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Gonzo film critic, champion ranter, and all around maverick and Web celebrity Vern has just released his first book. This book, a compendium of 87 -- yes, 87, count 'em reviews from the first five years of Then Fuck You Jack: The Life and Art of Vern, features a jacket quote by Blade director Guillermo del Toro and an introduction by Your Humble Blogger.



5 On the Outside is the perfect holiday gift for your favorite rebel, and now that Halloween is just about over (and wouldn't you know it, as soon as I put out the candy, the kids stopped coming to the door), the Solstice Shopping Season is about to officially begin. So if you're not a member of my immediate family (because I already have copies for you guys), go pick up a few dozen for your nearest and dearest friends.



And if you're going to be in the New York City area in the next week, don't miss the Creative Mechanics production of The Fall of the House of Usher, directed by ModFab's own Gabriel Shanks. This is a terrific production of one of Edgar Allen Poe's creepiest works; the perfect way to make Halloween last just a little longer.



We now return you to your regularly scheduled Election Mania, already in progress.

Republican Election Theft Watch for 10/31/04

Dateline Wisconsin:

The state Republican party is questioning another 37,180 addresses of people registered to vote in the city along with the more than 5,600 it already had flagged last week.



The party is demanding city officials require identification from all of those voters Tuesday or it is prepared to have volunteers challenge each individual at the polls.



"It's not a leap at all to say the potential for voter fraud is high in the city, and the integrity of the entire election, frankly, is at stake," state GOP chairman Rick Graber said. "The city's records are in horrible shape."



Any inaccurate address is an opening for someone to cast a fraudulent vote, he said.



Last week the party claimed Milwaukee had 5,619 bad addresses, but the challenge was dismissed 3-0 by the city Election Commission.



Democrats condemned the latest move as a last-minute effort to suppress turnout in the largely Democratic city of Milwaukee by creating long delays at the polls.



City officials, who already were trying to establish safeguards in response to the party's claim of 5,619 bad addresses, were surprised by the new number.



City Attorney Grant Langley labeled the GOP request "outrageous."



"We have already uncovered hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of addresses on their (original list) that do exist," said Langley, who holds a nonpartisan office. "Why should I take their word for the fact this new list is good? I'm out of the politics on this, but this is purely political."



The initial GOP challenge cited thousands of cases where no voter address exists, such as vacant lots and, in one case, a gyros stand.



The Republicans generated the list using a computer to compare the city's list of 386,526 registered voters to a U.S. Postal Service list of known addresses.



The same list generated about 13,300 cases in which incorrect apartment numbers were listed, and some 18,200 more cases where no apartment number was listed for an existing building. The party didn't include any of those in its original challenge, filed three minutes before a 5 p.m. Wednesday deadline.

This kind of challenge is ridiculous. In most cases, mail is delivered to tenants at a particular address even if an apartment number is not included in the address. Republicans want to challenge these addresses. They would similarly challenge an address in which "Township" was part of the name, if, say, the post office address had it as "Twps." or "Twsp". and the voter registration form read "Twp." Or "Boro of" instead of "Borough of".



This kind of challenge is designed to do two things: 1) keep the challenged voter (who in most places will be black; funny how the Republican party is getting touch with and embracing its inner Jim Crow after all these years); and 2) clog up the works so the polls in the challenged areas, which in most cases are minority/Democratic, can't handle everyone who comes out to vote before the polls close.



Again, I ask you: If the Republicans are so proud of their record, and so confident, why do they have to resort to disenfranchisement -- preventing people from voting -- in order to win?



Eriposte will document the atrocities...



UPDATE: Kos has a big lineup of Republican vote suppression efforts.

You fucked up! You trusted us! [/Otter]

MoDo:

The Bushies' campaign pitch follows their usual backward logic: Because we have failed to make you safe, you should re-elect us to make you safer. Because we haven't caught Osama in three years, you need us to catch Osama in the next four years. Because we didn't bother to secure explosives in Iraq, you can count on us to make sure those explosives aren't used against you.



[snip]



In their ruthless determination to put Mr. Bush's political future ahead of our future safety, the White House and House Republicans last week thwarted the enactment of recommendations of the 9/11 commission they never wanted in the first place.



While pretending to be serious about getting a bill on reorganizing intelligence agencies before the election, the White House never forced Congressional Republicans to come to an agreement. So the advice from the panel that spent 19 months studying how the government could shore up intelligence so there wouldn't be another 9/11 may be squandered, even though Dick Cheney's favorite warning to scare voters away from Mr. Kerry is that we might someday face terrorists "in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us," including a nuclear bomb.



Wow. I feel safer. Don't you?

Foxes guarding the henhouse

Matt Yglesias asks the obvious question in response to the GOP gloat that "anything that makes people nervous ... helps Bush":

Are people who think this way likely to improve, or degrade the personal safety of the American people? It's a question that, I think, answers itself.

Think about it....do you want to trust with YOUR safety an administration who allows the perpetrator of the terrorist attacks of September 11 go free, then on the eve of the election is THRILLED to see a new videotape of that person looking tanned, rested, and ready, because it "helps Bush"?



I don't even have to go all tinfoil and make dark allegations of the Bush Administration being in cahoots with Bin Laden. They don't have to be; all they have to do is make sure they never catch him; it's the only way they can keep Americans frightened enough to fall into line so they placidly accept their agenda.



Are you going to allow them to succeed? Do you really want to let them jerk your fear-chain another four years?

Pasteur, Bankstown

It's a hot Sydney Sunday in Bankstown. Pho An is just around the corner, but as fast, furious and flavoursome as its pho is, sometimes a steaming bowl of noodle soup is the last thing on your mind when mopping the sweat from your brow.

Enter the Vietnamese cold noodle salad - a cavernous bowl of cool vermicelli noodles topped with lemongrass-marinated pork or beef, pickled carrot and radish,

"A little gift"

Osama Bin Laden. For the Bush Administration, he's the gift that keeps on giving. Kinda makes you wonder why he's so generous to Georgie boy, doesn't it?

Sieg Heil

Chris Suellentrop, Slate.com:

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.—"I want you to stand, raise your right hands," and recite "the Bush Pledge," said Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: "I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States."



I know the Bush-Cheney campaign occasionally requires the people who attend its events to sign loyalty oaths, but this was the first time I have ever seen an audience actually stand and utter one. Maybe they've replaced the written oath with a verbal one.

James R. Harris, Co. K., 407th Regiment, 102nd Infantry Division, European Theatre, 1942-1945:

Every time I met Harmel he was quite friendly. After a few visits I finally decided to ask the question we all wanted to ask. "Heinze, I would like to ask you a personal question if I may." He agreed and so I asked "You must have known when we were fighting around Linnich that the war was lost. Why did you continue to fight?" His reply was that "Yes, I knew the war was lost, but you must realize the situation I was in. I believed Germany was fighting for a just cause, and believed Hitler was a good leader. I joined the SS and as an officer I made a pledge to fight for my country and its leader, Hitler, until the very end, even with my life if necessary. As the war progressed I began to realize that Germany could not win, and also began to believe that even Hitler could be wrong. However, I am a man of my word and I had taken the oath to fight and I could only do my best as a member of the Waffen-SS." The Waffen-SS pledge is "Loyalty Is My Honor.



All officers of the SS were required to take the loyalty oath. Raising their right hand and their left hand placed on their officers sword the oath went as follows. "I swear to thee, Adolph Hitler as Fuhrer and chancellor of the German Reich, my Loyalty and Bravery. I vow to thee and the superiors whom those shall appoint, obedience until death, so help me God."

(via Billmon)

Republican Election Theft Watch for October 30, 2004

The Lake County (Ohio) Board of Elections is sending letters that ANYONE who registered to vote through the NAACP, ACT, John Kerry for President, or Capri Cafaro for Congress* is ineligible to vote in this election.



Just for the record, voter registration forms are available for download from the internet. If I wanted to set up a table in front of my local A&P to register voters using these forms, as long as I delivered them to the Superintendent of Elections, they are valid registrations. Lake County is singling out GOTV efforts for only those organizations and entities most likely to register Democrats.



