Thank you, C-SPAN

only C-SPAN is showing full split screen. Bush's head looks like he's going to explode. Someone did a crappy job on makeup; Kerry looks green; Bush orange. But thank God for C-SPAN for showing us just what an adolescent Bush is.



More tomorrow.

Why indeed

Go sign the petition.

I take back everything mean I ever said about Rebecca Romijn

Not that I ever actually SAID anything mean about her, I mean hell, even a good, straight middle-aged, overweight, 4'10" woman like me can tell she's hotter'n a two-dollar pistol.



But how cool is it that she's in this ad?



Mystique rocks, man.

The REAL no-spin zone

Real people, real impact, Real Voices. Go watch their new TV ad that's running in swing states, then go giv them some turkee so they can run more of them.

Jon Stewart Is a Golden God

I know, I sound like a groupie, don't I? But DAMN, The Daily Show just keeps getting better and better.



Here's a transcript from another classic bit from last night's show, courtesy of Fact-esque, which manages to skewer the entire mainstream press at one shot. Masterful, masterful stuff:

John: Ed, thank you so much. I know the weather's been rough down there. You know these men well. You served as Skull and Bones pledge master for both. In tomorrow night's debate, how do you see things going?



Ed [Helms]: John two men will take the stage and shake hands. I believe in an attempt to shed his cautious image, the senator will wear a cape and punctuate every sentence with the word "be-otch." The president, meanwhile, buffering his image as a strong leader, will more than likely squeeze the juice out of an orange with his bicep. He will then lick this juice. People will find it disturbing, yet erotic. And that's when the fucking starts.



John: Alright, Ed. I'm sorry. Let me just jump in here real quick. None of that is going to happen.



Ed: I know, John. Just trying to have a little imagination is fun...



John: Can you seriously talk a little about what's really going to happen at the debates tomorrow?



Ed: Okay. This is the report I'm going to file:



The two candidates exchanged poin barbs about our Iraq policy and the war on terror. Senator Kerry made strides in shedding what some of his analysts call a "patrician image" yadda yadda yadda. But the president with his plain-spoken words was more effective in communicating his vision ...



John: Alright, Ed. I'm sorry. You've written your report as though it's already happened.



Ed: Yeah. I wrote it yesterday.



John: You write your stories in advance and then put it in the past tense?



Ed: Yeah. We all do. That's ... all the reporters do that.



John: Why?



Ed: We write the narratives in advance, based on conventional wisdom and then whatever happens, we make it fit that storyline.



John: Why?



Ed: We're lazy? Lazy thinkers?



John: But what happens if actual news happens?



Ed: Well, that's what bloggers are for.



John: Alright, Ed. Why are you even bothering to watch the debate then?



Ed: To see if someone sighs or sweats, because that could cost someone the election, bee-otch!

That these guys manage to crank this stuff out four days a week is just astounding.

Pop Quiz

Anyone still undecided about whether to vote for Bush or Kerry is hereby required to take this pop quiz. Please pass it on to all those inexplicable people you know who still can't tell the difference.

Rep. Scott Garrett: accountable to no one

The arrogance of Scott Garrett, our freshman Congressman from the NJ 5th district, is breathtaking.



The League of Women Voters is hosting a debate among 5th Congressional District candidates next month. This should be an opportunity for voters in the district to find out the very real differences between the candidates, which include Democrat Anne Wolfe and three third-party candidates.



But Scott Garrett won't say if he'll show up. "Given Congressman Garrett's congressional responsibilities and often changing congressional schedule, we cannot commit to the debate at this time", says his campaign manager.



Anne Wolfe has pretty much been abandoned by the state party, which has weaselly decided to cede the seat, which was occupied by moderate Republican Marge Roukema for 25 years, to this dangerous, preposterous wingnut. Choosing your battles is one thing. Abandoning a district in this state to the likes of Scott Garrett is another. Anne Wolfe doesn't show up on Blogads, she's not one of the candidates chosen by Kos (though she is a Dean Dozen candidate, which just goes to show ya how on the mark the good doctor is). This isn't one of those Blogistan glamour races like Joe Hoeffel's or Ginny Schrader's, but Anne Wolfe is no less deserving of your support.



If the idea of someone like Scott Garrett running on a moderate platform and then voting 100% in lockstep with the most extreme elements of the Republican party, using his franking privileges to send glossy campaign literature that frankly misrepresents his record, offends you, please consider tossing some turkee in Anne Wolfe's direction.

And now, a post the average American might just read

After all, what's the future of the nation weighed against gossip about who's marrying whom?



So, via Oliver Willis, comes this little tidbit:

Texas marriage records:

BUSH GEORGE W 31

WELCH LAURA L 31

11/5/1977

MIDLAND 137552



BUSH GEORGE W 23

HILL SUE E 21

12/27/1970

EL PASO 138376

We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion of the debates, the Iraq war, and separation of church and state.

Not much of a choice, is it?

Dick Cheney is fond of articulating the dire and painful deaths he believes await all of us if we don't vote for him and his AWOL blow-monkey faux-Christian puppet. Only they can keep us safe from terrorist attacks, he claims, conveniently ignoring the fact that they weren't able to do it three years ago.



Well, Frank Rich reports (via Corrente) that a new DVD, George W. Bush: Faith in the White House, designed to be a counterweight to Fahrenheit 9/11, is being distributed to church groups all over the country. The film purports to reveal "the President’s extraordinary faith and prayer life".



Extraordinary indeed, for this is a man who believes that God wanted him to be President. If this is the case, then it's a logical extension that he believes himself to be God's infallible instrument -- but of what? Given the continuing tendency for Bush surrogates to refer to the Iraq war as part of a Crusade, and his own general, William Boykin, referring to Bush as God's chosen leader to head up an "army of God" against "a guy named Satan", it's not all that great a leap to assume that Bush regards himself as God's own anointed instrument to deliver Christians to the Rapture. As Frank Rich points out:

It's not just Mr. Bush's self-deification that separates him from the likes of Lincoln, however; it's his chosen fashion of Christianity. The president didn't revive the word "crusade" idly in the fall of 2001. His view of faith as a Manichaean scheme of blacks and whites to be acted out in a perpetual war against evil is synergistic with the violent poetics of the best-selling "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and Mel Gibson's cinematic bloodfest. The majority of Christian Americans may not agree with this apocalyptic worldview, but there's a big market for it. A Newsweek poll shows that 17 percent of Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. To Karl Rove and company, that 17 percent is otherwise known as "the base."

I understand that people are afraid, but I have to wonder just how many Americans really believe that George W. Bush is God's chosen instrument to bring about the end times. It seems to me that at one time, when people did terrible things because God told them to, they were John List and they merely murdered all of their own family members. Now we call them "Mr. President" and blindly accept his policies designed to bring about the deaths of all of us.



Taking this thinking at face value, here's your choice. Death by terrorists if we vote for Kerry, death by religious insanity if we vote for Bush. Not much of a choice, is it?

Hey, Joisey! Wake the F*** Up!!

My fellow Amjersicans:



What on earth are you thinking? Are you seriously thinking of allowing the thugs in Washington to screw our state for another four years? Why? Do you honestly think he'll "make us safer"? Do you feel one bit safer today than you did on September 11, 2001? If not, why not? Maybe it's because your president doesn't know what the hell he's doing, and doesn't give a rat's ass about the Communist homosexual black Jewish feminist industrial northeast?



Why would you reward people who take your money and give very little back?



Did you know that New Jersey RECEIVES LESS FEDERAL MONEY FOR EACH DOLLAR WE PAY IN THAN ANY OTHER STATE IN THE COUNTRY? Even less than New York? You didn't? Well you do now.



Here are the 10 states that see the least in Federal spending per dollar of taxes paid:



1. New Jersey ($0.62)

2. Connecticut ($0.64)

3. New Hampshire ($0.68)

4. Nevada ($0.73)

5. Illinois ($0.77)

6. Minnesota ($0.77)

7. Colorado ($0.79)

8. Massachusetts ($0.79)

9. California ($0.81)

10. New York ($0.81)



7 out of 10 of them are "blue states."



Of the top 10 recipients of Federal largesse, 8 are "red states."



Why would you vote for a government that regards you as somehow less American and therefore less worthy than those in the West and in the South? You want to know why you have the highest property taxes in the country? Want to know why you pay a state income tax AND sales tax? THAT's why. Because the largesse is all going to Mississippi and Alaska and Alabama and West Virginia and Montana.



Are you going to sit and take it, or are you going to vote for change?

