Hacked DNC emails showed that the DNC was favoring Clinton as early as May 26, 2015: “Three in the Bed”

Three in the Bed: Media Collusion with DNC & Hillary Leaked By Joan Brunwasser This is likely the biggest untold story of the 2016 primary. Hacked DNC emails showed that the DNC was favoring Clinton as early as May 26, 2015. This is significant, as Sanders entered the race as a Democrat in April, so the party had known about [his] candidacy for over a month at the time the email was written… These emails show that Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s constant claims of neutrality were completely false. :::::::: My guest today is journalist Tom Cahill, a contributing editor who writes for US Uncut and an active member of the Occupy movement. Joan Brunwasser: Welcome to OpEdNews, Tom. You wrote a recent piece, EXPOSED: Leaked Emails Show DNC Colluded with Media to Push Clinton Nomination. This sounds like a major story. Can you get us started, please? Tom Cahill: Hi, Joan. Thanks for the introduction. And yes, this is likely the biggest untold story of the 2016 primary. In a nutshell, hacked DNC emails that were leaked by a hacker who calls himself “Guccifer 2.0” showed that the DNC was favoring Hillary Clinton as early as May 26, 2015. This is significant, as Bernie Sanders entered the race as a Democrat in April, so the party had known about Sanders’ candidacy for over a month at the time the email was written. The DNC is supposed to be an independent arbiter of primaries and caucuses and not actively get behind a candidate until after the national convention. These emails show that Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s constant claims of neutrality were completely false. “Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by “sophisticated” hacker groups. I’m very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy, very easy. “Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton’s and other Democrats’ mail servers. But he certainly wasn’t the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC’s servers. “Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I’ve been in the DNC’s networks for almost a year and saved only two documents? Do you really believe it? ~ Guccifer2.0 What’s particularly sinister about these leaked emails is that it suggests “muddying the waters” around allegations of Hillary Clinton’s lack of transparency and questionable campaign finance schemes by planting stories in the media, and working “off-the-record” to “pitch stories with no fingerprints” to national networks, in order to “drive a message.” After reading these leaked emails, it suddenly makes perfect sense why the media narrative about Sanders’ candidacy was to dismiss him as a fringe ideologue, and why networks seemed so gung-ho about Clinton’s candidacy at the same time. After reading Guccifer 2.0’s leaked emails, take a look at coverage from CNN’s Brian Stelter, panel discussions featuring paid CNN pundits from the DNC, like Donna Brazile, or MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough on almost any given day, and you can see a clear pro-Clinton bias. Before these emails were leaked, any Sanders supporter who claimed the DNC and the media were colluding to build up Hillary Clinton and demean Sanders was seen as a tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorist. But now, there’s a smoking gun. Perhaps the most telling part about how damning this information is is by gauging the media’s reaction to Guccifer 2.0’s leaks. When the DNC’s opposition research about Donald Trump was leaked, nearly every major media outlet reported on it. The leaked DNC emails showing a collusion with members of the media to plant messaging suggesting Hillary Clinton as the inevitable nominee were virtually ignored by nearly everyone, even though those leaks were on the same website as the leaked Donald Trump oppo research. While the DNC has publicly refused to acknowledge the revealing emails, it has effectively removed Debbie Wasserman Schultz from her post as DNC chair. While she still retains the title, her power has been effectively stripped, as she’s been the deserving target of anger from Bernie Sanders supporters since December, when she briefly removed the Sanders campaign’s access to the 50-state voter file. The DNC knows that Sanders and his supporters hold all the cards, and can singlehandedly decide this November whether or not Donald Trump will be the next president, so they’re likely preparing Schultz to be the sacrificial lamb to appease the Sanders wing of the party. This is unlikely, however, as millions of voters who backed Sanders in the primaries and caucuses have vowed to vote “Bernie or Bust,” meaning if Sanders doesn’t win the Democratic nomination at the convention this year, they want him to continue running as an independent. The number of “Bernie or Bust” voters has actually grown in the last few months from 25 percent, to 33 percent, to nearly 50 percent. While he doesn’t have a majority of the pledged delegates, and while Hillary Clinton maintains an enormous lead in superdelegates