Again, I ask: If the Republicans are so proud of their record, and so certain of their hold on power, why are they so afraid of people going to the polls to vote?

Cheney and the 400,000 tons

Dick Cheney is whining that John Kerry isn't mentioning the "400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that our troops have captured."



As Jesse Taylor notes:

It took about 3/4 of a pound to commit the Lockerbie attack. The total explosive power of what was stolen is enough to commit 4000 Oklahoma City-size bombings. The death toll would be measured in the tens of thousands, possibly the hundred of thousands - more in a crowded city like, say, New York.



But it doesn't matter, because it's only .00095% of the total. Let's look at Russia's nuclear arsenal - a nuclear attack inside a crowded city would likely also result in tens-hundreds of thousands dead. Suppose that a terrorist got one weapon. Just one. Russia has around 10,000 nuclear weapons. A single weapon would be merely .0001 of their entire arsenal - nearly ten times less, percentagewise.



And therefore, friends, absolutely nothing to worry about. Hell, we might as well just give al-Qaeda a nuke, and stop fucking worrying about it altogether.

Using Cheney's logic, we should just file September 11, 2001 away under "shit happens." After all, how many planes land perfectly safely every day? Hell, how many planes landed safely on September 11, 2001? Let's look at those instead!



This Administration never ceases to astound me with their ability to spout utter horseshit.

Shorter OBL

(via DemfromCT at Kos):

I'm still here. You haven't caught me. And you went after the wrong guy. I just thought I'd remind you.

George W. Bush, press conference, March 13, 2002:

So I don't know where he [Osama Bin Laden] is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him...I truly am not that concerned about him.

Just something to think about before you all go to the polls on Tuesday.



And something for David Brooks to think about when he's not jerking off while thinking of the Great Codpiece.

.Bush using WTC dead to shill for his election

Raw Story shows us a new flyer that the increasingly desperate Bush campaign is mailing in hotly-contested Pennsylvania, this one making liberal use of horrific images of the burning World Trade Center. You remember the World Trade Center, right? Those two buildings in Commie Homosexual Liberal Jewish New York City that were hit by terrorists, thereby fooling people into thinking that Bush was a leader?



Well, in the waning days of the campaign, Rove & Co. are dancing on the grave of the dead, showing us these images, including the one of the second plane about to hit, to imply that only George W. Bush can keep us safe from terrorists (never mind what a great job they did keeping us safe the first time, barely a month after a Presidential Daily Briefing SCREAMED that Bin Laden was determined to attack, but of course Osama Bin Laden was CLINTON's obsession, so therefore it meant nothing).



I wonder how Beverly Eckert, whose husband, Sean Rooney, was on the 98th floor of the tower depicted in the Bush ad, feels about this. Eckert stayed on the phone with her trapped husband until smoke overcame him. Or how Kristen Breitweiser feels about it. Breitweiser and her husband Ron, an employee of Fiduciary Trust, had both been Bush voters in 2000. Breitweiser was told by her husband, "Sweets, I'm fine. I don't want you to worry," right before the second plane hit a dozen floors below where he was sitting. Or how any of the other reality-based survivors of the attacks feel about their loved ones being used as shills for a president who was asleep at the switch when the attacks were being planned, continued a photo-op after the attacks had begun, ran away like a scared rat after his photo-op, who abandoned the retaliatory war everyone, including me, supported so that he could resolve his psychosexual issues about Daddy and Saddam Hussein, and who is now blaming the troops he commands for his own ineptitude.

Bush Administration Declares Earth Center of Universe; 50 State Manhunt for Galileo Underway

Next week they sacrifice a goat.

PARK SERVICE STICKS WITH BIBLICAL EXPLANATION FOR GRAND CANYON

Promised Legal Review on Creationist Book Is Shelved



Washington, DC — The Bush Administration has decided that it will stand by its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, according to internal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).



Despite telling members of Congress and the public that the legality and appropriateness of the National Park Service offering a creationist book for sale at Grand Canyon museums and bookstores was “under review at the national level by several offices,” no such review took place, according to materials obtained by PEER under the Freedom of Information Act. Instead, the real agency position was expressed by NPS spokesperson Elaine Sevy as quoted in the Baptist Press News:

Here's a new one

You've got to wonder how long Ed Gillespie has to practice keeping a straight face in front of a mirror in order to come up with crap like this (emphasis mine):

Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie said he was "disconcerted" by claims that supporters of Democratic challenger John Kerry are clogging early voting locations and attempting to dissuade backers of President Bush from voting.



"Some folks have been intimidated to the point where they turned away from the lines," Gillespie alleged.

Is your head exploding yet? The caging lists, the Republican thugs preparing to challenge every black voter they can find, none of that constitutes voter suppression. Democrats showing up at the polls to exercise their right to vote, now that's suppression of the Republican vote.



Maybe in the la-la land that the Bush campaign and their supporters live in. Those of us who are reality-based are under the impression that voting is one's civic duty.

Republican Election Theft Watch for 10/29/2004

Why is the Bush campaign so afraid of the people who employ it? Why, if their record is so great, don't they want people to vote? That's the bottom line, folks: The Bush Administration doesn't think you have the right to vote unless you agree with them. This is not American democracy, this is fascism, as defined in the Merriam Webster New Collegiate Dictionary:

a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

This just in:

Bush administration lawyers argued in three closely contested states last week that only the Justice Department, and not voters themselves, may sue to enforce the voting rights set out in the Help America Vote Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 election.



Veteran voting-rights lawyers expressed surprise at the government's action, saying that closing the courthouse door to aspiring voters would reverse decades of precedent.



Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, individuals have gone to federal court to enforce their right to vote, often with the support of groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters and the state parties. And until now, the Justice Department and the Supreme Court had taken the view that individual voters could sue to enforce federal election law.



But in legal briefs filed in connection with cases in Ohio, Michigan and Florida, the administration's lawyers said the new law gives Attorney General John Ashcroft the exclusive power to bring lawsuits to enforce its provisions. These include a requirement that states provide ``uniform and non-discriminatory'' voting systems. They also must give provisional ballots to those who say they have registered but whose names do not appear on the rolls.

A government that does not wish its citizens to vote is not fit to govern. Support Bush if you must, delude yourself that it's necessary because of September 11, 2001 if you dare, but don't call yourself a defender of democracy. Call yourself instead an embracer of fascism, because that is what you are.



The American election process is starting to look more like that of my beloved vacation spot, Jamaica, every day. Election-related violence in Jamaica in 1980 is largely responsible for the island's reputation for unrest that alas, continues to this day. Looking at Jamaica's election problems is instructive, because this is where we are heading.



Jamaica is plagued by "garrison" communities, which are completely controlled by one political party or the other. Anyone who seeks to oppose the dominant party in these communities is in danger of suffering serious damage to their possessions or person. Is it so different here? I'm not the only one who's afraid to put a Kerry bumpersticker on my car or lawn sign in front of my house for fear of reprisals from the more rabid Republicans in my Republican-dominated town. The election "challengers" being recruited by the Republican National Committee are no different from the Jamaican posses which began in the late 1960s and 1970s as urban gangs recruited and armed by politicians to organize local constituencies, distribute political favors, enforce party loyalty and turn out votes.



People wonder why there's talk of bringing in international observers on November 2nd. The answer is easy: It's because our election process, which has been completely corrupted by a Republican party willing to resort to anything, including the kind of mass disenfranchisement not seen since the Jim Crow era, to stay in power, resembles that of a developing nation more than that of the world's only superpower.



UPDATE: More thuggishness in Ohio (via Atrios):

When Catherine Herold received mail from the Ohio Republican Party earlier this year, she refused it.



The longtime Barberton Democrat wanted no part of the mailing and figured that by refusing it, the GOP would have to pay the return postage.



What she didn't count on was the returned mail being used to challenge the validity of her voter registration.



Herold,who is assistant to the senior vice president and provost at the University of Akron,was one of 976 Summit County voters whose registrations were challenged last week by local Republicans on behalf of the state party.



She went to the Board of Elections on Thursday morning to defend her right to vote and found herself among an angry mob -- people who had to take time off work to defend their right to vote.