A sad commentary

Former Texas governor Ann Richards on George W. Bush (in the context of Thursday's debate:

"we see issues in less simplistic terms than the president. The president speaks in terms that are so simple on the most complex issues that it sort of leaves you with your mouth hanging open,"



"It is one of the slickest political machines that I've seen in my lifetime, and I've been in politics for over 50 years," she said. "I think it is without question the most difficult (to counter) when it comes to the misrepresentation of facts."



"Here we are in a war where we have committed $200 billion, shortchanged education, shortchanged health care, shortchanged job training, and the reason we were told we had to go to war was because (Iraq was) a threat to the safety and security of America.



"But now it turns out, with the simplistic responses that George Bush gives, that we were there to get rid of a bad man, Saddam Hussein. There's no discussion about what he's going to do about all of the other bad men in the world.



"But if he can answer the questions with those simple little terms, he has avoided answering the tough questions, like how many more men and women will it take? How much more money? What is the Pentagon telling you? And why don't you believe the CIA reports you're getting now that this thing doesn't look solvable?"



"If we in this country have become the kind of people that we don't want to know anything more than some simplistic answer or non-answer to questions, then God help us," she said. "If we want to elect people to public office whose whole purpose and goal is to avoid controversy and avoid answering the tough questions about government, then we're in terrible shape."

Memo go Gov. Richards: We're in terrible shape. Look how this guy is polling!

Never Mind

ModFab points out this morning that Iraqi conman and former Great White Hope of the Bush Administration is suddenly off the hook, whereby he becomes the Iraqi Oliver North. It's nice to have friends in high places.

The sins of the father....

...shall be redeemed by the son.



Ron Reagan, in an interview with the Sunday Herald (UK):

“This administration will use whatever they can – they will try to hijack that legacy, they will pretend that Mr Bush is the reincarnation of my father. I don’t feel terribly happy about that; I certainly don’t remember Bush being at any Thanksgiving dinners.”



“I don’t know Mr Bush well, but from what I can gather, he’s nothing like my father as a man.”



“The reality of this administration is so ugly that most Americans, even those who are more or less opposed to the administration, really don’t want to come to grips with that.



“This is an administration that has cheated to get into the White House. It’s not something Americans ever want to think about their government. My sense of these people is that they don’t have any respect for the public at large. They have a revolutionary mindset. I think they feel that anything they can do to prevail – lie, cheat, whatever – is justified by their revolutionary aims.”



“If Laura Bush went back and did her homework, she would see that nobody thinks there is a cure around the corner for Alzheimer’s.”



“Diabetes, Parkinson’s and spinal injuries will come first in the search for therapies. It was thought that stem cell research would help Alzheimer’s, but it’s clear other things will come first. Mrs Bush was either uninformed or disingenuous in her comments, but perhaps, with federal funding, we could address the issue properly.”



“September 11 was a huge opportunity for the Bush administration. When you read accounts of insiders who were close to the top of the administration on September 11, it’s shocking. Within hours of this terrible atrocity they were looking for opportunities to take advantage of it. They turned it into a situation where they could attack Saddam, who had nothing to do with September 11. This wasn’t a wake-up call for them.”

When all else fails, blame the bloggers!

Who knew that those nice young people like Kos and Jesse and Ezra and Atrios and Josh and the others profiled in the New York Times Magazine today were to blame for the whole CBS mess?



Not only that, but bloggers are singlehandedly responsible for the ENTIRE DOWNFALL OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM.



Ah, the power. I can almost smell it.



And here I thought that everything was the fault of the Clenis(TM):



David Broder, boy dinosaur:

We don't yet know who will win the 2004 election, but we know who has lost it. The American news media have been clobbered.



In a year when war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism and looming problems with the federal budget and the nation's health care system cry out for serious debate, the news organizations on which people should be able to depend have been diverted into chasing sham events: a scurrilous and largely inaccurate attack on the Vietnam service of John Kerry and a forged document charging President Bush with disobeying an order for an Air National Guard physical.



[snip]



The common feature -- and the disturbing fact -- is that none of these damaging failures would have occurred had senior journalists not been blind to the fact that the standards in their organizations were being fatally compromised.



We need to be asking why this collapse has taken place.



[snip]



When the Internet opened the door to scores of "journalists" who had no allegiance at all to the skeptical and self-disciplined ethic of professional news gathering, the bars were already down in many old-line media organizations. That is how it happened that old pros such as Dan Rather and former New York Times editor Howell Raines got caught up in this fevered atmosphere and let their standards slip.

I'll wait till you clean the Diet Coke off your monitor.



What Mr. Broder is saying is that the reason the Swift Boat Liars' documentably false claims were reported as news, the reason why CBS News didn't vet the Killian documents thoroughly, the reason that people like Bill Hemmer and Paula Zahn and Daryn Kagan and the Bubbleheads of Fox News' morning show spend their days talking about Hurricane Frances and Scott Peterson and Kobe's semen is because of BLOGGERS?



I only wish we had that much clout.

Buttle.

Terry Gilliam was prescient:

You Say Yusuf, I Say Youssouf...



The Cat Stevens incident has its origins in a spelling mistake

By SALLY B. DONNELLY



The Yusuf Islam incident earlier this week, in which the former Cat Stevens was denied entry into the U.S. when federal officials determined he was on the government's "no-fly" antiterror list, started with a simple spelling error. According to aviation sources with access to the list, there is no Yusuf Islam on the no-fly registry, though there is a "Youssouf Islam." The incorrect name was added to the register this summer, but because Islam's name is spelled "Yusuf" on his British passport, he was allowed to board a plane in London bound for the U.S. The Transportation Safety Administration alleges that Islam has links to terrorist groups, which he has denied; British foreign minister Jack Straw said the TSA action "should never have been taken."



The incident points up some of the real problems facing security personnel as they try to enforce the "no-fly" list. One issue is spelling; many foreign names have several different transliterations into English. And the sheer size of the list is daunting; thousands of names have been added in the last couple months, says one government official, bringing the total up to more than 19,000 names to look out for. That makes it difficult for airlines and government agencies to check all passengers. Within the past six months, several people on the no fly list have been mistakenly allowed to fly.



Still, the TSA is learning. It recently acknowledged that a Federal Air Marshall, unable to fly for weeks when his name was mistakenly put on the "no-fly" list, was in fact not a threat, and removed his name from the list.

(Thanks to Cinemarati Roundtabler RaJa)

The final nail in traditional journalism's coffin

Viewers of late-night comedy programs, especially The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on the cable channel Comedy Central, are more likely to know the issue positions and backgrounds of presidential candidates than people who do not watch late-night comedy, the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey shows.



Polling conducted between July 15 and Sept. 19 among 19,013 adults showed that on a six-item political knowledge test people who did not watch any late-night comedy programs in the past week answered 2.62 items correctly, while viewers of Late Night with David Letterman on CBS answered 2.91, viewers of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno answered 2.95, and viewers of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart answered 3.59 items correctly. That meant there was a difference of 16 percentage points between Daily Show viewers and people who did not watch any late-night programming.



The campaign knowledge test covered such topics as which candidate favors allowing workers to invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market, the income range at which John Kerry would eliminate the Bush tax cut, and which candidate is a former prosecutor.



“In recent years, traditional journalists have been voicing increasing concern that if young people are receiving political information from late-night comedy shows like The Daily Show, they may not be adequately informed on the issues of the day,” said Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, a senior analyst at the Annenberg Public Policy Center who conducted the research. ”This data suggests that these fears may be unsubstantiated. We find no differences in campaign knowledge between young people who watch Leno and Letterman – programs with a lot of political humor in their opening monologues -- and those who do not watch late night. But when looking at young people who watch The Daily Show, we find they score higher on campaign knowledge than young people who do not watch the show, even when education, following politics, party identification, gender, viewing network news, reading the newspaper, watching cable news and getting campaign information on-line are taken into account.”

Gotta get me one o'them intarweb globber thingies

("Intarweb thingie" copyright (c) 2004 Mary Ann Johanson)



Alas, being a latecomer to this particular party, largely due to other intarweb commitments, such as this and this and a much-needed rework of this, and involvement in the Dean campaign early on to focus my rage, in addition to being far too old for this sort of thing, today's New York Times Magazine article about bloggers doesn't include me. It is, however, somewhat disconcerting, and indicates that I am either too cool for words or am spending far too much time reading blogs, that I am a regular reader of every left-of-center blog mentioned and am therefore familiar with all the names mentioned.