that’s unlikely to change barring an indictment before July 25, Sanders has correctly said that he’s consistently the best candidate to face off against Donald Trump in November. JB: What makes Bernie the best candidate to beat Trump? TC: Election maps from RealClearPolitics, put together using statewide polling averages, show that in a Trump/Sanders general election, Sanders wins swing states like Pennsylvania and New Hampshire outright, while putting traditionally red states like Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, and Utah into contention. Comparatively, a Clinton/Trump matchup is disastrous for the Democratic ticket, as Clinton would not only lose all the aforementioned states, butblue states like Michigan are swing states if Clinton is the nominee. Previous maps showed Clinton put Minnesota and Oregon at risk, as well. Even though the Democratic establishment is loyal to Clinton, even they have to admit that she’s the riskier choice when looking at the polls. The Democratic establishment may be in the midst of its last stand right now. Should Democratic party bosses write off Sanders and his supporters’ demands for a truly progressive party platform, the abolition of superdelegates, an end to big money politics, and the opening of primaries across the country, I seriously doubt enough of his supporters would vote for Clinton in the general election. If Donald Trump wins in November, it will be a disastrous four years for everyone in the country. But the silver lining may be that the Democratic establishment will wither away, and the millions of supporters galvanized by the Bernie Sanders movement will take over the party and steer it in the right direction in time to win major progressive victories in 2020 and beyond. JB: Thanks for bringing us up to speed, Tom. I feel like I have a much better handle on this topic now. Tell us more about how the DNC, Hillary’s campaign and the MSM came to work together to “pitch stories with no fingerprints.” Any conjectures on how it came about in the first place? I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when that first feeler got sent out. TC: On Tuesday, Guccifer 2.0 again released a new set of documents–a dossier, if you will–that the DNC assembled to help Hillary Clinton back in April and May of 2015. What it reveals is that the DNC, which told the public it was neutral in the primaries, was not. They studied all the attacks against Hillary Clinton on a variety of issues, from the Clinton Foundation to her email server, and generated a list of talking points for Clinton and her campaign officials to use in the media. This further shows a collusion between the DNC and the Clinton campaign to plant messages in the media that “muddy the waters” around the most vulnerable parts of Clinton’s record. Any column by Paul Krugman about Hillary Clinton in the last year sounds very similar to the DNC talking points leaked on Tuesday. Obviously, by “pitching stories with no fingerprints,” there are no fingerprints by which to trace back to the DNC in its interactions with the media. This could mean that talking points were sent through personal email accounts rather than accounts subject to public records requests, or that messages were relayed over the phone, or in-person to the journalists themselves. There’s no way to confirm directly, hence the “no fingerprints” phrase the DNC employee used in the email. And they were successful in that way. But when looking at the original leak, including the opposition research conducted against Donald Trump and other Republican candidates, all of those talking points sound very similar to dominant narratives repeated ad nauseam on the networks about Trump and the GOP field of candidates. The argument that Trump is a bad businessman, for example, was one of the leading messages the DNC had in its oppo research document, which we of course heard in the mainstream cable news media for months on end. JB: You’ve rightly pointed to the hypocritical treatment the press is giving this leak, especially since they carried the Trump opposition research leak from the same website. How lethal is the media silence on this matter? Will social media and the alternate press be able to break through that barricade? And isn’t Sanders campaign’s stunning lack of media coverage [or distortion of his positions, if he was covered] further evidence of the bias and collusion that you write about? TC: I think the media silence on this is intentional, but social media’s amplification of it can and does make a difference. On the original story we published on USUncut.com, we garnered roughly 58,000 total engagements (likes, shares, comments), making it one of our most viral stories that week. I think one thing this primary season has proven is that social media, not traditional media, is what drives the conversation. Major media companies have gotten so lazy that most of their content now comes from lurking on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, and basing their content on what goes viral on those platforms. Election coverage used to be driven by stuffy