[snip]



``Why'd you do it?'' one challenged voter shouted out at Calhoun. ``Who the hell are you?'' the man asked.



``What the hell do you care?'' replied Calhoun, an attorney.

Let's stop tiptoeing around and call these people what they are: Despicable, un-American thugs. Brownshirts. Fascists.

Friday Cat Blogging

Calico Jenny on the job, keeping us safe from Ashcroft's goons.

Killing Two Birds With One Stone

Just in case you had any doubts that the Bush Administration is in full Jim Crow mode (see also: this flyer being distributed in black neighborhoods in Milwaukee), we now have news that the IRS has been sicced on the NAACP on the grounds that a speech critical of Captain Codpiece that the organization's chairman, Julian Bond, gave last summer, may have "violated a federal law that prohibits tax-exempt charitable organizations from engaging in most forms of political activity."



Um, excuse me, but wasn't it the Bush/Cheney campaign that asked conservative Christian churches to give them their lists of members? Wouldn't THAT sort of activity violate the same law? Last time I looked, churches were tax-exempt organizations too.



It's pretty clear that BushCo intimidation tactics are going beyond individual black people or neighborhoods, and zeroing in on black organizations. Presumably, any liberal nonprofit group is in the IRS' sights now.



Look for more of this in a second Bush term. See you in the gulag.

Busted!

"Red the Dog" at Kos, has the Best. Diary. Ever:

We have 24/7 satellite surveillance on the most sensitive WMD sites in Iraq, a virtual Pentagon Security Camera. WE SEE EVERYTHING. WE RECORD EVERYTHING. Al Qaqaa was THE BIGGEST MUNITIONS site with the most sensitive materiel in Iraq. The reason for the dissembling on behalf of the White House on this, the reason Bush took over 36 hours to respond is... the Bush Administration is BUSTED. I believe the NYTimes article tomorrow with Iraqi chemist eyewitnesses who were employed at Al Qaqaa describing the looting of Al Qaqaa is correct. The Pentagon possesses photographs (and I suspect video footage) showing that the site was looted after the invasion, after our troops had been there twice and abandoned the site for lack of adequate security forces. There is an internal struggle within the Pentagon, of epic proportions and the truth is leaking out. The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld faction literally are fumbling to cover this up now, and Kerry knows it. Give it another day or two and it's going to break wide open.

Go read it. It's got photos and transcripts from Colin Powell's testimony before the U.N. prior to the Iraq invasion.

Evangelical Christians who get it

They're not all Bush-worshipping kool-aid drinkers. Some Evangelicals actually remember what Jesus was about (emphases mine):

Some, such as Wendy Skroch, a 51-year-old mother of three who prays regularly at the evangelical Elmbrook Church in this heavily Republican Milwaukee suburb, blame Bush for failing to fix a "broken" healthcare system and for "selling off the environment to the highest bidder."



Others are like Joe Urcavich, pastor of the nondenominational evangelical Green Bay Community Church, where more than 2,000 people worship each Sunday. He is undecided, troubled by the bloodshed in the Middle East.



"It's hard for me to say that Christians should be marching against abortion and carrying signs, and then turn around and giving a pep rally for the war in Iraq without even contemplating that hundreds and hundreds of people are being killed on a regular basis over there," Urcavich said.



"I'm very antiabortion, but the reality is the right to life encompasses a much broader field than just abortion," he added. "If I'm a proponent of life, I have to think about the consequences of not providing prescription drugs to seniors or sending young men off to war."

Election For Sale

...and it's on Ebay!

From the Chairman of the Department of Laughable Horseshit

"President George W. Bush: A Remarkable Record of Achievement"

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

...mere anarchy is loosed upon the world:

Liqaa Abdul-Razzaq, a popular Iraqi TV reporter, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Baghdad. She was assassinated while returning home from her offices of the local ‘Al-Sharqiya’ TV network, which she had worked for since last year after a long period with the State TV as news conductor during the regime of Saddam Hussein. Two months ago, her husband was killed in analogous and still unclear circumstances. Liqaa Abdul-Razzaq was mother of a 6-year-old boy and just a month ago gave birth to a girl. This assassination is however not the only episode of violence of today in Iraq: in the capital the day in fact began with yet another car-bomb, which exploded at the passage of a US marine convoy. An American soldier and an Iraqi bystander were killed and another 2 soldiers wounded in the explosion. In Buakuba, north-east of Baghdad, three Iraqis were killed and four injured in two separate attacks. In the first, armed men stopped a taxi and shot dead the two police officers and driver onboard, wounding another two. In the second attack, unidentified gunmen opened fire against an Iraqi national guard patrol, but without claiming victims. Local medical sources also report three people killed in Falluja, the rebel city west of Baghdad, for months target of US air strikes. A US incursion shortly before dawn struck a home in the neighbourhood of Joulan. The US claims that Falluja, aside from militants, is also the hideout of members of the terror group headed by the Jordan Al-Zarqawi.

Sorry, George, you can't shift the blame this time

ModFab has the links showing that Bush's attempts to deflect blame for the Al-Qaqaa mess to the Russians, to the Iraqis, to anything but his own policies, are increasingly flying in the face of the FACTS...at least as we in the reality-based community (as opposed to the la-la land that Bush's supporters increasingly have to live in) know them.



Col. Dave Perkins, then the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, was first at the scene with his troops, and he says it's highly improbable that the Iraqis could possibly have ferried that volume of explosives out of Al-Qaqaa, given the high level of military presence.



Atrios is also linking to a KSTP-TV exclusive, which reveals that KSTP's crew was embedded with the 101st Airborne on April 18, 2003:

During that trip, members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew bunker after bunker of material labelled explosives. Usually it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get in and see the material identified by the 101st as detonation cords.

The Bush Junta is having to increasingly rely on not just their own delusional state, but keeping the public at the same level of delusion, to keep this story from swamping them. This morning they sent out Saint Rudy to blame the troops (via Atrios). This is the Bush Administration strategy -- never admit mistakes, always blame someone else, even the guys you're sending out to die for you.



I have no beef with thoughtful conservatives and Republicans who just have a different idea of how to an America that's best for everyone. But at this point, it makes absolutely no sense to support George W. Bush for President. If you don't believe he's dangerous, the way people like me do, fine. But this President and the people around him have bungled the so-called War on Terror so badly that they've put not only us, but the rest of the world, at risk. You can stick your head in your ears and shout "La la la la la I Am Not Listening" all you want to; it doesn't change the FACT -- yes, FACT, the kind of things that happen in the Real World, that this administration is hopelessly inept and ought to be driven from office with all the due haste that the electoral process affords us.

E-voting = FUBAR

PC Advisor (emphases mine):

Of the 666 (!!!!!!) incidents reported in Florida, 33 have been linked to alleged voting machine malfunctions in Broward, Duval, Lee, Marion, Miami-Dade, Orange, Palm Beach, Sarasota and Volusia counties.



In Broward County, for example, some voters complained of electronic touch-screen systems that presented incomplete ballots.



Alia Faraj, spokeswoman for Florida Deputy Secretary of State Dave Mann, said contrary to news reports, there have been no problems during early voting related to any of the touch-screen electronic voting systems in Florida. The only problems that did occur, she said, involved laptop computers that were used to check voter registration rolls in some of the counties.



Those problems were fixed immediately by a simple reboot of the computers, said Faraj. "The touch-screen systems have been operating as planned," she said.



[Note from me: But what was "planned"???]



Will Doherty, executive director of the San Francisco-based Verified Voting Foundation, said despite Florida's assertion that the malfunctions of the laptops handling voter registrations were minor, his organisation is aware of dozens of voters who were turned away from the polls "because of that minor system crash". Doherty also said there have been multiple reports related to touch-screen calibration problems. Some voters have reported that when they touched the screen next to their candidate's name the screen highlighted the opposing candidate, according to Doherty.



In President George W Bush's home state of Texas, some Travis County and Austin County voters complained of touch-screen voting systems that marked a vote for Bush even though they voted Democratic across the board. In Houston, only five voting machines out of approximately 20 were operating, causing long lines and forcing some voters to leave polling places without voting.