Aside from the author's obvious lubriciousness at spending time with Wonkette, compared to the regular-guy earnestness of the blogmales profiled, and an unfortunate accreditation of the odious Mickey Kaus as being some kind of Godfather of Blogging, it's not a bad piece. However, I'll leave it to folks like Steve Gilliard to do a more accurate deconstruction than I'm qualified to do.



Those of you who actually watch the Sunday morning version of Good Morning America were treated to a gee-whiz-bang-what'll-they-think-of-next introduction to them globber thingies that are popping up all over the on that intarweb. It was quite a hoot, even if there were some glaring mistakes, such as:

Earlier, during the Republican convention in New York, a Republican congressman decided to drop his bid for re-election after a blog suggested he was gay.

Said blog didn't just suggest that Virginia Congressman Ed Schrock is gay, Raw Story actually has posted on its site the recording of a phone call the anti-gay Congressman made to a phone sex service. Transcript here.



Another example of the story playing fast and loose with the facts is the claim that:

This past week, bloggers pushed hard on the story about controversial documents uncovered by CBS that spoke to President Bush's National Guard service. Many analysts believe all the talk on Weblogs played a part in forcing CBS to re-examine the issue and ultimately issue a statement.

First of all, Free Republic is hardly a blog, and second of all, Harry MacDougald (code name "Fuckhead"....I mean "Buckhead"), who posted his infamous font post on Free Republic a mere four hours after the 60 Minutes 2 story about the Killian memos, is hardly a blogger. He is, in fact, a conservative attorney, as revealed by the Los Angeles Times on September 18, who was instrumental in the disbarment of President Clinton and who is a mucky-muck in various conservative causes.



Once again, mainstream journalism gets it wrong.

The Pro-Life President

I'm so glad that the President is so reverent towards the sanctity of human life....as long as it's still just a blastocyst:

Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.



According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.



While most of the dead are believed to be civilians, the data include an unknown number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, especially of insurgents, are never reported, so the actual number of Iraqis killed in fighting could be significantly higher.

Yup, that's our President. Loves life, hates death. So why does he inflict it on so many people?



Now that we know that "liberation of the Iraqi people" means "liberating them from this mortal coil", what are we going to do about it?



Right now much of the world sees us as being held hostage by a gang of ruthless thugs who stole the 2000 election. If we send them back to Washington with a resounding victory, it WILL be our responsibility, and I believe there'll be hell to pay.



Think about THAT when you think about who will make your kids safer.

It's the Priorities, Stupid!

What Digby said:

It is impolitic to say it, (and probably suicidal) but in a very real sense, the answer to the question "is the world better off without Saddam in power?" is no.



9/11 did change everything. It meant that we could not afford to go around willy nilly experimenting with Wilsonian democracy schemes in the mid-east without further endangering Americans by ramping up terrorist recruiting. It meant we needed to be smart and cunning, not blustering loudly with half baked information or "liberating people" without considering the consequences. It meant that creating another failed state crawling with lawless terrorists was the most dangerous thing we could do. But, that is exactly what we did.



Clearly, if we had left Saddam in power and used the excuse of 9/11 to get inspectors back in, we would probably have made more progress against the fight against the Islamic radicals who pose the greatest threat to us. At the very least we wouldn't have been creating more terrorists every single day with our corrupt mismanagement of the occupation.



Saddam was not an imminent or even near term threat. We knew it then and we certainly know it now. If one had asked the American people in the fall of 2002 if they thought it was worth it to "liberate" Iraq if it made Americans less safe, I think we know what the answer would be. We are a good people but we aren't that good. Sadly, it appears that we will have to have that fact demonstrated before many people will understand that this is precisely what we just did.



And those poor schmucks who are over there fighting and dying for this misbegotten war need to believe that they are doing a good deed for their fellow man and protecting their own. I understand that. But, their commander in chief has made a series of terrible, terrible errors and he is setting them up for death right now by manipulating the situation on the ground in order to get elected here at home. It just gets worse and worse.



Two-faced Bush can pretend and lie and prevaricate and mislead all he wants. But, the facts are what they are. He sent American soldiers to die for no good reason. It has resulted in a large number of unnecessary Iraqi deaths in the process and it is creating Anti-American terrorists much faster than they can even kill themselves.

Friday Cat Blogging Manqué

Maggie has just informed me that I forgot Friday Cat Blogging again. She's insulted.



Sorry, Mag-Mag. I'll be more careful next week.

Kristof and the 800-lb. elephant in the room

The Grey Lady is on a roll today. I don't dare hope that this means the press is awakening from their slumber; they know which side their bread is buttered on, and they value the lives of their children and pets -- and their livelihoods.



But still, a very hard hitting day at the Times today.



Pistoff:

President Bush has been searching vainly for Osama bin Laden for three years now, so I've decided to help him out. I'm traveling through Pakistan and Afghanistan to see whether I can find Osama, bring him back in my luggage and claim that $25 million reward.



So for the last few days, I've been peering into mosques and down village wells, even under mullahs' couches. No luck so far, but I did find something almost as interesting.



I'm talking about the arrangement under which the U.S. cuts Pakistan some slack on nuclear proliferation, in exchange for President Pervez Musharraf's joining aggressively in the hunt for Osama - in the hope of catching him by Nov. 2.



If a nuclear weapon destroys the U.S. Capitol in coming years, it will probably be based in part on Pakistani technology. The biggest challenge to civilization in recent years came not from Osama or Saddam Hussein but from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb. Dr. Khan definitely sold nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, and, officials believe, to several more nations as well.



But, amazingly, eight months after Dr. Khan publicly confessed, we still don't know who the rest of his customers were. Mr. Musharraf acknowledged as much in an interview.



"I can't say surely that we have unearthed everything that he's done, but I think we have unearthed most of what he's done," Mr. Musharraf said. Translated, that means: I'm afraid you're eventually going to find out about other transactions that we're still trying to hide.



American intelligence experts haven't been able to interrogate Dr. Khan, and Mr. Musharraf claims that the U.S. has not even asked to do so. "Let me put the record straight: nobody asked us to be allowed to question him," Mr. Musharraf said.



President Bush apparently did not ask for that direct access at his meeting on Wednesday with Mr. Musharraf, and it's clear that the administration is not pressing the issue. Why? Because Mr. Bush in this election season has another priority: getting Mr. Musharraf to help catch Osama.

So George W. Bush, who has allowed Osama bin Laden to run free until the time most beneficial to his re-election, has, as part of this most cynically political move, decided to look the other way at REAL weapons of mass destruction emanating from Pakistan.



And this president is making us safe from terror....how again?

Good start guys, now do something about Wilgoren

The New York Times, which through reporters like Jodi Wilgoren and Elisabeth Bumiller, has been giving George W. Bush journalistic blowjobs for the last three years, finally wakes up with a hard-hitting editorial:

President Bush and his surrogates are taking their re-election campaign into dangerous territory. Mr. Bush is running as the man best equipped to keep America safe from terrorists - that was to be expected. We did not, however, anticipate that those on the Bush team would dare to argue that a vote for John Kerry would be a vote for Al Qaeda. Yet that is the message they are delivering - with a repetition that makes it clear this is an organized effort to paint the Democratic candidate as a friend to terrorists.



[snip]



This is despicable politics. It's not just polarizing - it also undermines the efforts of the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency to combat terrorists in America. Every time a member of the Bush administration suggests that Islamic extremists want to stage an attack before the election to sway the results in November, it causes patriotic Americans who do not intend to vote for the president to wonder whether the entire antiterrorism effort has been kidnapped and turned into part of the Bush re-election campaign.



[Note from me: We don't have to wonder. We know. And we've known since 9/11/2001. And frankly, this is a taste of what people like me have to look foward too once Diebold and Glenda Hood and the now-cowed CBS and Fox News and everyone else still carrying water for this bunch of thugs succeeds in propping him up for at least another four years (because why should anyone care about the Constitution at this point?).]



[snip]



The general instinct of Americans is to play fair. That is why, even though terrorists struck the United States during President Bush's watch, the Democrats have not run a campaign that blames him for allowing the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to be attacked.

Go read it.



It's fairly hard-hitting, for the Bush York Times, though this idea that the instinct of Americans to play fair is utter horseshit. If Americans wanted fair play they would have repudiated the Bush Administration a long time ago, and the campaign certainly wouldn't be a dead heat. It is the instinct of DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS to play fair, and we've seen how far that's gotten them.



To paraphrase that famous Michael Douglas rant from Wall Street: Negativity is good. Negativity works.



Why does it work? Because the American people allow it to work by voting with their guts instead of their brains.



I just wish that they didn't have to take the rest of us down with them.



