help them understand the rules of voting, is everything. Without an accurate or fair vote count, everything we've worked for for the past two years will mean nothing. Like I mentioned, we don't have impartial, international election monitors to help us keep our voters from being violated-- it's up to us. We could lose it with this; we have before. So for those of you who can-- vote absentee. In some states there is NO EXCUSE ABSENTEE VOTING or EARLY VOTING for students.

Then volunteer for election protection at:
http://www.nationalcampaignforfairelections.org/page/s/vol08ep

We can't afford to lose a single vote!

Posted by Cheryl Howard Crew at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just heard from a friend in Georgia whose young co-workers are being sent to the front line to battle the Russians. My friend prays for a settlement soon. He knows that his countrymen are no match against the Russian forces, and he also prays for U.S. and international support, the only real hope for the Georgians. But presently a U.S. president's words of protest mean nothing, and sadly, by association, our allies aren't much better off. So, with well over 1500 casualities, Russia continues to act with impunity, and why not? Who will stop Putin, and his minion, Dmitry Medvedev. No one. Not now.

Were we, instead, a power to be reckoned with, as we once were, we and our democratic allies, the UK and the EU, would have been able to bring the weight of a strong and impactful coalition to oppose Putin. If Americans could wake in the morning, and it was Al Gore who was just finishing the last few months of his term as President, Saddam Huessin would be a distant concern. Intelligence would've had time to discover the obvious, that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, and had no WMP's. And there would be no war in Iraq, and the Taliban would not be an issue. And maybe even the tribesmen in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, from lack of Al Qaeda support, would be joining their Afghani brothers in finally expelling Osama bin Laden and his remaining lieutenants.

Conjecture at this point, certainly, but with additional forces in Afghanistan, that whole region would have been more stable, allowing the U.S. along with a strengthened, and very real international coalition to deal with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and who knows--- maybe even Mr. Putin himself.

George W. Bush and his cronies not only damaged our credibility, but also severely weakened the international voice and power of democracy in the world, so much so that Putin, Mugabe, al-Bashir, the generals in Burma, and yes, Ahmadinejad, act with arrogant abandon.

President Bush is right, history will tell. But George Bush, after November, won't be listening. While the rest of the world, the U.S. and it's allies, and democracy itself, will be reeling from the decline of a vital superpower, George and Laura will likely be spending their days on their Crawford ranch, safe and oblivious in their bubble.

Posted by Cheryl Howard Crew at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The American president who will be elected in 2008 will have to be a different kind of leader—not just because he or she is an African-American male, or an elderly statesman still haunted by a decades-old war, or a CEO, or a woman—but a leader who can see outside the borders of our country and lead globally, because in the 21st century the leader of this country must understand and bring about something that no American president in the past has had to achieve—a world coalition. Any country that is to move forward economically, culturally, and yes, even spiritually, can no longer be isolated from the world and expect to be influential or powerful.

The world is political and we must be political. That’s a given, like it or not. And like it or not, we must be strong economically and militarily, so we can once again take our place as a credible and effective power in a world coalition of the new millennium. And that power, like it or not, cannot come in the form of hope, or militarism born from the humiliation of wars lost, or from business savvy, but in the form of a leader whose ideas and strategies comes from a deep understanding of how to coordinate the world’s resources and its collective might—not just for the benefit of our country, but for the benefit of the world.

It is a rare opportunity when voters can elect a President who is so perfectly suited to confront the unique challenges facing our nation. That candidate is Senator Hillary Clinton.

Posted by Cheryl Howard Crew at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)