"If [these] problems come up on 2 November, and they most certainly will, voters can expect to stand in long lines or not vote," said John Gideon, cofounder of Votersunite.org. "The fact that elections officials are again beta-testing our voting system in a live election is incomprehensible."

And that's really the bottom line, folks. Either the voting machine companies have released utter crap product for the most important purpose in a democracy, or else there's some serious, deliberate manipulation of voting machine software to produce a preordained result.



Right now you already have documented episodes of voter intimidation in early voting, combined with long waits, inadequately trained poll staff, voters complaining that their vote went for a candidate other than the one for whom they voted.



This is acceptable in the country that positions itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy for the world?

They may think it's a movement....and that's what it is

"And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.



And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacree Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar." --Arlo Guthrie

And if fifty bloggers, I said fifty bloggers, every Friday, post photos of their pets, they may think it's a movement...and that's what it is.



Watch for "Home Improvement Blogging", coming soon to this space.

Thursday Eclipse Blogging

Alas, not here. But Americablog has some great photos.

Bush's one-finger victory salute

Salon has it, back from when Dim Son was governor of Texas, after he supposedly found Jesus and became a different man.

The clip shows him smoothing his hair for the camera, complaining about an off-camera aide believed to be Hughes. "She's still tellin' me what to do," he says, before he flashes his middle finger. As worried aides murmur about whether the camera's running, Bush dismisses his gesture as a "one-fingered victory salute."

Now I frankly don't give a rat's ass who gives the finger to whom; God knows I've given the same salute myself more then once. But then, I'm not the President, I don't have delusions of being God's anointed anything, and I don't pretend to be holier than everyone else.

It really IS the end of days...

Either that or a good omen....

Voting early

This just in from our Durham, NC correspondent: Early voting turnout is huge, with long lines. Voting is on paper ballot.

Kos hits the big time

I don't know whether to envy his success or thank God for my paltry 80 visitors a day.



Last time I looked, Kos was just a blog, albeit a far more influential one than this one. Who knew?



Methinks Tom DeLay has too much malathion in his blood from his days as a bug exterminator.

Yeah. What Pierce said.

Then, there's this:

I remember how vivid the sounds were as the troopers rushed toward us -- the clunk of the troopers' heavy boots, the whoops of rebel yells from the white onlookers, the clip-clop of horses hooves hitting the hard asphalt of the highway, the voice of a woman shouting, `Get 'em! Get the n*****s!'

That's John Lewis's account of how things began on Bloody Sunday in Selma in 1965. I quote it here to remind all those sleek, oh-so-clever dicks in the Republican vote-suppression business on which side of history they're presently lining up. I also quote it as a caution to the many people who will be covering what could be a volatile aftermath of an extremely close election.

Link...

Bush's Brownshirts, or American Fascist

Des Moines Register (via Kos):

One of the latest incidents came when John Sachs, 18, a Johnston High School senior and Democrat, went to see Bush in Clive last week. Sachs got a ticket to the event from school and wanted to ask the president about whether there would be a draft, about the war in Iraq, Social Security and Medicare.



But when he got there, a campaign staffer pulled him aside and made him remove his button that said, "Bush-Cheney '04: Leave No Billionaire Behind." The staffer quizzed him about whether he was a Bush supporter, asked him why he was there and what questions he would be asking the president.



"Then he came back and said, 'If you protest, it won't be me taking you out. It will be a sniper,' " Sachs said. "He said it in such a serious tone it scared the crap out of me."



Sachs stayed at the event, but he was escorted to a section of the 7 Flags Events Center where he was surrounded by Secret Service and told he couldn't ask questions. "I was just in a state of fear," he said. "I was looking at the ceiling and I didn't know what to expect, I was so scared."

This is what we have to look forward to in a second Bush Administration. Suddenly the Bush/Hitler comparisons aren't sounding so crazy anymore.

Republican Election Theft Watch for 10/27/04

Greg Palast was on Morning Sedition today talking about the Florida "caging list", and said that a number of names on the list were of servicemen who weren't at the address listed BECAUSE THEY'RE STATIONED IN IRAQ!!



Farhad Manjoo in Salon's War Room seems to accept the Republicans' explanation that the list is only a compilation of bad addresses returned from a direct-marketing mail. Given the Republicans' history in Florida, I'm not sure that's wise.



Meanwhile, in Ohio, Jesse Taylor of Pandagon reports in his capacity with, of all things, the Jerry Springer campaign, how the Dayton Daily News explains the power that the Republican thugs -- I mean pollwatchers -- will have over determining whether Ohioans can vote:

What will happen if my right to vote is challenged?



The challenger will have to state why your right to vote is being challenged. The four reasons they can challenge are that they believe you are either not 18 or older, not a U.S. citizen, not a Ohio resident for the past 30 days or not a resident of the county and precinct in which you are trying to vote.



One of the poll workers and you will move no less than 10 feet from the challenger.



You will be asked to take this oath: "Do you swear or affirm that you will fully and truly answer all of the following questions put to you, touching your place of residence and your qualifications as an elector at this election?"



You will be asked a series of questions about one of the four areas in which you are being challenged.



If you refuse to answer fully all questions or are unable to answer them fully, or your answers indicate you are too young, not a resident or a citizen, you will not be able to vote.



If you answer the questions to the satisfaction of the poll worker, you will be given a ballot and will be allowed to vote.



What if you want to appeal? The decisions of the poll workers are final.

What if the challenger appears to be attempting to cause delays or intimidate voters? The chief poll worker, the presiding judge, can expel them from the polling place.

What this means is that some moron who wants to try to keep you from voting, and doesn't even know you, can challenge your legitimacy, based on....nothing. Well, probably the color of your skin or your name, but he needs no evidence at all. How many people have time to run this kind of gauntlet to vote before going to work, or picking up the kids?



UPDATE: According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, enough New Jerseyans have been abducted by the Cult of the Codpiece that at least for the moment, NJ is now in play again. This is truly frustrating, because Kerry seems to have EXACTLY ZERO organization in this state. The good news is probably that Bush doesn't have much more than that, but for those of us who want to volunteer, and find that despite our state now being a battleground state, no one -- not Kerry's campaign, not ACT, not Moveon.org -- has a presence here, is just appalling.



MyDD has a scoop that the latest New York Times/CBS poll has been spiked because it shows Kerry up by four points, so they're assuming it must be wrong.



The Bushistas must be worried, though, because that bastion of truth (sic) Matt Drudge, is hyperventilating with his own "scoop" (sic) that ABC News is in possession of a new Al Qaeda tape that claims the next attack will dwarf 9/11. Drudge claims that ABC denies that it's holding the tape so as not to influence the election. Which of course means, if the story is true, that ABC is holding the tape so as not to influence the election. But if the Bush campaign is true to form, this kind of "YOU'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!" scare talk means that they're scared shitless.



Josh Marshall sums it up nicely:

I half expect that by tomorrow we'll be watching a grainy video of Ken Mehlman, decked out in a phony beard a la Woody Allen in Bananas, bellowing that he and his boss OBL are about to take over America with one mammoth terror attack and institute compulsory gay marriage before forcibly converting everyone to Islam.

La Cucina @ The Aurora Hotel, Surry Hills

The Aurora Hotel is one of those stalwart local pubs where blokes while away the afternoon watching the cricket whilst knocking back a beer or two (or three or four).

So we didn't expect dazzling gourmet cuisine although the self-described "Italian Trattoria" known as La Cucina inside the hotel was read with wryness (they also have a restaurant in the Madison Hotel on Devonshire Street).

I

Well, here's where some of the explosives went

Large Blast Hits Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A huge explosion rocked central Baghdad late Tuesday.



There was no immediate explanation for the blast, and the U.S. military had no immediate comment.



Earlier Tuesday, a low rumble from multiple explosions sounded across the capital. At least six blasts were heard in the distance.

Jim Crow is alive and well in Florida

One thing you've got to say about Jeb Bush: his family loyalty knows no bounds, and if at first he doesn't succeed in purging likely Democratic (read: black) voters, he tries, tries again.



The absolutely indispensable Greg Palast:

A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.



Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".



It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.