Besides, the documented truth is that terrorists want Bush to win:

The Islamic militant group that claimed responsibility for the Madrid train bombings has warned that its next targets could be Japan, Italy, Britain or Australia, an Arabic newspaper reported on Thursday.



The newspaper, Al Quds al Arabi, which is based in London, said on its Web site that it had received a statement from the group, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, in which the group reiterated its responsibility for bombings, which killed 201 people and wounded more than 1,600...The statement tells Americans that Abu Hafs al-Masri supports the re-election of President George W. Bush.



"We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections," it said.



Addressing Bush, it said: "We know that a heavyweight operation would destroy your government, and this is what we don't want. We are not going to find a bigger idiot than you." The statement said Abu Hafs al-Masri needs what it called Bush's "idiocy and religious fanaticism" because they would "wake up" the Islamic world. Comparing Bush with his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, the statement tells the president, "Actually, there is no difference between you and Kerry, but Kerry will kill our community, while it is unaware, because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish infidelity and present it to the Arab and Islamic community as civilization."

Good doggie. Good obedient doggie.

So I wonder what Sumner Redstone was threatened with...maybe Rove had his prize horse killed and put the head in his bed?



Not only has Redstone decided he's going to vote for Bush, but CBS News now has a policy that they won't run any anti-Bush stories until after they do their part to ensure that Jesus Walker Christ stays in office another four years.



Isn't it good to know that independent journalism is alive and well in America?



Too bad it's all being done by unpaid bloggers.

Moral of story: Never Write Anything Down

Bob Herbert notes today a passage from George W. Bush's autobiography A Charge to Keep, in which Bush explains his initial support for the war in Vietnam (the one he was content to let OTHERS fight in):

"My inclination was to support the government and the war until proven wrong, and that only came later, as I realized we could not explain the mission, had no exit strategy, and did not seem to be fighting to win."

The Official Bush Administration Policy on Elections

Rumsfeld, before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday:

"Let’s say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. But in some places you couldn’t because the violence was too great...Well, so be it. Nothing’s perfect in life, so you have an election that’s not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet."

Why do I have the feeling that he's just revealed what the October Surprise is going to be?

It's called "Checks and Balances", Mr. DeLay

Look at your U.S. Constitution, asshole.



Don't these fucking morons have anything better to do?



And I had just finished picking up the exploded remains of my head from the floor, too.

The House passed legislation Thursday that would prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on whether the words "under God" should be stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance.



In a politically and emotionally charged debate six weeks before Election Day, Democrats said majority Republicans were debasing the Constitution to force a vote that could hurt Democrats at the ballot box.



Supporters insisted Congress has always had authority to limit federal court jurisdiction, and the legislation is needed to protect an affirmation of religion that is part of the national heritage.



[Note from me: Interesting how it wasn't part of the national heritage until the LAST era of American witch-hunting, the McCarthy years.]



The bill, which the House approved, 247-173, would prohibit federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from hearing cases involving the pledge and its recitation and would prevent federal courts from striking the words "under God" from the pledge.

Here are the members of the Democratic Axis of Weasels who were too chickenshit, or too lazy, to fight against this obvious "Dukakis Redux" Republican scam.



Marion Berry (AR - 1st)

Leonard Boswell (IA - 3rd)

Rick Boucher (VA - 9th)

Allen Boyd (FL - 2nd)

Brad Carson (OK - 2nd)

Ben Chandler (KY - 6th)

James Clyburn (SC - 6th)

Jerry Costello (IL - 12th)

"Bud" Cramer (AL - 5th)

Lincoln Davis (TN - 4th)

Chet Edwards (TX - 11th)

Bob Etheridge(NC - 2nd)

Harold Ford (TN - 9th) (Harold! How could you?)

Bart Gordon (TN - 6th)

Stephanie Herseth (SD) (Herseth is running a tight race for re-election in a Republican state. Hey, Herseth. You think kissing Republican ass is the way to keep your seat? Then how come Tom Daschle is losing too?)

Tim Holden (PA - 17th)

Christopher John (LA - 7th)

Nick Lampson (TX - 9th)

William Lipinski (IL - 3rd)

Jim Marshall (GA - 3rd)

Jim Matheson (UT - 7th)

Mike McIntyre (NC - 7th)

Alan Mollohan (WV - 1st)

Collin Peterson (MN - 7th)

Nick Rahall (WV - 3rd)

Mike Ross (AR - 4th)

Tim Ryan (OH - 17th)

Max Sandlin (TX - 1st)

Ike Skelton (MO - 4th)

Charlie Stenholm (TX - 17th)

John Tanner (TN - 8th)

Gene Taylor (MS - 4th)

Jim Turner (TX - 2nd)

Albert Wynn (MD - 4th)



So 25 of them are from Southern states, which brings up an interesting question: Why are Southerners so concerned about the so-called sanctity of the flag and the pledge thereof, when they are similarly concerned with the Confederate flag? Inquiring minds want to know.



And if the Texas guys think that this is going to make one iota of difference to their now-gerrymandered districts, designed to kick them out and replace them with Republicans, well, see also: Stephanie Herseth.



Disgusting.



UPDATE: Thanks to my good friend Low IQ Canadian for the following:

How Many US Reps Would Flunk Con Law 101?



Two hundred and forty-seven, apparently.



That's how many members (and I use the term advisedly) of the United States House of Representatives voted for a bill that would, among other things, remove the jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a First Amendment challenge to the pledge of allegiance.



Day One of Con Law. Any law school in the USA. Case 1. Marbury v. Madison. Wherein the U.S. Supreme Court determined that they had the authority to strike down Congressional enactments that violate the U.S. Constitution. It's just the foundation of our system of checks and balances -- that's no reason any of our legislators would know anything about it.



So why shouldn't Congress end every bill with "and federal courts, including the Surpeme Court, shall not have the jurisdiction to consider the constitutionality of this enactment"? That would end judicial review of legislative action entirely. Does anyone other than Bob Bork think they have the power to do that?



Worst of all, a prior version of the bill had excepted the US Supreme Court from the jurisdiction-stripping. While I wouldn't be in favor of any version of this bill, that would at least make constitutional sense -- the lower federal courts are created by Congress, and can be (maybe) barred by Congress from hearing specific issues; the USSC is created by the Constitution and can't have their jurisdiction divested by Congress.



But no, the HORs rushed in with the version of this bill that shows the maximum possible antipathy for horizontal federalism. What a bunch of goddamn idiots.

Jon Stewart: Making Fake News Safe for America

The man is absofuckinlutely brilliant.



Catch him making Katie Couric look like a giggling moron by comparison here.

Right on Schedule

So Captain Dickwave's much-touted convention bounce (more like a blip, actually) is gone, and right on cue -- here's a new terror warning, this time from General Garbledsyntax himself.

Standing beside Iraq (news - web sites)'s interim leader, President Bush (news - web sites) contended Thursday that insurgents could "plot and plan attacks elsewhere, in America and other free nations," if the United States pulled out. He said his top commander there has not asked for more troops but if he did, "I'd listen to him."

Then Allawi, who seems to still be deluding himself that he can have elections on time, took the Bullshit Baton from Fearless Leader:

He cautioned, however, that the election may not come off perfectly. But he assured it will be free and fair, "a giant step" in Iraq's political evolution.

I'm assuming that "free and fair" is using the upcoming election in the U.S. as a benchmark, in which most black voters and everyone overseas other than the military has just been disenfranchized, and a chimpanzee can hack the voting machines.



And what would a Bush appearance be without something for the Unintentional Humor file:

While Bush and Allawi spoke, Kerry campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart said Bush must be "unhinged from reality" to cite a poll suggesting that there are more Iraqis who feel their country is on the right track than there are U.S. voters who feel the same about their own.

And this is a guy who's supposedly running on his own record. Think about it. As Lockhart said (and thank GOD he's finally on board, for he is one tough mofo), "He just basically said a country that is dissolving into potential civil war, where terrorists have taken over large section of the country and where American can no longer secure four major cities, that the people over there think better of their country than people here in the United States." So what does that say of the colossal botch that Commander Monkeypants has made of the United States?



Here's where that stands today:



1) The Index of Leading Indicators, issued by the Conference Board , fell 0.3 percent in Aug to 115.7 after a matching 0.3 percent decline in July and a 0.1 percent drop in June



2) The number of applicants for an initial week of jobless aid climbed a sharper-than-expected 14,000 last week to 350,000. The number of people who remained on state unemployment rolls after claiming an initial week of jobless claims edged up to 2.88 million.



3) Oil prices were just over $48 a barrel on Thursday.