editors in air-conditioned newsrooms, but now it’s driven by millions of people interacting with engaging content on social media. Obviously yes, Sanders had a stunning lack of coverage in the early days of his campaign. That very well may have been deliberate, as the DNC has been caught pushing pro-Clinton messaging directly to the media since 2015. USUncut.com has previously written about this in great detail–your readers likely remember back in August of 2015, when Sanders went on a barnstorming tour down the West Coast and attracted over 100,000 people to rallies in Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles. Even on his biggest day, he got less than 500 media mentions across the 10 biggest media networks, while Clinton got roughly 600 that same day despite not holding any mega-rallies. But media networks were forced to pay attention to Bernie Sanders after his fans on social media made stories about him dominate Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, and especially after Sanders started raising millions of dollars through small donations that came mostly through the internet. We’re living in a democratized media space now, where everyday people get to decide what the news covers based on what we say is worth covering. It’s a very exciting time to be a journalist. JB: I’m glad you’re excited; I’m terrifically disappointed by the exceedingly low standards of my mainstream journalist counterparts. The corporate media is not about to out itself on this story, since it confirms our suspicions that their behavior is so corrupt, unprofessional and hardly befitting the Fourth Estate, traditional watchdogs of democracy. You mentioned Clinton’s chances against Trump in the general election. You pointed out that Sanders does much better in a number of key states. If the press is not covering this and the DNC (not to mention the superdelegates) chose to ignore this, what can Berniacs do? What’s to stop the corporate media from discontinuing issuing polls altogether if they continue to reflect Clinton’s weakness? We certainly don’t have much reason to trust what or even how they report. In these instances, social media is just not enough, is it? TC: Nothing beats good old-fashioned organizing, which Sanders supporters have been doing quite successfully since the start of last year. Social media is just one tool, not the entire toolbox. If Clinton isn’t indicted by the start of the conventions, I think the “Berniacs” as you call them should continue focusing their energy on congressional and statehouse elections to make sure there are candidates at all levels who embody Sanders’ values. Even if Bernie isn’t elected president in 2016, his supporters can still make a huge difference in local, statewide, and congressional elections. The Tea Party serves as a great example of that. While Sanders’ diehard supporters are often called the “left-wing Tea Party” by Hillary Clinton supporters, and while that’s meant to be an insult, I see it as a call to action, as the Tea Party’s grassroots organizing in 2009 and 2010 was tremendously successful, completely re-energizing the Republican Party and enabling it to take over both houses of Congress and the majority of state legislatures across the country. One of USUncut.com’s writers did a fantastic job making the case for Sanders’ millions of “Bernie or Bust” supporters to force the Democratic Party to let the new, young, hard-left base take over the party, or continue its eight-year trend of crushing defeat. In 2009, the Republicans were completely demoralized after losing the White House and both houses of Congress to Democrats by landslide margins. But the Republican base refused to quit, got mad, and started a populist, hard-right, grassroots movement that demanded their elected officials abide by a certain set of principles or face primary challenges. By 2010, the Tea Party had completely taken over the national discourse, framed it on their terms, and forced congressional candidates to adopt ultra-conservative platforms. After the 2010 midterm elections, they had not only taken over the U.S. House of Representatives, but enough state legislatures and governor’s mansions that they got to influence the redrawing of districts after the census. This paved the way for years of Republican control, and they were able to build on their congressional and statewide victories in 2012 and 2014. Their 2010 redistricting efforts were so successful that even though Republicans lost the White House by a virtual landslide, they actually made gains the House due to the new district lines they drew at the state government level. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party today has the lowest state-level representation in a century, and Republicans control both houses of Congress for the first time in decades. That’s what successful grassroots organizing looks like. There’s no reason Sanders supporters can’t do the same thing between 2016 and 2020. If the millions of people who galvanized for Bernie Sanders can get Sanders-style Democrats elected to enough state legislatures and congressional seats by 2020, they can take over the Democratic Party and play a major role in the 2020 redistricting battle. Of course, this is chess, not checkers, so playing the long game will likely mean primarying longtime incumbents and potentially losing to Republicans as a result, like the Tea Party did with Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin in Indiana and Missouri, respectively. Even though their hard-right candidates lost their general election battles, it served a greater purpose of hardening the Republican Party and forcing party bosses to listen to the base or lose their jobs. And of course, some Tea Party primary challenges have been successful, like when Dave Brat beat Eric Cantor in 2014. Who expected that to happen? Right now, the Democratic National Committee runs roughshod on its base and expects the base to fall in line out of fear of the other. What the base needs to do now is remind the DNC that the voters are in charge, not the party bosses, and if that requires them learning the hard way, then so be it. DNC initially claimed that no financial information was leaked. The rest of this list (and lots more) can be found on Guccifer 2.0 website JB: That’s a well-thought out but very long-range plan. I’m interested in right now, today, and the coming weeks and months. What about the millions of voters who have a long laundry list of complaints including unfair press coverage, voter suppression, insufficient numbers of polling places, mass disenfranchisement of legally registered voters, vote flipping from their candidate to another candidate, double-dealing by the DNC and old pols of the Democratic Party, etc. etc. etc.? What recourse is there for their many, varied and justified grievances? And let’s not forget Hillary’s prematurely declaring victory and arrogantly taking their future support for granted. Are they just plain out of luck? TC: The DNC is still a month away, so Sanders supporters who want to make their voices heard about the numerous irregularities in the primary and caucus process can start making plans to find a way to Philadelphia by July 25 for the mass protests outside the Wells Fargo Center. Organizers are expecting tens of thousands, but it could very well be as big as 100,000 or more. Over 1 million basketball fans took over the streets of Cleveland on Wednesday for the Cavaliers parade, so there’s no reason to believe that Sanders’ 12 million voters can’t put up similar numbers next month. Up until then, find out who your delegates and superdelegates are, and lobby them to vote for the candidate who polls best against Donald Trump. Remind them that states Clinton won, like Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York were rife with irregularities, with two of those primary results still under investigation for possible election fraud. Clinton’s wins in Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Missouri were all ties in which she split delegates evenly with Sanders, putting her from 28 wins to 23 wins and 5 ties, while Sanders has won 22 states. I think it’s accurate to say claims of Clinton being the strongest general election candidate are highly questionable. Additionally, over 116,000 Sanders supporters who want him to run through November as an independent have signed a petition calling on him to do just that. As Trump’s campaign continues its plummeting in the polls, Sanders may have enough justification — along with Clinton’s baggage of a possible federal indictment — to continue his campaign. He’s proven that he can out-raise the most prolific fundraiser in Democratic Party history for three months in a row with online donations of $27 apiece, overcome a 60-point deficit in national polls to poll ahead of Clinton several times, and win nearly half of all primaries and caucuses despite astonishingly little coverage from the media. Should Sanders run as an independent, he would only need roughly 35 to 40 percent of the vote in a five-way race (when including the Libertarian and Green tickets) in a given state. And unlike Democratic primaries, the general election is open to all independents, a majority of whom prefer Sanders over Clinton or Trump. Also, electoral votes aren’t proportionally awarded, so if Sanders wins a majority in any state, he takes all of its electoral college votes. When looking at the math, it’s possible for Sanders to win 270 electoral college votes. Even when writing off all of the states that don’t allow write-in votes (Arkansas, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Oklahoma, or South Dakota), and deep-red states in the South and the Great Plains, that still leaves 494 electoral votes available for the taking. Clinton and Trump are two of the most disliked presumptive nominees in history, and Sanders is favored by a majority of people. He could very possibly be the first independent president in history. I guess that would be a long-winded way of saying Bernie’s supporters should feel justified in pushing for an independent presidential run after the convention. JB: Interesting scenario, Tom. I’d like to go back to the press