An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."



Ion Sancho, a Democrat, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot.



They may then only vote "provisionally" after signing an affidavit attesting to their legal voting status.



Mass challenges have never occurred in Florida. Indeed, says Mr Sancho, not one challenge has been made to a voter "in the 16 years I've been supervisor of elections."



"Quite frankly, this process can be used to slow down the voting process and cause chaos on election day; and discourage voters from voting."



Sancho calls it "intimidation." And it may be illegal.

What's even more disgusting is that this is a BBC story, but isn't deemed newsworthy here in the U.S.

Public School Turned into a Church for the Cult of the Codpiece

E-mail sent to Kos:

A friend with a child in the Richland County,WI high school where George Bush appears today reports the following. Students were told they could not wear any pro-Kerry clothing or buttons or protest in any manner, at the risk of expulsion. After a parent inquired, an alternative activity will be provided, probably a movie being shown in an auditorium. (The school secretary reportedly said that students had the choice of just staying home if they didn't want to attend the Bush rally, but the principal subsequently offered an alternative.)

Last time I looked, public schools were funded with public money. Since when have they become churches for the Cult of the Codpiece?

Things you have to believe to vote for George W. Bush

Via Tom Schaller at Gadflyer:

I believe the president invaded Iraq to secure liberty and democracy for the Iraqi people. I believe he had compelling evidence that Iraq was a significant threat to America and the world, and presented that evidence in a complete and balanced manner. Like 42 percent of Americans – and 62 percent of Republicans – I believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks.



I believe we have enough troops on the ground in Iraq to ensure stability. I believe the rising American fatality rates, the rising casualty rates, and the rising American share of those coalition fatalities and casualties testify to the undeniable progress we're making there. I believe it is inappropriate and traitorous, however, for the media to broadcast pictures of American flag-draped caskets returning from Iraq.



[snip]



I believe the best response against an Islamic fundamentalist network operating from a South Asian cave which used boxcutters to attack us is to invade a secular Arab dictator living in 11 palaces in a Middle Eastern country whose (supposed) weapon of choice was nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. I further believe that the best way to accomplish that mission was to land on air aircraft carrier in military garb and stand in front of a banner declaring it so.



I believe the president was right to oppose the formation of the 9/11 Commission, to change his mind but then oppose fully funding it, to change his mind but then oppose granting its request for an extension, to change his mind but refuse to testify for more than an hour, to change his mind but then testify alongside Vice President Dick Cheney so long as transcripts and note-taking were prohibited. I believe the investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shows it was the fault of a handful of misguided underlings who simply misunderstood a memo signed by the Secretary of Defense which authorized the use of dogs to interrogate prisoners.

In short, you have to be completely delusional. Go read the whole thing, it's priceless. What's sad is that I actually know people who believe all this. I'm sure you do too. What's frightening is that it's possible that up to 48% of Americans are that delusional.

Yikes

Can they actually be this fucking stupid? Or do they just not understand them internets?

Not a good day to be George W. Bush

Things just aren't going well for Captain Codpiece today (and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy). Rundown courtesy of AmericaBlog.

• Consumer Confidence Hits 7-Month Low - U.S. consumers turned more gloomy in October, beset by soaring energy prices, relentless violence in Iraq and the increasingly bitter end of the presidential election campaign.



• Washington Post tracking poll shows Kerry up by 1



• The Gropinator is distancing himself from the Idiot Dauphin, preferring instead to do the job people elected him to do. AmericaBlog quotes him telling the LI Times, "But I'm not going to hop around from state to state because the people did not elect me to do that."



• Remember a couple of weeks ago when Bush mouthpieces were all over John Kerry for saying that the Iraq War was costing over $200 billion? Well, the additional $70 billion of YOUR DOLLARS that Danny Dickwave is asking Congress for will push the total up to $225 billion.



• And finally, from the Hoist on his own Petard file, we have President Sock Crotch Puppet backsliding on the issue his maniacal faux-Christian hatemonger base regard as the most important one in this election, gay marriage and the Constitutional Amendment he touted so energetically not so long ago: "I view the definition of marriage different from [sic] legal arrangements that enable people to have rights. And I strongly believe that marriage ought to be defined as between a union between a man and a woman. Now, having said that, states ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others", sayeth the AWOL blow monkey puppet of the Cheney neocon death cult.

On the other hand, as long as people like this show up at the polls, take nothing for granted.



I'm going to phone bank for Moveon.org tonight. What about you?

He'd be no worse than what we already have

LONDON (Reuters) - Doughnut-chomping, beer-guzzling Homer Simpson may not be the model father but he has won the hearts of British TV fans who want the nuclear power plant worker to be the next U.S. president.



Former president George Bush (news - web sites) notoriously said American families should be "closer to the Waltons than the Simpsons" but Homer was overwhelming favorite in a Radio Times magazine poll on which U.S. TV character should take over at the White House.



As Americans ponder tax and security pledges from President Bush (news - web sites) and Democratic rival John Kerry (news - web sites) ahead of the November 2 poll, television fans have been considering Homer slogans such as "No big government, just big waist sizes."



In a manifesto compiled for the magazine by The Simpsons' writing staff, the bumbling animated TV hero also pledges: "I promise there will be fewer nuclear disasters with me as your mayor than with me as your nuclear safety inspector."



Homer got 24 percent of the vote in the poll of more than 2,000 readers. Second place went to the more obvious choice of Josiah Bartlet, the president played by Martin Sheen in "The West Wing."

Link...

Dinner with Stephanie Alexander

We attended the Gleebooks Dinner with Stephanie Alexander at the Hickson Road Bistro.

Launching her revised The Cooks Companion, we heard Stephanie speak about the latest revisions, and enjoyed a 5-course dinner using recipes from TCC.

Stephanie spoke about the initial pessimism surrounding the launch of the original Cooks Companion, which belied the critics and has now sold over 300,000 copies

Bush Administration ADMITS protecting oil was more important

From today's press gaggle:

Q She [Condoleeza Rice] was informed days after October 15th?



MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, and she informed the President. And the first priority, from our standpoint, was to make sure that this wasn't a nuclear proliferation risk, which it is not. These are conventional high explosives that we are talking about. And the President wants to make sure that we get to the bottom of this. Now, the Pentagon, upon learning of this, directed the multinational forces and the Iraqi survey group to look into this matter, and that's what they are currently doing.



[snip]



Q But after Iraqi Freedom, there were those caches all around, wasn't the multinational force -- who was responsible for keeping track --



MR. McCLELLAN: At the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom there were a number of priorities. It was a priority to make sure that the oil fields were secure, so that there wasn't massive destruction of the oil fields, which we thought would occur. It was a priority to get the reconstruction office up and running. It was a priority to secure the various ministries, so that we could get those ministries working on their priorities, whether it was --

This is simply astounding. First of all, we now have a pattern of Condoleeza Rice shrugging her shoulders when the word "conventional" is used: "conventional" hijacking...."conventional" high explosives. The result of the first shrug was the collapse of the World Trade Center and the deaths of 3000 people. Who knows what the death toll of this second shoulder shrug will be.



Then, we have the President's spokesperson ADMITTING that securing the oil fields took priority over the safety of our soldiers; indeed, took priority over EVERYTHING else. The President and his cronies are oilmen. Oil is over $55/barrel.



In 1988, I said of the FIRST George Bush that this family regards the entire country as a private fiefdom for themselves and their friends. I was wrong. They regard the entire WORLD as their private fiefdom.

The "Not me, him!" Presidency

Josh Marshall:

Look at the latest from Scott McClellan on Air Force One. This from CNN ...



****

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush wants to determine what went wrong.



McClellan, on Air Force One, stressed that the missing explosives were not nuclear materials, and said the storage site was the responsibility of the interim Iraqi government, not the United States, as of June 28, when the United States turned over the nation's administration to the Iraqis.

****



The president wants to determine what went wrong.



This reminds me of when I wanted to know why my Palm Pilot stopped working after I dropped it in the bath tub.



Doesn't this capture Bush's entire presidency?



The thing happened more than a year ago, his administration has taken active steps to cover it up and now that the truth finally comes out, he 'wants to determine what went wrong.'