4) The Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 70 points, or 0.7 percent, in early afternoon trading.



Yup, we're turning the corner all right....into one nasty neighborhood.

So simple even a chimp can hack it

It's no secret to anyone that responsibility for getting me through the day with my sanity intact has fallen on the highly neurotic shoulders of Marc Maron of Air America's Morning Sedition. Without my daily dose of the Presidential Palm Pilot, Recovery Corner, and the Issues Guy, I'd probably go into a corner and sit in a fetal position, never to emerge. But I have webs to finish and a grant system to write for my beloved (really! I'm one of the lucky ones) Real Job, movie reviews to write, kitchen cabinets to reface, and a million other things to do. So I can't just withdraw into a crying jag until either the Bushes are out of office or death takes me, whichever comes first.



But sometimes not even Maron is enough, and this morning it took the assistance of none other than Bev Harris of Black Box Voting to restore my sanity. It seems that Diebold is swearing up and down at their voting machines are hack-proof, but the intrepid Harris hired Baxter, a chimpanzee, to attempt to hack Diebold's machines at a live press conference.



Do I even have to tell you whether Baxter was able to do it?



On this morning's show, Marc Riley, a.k.a. the Sane Person on Morning Sedition, wondered whether a chimpanzee would be allowed in the polling place. Harris' reply was that they'd have to put a security guard suit on him.



Maybe you had to be there.

A pox on both their houses

Putting aside efforts to control the federal deficit before the elections, Republican and Democratic leaders agreed Wednesday to extend $145 billion worth of tax cuts sought by President Bush without trying to pay for them.



At a House-Senate conference committee, Democratic lawmakers abandoned efforts to pay for the measures by either imposing a surcharge on wealthy families or closing corporate tax shelters.



"I wish we could pay for them, but this is a political problem and we have people up for re-election,'' said Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. "If you have to explain that you voted for these tax cuts because they benefit the middle class and against them because of the deficit, you've got a problem.''



Fearful of being attacked as supporters of higher taxes, Democrats said they would go along with an unpaid five-year extension of the $1,000 child tax credit; a four-year extension of tax breaks intended to reduce the so-called marriage penalty on two-income families; and a six-year extension of a provision that allowed more people to qualify for the lowest tax rate of 10 percent.



Even as they pushed for the cuts that will add to the federal budget deficit, House Republican lawmakers said Wednesday that they hoped to have a vote soon on a constitutional amendment that would require the government to balance the budget by 2010, except if the country is at war.

Now I have to pick up the fragments of my skull off the floor. But before I go, just one question:



WHEN THE FUCK ARE THE DEMOCRATS GOING TO LEARN HOW TO FRAME AN ARGUMENT INSTEAD OF CAVING IN ALL THE TIME????



You want to know why people vote for Nader? This is why.

Hesiod is back!

And I'm only finding out a month late. He says it's temporary, but I don't believe it. Welcome back, sir.

The Bush Second Term Tax Plan ... you can still prevent it

Ron Suskind has an image file of a 2002 Administration document containing a blueprint for some major revamping of the income tax structure. Yes, it's two years old, but given that George W. Bush has recently spoken out favorably about a flat tax, it'w worth revisiting.



All the options are some variety of a flat tax under the guise of "simplification." One of the alternatives it pushes is a consumption tax replacing the progressive income tax. This is about as regressive as it gets. Imagine paying 20% - 25% on your groceries, utilities, gasoline purchases, clothes and school supplies for the kids, car repairs, home improvements, and EVERYTHING ELSE YOU BUY. Want to know how regressive such a tax is? Think about how much you have left after you buy your necessities. Now think about the guy on the other side of town who makes well over six figures, and how much HE has to buy necessities. Bottom line here: you'll pay a heck of a lot more PERCENTAGE OF YOUR TOTAL INCOME in tax than he will. Not to mention how such a tax DECREASES consumption, and since this Administration has been Worshipping Before the Altar of Consumer Confidence and Consumption since day one, this could put a real crimp in the economy.



Another option is a flat income tax, which would eliminate ALL of your itemized deductions. ALL of them. Your deduction for your kids? Gone. Medical expense deduction? Gone. Mortgage interest deduction? Gone. Property tax deduction? Gone. (Side note: This would WALLOP those "blue states" with high property taxes, but that's probably the whole point...penalize those states that do not vote for Der Füehrer0. One other thing to keep in mind is that keeping such a flat tax "revenue neutral" would require a 20-25% flat tax rate. For most working- and middle-class Americans, this would constitute a HUGE tax increase.



Just FYI, a married couple filing jointly will pay the following RATES in 2004 under the current system:



The first $14,300 of income is taxed at 10%.

The amount between $14,301 and $59,100 is taxed at 15%

The amount between $58,101 and $117,250 is taxed at 25%.



So if your TAXABLE INCOME (that is, after the deductions for your children, your mortgage interest, your property taxes, your medical expenses, your unreimbursed employee business expenses, AND your 401(k) contributions are deducted from your gross income) is less than $117,250, you're paying 19% of your GROSS income in federal income tax. Not a heck of a lot, right? Even if your taxable income is that high, which means that your gross annual pay is probably $135K or more, that's all you pay.



If your taxable income is, oh, say, $60,000 (which means you're probably pulling in $75-$80K gross), you will pay $8475 income tax, or 14%. Which means that a 20-25% flat tax would be a 6-9% tax increase for you.



So if you think a flat tax would be good for you, think again. Sure the tax system is complex. Yes, doing your taxes sucks. But are you willing to give up 10% of your income to simplify it?



It's all here. Go read it...BEFORE you go into the voting booth.

Mr. Salt, meet Mrs. Wound

As if losing her son in Bush's Iraq clusterfuck while he was doing work for which he wasn't trained, and being arrested for asking The Stepford First Wife when the latter's own children were going to enlist, now Seth Dvorin's mother, Sue Neiderer of Hopewell Township, NJ is being investigated by the Secret Service:

he mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who was arrested last week for interrupting a speech by Laura Bush is being investigated by the Secret Service for threatening remarks she made about President Bush, a Secret Service official confirmed yesterday.



The woman, Sue Niederer, 55, who lives in Hopewell, N.J., made the comments on a Web site, according to the Secret Service official, who was reached by telephone in Washington. He referred further questions to Special Agent Tony Colgary in the Trenton office of the Secret Service, who did not respond to messages.



Mr. Colgary, however, confirmed the investigation to The Trenton Times.



Mrs. Niederer, reached by phone, said: "I don't want to talk about it. Leave it alone."



The federal officials are apparently investigating comments made by Mrs. Niederer in May on the Web site counterpunch.org, a political newsletter. In the Web postings, she is quoted as saying she "wanted to rip the president's head off" and "shoot him in the groined area."



It is a federal crime to threaten the president, though civil liberties groups are expected to argue the case on free speech grounds.



Mrs. Niederer told The Trenton Times she was upset about her son's death at the time. When asked if she wanted to threaten the president, she answered, "Absolutely not."



Mrs. Niederer is being assisted by a volunteer lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union, according to Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the civil liberties group's New Jersey chapter. Ms. Jacobs, who did not return a voice mail message left at her office late yesterday, told The Associated Press that Mrs. Niederer's comments on the Web site were protected by court precedent from a 1969 case. In Watts v. United States, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a man who three years earlier had claimed at a public gathering that he would "set his sights" on President Lyndon Johnson if he was drafted.



The court ruled that while the nation had an interest in protecting the president, the 1917 statute on which the case was based "must be interpreted with the commands of the First Amendment clearly in mind."

There's no doubt that Sue Niederer is a problem for the Bush Administration, because she has refused to buy the Official Party Line that this is some sort of noble cause for which people should feel honored to donate their sons' lives. But saying what one would "like to do" to the president is in no way an actual threat. I am always very careful in e-mails and on this blog to qualify everything I say about removing George W. Bush from office with "via the ballot box on November 2nd" for just this reason -- because these days, any kind of dissent about Bush's policies is now regarded as a threat against Der Führer, and frankly, I don't need the aggravation.



But I'm just your ordinary garden-variety outraged citizen, I'm not a bereaved mother. It's easy for me to take a deep breath and think before posting. If I'd lost my kid to this war, it might not be so easy.



This president and the people around him are now trying to control how the families left behind from the carnage in Iraq they have produced, and continue to produce every day. If you mourn "appropriately," which means you be sure to praise Chickenshit Leader as part of your mourning, you're all right. If you dare to rage against the injustice of a man who went AWOL from his own service sending your son off on bomb defusal duty without training him how to do it, you're an enemy of the state.



