Clear Channel Communications, one of the biggest media companies in the U.S. and a major owner of radio stations across the country, is in the news for censoring antiwar speech again. An article in the Business section of today’s New York Times reports that CCC rejected an ad by Project Billboard to be displayed in Times Square; the ad showed a red, white, and blue bomb with the words, “Democracy is best taught by example, not by war.” The ad was rejected even after Project Billboard agreed to CCC’s request to change the bomb to a dove, and despite having agreed to the terms of lease for the billboard back in December. Project Billboard is suing CCC for breach of contract.

It’s interesting that, despite the right’s claims that the media is controlled by the left, and that conservatives are censored and discriminated against in Hollywood and academia, the most blatant attempts at censoring speech always seem to come from conservative media organizations with well-known ties to the Republican Party. Back in April, when Ted Koppel announced his intention to read aloud the names of the hundreds of men and women who had been killed in Iraq while showing their photographs, Sinclair Broadcast Group, “the largest non-network owner of television stations in the country,” according to mediageek.org, pulled that night’s edition of Nightline off the air.

And of course, Clear Channel also gained a reputation for censorship by using its radio stations to promote the invasion of Iraq and refusing to play the music of musicians who opposed the war–like the Dixie Chicks.

We can add to the Bush admin’s election suspension plans the recent report in the New York Times that Florida election officials used a method of identifying convicted felons (for the purpose of purging them from the voter rolls) that made it almost impossible to identify convicted felons who were Hispanic. At the same time, African-American voters were easily identified by the election officials’ methodology. Of course, it’s just a coincidence that African-American voters tend to vote Democratic and Hispanic voters tend to vote Republican.

Not only that, but after a state judge ordered the purge list to be made public, it was discovered that thousands of felons who had been granted clemency were still on the list.

So we can certainly see why the United States would be in such an excellent position to bring democracy and freedom to Iraq.

Okay, it’s official. I’ve been saying this for months in Yahoo’s Politics Lobby and was branded as a lunatic, but now it’s in black and white in Newsweek. The United States government–specifically, the Bush administration–is seriously considering plans to suspend the November elections “in case of a terrorist attack.”

Okay, I feel a little better. I just read Daniel Terdiman’s piece in Wired News about blogger burnout. Only a little better, though. Those bloggers Terdiman interviewed were posting several times a day when they burned out. I only posted one entry!

I’m reading a book now by Niall Ferguson called Colossus. It’s about how the United States really is the empire that Americans don’t want to believe it is, but it’s a reluctant and conflicted empire, because Americans don’t like to think of themselves as imperialists. Ferguson actually believes that what he calls “liberal empire” could be a good thing for many parts of the world, but that the United States so far has made rather a mess of it because we don’t have the will to commit ourselves to the countries we conquer. I disagree with almost everything Ferguson says, but it’s an interesting proposition. I certainly agree that America’s tendency to invade, overthrow, and then withdraw without cleaning up our mess or taking responsibility for the chaos we cause is not doing us any good.

I’m more depressed than ever about the coming elections. The justifications for invading Iraq have been unraveling more and more every day, and with the 500-page report just out of the Senate that the CIA completely misrepresented the intelligence on Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and its supposed link to Al Qaeda, Bush’s two major rationales for the invasion are being shredded faster than the Arthur Andersen accountants can say, “Shred those Enron files.” Bush has never looked more beatable than he does now, but who have the Democrats given us to beat him? John Kerry and John Edwards, the wimpiest, most passion- and vision-free candidates since Al Gore. I can’t believe that this is the choice Americans have. I’ve gone back and forth about whether I should vote for Kerry to get Bush out of the White House, but the bottom line is, I can’t imagine myself voting for him. I’d rather vote for Gollum. I’m not that thrilled with Nader either. I’ll probably end up writing in Dennis Kucinich’s name.