The idea of accepting responsibility for anything is simply alien to the man. He doesn't even have the good grace to scam us by finding a scapegoat to pin the blame on.



And what about Scott McClellan trying to pin it on the Iraqis?



Does he not read the newspapers or does he think everyone else to too stupid to remember what they just read in them this morning. The stuff was taken more than a year before the Iraqis took over the US occupation authority. And even the highly-cautious Times piece makes clear that Jerry Bremer was told about it no later than May of this year.

So tell me again why this guy should be re-elected? Cheney says it has something to do with "keeping us safe." This Administration let 380 TONS of explosives fall into the hands of terrorists while they were guarding the Oil Ministry. And this is who we should rely on?

Knee-Jerk Lunkheads

There is absolutely nothing that the Bush Administration could fuck up that would make the knee-jerk lunkheads on the right question Captain Codpiece's so-called leadership.



Redstate.org can't see what the fuss is about:

So 380 tons of fairly decent explosives -- mind you, not nukes, not even on a daisy-cutter scale, and suitable for everything from construction to manufacturing nukes -- went missing some time between January of 2003 and the present. In a worst-case scenario, thousands of terrorists will have access to high-yield explosives without having the Iranians donate them free of charge.



Not to put too fine a point on this, but what's the big deal?

I don't even need to comment on this, do I?

Independent Media, my ass

According to the ever-vigilant Xan at Corrente, the report that's bumped the "We Lost 380 Tons of Explosives That Are Now In the Hands of Terrorists" story off the screaming headlines on the major news sites -- the hospitalization of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, is in fact old news. Rehnquist has been in the hospital since Friday.



And we're just hearing about it now, right when Bush needs a distraction and "Kerry forgot Bulgaria" ain't cutting it? YOU do the math.



(Just so you know I'm not a complete monster, my thoughts are with Rehnquist's family. I've seen someone die slowly from thyroid cancer, and it's not pretty and it's not easy. Check your neck, guys. And if you needed a further excuse to vote, and you weren't thinking about the Supreme Court, my family member was just over 12 months from initial diagnosis until the end, with the last four months being a straight downhill slide. Rehnquist may not be my favorite person, but I don't wish this on him. But if he follows a similar course, and it is not an infrequent course for thyroid cancer in older men, a re-elected George W. Bush WILL DEFINITELY choose at least one Supreme Court Justice. We already know that Clarence Thomas is Antonin Scalia's Mini-Me, and that Scalia is Bush's idea of a great justice. Think about having THREE of these troglodytes on the Court.)

Oh, the heck with it

Just go read Josh Marshall already....he's monitoring the latest in the Bush Administration FUBAR Adventure.

Guess which story will be covered nonstop on CNN and MSNBC

Story 1. The New York Times, today:

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

By JAMES GLANZ, WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER



Published: October 25, 2004



BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.



The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.



The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."



Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.



American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings.

Story 2. The Moonie Times, today:

Security Council members deny meeting Kerry



By Joel Mowbray

SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES





U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.



An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred.



At the second presidential debate earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said he was more attuned to international concerns on Iraq than President Bush, citing his meeting with the entire Security Council.



"This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator.



Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."



But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.



The former ambassadors who said on the record they had never met Mr. Kerry included the representatives of Mexico, Colombia and Bulgaria. The ambassador of a fourth country gave a similar account on the condition that his country not be identified.

Now, let's see....Kerry forgot to mention Mexico, Columbia and Bulgaria....The Bush/Cheney neocon death cult allowed 380 tons of explosives to disappear into the chaos that is occupied Iraq. Bulgaria....missing explosives. Hmmmmmmm.....I wonder which one will get nonstop play in the whore media?



Jon Stewart, call your office.



UPDATE: Want to get a vague idea of how much 380 tons is? One pound of explosive took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. ONE POUND. 380 tons is 760,000 pounds. That's enough to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 all over again, every hour, on the hour, for the next eighty-seven years. (via Corrente.)

Jon Stewart: A Colussus Bestride the Media

I hope you didn't miss Jon Stewart on 60 Minutes this evening. While not quite having the stealth smackdown beauty of the Tucker Carlson Incident, Mr. Stewart managed to skewer CBS quite nicely, thank you very much.



Meanwhile, don't miss ModFab's recap of today's events, such as Captain Codpiece saying that whether we can win the war on terror is "up in the air". How that is OK, and aspiring to get back to where terrorism is a nuisance rather than an obsession is a mystery to me.



Oh yeah. Bush said the former, Kerry said the latter. Bush says good; Kerry says bad. So sayeth the media. Which is why Jon Stewart is on the march.

Republican 2004 Election Theft Watch for Sunday, 10/24/04

Chris Bowers at MyDD offers a summary of how the election race actually stands now, as opposed to the "Bush is ahead" meme being touted by the whores in the media:

• Kerry holds a commanding lead in the battleground states, according to post-debate polling.





• Undecideds break heavily for the challenger, especially in Presidential Elections. This will only serve to further increase Kerry's lead in the battleground states.





• According to Real Clear Politics, which regularly fishes for pro-Bush polls, Bush is under 47.5 in states worth 277 electoral votes. It will be very difficult for him to win any of these states, including Ohio where he rarely travels anymore. He is under 49 in states worth 316 electoral votes, and over 50 in states worth only 202 electoral votes.





• According to the most recent polls from the fifteen polling firms that have conducted polls entirely after the third debate, Bush is only at 47.3% simple mean to Kerry's 45.9% simple mean. The median is Bush 47, Kerry 46. In the history of Presidential elections since there was public polling, no incumbent has amassed a large enough percentage of undecideds to hold on to such a small lead.

Bowers also gives a rundown of the proven and documented incidents of Republican efforts at voter suppression and outright fraud:

• GOP-funded company caught shredding Dem registrations and lying to potential voters in a half-dozen states.





• Minority and elderly absentee voters fooled into relinquishing their ballots.





• College students nationwide tricked into changing their political registration and polling places.





• Elderly Ohio voters wrongly informed that their polling places have been changed.





• Minnesota voters told it's too late to register, even though the state allows voter registration all the way up to election day.





• Disgraced South Dakota dirty trickster Larry Russell brought on board by the GOP to bring his special brand of voter fraud to Ohio.





• The most aggressive voter-intimidation campaign waged by the GOP since the Civil Rights era. (Including massive pre-emptive voter registration challenges designed solely to gum up the works and make it more difficult to vote.)

MyDD has all the links.



George W. Bush: Touting Democracy Around the World; Cutting it Off at the Knees Here at Home.

Chocolate counter at David Jones Food Hall

We followed-up our yum cha banquet with a visit to the Art and About Sydney Life Exhibition on the central walkway of Hyde Park north. My favourite photo follows--wedding + food + imminent disaster. What more could you want?


MICHAEL AMENDOLIA Rites of Passage - Cutting the Cake
Felicity Anderson in Vietnamese traditional dress and Dat Lieu cut their croquembouche wedding cake. Dat playfully

East Ocean, Chinatown

We've visited East Ocean a number of times over the years and always found the food consistent and of high-quality. With a recent refurbishment, East Ocean is probably one of the only Chinese restaurants in Chinatown with booth seating, respectable toilets and a colour scheme devoid of red and gold.For those familiar with yum cha, or dim sum as its known in the UK and US, yum cha simply means to

Inventing Reality

Josh Marshall examines the Bush Administration's backtracking on its 2002 admission that Osama Bin Laden was present during the 2001 battle for Tora Bora:



CNN, December 15, 2001:

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, in his bluntest language yet, the U.S. commander-in-charge of the Afghan campaign says al Qaeda fighters are bottled up in a Tora Bora mountainous area, with no access to food or ammunition and no way out. U.S. officials say there's reason to believe Osama bin Laden is in there as well, but they can't be certain.

Washington Post, 4/7/2002:

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.



Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border. Though there remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December.



After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the United States. A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda's leader. Without professing second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach fundamentally in subsequent battles, using Americans on the ground as first-line combat units.