This is America under George W. Bush. And if he is allowed a second term via the ballot box on November 2nd, all of us who have been trying to get people to wake up and smell the carrion, risk of the same treatment.

Now THIS is journalism

Peter Jennings has obviously studied his Jon Stewart very carefully, to positive and devastating effect. Oliver Willis has the video.



This, folks, is what journalists do, and THIS is how being "fair and balanced" ought to be done. Lies presented as simply "the other side" are still lies. But here the misrepresentation is coming right out of Captain Pencildick's own mouth, IN CONTEXT.



Nice work, Mr. Jennings. More of this, please.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!! [/Gomer Pyle]

Looks like the Bushistas have succeeded in disenfranchising as many potential Democratic voters as possible.



And they wonder why black Americans refuse to join up with the Republicans?

Millions of U.S. citizens, including a disproportionate number of black voters, will be blocked from voting in the Nov. 2 presidential election because of legal barriers, faulty procedures or dirty tricks, according to civil rights and legal experts.



The largest category of those legally disenfranchised consists of almost 5 million former felons who have served prison sentences and been deprived of the right to vote under laws that have roots in the post-Civil War 19th century and were aimed at preventing black Americans from voting.



But millions of other votes in the 2000 presidential election were lost due to clerical and administrative errors while civil rights organizations have cataloged numerous tactics aimed at suppressing black voter turnout. Polls consistently find that black Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.



[snip]



The commission, in a report earlier this year, said that in Florida, where President Bush (news - web sites) won a bitterly disputed election in 2000 by 537 votes, black voters had been 10 times more likely than non-black voters to have their ballots rejected and were often prevented from voting because their names were erroneously purged from registration lists.



Additionally, Florida is one of 14 states that prohibit ex-felons from voting. Seven percent of the electorate but 16 percent of black voters in that state are disenfranchised.



In other swing states, 4.6 percent of voters in Iowa, but 25 percent of blacks, were disenfranchised in 2000 as ex-felons. In Nevada, it was 4.8 percent of all voters but 17 percent of blacks; in New Mexico, 6.2 percent of all voters but 25 percent of blacks.



In total, 13 percent of all black men are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, according to the Commission on Civil Rights.



"This has a huge effect on elections but also on black communities which see their political clout diluted. No one has yet explained to me how letting ex-felons who have served their sentences into polling booths hurts anyone," said Jessie Allen of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.



Penda Hair, co-director of the Advancement Project, which seeks to ensure fair multiracial elections, recently reported that registrars across the country often claimed not to have received voter registration forms or rejected them for technical reasons that could have been corrected easily before voting day if the applicant had known there was a problem.



Beasley said that many voters who had registered recently in swing states were likely to find their names would not be on the rolls when they showed up on Election Day.

This is reprehensible and disgusting, and the President's brother, Jeb Bush, is one of the primary offenders. People have given their lives in order that every American citizen be able to exercise this primary right -- and responsibility of citizenship. But the Bush family, and their cronies, believe that only those who vote for THEM should be permitted to vote.



This is not a dictatorship, nor is it a kingdom with the Bushes as the Royal Family. These people are fundamentally opposed to everything this country stands for, and they MUST be voted out on November 2nd via a RESOUNDING message. It had better be resounding, because between disenfranchisement and rigged voting machines, if it's anything else, Bush wins. Why do you think all the advance polling skews the sample towards Republicans? They want us to stay home, folks. They want us discouraged.



So please...tell all your friends that if they value democracy, or even if they don't, do not reward this sort of behavior with another term.



Thank you, and may God bless America, because no one else will.

Yeah, his music sucks, but still....

And to think there was a time when I not only OWNED the album Tea for the Tillerman but actually LIKED it.



There are some records, like Bat Out of Hell, or The Allman Bros. Live at the Fillmore East, or just about anything Elvis Costello did when he was still young and angry, instead of showing off his Big Canadian Croonster wife, that you can always pick up and listen to over and over again. Then there's the stuff of which Depressed Hippie Wannabe Teenagers are made of, like Joni Mitchell's Blue, or Harry Chapin's chunks of life songs, or yes, Tea for the Tillerman, that only a fifteen year old who feels like a complete misfit could love.



Still, while Cat Stevens, a.k.a. Yusuf Islam, is a lousy songwriter and even worse vocalist, and while he misguidedly supported the late Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against author Salman Rushdie (whose only real crime is being insufferably pretentious), the idea that he's on a government watch list is kind of chilling. Is this triggered SOLELY because he re-released "Peace Train" last year? Yeah, it's an awful song, but then, so is "Oops, I Did It Again", but you don't see Britney Spears on any kind of watch list.

A London-to-Washington flight was diverted to Maine when it was discovered that passenger Yusuf Islam — formerly known as singer Cat Stevens — was on a government watch list and barred from entering the country.



United Airlines Flight 919 was en route to Dulles International Airport when the match was made Tuesday between a passenger and a name on the watch list, said Nico Melendez, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration.



The plane was met by federal agents at Maine’s Bangor International Airport around 3 p.m., Melendez said. A spokesman for the Bangor Police Department told WCSH-TV, an NBC affiliate in Portland, Maine, that Islam was driven to Boston.



Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy said that Islam "was interviewed and denied admission to the United States on national security grounds.”



He said Islam would be put on the first available flight out of the country Wednesday.



Questioned by FBI, immigration officials

Officials had no details about why the peace activist might be considered a risk to the United States. Islam had visited New York in May for a charity event and to promote a DVD of his 1976 MajiKat tour.

Just for the record (via MSNBC), here's Stevens/Islam's record of proclamations on recent terrorist attacks:

Recently, though, Islam has criticized terrorist acts, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the school seizure in Beslan, Russia, earlier this month that left more than 300 dead, nearly half of them children.



In a statement on his Web site, he wrote, “Crimes against innocent bystanders taken hostage in any circumstance have no foundation whatsoever in the life of Islam and the model example of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.”



After the Sept. 11 attacks, Islam issued a statement saying: “No right thinking follower of Islam could possibly condone such an action: The Quran equates the murder of one innocent person with the murder of the whole of humanity.”

So why is he on a government watch list? Because his last name is "Islam"? Because someone at the Justice Department had hoped never to have to listen to "Peace Train" again?

BBQ Rally for Anne Wolfe for Congress

As posted yesterday, Anne Wolfe is running for the NJ 5th District Congressional seat against wingnut Scott Garrett. This traditionally Republican seat was held for 25 years by moderate Republican Marge Roukema until her retirement in 2002. Garrett is dangerous because he's a stealth wingnut -- he runs as a moderate, he votes about as hard-right as you can get, and he uses his franking privileges to send out what is essentially campaign literature full of complete misrepresentations of his views.



The New Jersey Democratic party, not surprisingly, has essentially ceded this race to Garrett, which is, in my view, a huge mistake. This highly gerrymandered district, which includes some of the most affluent sections of Bergen County, then going around the top of the state into Sussex County, is suffering the often invisible pain associated with Garrett and the rest of his party. From overdevelopment to air quality, from skyrocketing property taxes to high health care costs, just about all of these problems can be traced to the Bush Administration and its lackeys in Congress.



Anne Wolfe was named to the Dean Dozen, a select list of common-sense progressives that Howard Dean's organization, Democracy for America, is supporting. She represents the kind of nuts-and-bolts progressivism that made many of us support Howard Dean early on in the presidential race. Anne Wolfe has no financial support from the party, and no financial support from corporate interests. Like Howard Dean before her, her contributions come from ordinary people, with an average donation of $80.



I think it's insane for OUR party to cede ANY seat in Congress to someone as odious as Scott Garrett. So I'm supporting Anne Wolfe with my wallet and my words.



Not in the NJ Fifth, you say, so it's not your problem? Au contraire. With Web-based campaigns taking off, every seat is now our problem. I've sent money to Joe Hoeffel in Pennsylvania and to Jim Newberry in Missouri, because I think Arlen Specter needs to be retired, and Roy Blunt needs to be drummed out of office with as ignominious a defeat as possible. As Barack Obama said at OUR convention:

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats...We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

I'm defending the United States of America by throwing support behind good, progressive candidates who, once elected, can start taking our country back from the Bush Family Business.



So now let's cut to the chase. The reason for this rant this morning is to spread the word about what promises to be a really fun event coming up on October 2nd, to benefit Anne Wolfe's candidacy.