collusion in tipping an already unlevel playing field. Can you give us a historical perspective? Has this been done before? Is this a totally new phenomenon? Can you fill in the picture for us? TC: We all remember the way the media railroaded Bill Bradley in 2000, as he was the only candidate who had a chance at winning calling for universal healthcare and getting big money out of politics. They did the same thing to Howard Dean in 2004, especially when he started picking up steam and becoming a real threat to the Democratic establishment. You could make the case that had Bradley and Dean been the nominees in 2000 and 2004, the Republicans would have lost badly. And Dennis Kucinich was no exception in 2008, when the media completely blew him off to cover Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, neither of whom embody the values Kucinich campaigned on. But I think the 2016 primary is the first time there’s been such a coordinated effort on behalf of the media and the party bosses to rally behind one candidate from such an early stage. It really is unprecedented. I think you’d have to go all the way back to 1968 to come anywhere near the corruption seen within the Democratic Party today. After RFK’s assassination, Eugene McCarthy was the only real anti-war alternative to Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic establishment’s favored candidate, who favored expanding US presence in Vietnam. Of course, 1968 was slightly different, since Humphrey jumped in the race at the last minute after LBJ dropped out, and people were rightly upset that party bosses wanted Humphrey despite not actually winning any real races. Of course, I’m sure your readers are familiar with what happened next — party bosses met behind closed doors at the convention and nominated Humphrey, who lost by over 100 electoral votes to Nixon. However, 2016 is similar to 1968 in a lot of ways. On one hand you have a grassroots candidate who not only opposes foreign wars, but who opposes the entrenched system of standard pay-for-play Washington politics and vows to upend it. On the other, you have an establishment candidate who secured the support of some 400 superdelegates — almost 10 percent of the entire delegate vote — over six months before the first primary and caucus ballots were cast, and before anyone else entered the race. After Guccifer’s leak, we have proof that the media quickly rallied to the side of that candidate to project an aura of inevitability, again, months before anyone actually voted. And barring something completely unexpected, it looks as if the establishment candidate, who has the Sword of Damocles of a federal investigation hanging over her head, will be nominated with the help of Democratic party bosses to push her over the line. And as the saying goes, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. JB: In all this, has anyone – Hillary, her staffers, the DNC, the corporate press – actually done anything illegal, committed any crime/s? TC: Not at all, and that’s the crime of it. The DNC is perfectly within their legal rights to feed talking points to the media, and the media is completely allowed to cooperate. If lying in the media was a crime, as Debbie Wasserman Schultz has done on multiple occasions when claiming the DNC was neutral throughout the primaries, then there would certainly be ample case to file charges. But until there’s actually a law on the books preventing people from knowingly spreading lies on the media to misinform the public, nothing will be done. JB: I guess this is the bottom line: Where does that leave us, the public? Don’t we deserve a press that protects and informs us? Wasn’t that why the Fourth Estate received the unique privileges it did? And how do we go forward, knowing that the media deliberately (and dare I say maliciously?) misled us regarding something of huge national importance? How can we trust anything they say, especially about the elections? What’s our recourse? TC: That’s an easy one. Stop giving the media your money. By that, I mean don’t just boycott cable TV news, but stop going to their websites. If you have to read an article from a site that has a paywall, like the New York Times or the Washington Post, use incognito browsing. If you have to click on a CNN/MSNBC/FOX link, use ad-blocking software so they don’t make any money from your visit. Don’t share links from their sites on social media, and don’t retweet their tweets. But that’s not enough — we have to give our money to honest media. Donate to honest, alternative news sites like OpEdNews, of course, and also Democracy Now, Jacobin Magazine, Counterpunch, Truthout, and the Real News Network. When reading articles from independent media outlets like OpEdNews.com and USUncut.com, turn off your ad-blocking software, and click on ads. Share their links on social media, and encouraging your friends to do the same. If enough people, for enough time, actively work to divest from big media and put their money in alternative media, we can take back the Fourth Estate. JB: All good suggestions. In the meantime, how do we get the