Freddy Jason Darth Voldemort Cheney, 10/19/2004:

the facts are -- and this issue was addressed just yesterday or the day before by General Tommy Franks. General Franks was the CENTCOM commander; he was the four-star in charge of or operations for that whole part of the globe, including both Afghanistan and Iraq. He was the man in charge of those operations. He was the one who developed and executed the plans that worked in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and he came just within the last 24 or 48 hours and said, it's absolute garbage. It's just not true.

But when you're an empire, you're not bound by consensus reality, right? You can just make shit up, and if you have faith that it is, it is.



What has to happen before Americans realize that this kind of thinking is just insane?

Good Food Month Twilight Trail

We created our own Twilight Trail in order to take advantage of some of the fabulous $15 Cocktail of the Month and Sugar Hits as part of the SMH Good Food Month.7.00pm - HEMMESPHEREThe Trail commenced at Hemmesphere where the plush comfy lounges, soft lighting and attentive service definitely kicked off our evening to a great start.Cocktail: Salsa VerdeWhite Eagle lemon vodka, limoncello, fresh

Republican 2004 Election Theft Watch for Saturday, 10/23/04

Last time they denied it took place. This year they're proud of it.

Big G.O.P. Bid to Challenge Voters at Polls in Key State



epublican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.



Party officials say their effort is necessary to guard against fraud arising from aggressive moves by the Democrats to register tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio, seen as one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in the Nov. 2 elections.



Election officials in other swing states, from Arizona to Wisconsin and Florida, say they are bracing for similar efforts by Republicans to challenge new voters at polling places, reflecting months of disputes over voting procedures and the anticipation of an election as close as the one in 2000.



Ohio election officials said they had never seen so large a drive to prepare for Election Day challenges. They said they were scrambling yesterday to be ready for disruptions in the voting process as well as alarm and complaints among voters. Some officials said they worried that the challenges could discourage or even frighten others waiting to vote.



Ohio Democrats were struggling to match the Republicans' move, which had been rumored for weeks. Both parties had until 4 p.m. to register people they had recruited to monitor the election. Republicans said they had enlisted 3,600 by the deadline, many in heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities. Each recruit was to be paid $100.



The Democrats, who tend to benefit more than Republicans from large turnouts, said they had registered more than 2,000 recruits to try to protect legitimate voters rather than weed out ineligible ones.



Republican officials said they had no intention of disrupting voting but were concerned about the possibility of fraud involving thousands of newly registered Democrats.

This has nothing to do with Republicans wanting to ensure electoral "integrity", and everything to do with intimidating minority voters in predominantly Democratic districts. We used to call this "Jim Crow", and it was done predominantly in the pre-Civil Rights era south.

The October Surprise?

Greg at The Talent Show speculates that Bush's mention of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi sixteen times in stump speeches this week is a sign of something to come, and perhaps the reason for Bush's weekend off for campaigning.



My money is on Rove flying Bush into the place where al-Zarqawi is being held by American troops. He'll be clad in his flight suit, with an even BIGGER crotch pad, and a nice big fat firearm strapped across his shoulder.



I can hear Chris Matthews' orgasmic moans already.

Why I Love Them Internets

It's that rapid response thingie. You knew someone had to do it.



Via Josh Marshall through The Talent Show, let me also share with you: Wolfpacks for Truth.

Vote for Bush or We'll Kill This Dog

And then we'll kill your mother. And your father. And your kids. But hey! We're the pro-life team, right? Only WE respect human life...as long as it's a blastocyst.



That's the sum-total of the new Bush ad, to which I'm not even going to link. Why promote these sick motherfuckers?



But Greg at The Talent Show enumerates, for your edification, how sudden death via horrible weapons is far more likely for you and your family under four more years of the Bush/Cheney neocon death cult. You can click to the ad there if you want.

This would be funny if it weren't so plausible

Florida voting, circa 2004 (from Boom Chicago Amsterdam).

Here's why Bush is ahead

...because too many Americans live in the delusional state of mind required for membership in the Cult of the Codpiece. From the PIPA (Program on International Policy Attitudes) Knowledge/Networks poll (via Winning Argument):

– 75% believe Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda.



– 74% believe Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in agreements on trade.



– 72% believe Iraq had WMD or a program to develop them.



– 72% believe Bush supports the treaty banning landmines.



– 69% believe Bush supports the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.



– 61% believe if Bush knew there were no WMD he would not have gone to war.



– 60% believe most experts believe Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda.



– 58% believe the Duelfer report concluded that Iraq had either WMD or a major program to develop them.



– 57% believe that the majority of people in the world would prefer to see Bush reelected.



– 56% believe most experts think Iraq had WMD.



– 55% believe the 9/11 report concluded Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda.



– 51% believe Bush supports the Kyoto treaty.



– 20% believe Iraq was directly involved in 9/11.

From the report's summary:

...why are Bush supporters clinging so tightly to beliefs that have been so visibly refuted? As discussed, one possible key explanation for why Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had WMD or a major WMD program, and supported Al Qaeda is that they continue to hear the Bush administration confirming these beliefs.



Another possible explanation is that Bush supporters cling to these beliefs becaue they are necessary for their support for the decision to go to war with Iraq....To support the president and to accept that he took the U.S. to war based on mistaken assumptions is difficult to bear, especially in light of the continuing costs in terms of lives and money. Apparently, to avoid this cognitive dissonance, Bush supporters suppress awareness of unsettling information.



[snip]



So why do Bush supporters show such a resistance to accepting dissonant information? While it is normal for people to show some resistance, the magnitude of the denial goes beyond the ordinary. Bush supporters have succeeded in suppressing awareness of the findings of a whole series of high-profile reports about pre-war Iraq that have been blazoned across the headlines of newspapers and prompted extensive high-profile and agonizing reflection. The fact that a large portion of Americans say they are unaware that the original reasons that the U.S. took military action--and for which Americans continue to die on a daily basis--are not turning out to be valid, are probably not due to a simple failure to pay attention to the news.



The roots of this resistance to this information very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11...Large numbers of Americans had a powerful bonding experience with the president -- a bond they may be loath to relinquish.



[snip]



Bush appears to assume that his support is fragile. He refuses to admit to making any mistakes....to remain bonded to him means to enter into [this] false reality.

Obviously 48% of Americans are NOT part of the reality-based community.



Look, I can understand the need to believe that the president is honest, that he's protecting us, that he's doing what he honestly believes is the right thing to do -- and that it IS the right thing to do. But you can call a pig a horse all you want to, and even put horseshoes on it, but the fact of the matter is that it's still a pig, albeit a well-shod one. Believing that Iraq had WMDs when it didn't doesn't make it so. Believing that Saddam was behind 9/11 doesn't make it so. Believing that bombing the shit out of people is going to stop terrorism doesn't make it so. And believing that George W. Bush has a fucking clue what the hell he's doing certainly doesn't make it so.



And there's only so long that people will be able to delude themselves. There's only so long you can run from consensus reality before it smacks you in the face.

Mosaic, Sydney

Tucked away on an overhanging balcony, one would never know Mosaic existed in the grand GPO building, with no signs on the street or at eye-level on the ground floor. Up on the first floor balcony, the restaurant decor is modern classic with earthy tones, affording a decadent view into the atrium below. Up above our heads the statuesque but elegant clock tower was constantly visible through the

Milliore, Chinatown

In search of a quick cheap lunchtime feed, we ventured into Milliore, which we have passed many a time on our cross-Chinatown travels. Situated on the Campbell Street side of Capitol Square, Milliore claims to offer Korean fusion food, however we were more interested in its reguarly advertised $5 lunchtime special.

Today's lunchtime special had the option of either eel or chicken on rice. I

Don't Cry for Me, Argentina

Via diarist Msaroff at Kos:

NEW YORK — On Sept. 9, as it must frequently do, the U.S. government turned to Wall Street to raise a little cash, and Paul Calvetti bet that demand for $9 billion worth of long-term Treasury bonds would be “huge.”



But at 1 p.m., as the auction opened and the numbers began streaming across his flat-panel screens, the head of Treasury trading at Barclays Capital Inc. slumped in his chair. Foreign investors, who had been voraciously buying Treasury bonds, failed to show up. Bond prices cascaded downward, interest rates rose, and in five minutes, Calvetti, 38, who makes money by bidding on bonds at one price and hoping market demand lets him quickly resell them at a profit, had lost $1.5 million.