Here are the particulars (from Democracy for America):



When: Saturday, October 2nd

2pm - 6pm

Rain or Shine



Where: Alpine Pavilion

Palisades Interstate Park

Alpine, NJ 07620

(Alpine Boat Basin)



What: Live entertainment

Food & soda

(BYOB)



It is a BBQ/fundraiser, with a live band - Peter Karp and the Road Show and BBQ food. NJ Democratic candidate for Congress Anne Wolfe will be speaking. Children welcome. Informal. Minimum suggested donation $50 at door, 40$ if preregistered. All proceeds to go to the Anne Wolfe for Congress campaign.



The site of this event is rumored to be where the British invaded New Jersey on November 20, 1776. They landed on the shores of the Hudson River under the Palisades in Alpine and scaled the cliffs, to attack George Washington's army at Fort Lee. This was the event which caused Mr. Paine to write "These are the times that try men's souls." It was a dark time, but all was not lost. General Washington was able to rally his troops for a stunning victory in Trenton where the tide was turned. Over a century and a half later, the Great Depression was upon us. When NJ and NY were gripped by fear and uncertainty, FDR sent our boys "into the forest to get us out of the woods". The Pavilion in Alpine was built by the New Deal Agencies and still stands today. It is a beautiful stone and chestnut structure on the shore of the Hudson that helped see New Yorkers and New Jerseyans out of that dark time as well. It is a perfect setting for us to take back our government and restore the ideals and progress of the New Deal and the Democracy founded long ago when we determined our destinies free of the strangling grip of a different King George and later a ruthless dictator bent on ruling the world.



The Alpine Boat Basin is a scenic location on the banks of the Hudson River, easily accessible via the Palisades Parkway or Route 9W; early October is gorgeous in northern NJ, and Peter Karp's band, which plays roadhouse blues-tinged rock 'n' roll, with clever, quirky lyrics often reminiscent of a less-cynical Elvis Costello, is worth a trip all by itself.



If interested in attending, sign up here.

What Are You Voting For?

It's not just for comic book geeks and readers of the New York Post, which is already a "newspaper" in comic-book form.



Go check out What Are You Voting For?. It's a compendium of the nightmare that has been the last four years. For all of those so-called "undecided" voters with amnesia who need a refresher course, it's must reading. And it's got footnotes so detailed that not even Freepers can argue.

How Many People Died Because of the CBS Documents?

Just asking.

Are Women Really This F***ing Stupid?

Now THERE'S an inflammatory title for you.



But just for the record, this falls under the "It's OK To Knock Your Own Team" rule, because I am one.



But Naomi Wolf leaves me with no other conclusion after reading her article "Female Trouble" in New York magazine.



Her main points:



1. The Karen Hughes factor: "they devised a deliberate strategy that went unnoticed by Democratic strategists, most of whom are white guys over 50: to showcase a moderate, mainstream feminist makeover for the Bush brand....Bush’s speeches are routinely cast before the eye, I am convinced, of Karen Hughes, who spins tax cuts as a boon to women entrepreneurs, like the one Laura Bush mentioned in her convention speech (Carmella Chaifos, “the only woman to own a tow-truck company in all of Iowa”). The fallen heroes of Iraq are “moms and dads.” Afghanistan was the first time U.S. troops were deployed for a feminist goal, “so Afghan girls could go to school.”"



2. The "soft wives" factor. Now that Bush needs to present a softer face, suddenly Lynne Cheney, who writes lesbian erotic fiction and has been a career woman her whole life, talks about Dick making eggs for breakfast. And they've taken Laura off the Thorazine long enough to make appearances where she refers to young George changing the twins' diapers.



Compare this with Mrs. Vagina Dentata, otherwise known OUTSIDE wingnut circles as Theresa Heinz Kerry. Mrs. Kerry is a castrating bitch because she's kept her dead first husband's name, much the same way Hillary Clinton was a castrating bitch for keeping her maiden name. She is a figure of exotic sexuality with a social conscience, as opposed to Mrs. Bush's demure, if zonked-out, demeanor and prior gender-appropriate career as a librarian.

Bush knows that Laura is his outreach to that swing voter in Michigan who is juggling work and family, who wants to feel that her abortion rights are secure and her kids are safe. Whenever his anti-environment, anti-choice, anti-peace, anti-working-class-women policies obtrude onto her consciousness, all he needs to do is point to Laura; his recent stump speeches promise that if you vote for him, you get four more years of her.

Are women really so fucking idiotic that they're falling for this load o'manure? Or are they just not paying attention? Either way, girls, you'd better wake the fuck up soon. Because if you don't, you may find your 13-year-old daughter having to bear the child of that perv she met on the internet while you weren't looking, and your 18-year-old son will be sent to the meatgrinder in Iraq.

What Democracy?

Juan Cole knows more about the Middle East on his worst day than George W. Bush ever could. Today he takes a withering look at Bush's delusional claims that the situation in Iraq is improving:

I just heard President Bush taunt John Kerry for suggesting that the US was not safer because Saddam Hussein was deposed, and for saying that the US was in fact less safe because of the chaos in Iraq.



Bush attempted to turn this statement around and suggest that Kerry was preferring dictatorship to democracy.



Iraq, however, does not have a democracy, and cannot possibly have a democracy any time soon because of events such as those described below (and they are only 24 hours' worth)-- that is, because of a failed state and a hot guerrilla war.



Moreover, if Mr. Bush abhors dictatorships so much, why hasn't he overthrown that in China? North Korea? Zimbabwe? Or, say, Egypt? There are enormous numbers of dictatorships in the world. Is the US to overthrow them all? Putin's decision to appoint provincial governors rather than allowing them to be elected (as though Bush should appoint the governors of US states) is a step toward dictatorship. Shall we have a war with Russia over it?

And here he gets to the crux of why Bush's utter botch of the entire region doesn't seem to affect his poll numbers:

I have a sinking feeling that the American public may like Bush's cynical misuse of Wilsonian idealism precisely because it covers the embarrassment of their having gone to war, killed perhaps 25,000 people, and made a perfect mess of the Persian Gulf region, all out of a kind of paranoia fed by dirty tricks and bad intelligence. And, maybe they have to vote for Bush to cover the embarrassment of having elected him in the first place.

Exactly! Imagine how schmucky some of these people would feel if they had to admit how they allowed themselves to be duped by their President. Not only does it fly in the face of everything we believe about America, it flies in the face of everything they were taught in school.



It's not easy facing that the President and the men around him are corrupt, greedy, venal, and yes, murderous. It's not easy facing that over 1000 American young people have died because of a lie. But your obligation as a citizen depends on coming to that realization, and get these people out of power.

Bush: "La-la-la-la-la I Am Not Listening"

Krugman:

Mr. Bush hopes that by pretending that Mr. Allawi is a real leader of a real government, he can conceal the fact that he has led America into a major strategic defeat.



That's a stark statement, but it's a view shared by almost all independent military and intelligence experts. Put it this way: it's hard to identify any major urban areas outside Kurdistan where the U.S. and its allies exercise effective control. Insurgents operate freely, even in the heart of Baghdad, while coalition forces, however many battles they win, rule only whatever ground they happen to stand on. And efforts to put an Iraqi face on the occupation are self-defeating: as the example of Mr. Allawi shows, any leader who is too closely associated with America becomes tainted in the eyes of the Iraqi public.



Mr. Bush's insistence that he is nonetheless "pleased with the progress" in Iraq - when his own National Intelligence Estimate echoes the grim views of independent experts - would be funny if the reality weren't so grim. Unfortunately, this is no joke: to the delight of Al Qaeda, America's overstretched armed forces are gradually getting chewed up in a losing struggle.

Swimming with Sharks

Let's forget for a minute that by climbing aboard the Ralph Nader Spoiler Bandwagon in 2000, Michael Moore contributed to getting us into this mess. God knows he's done everything he can to atone.



I admit that he's talking to me here as much as to anyone else, but even I have to admit he's right:

Bush IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and bellyaching and stop shaking like a bunch of nervous ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The Republicans are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh, it's all over! We are finished! Bush can't win! Waaaaaa!"



Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying.



They are relentless and that is why we secretly admire them -- they just simply never, ever give up. Only 30% of the country calls itself "Republican," yet the Republicans own it all -- the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. How do you think they've been able to pull that off considering they are a minority? It's because they eat you and me and every other liberal for breakfast and then spend the rest of the day wreaking havoc on the planet.



Look at us -- what a bunch of crybabies. Bush gets a bounce after his convention and you would have thought the Germans had run through Poland again. The Bushies are coming, the Bushies are coming! Yes, they caught Kerry asleep on the Swift Boat thing. Yes, they found the frequency in Dan Rather and ran with it. Suddenly it's like, "THE END IS NEAR! THE SKY IS FALLING!"