word out about all of the collusion and deceit? Since many people still read conventional newspapers, watch TV news and depend, one way or another, on corporate media coverage, how do we spread the word about what you’ve learned through these fortuitously timed leaks? TC: The revolution will not be televised. But the revolution will be liked, shared, and commented on. I know that boomers like to complain that my generation is always on their phones, but that’s how you reach us — by actively engaging with us on social media platforms. There’s always direct action and culturejamming as well, but which I mean taking creative, bold steps to address the corruption of corporate media. If you find yourself in the gym or at the bar, and there’s a TV on with corporate news, ask the manager to change the channel to literally anything else. If it has to be news, change it to PBS — at least that’s publicly funded. The media’s grip on information may seem daunting, and it won’t loosen overnight, but the key is to sustain an active boycott and divestment campaign in the war for control over our political discourse. Martin Luther King was famous for saying, “If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” So keep sharing, liking, commenting, and culturejamming. We’ll win in the long run. JB: Hooray for your optimism; You’re a breath of fresh air. Before I let you go, what about us alte kachers (Baby Boomers and older) for whom social media may not be our comfort zone? Any last words for us? We’re also deeply committed to turning this country around but may lack some of the tools to do so. Are we cut out of the mix? TC: Face-to-face communication is always the best way to get a message across. Don’t shy away from political conversations with coworkers, fellow churchgoers, the waiter/ress, the bartender, the cashier, the teller, and anyone else you find yourself interacting with on a face-to-face level every day. Chances are, they probably feel the same way you do, but are lost in apathy. Encourage all of them to inform themselves through alternative means, like listening to public/community radio, or free alternative papers/magazines found in your respective city. Personally, as a resident of the Portland metro area, I prefer the Portland Mercury and the Portland Phoenix to the Oregonian. Another example — I recently spent time in Jackson, Mississippi, and discovered the Jackson Free Press — an alt weekly available at newspaper stations across town that’s actually incredibly popular and has a penchant for hard-hitting local reporting that asks tough questions. It’s a much better alternative than the Clarion-Ledger, which is owned by Gannett Corporation (USA Today). While in New Hampshire covering the primary, I discovered some incredibly informative public access cable news shows that deserve more viewership, like the Chris Herbert show, which is hosted by a progressive state representative. I’m sure the same is true across the country. Discover local independent media, and if you don’t have it, create it. JB: Great ideas, and thanks so much for talking with me, Tom. This is dynamite! I hope your story goes viral. Keep up the good work! TC: Thanks for reaching out, Joan. It’s been a pleasure. ** Postscript: After this interview was completed, Tom posted: Thousands of Bernie Sanders Supporters Are Suing the DNC in a Massive Class Action Lawsuit, 6.23.2016 Quote from above article by Jared Beck, partner, of Beck & Lee, about their lawsuit: “You have people who say they’re homeless or unemployed, and they gave whatever was in their pockets to Bernie, and you have doctors and lawyers who have given thousands of dollars…. We’re civil litigators, and usually our cases can be reduced to dollars and cents, but I don’t know if any amount of money could compensate for American democracy, which is priceless to me. I think anything short of a fundamental change in the way the DNC conducts itself is not acceptable” This isn’t a case that’s about money, this is a case about the fairness about the Democratic process.” *** See Wikileaks Hillary Clinton Email Archive: searchable database with 30,322 emails, comprising 50,547 pages of documents. These were made available by the State Department in response to a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request. from: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Three-in-the-Bed-Media-Co-by-Joan-Brunwasser-Bernie-Sanders-2016-Presidential-Candidate_Collusion_Corporate_Corporate-Media-160626-486.html Submitters Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html Submitters Bio: Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning. Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations – authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we’re all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done. When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here. While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: “Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!” Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.

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