Bush’s Brain’s Brain?

Today on the list: Meet Karl Rove’s Karl Rove, what happens when you Facebook friend request yourself, and the third-party candidates who still can’t catch a break.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

The links below open in a new window. Newer ones are on top.

So Much for Open, Free and Fair Elections Running for election on the Green Party ticket, [Laura] Wells was excluded from a gubernatorial debate, which only Democratic candidate Jerry Brown and Republican candidate Meg Whitman were allowed to participate in. Libertarian Party candidate Dale Ogden, American Independent Party candidate Chelene Nightingale, and Carlos Alvarez of the Peace and Freedom Party were also excluded.

The Many Faces of You The other day, Facebook suggested that I make a new friend: myself.

Democrats Against Democracy Pennsylvanians may notice something unusual when they go to the polls in November: Their choices for governor, lieutenant governor, and U.S. Senate will be limited exclusively to Republican and Democratic candidates. Only four other states’ 2010 general-election ballots are so restrictive.

Book review: ‘The Great American Stickup’ by Robert Scheer The journalist makes sense of the 2008 economic ‘meltdown’ in the U.S. and finds fault with Republicans and Democrats alike.

U.K. Moves to Counter Cyberwarfare A significant rise in resources devoted to cyberwarfare, intelligence gathering and special forces will be signalled tomorrow when the government reveals full details of a defence review that will impose sweeping cuts on the armed forces’ more traditional forms of firepower.

Merkel says German multiculturalism has failed Germany’s attempt to create a multicultural society has “utterly failed,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday, adding fuel to a debate over immigration and Islam polarizing her conservative camp.

Karl Rove’s Karl Rove Democrats have targeted their longtime nemesis Karl Rove as the mastermind behind the tens of millions of dollars of ads from independent groups attacking their candidates this fall, but maybe they should have listened more carefully when Rove recently told the audience of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show about “one of the smartest people in politics you’ve never heard of.”

White House ‘Don’t Ask’ Plan Backfires Obama’s current predicament is a result of a collision between a go-slow White House strategy that deferred to Pentagon and military leaders on the pace of repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the progress of a stuttering federal lawsuit that a small group of gay Republicans filed more than six years ago.

Doctoral-Program Rankings — the NRC Responds When A Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States was released by the National Research Council on September 28, we expected many comments, including criticisms.

Progressive Canaries in a Political Mine Take it from David Axelrod. “Almost the entire Republican margin is based on the enthusiasm gap,” the president’s senior adviser said last week. “And if Democrats come out in the same turnout as Republicans, it’s going to be a much different election.”

A Vote for ‘Rich Whitey’ In a curious case of electoral misspelling, a private vendor has misspelled the name of Illinois Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney on thousands of electronic voting machines in Chicago, dubbing him instead as “Rich Whitey,” the Associated Press reports.