No, it is not. If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like him don't run -- and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.



Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better, smarter, kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have smacked each and every one of those phony swifty boaty bastards down. But WE are not running for president -- Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we have. Oprah just gave 300 women a... Pontiac! Did you see any of them frowning and moaning and screaming, "Oh God, NOT a friggin' Pontiac!" Of course not, they were happy. The Pontiacs all had four wheels, an engine and a gas pedal. You want more than that, well, I can't help you. I had a Pontiac once and it lasted a good year. And it was a VERY good year.



My friends, it is time for a reality check.

Read the rest of it.



Meanwhile, I am going to go to a meet and greet for Anne Wolfe tonight. Anne Wolfe is the Democrat running for Congress in New Jersey's 5th District. This is a district currently represented (if you can call it that) by Scott Garrett, as vile and odious a wingnut as has ever walked the face of the earth. Garrett has a 100% rating from the Christian Coalition, a 75% rating from the John Birch Society, a 96% rating from the American Conservative Union, a 92% rating from the Eagle Forum, and a 100% rating from the Family Research Council. And of course, let's not forget his 100% rating from the NRA.



Scott Garrett must go. And I'm going to help escort him out the door after the November election.

[Bush] Dictatorships and Double Standards: Tuesday Edition

Atrios reproduces something interesting from Smythesworld, which takes us in the wayback machine, back to those halcyon days of presidential blowjobs, when any allegation, any piece of paper, was reprinted as Biblical Gospel Proof that the President is a Degenerate. One of the leading so-called "journalists" involved in just about everything designed to bring down Bill Clinton was Chris Vlasto, an ABC News Producer who...

...is well-known for his far-right connections. In 1994, he acted as an emissary from Ken Starr to lobby both James and Susan McDougal to cooperate with his inquisition. In 1995, he produced a report on ABC that accused Hillary Clinton of perjury, based largely on a doctored video clip of the First Lady. In 1998, he threw a celebratory party for Paula Jones and her attorneys after Bill Clinton was forced to testify before the Lewinsky Grand Jury. In October, 2001, he produced a report that claimed a connection between Saddam and the anthrax attacks on Senator Daschle, et al., as well as being one of the first journalists to detail a link between Muhammed Atta and the government of Iraq; both allegations were subsequently discredited. More recently, Vlasto ran a misleading report suggesting that Howard Dean had covered-up incidents of alleged domestic abuse by one of the state troopers protecting him; it was repudiated as "slime" and denounced by those denizens of the far left, Andrew Sullivan and John Ellis. And now comes word that the tape itself was made by the Nixon Administration, which viewed Kerry as an "enemy".

Vlasto is now working diligently to paint John Kerry as a traitor because of the medal incident.



But all the outright lies, half-truths, uncorroborated stories, and falsified documentation used by Vlasto over the course of his career were never met with the kind of outrage by the right that Dan Rather's use of highly suspect documents about Their Own God's Anointed Horseman To Lead Them Bravely Lo Unto the Rapture Thereby Freeing Them From All Those Uppity Women, Uppity Negroes (sic), And Especially Those Money-Grubbing Jews have been. Vlasto still has his job, but it's doubtful that Dan Rather will keep his. Because the so-called liberal media isn't so liberal after all.

Why Bush's National Guard Service Matters

William Saletan, of all people, has an excellent piece in Slate today about why Bush's TANG service matters.

In fairness to Bush, Vietnam was a lousy war. And lots of guys who joined the Guard in those days lost interest in their duties once the penalty they feared—assignment to active duty in Vietnam—expired with the war. Maybe we should cut Bush some slack. But before we do, let's look at how much slack he's cutting the folks who serve in the Guard today.



[snip]



The Guard's primary purpose has traditionally been homeland security....There's just one hitch: "During national emergencies, however, the President reserves the right to mobilize the National Guard, putting them in federal duty status."



That's the language Bush has invoked to mobilize half the Guard's 450,000 troops.



[snip]



...the Army has sent thousands of guardsmen overseas and has instituted a "stop-loss" policy that prevents them from being released when their active duty commitments expire.



But these Guard troops aren't being sent to fight the people who attacked the United States in September 2001. They're being sent to—and locked in—Iraq. Some 40,000 members of the Guard are in Iraq today—six times the number of guardsmen sent to Vietnam. Already, more Guard troops have died in Iraq than in Vietnam.



In short, Bush has pulled Guard troops away from their homeland security duties to fight and die in a war unrelated to the service for which they enlisted. A guardsman who did less than he signed up for is coercing other guardsmen to do more than they signed up for.

And THAT's why it matters.



For some strange reason, George W. Bush, a child of Connecticut landed gentry, a son of money, a man whose path has been greased by his father's friends all his life, has succeeded in painting himself as a "man of the people" by never, ever being photographed at the family compound in Kennebunkport, let alone on the infamous family cigarette boat. By putting on a preposterously clean cowboy hat and blue jeans, and attacking a dead tree with a chainsaw, he plays the character of an American archetype. "I'm not a cowboy, but I play one on TV", the image says. And people believe it.



George W. Bush has about as much in common with the working class men and women he's sending to Iraq as Prince Charles does with blue-collar neopunks in Liverpool. When it was HIS turn to serve, even in a cushy position, he decided the rules didn't apply to him. Yet he's applying far more draconian rules to the men under his command.



THIS is why you don't put a spoiled, rich asshole with absolutely no empathy whatsoever in charge of the lives of hundreds of thousands of American servicemen. THIS is why if you support our troops, kick this chronic fuckup out of the White House on November second and let him spend the rest of his life in Crawford with his chain saw, his phony cowboy hat, and his phony folksy mannerisms.

Kerry's plan for dealing with Iraq

Here's something for those who think John Kerry has no plan for handling Iraq any better than Captain Codpiece has.



Whether it'll work remains to be seen. It's not a plan that Commander Dickwave can implement, because he is universally hated around the world. It is, however, a plan that a new president who understands that we are a part of a world community, at least has a reasonable shot at implementing.



These from Kerry's speech today at New York University

First, the President has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don’t have to go it alone. It is late; the President must respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support.

Bush cannot effect that, but I don't believe for one minute that the rest of the world wouldn't jump to assist President John Kerry to do this.

The President should convene a summit meeting of the world’s major powers and Iraq’s neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly. He should insist that they make good on that U.N. resolution. He should offer potential troop contributors specific, but critical roles, in training Iraqi security personnel and securing Iraq’s borders. He should give other countries a stake in Iraq’s future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq’s oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.

But Bush won't do this, because he wants all the oil revenue for himself and his family's friends. Kerry understands that in order for other countries to share the risk, they must share the benefit as well.

The President should urgently expand the security forces training program inside and outside Iraq. He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double classroom training time, and require follow-on field training. He should recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq. He should press our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries. And he should stop misleading the American people with phony, inflated numbers.

Third, the President must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people.

...



Now, the President should look at the whole reconstruction package…draw up a list of high visibility, quick impact projects… and cut through the red tape. He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers, instead of big corporations like Halliburton. He should stop paying companies under investigation for fraud or corruption. And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.

This is very important. Iraq has been a cash cow for Bush family friends, with reconstruction being a mere afterthought. It's time for reconstruction to be the whole point, with Iraqis benefitting from the reconstruction of their own country, instead of being Dick Cheney's to plunder for his own benefit.

Fourth, the President must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee the promised elections can be held next year.



Credible elections are key to producing an Iraqi government that enjoys the support of the Iraqi people and an assembly to write a Constitution that yields a viable power sharing arrangement.



Because Iraqis have no experience holding free and fair elections, the President agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role. Yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. Secretary General and administration officials themselves say the elections are in grave doubt. Because the security situation is so bad… and because not a single country has offered troops to protect the U.N. elections mission… the U.N. has less than 25 percent of the staff it needs in Iraq to get the job done.



The President should recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force. This won’t be easy. But even countries that refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq should still help protect the U.N. We should also intensify the training of Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened. Otherwise, U.S forces would end up bearing those burdens alone.

There's no way Bush can do this, because he has no credibility in the world about holding real elections even here in the U.S. Between bogus felon purges in Florida, attempts to suppress the black vote in Detroit, and potentially rigged voting machines everywhere, the Bush Administration is in no position to tell anyone how to run an election.



So read the rest of the speech; it's good stuff. Then copy it and e-mail it to all your friends to read as well. They won't see it on the 6:30 PM news tonight; after all, Britney Spears got married over the weekend, and they simply MUST cover that.