Atlanta, GA - Bob Barr is slated to be the only presidential candidate on the ballot in Texas after Republicans and Democrats missed the Aug. 26 deadline to file in the state.

"Unless the state of Texas violates their own election laws, Congressman Barr will be the only presidential candidate on the ballot," says Russell Verney, campaign manager for the Barr Campaign and the former campaign manager for Ross Perot. "Texas law makes no exceptions for missing deadlines."

The Texas Secretary of State Web site shows only Bob Barr as the official candidate for president in Texas.

We're celebrating again.
Because Ralph just polled 8 percent in New Mexico.
It is just remarkable.
Approaching zero media publicity.
And Nader is still polling at six, seven and eight percent in the polls.
Check out this one just in from Time/CNN.
In three battleground states, Ralph is a factor.
In New Mexico, Nader polls 8 percent.
In Pennsylvania, Nader is at 7 percent.
In Colorado, Nader is at 7 percent.
And in Nevada, Ralph is polling 6 percent.
And the poll shows that Ralph is pulling votes from across the board.
Like we said at the beginning.
Build it and they will come.

ARLINGTON, VA -- Today, the McCain presidential campaign issued the following statement from Brian Rogers, McCain 2008 spokesman, regarding Barack Obama's statement questioning the necessity of the U.S. Special Envoy for Northern Ireland:

WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders challenged the media and campaign hype of the Democratic National Convention by comparing the positions taken by Barack Obama and Joe Biden with the Green presidential nominees, Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente.

"McKinney's track record has been one of leadership and fighting for people. Obama's track record has been all style and little substance," said Jody Grage, treasurer of the Green Party of the United States.

Chicago, IL -- "Today's news confirms what America's struggling families already know - that over the past seven years our economy has moved backwards. We have now lived through first so-called economic 'expansion' on record where typical families saw their incomes fall, and working-age households lost more than $2,000 from their paychecks. Another 816,000 Americans fell into poverty in 2007 - including nearly 500,000 children - bringing the total increase in Americans in poverty under President Bush to 5.7 million.

The Monroe County Public Library Board of Trustees ended months of bitter debate on Aug. 20 when it voted 5-2 to start televising its monthly work sessions, every other month.

Bitter may be an understatement. Trustee Penny Austin said at an Aug. 13 board work session that coming to meetings makes her feel physically ill. She reiterated that point at the board’s regular meeting a week later.

At the work session, board President John Walsh characterized Trustee Randy Paul’s “behavior and tactics” as “selfish, narcissistic, disrespectful, dishonorable, unethical and detrimental.” He repeated disrespectful, dishonorable and unethical twice.

Board Vice President Fred Risinger shouted at Paul during the work session. He too restated his frustrations at the Aug. 20 meeting.

“I really feel like we’ve been pressured into this, and I resent it,” he said of a vote to have Community Access Television Services (CATS) broadcast the board’s previously untelevised work sessions.

It’s hard to think of a tragedy worse than that which befell Elena Veach last week. A talented teacher and wife of Bloomington’s New Tech High School principle Alan Veach, Elena, just 27, fell after giving birth to her son. A victim of genetics gone bad, Elena passed from a congenital heart defect; too soon, and too tragic.

But not without a legacy. For now Elena’s family is struggling to raise funds for which to pay her posthumous medical bills. Bills accrued during her life, due now that it’s over and because it’s over.

A bake sale of sorts, for the past health needs of a vibrant individual. Covering the obligations that she, in death, was forced to lay on the feet of her survivors. Here, in the most prosperous nation on earth.

Ask just about any citizen at the Recycling Center how long they have been recycling, why they do it and how they would feel if their recyclables weren’t being recycled, and you get remarkably similar answers.

“As long I’ve lived in Bloomington -- six years,” said Cathleen Paquet, while her friend Elizabeth Gibbs nodded in agreement.

We mustn't forget George Orwell, not at a time like this. He wrote the phrase "Big Brother is watching you," pertaining to the government spying on its people; the statement that "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others;" and the memorable essay, "Shooting an Elephant."

Orwell was a terribly truthful writer, especially when writing about the power of the English language to obvert and obscure the truth for political purposes. In his novel 1984, the state controlled its citizens minds by fear, and by erasing and revising history. In Animal Farm, the animals who made themselves more equal than others were, of course, the pigs, who, as in government, came out dominant.

He was born Eric Blair: George Orwell was his nom de plume.

Now let us consider George Ohwell, whose real name is Bush. It is he who has so recklessly abused the English language to control the citizens, invoke fear and put the pigs in power, with utter disregard for truth or reality:

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Herman and Chomsky's now classic, if still controversial, study puts forward a "propaganda model" for analyzing and explaining U.S. press performance and behaviors.

Briefly stated, the propaganda model identifies five factors -- ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak and anticommunist ideology -- that act as "filters" through which information is processed by news workers and organizations. In turn, these filters affect how news stories are selected and framed for presentation to the American public.

When it first appeared, some critics dismissed Manufacturing Consent as just so much conspiracy theory. Others hailed the book as a groundbreaking analysis of the structural factors that shape U.S. journalistic institutions and practices.

Notwithstanding two decades of critique and refinement, recent events underscore the continued relevance of the propaganda model for understanding how and why U.S. news media operate as they do.