“It’s amazing,” he gasped, after the Treasury Department announced that Wall Street traders, not foreigners, had been left to buy virtually the entire auction. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.”



The most recent auction of 10-year Treasury notes may have been a fluke, a momentary downturn in one aspect of the massive world market for U.S. government and private-sector bonds, stocks and other securities — a market so large and diverse that it has long been the world’s safe haven. But a rash of new data, including Treasury Department figures released Monday showing a net sell-off by foreigners of U.S. bonds in August, has stoked debate over whether overseas investors — private individuals, institutions and government central banks — are growingly dangerously bearish on the U.S. economy.



It is a portentous issue. Foreign governments and individuals hold about half of the $3.7 trillion in outstanding U.S. Treasury bonds, for example, and the government has been heavily dependent on continued overseas bond purchases to finance the roughly $1 billion a day it has to borrow to pay its bills. Foreign lending and investment are also needed to finance the country’s roughly $50 billion monthly trade deficit, while foreign capital has been a key prop to U.S. stock prices.



A turn in overseas attitudes toward the United States could ripple deeply through the economy, depressing the market, raising interest rates and pushing down the value of the dollar.

Bush can think he can create his own reality all he wants, those of us in the reality-based community know that when you a) alienate the rest of the world; and b) run a country's economy into the ground; no one wants to invest in your future. And that's what seems to be happening now.



Do we really want to have to depend on the kindness of strangers? Do we really want our economic well-being to depend on the governments of other countries? Elect Bush for 4 more years, and we will be Argentina by 2008. Complete with junta-style dictatorship.

Republican Wackjob of the Day for 10/21/04

Today's winner is Former Waterbury, CT Mayor Philip Giordano.



For those not familiar with this esteemed member of the fine, upstanding, moral Republican party, Philip Giordano was convicted on March 25, 2003 of violating the civil rights of two young girls by sexually abusing them. He was also found guilty of conspiring with a prostitute who is the mother of one of the girls and an aunt of the other. In addition, jurors convicted him on 14 of 15 counts of using an interstate device -- a cell phone -- to arrange the meetings with the girls.



Now, Giordano claims that he didn't abuse his office when he paid to have oral sex with the aforementioned girls (who, by the way, were age 8 and 10 at the time).

Giordano's attorney argued before the 2nd U.S. Circuit of Appeals on Wednesday that the former mayor wasn't using his political power when he paid to have oral sex with the 8- and 10-year-old girls.



If the three-panel appeals court agrees, it could jeopardize Giordano's conviction and 37-year prison sentence.



During an hour-long court hearing Wednesday, Judge Dennis Jacobs said that committing a crime while mayor is not necessarily the same thing as using political office to commit a crime.



Jacobs suggested that Giordano didn't need to use his political power to force the girls into sex.



"Did the children testify that they wouldn't have submitted if he hadn't been the mayor?" Jacobs asked federal prosecutors. "They never said that because it's not true."



Between 2000 and 2001, Giordano paid a crack-addicted prostitute to bring her daughter and niece to City Hall, his home and his law office for oral sex. After each encounter, Giordano told the girls not to talk about it or the woman would go to jail.



Prosecutors said those warnings, plus the fact that Giordano drove a police cruiser and carried a badge, made him an intimidating figure whom the girls were afraid to disobey.



"He watched over them like God," Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Jongbloed said. "He ruled the city."

You watch. In twenty years, after he's released, Giordano, who will claim to be a born-again Christian, will run for House of Representatives on a platform of Restoring Morality to America. President George P. Bush will campaign hard for him, calling him "a fine example of what Christian forgiveness can do" and "one of the finest men ever to serve his great city."

Republican Election Theft Watch for 10/21/04

Robert Kuttner pulls no punches and tells us exactly what we can all see is brewing:

THE REPUBLICANS are out to steal the 2004 election -- before, during, and after Election Day. Before Election Day, they are employing such dirty tricks as improper purges of voter rolls, use of dummy registration groups that tear up Democratic registrations, and the suppression of Democratic efforts to sign up voters, especially blacks and students.



On Election Day, Republicans will attempt to intimidate minority voters by having poll watchers threaten criminal prosecution if something is technically amiss with their ID, and they will again use technical mishaps to partisan advantage.



But the most serious assault on democracy itself is likely to come after Election Day.



Here is a flat prediction: If neither candidate wins decisively, the Bush campaign will contrive enough court challenges in enough states so that we won't know the winner election night.



The right stumbled on a gambit in 2000, which could become standard operating procedure in close elections: If the election ends up in the courts, all courts eventually lead to the Supreme Court, which, as we learned, can overrule state courts -- and pick the president.



[snip]



If the courts took away the people's right to choose the president, and George Bush in effect stole two elections in a row, this would surely produce a constitutional crisis and a crisis of legitimacy.



But what if they gave a constitutional crisis and nobody came? The most ominous outcome of all would be public passivity, echoing 2000. That would confirm that the theft of our democracy was real.



Call me partisan, but the best insurance against this horrific outcome would be a Kerry win big enough so that even Karl Rove would not dare to mount this maneuver. A razor-thin race virtually invites it. And if Bush wins handily, our democracy will have other problems.

Meanwhile, here's the Republicans' latest attempt to tamper with voter registrations, this time in Indiana County, PA:

The old caveat, read the fine print before you sign, has taken on new meaning for some students at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.



An official from the Indiana County Voter Registration Office estimated Tuesday that several hundred IUP students had been duped into registering as Republicans several weeks ago.



The duplicity occurred, voter registration chief Donna Hoover said, because forms that the students thought they were signing to support efforts to legalize marijuana for medicinal use were actually used to register them as Republicans.



No one has lost his or her ability to vote this fall, Hoover stressed. "It is not going to make a difference for these students this time." Voters, regardless of party registration, can select any candidate on the ballot on Nov. 2. Party registration will make a difference, however, in the primary election, when voters can only choose candidates of their party affiliation.



Indiana County Democratic Committee Chairwoman Della Jean Manning said she is already concerned how registration could affect the party's vote count next May.



"We certainly will put forth an effort to give them (the students who were duped) an opportunity ... to register as they intended to register," she said.



In the meantime, some IUP students are feeling frustrated.



They have tried to be conscientious this election year, but the electoral system has let them down, said Richard Auvil of Blairsville, a sophomore music major.



A victim of the registration scam, Auvil signed a petition and form supporting the marijuana issue, only to find out a week or so later that the paperwork caused his party registration to be changed from Democrat to Republican.



"It is disheartening not because my party was switched but because the process was tampered with so blatantly," he said.

And more atrocities from PA:

An ostensibly nonpartisan voter registration drive in Western Pennsylvania has triggered accusations that workers were cheated out of wages and given instructions to avoid adding anyone to the voter rolls who might support the Democratic presidential nominee.



Sproul & Associates, a consulting firm based in Chandler, Ariz., hired to conduct the drive by the Republican National Committee, employed several hundred canvassers throughout the state to register new voters. Some workers yesterday said they were told to avoid registering Democrats or anyone who indicated support for Democratic nominee John F. Kerry.



"We were told that if they wanted to register Democrat, there was no way we were to register them to vote," said Michele Tharp, of Meadville, who said she was sent out to canvass door-to-door and outside businesses in Meadville, Crawford County. "We were only to register Republicans."



Tharp said volunteers were sent door-to-door to seek registrants but were instructed to first ask prospective new voters which candidate they planned to support.



"If they said Kerry, we were just supposed to say thank you and walk away," Tharp said.

Everything you need to know about the slimebucket that is Nathan Sproul.



It doesn't surprise me in the least that the Republicans are trying to steal another election; after all, they got away with it once, and God knows they have nothing to run on. What does surprise me a little is how they aren't even trying to hide it anymore.



Remember on December 12, 2000, when we tried to console ourselves with "He doesn't have a mandate, there's only so bad it can be." Well, we now know how bad it can be. Let's not let them get away with it again.