underzealous

I heard about this on NPR earlier. Jami Miscik, Deputy Director for Intelligence, is the latest person to step down in Porter Goss' purge of people not loyal to Bush. I can't imagine replacing senior officials for political gains is an effective way to implement intelligence reform.

I don't get it. Why would Washington need a re-vote without any improprieties shown in voting? Sour grapes much? Rossi has consistently been against counting every single vote, despite the fact that the Republican Secretary of State wanted all votes counted.

The Internal Revenue Service may be the nicer and friendlier IRS, but it seems like the same can't be said about Bush's cronies appointed to run American embassies, particularly at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok:

Faye Wachs said she was impressed by the efforts of the Thai government and the International Committee for the Red Cross, but "she was appalled at the treatment they got" from the U.S. government, her mother said.

At the airport in Bangkok, other governments had set up booths to greet nationals who had been affected and to help repatriate them, she said.

That was not the case with the U.S. government, Wachs told her mother. It took the couple three hours, she said, to find the officials from the American consulate, who were in the VIP lounge.

Because they had lost all their possessions, including their documentation, they had to have new passports issued.

But the U.S. officials demanded payment to take the passport pictures, Helen Wachs said.

The couple had managed to hold on to their ATM card, so they paid for the photos and helped other Americans who did not have any money get their pictures taken and buy food, Helen Wachs said.

"She was really very surprised" that the government did so little to ease their ordeal, she said.

About Howard v. Arkansas:

Ruling in a case brought by the Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy Fox said the state Child Welfare Agency Review board had overstepped its authority by trying to regulate "public morality."

At issue was a 1999 board regulation that said gays cannot become foster parents, and foster children cannot be placed in any home with a gay member under its roof.

It's interesting that the basis wasn't Equal Protection, but was rather based on how the Arkansas legislature granted authority to the child welfare board. This would suggest that the state legislature could overturn this ruling by changing the authority of the child welfare board to include "public morality," whatever that means. What's interesting is that Arkansas allows gay adoption, so changing the authority of the board would hinge on whether the legislature believed that foster children were specially situated such that the law would be necessary.

Members of the board said they had "personal problems" with homosexuality, which means they weren't thinking about the child's welfare; they were thinking of their own welfare. Regardless, at the least, not allowing a foster child in a house simply because of a gay household member that isn't the parent is pretty obviously going a bit too far.

The article also mentions that a case involving Florida banning gay adoption is under consideration for certiorari by the Supreme Court (Lofton v. Kearney). Mississippi bans adoption by gay couples, but not gay individuals (although I'm thinking that individuals are less likely to be allowed to adopt), and Utah bans adoption and fostering by any unmarried cohabiting couple, gay or straight.

I don't like Bush's idea of getting rid of the state and local tax deduction. The general idea seems to be that Bush is trying to punish states that didn't vote for him, given that these are the states it tends to affect the most, such as California, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

These states have relatively high state and local taxes, but also make a net donation to many "Red States" that can't take care of themselves and need federal subsidies. If the net federal donation was reduced, as Governator Schwarzenegger has pointed out, these states would be able to lower their own taxes because more money would stay in the state. Nonetheless, Bush wants to punish these states further beyond the appropriations that exploit their prosperity by removing the deduction for these taxes.

Conceivably, this would also get rid of the sales tax deductions that are currently allowed. Although the 1986 tax act removed deductions for sales tax, Bush pushed through legislation that would allow people to chose whether to deduct sales tax or state and local income tax. This change was a clear nod to states like Texas and Florida that don't have a state income tax.

The move to strike the deductions for state and local taxes failed in 1986 when Reagan tried to get rid of them, causing state and local governments to rebel. Ideally the same thing would happen this time, especially with the Republican leadership of many of these states having a fair amount of influence to scrap this idea.

Bush also plans to raise taxes further by making employee health benefits taxable. Currently, these health plans are pre-tax. Bush has continually shown himself ineffective at making health policy, and this is no exception.

And of course, none of this addresses the deficit. Bush still wants to lower income tax rates by removing the 28% and 33% brackets. The aforementioned changes, among a few others, only serve to offset the reduction in rates, not to raise revenue. In furthering his goals to punish wages from labor but not other income, Bush also wants to kill the estate tax. This will further lower revenue, while only reducing taxes for heirs of the very rich, since most people don't have even a $1 million estate (the exemption under the old law), much less an estate of the $4-5 million exemptions which exist under the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. In addition to the $2 trillion Bush wants to spend to eliminate Social Security, his proposals ignore the deficit entirely despite his pledges to cut it in half, since he has no plans either to cut spending or to raise revenue.

Kudos to the Charlotte Observer for having the guts to withhold AP votes if they were to be used for the BCS, saying "The credibility of this newspaper is more important than the prestige of voting in the AP poll."

With the corruption that happened this year putting Texas in the Rose Bowl instead of Cal, it's good that the AP rankings will no longer be used in the BCS, since they are so easily manipulable as was shown. Unfortunately, the coaches poll, which is also corrupt, is still part of it [subscription required]:

The Observer, which published its vote each week this season, announced Dec. 10 that it would not vote in the AP football poll in the future as long as the rankings were tied to the BCS. The newspaper cited questions about the credibility of the process and the ethics of the media determining the flow of millions of dollars in the BCS system. No other newspapers had joined the Observer before Tuesday's announcement.

Now that the the poll is no longer part of the BCS formula, the Observer would vote if asked in the future.

The integrity of the coaches poll has also come into question, and coaches were asked to make their votes for the final two weeks of the poll public. According to USA Today, they voted not to do so by a 32-29 margin.

A Cornell study shows that 44% of Americans think there should be restrictions on Muslim Americans? It's like Korematsu all over again...

About 27 percent of respondents said that all Muslim Americans should be required to register their location with the federal government, and 26 percent said they think that mosques should be closely monitored by U.S. law enforcement agencies. Twenty-nine percent agreed that undercover law enforcement agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations, in order to keep tabs on their activities and fund raising. About 22 percent said the federal government should profile citizens as potential threats based on the fact that they are Muslim or have Middle Eastern heritage. In all, about 44 percent said they believe that some curtailment of civil liberties is necessary for Muslim Americans.

It's neither "social" nor "secure" when you're trying to eliminate Social Security.

Donald Rumsfeld is JUST NOW going to start signing letters to famililes of soldiers killed in action!? Seriously, how does this guy still have a job if the White House is supposed to be run like a corporation by someone with a so-called Harvard MBA? Real CEOs fire people when they're incompetent:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld faced renewed criticism Sunday from lawmakers, including one prominent Republican, after he said he has not personally signed letters sent to family members of troops killed in action.

Rumsfeld made the acknowledgment in a statement to military newspaper Stars and Stripes, saying that he would begin signing such letters.

Stars and Stripes had reported that Rumsfeld's letters carried a mechanical reproduction of his signature, which angered some military families.

Sen. Chuck Hagel, a leading GOP critic of Rumsfeld, called the news about the letters "astounding," and noted that President Bush signs each of his letters to military families.

"I think it's very reflective of how out of touch this crowd is," the Nebraskan said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "My goodness, that's the least that we could expect of the secretary of defense."

Who knows how many soldiers Rumsfeld has killed and how many other deaths he will be responsible for because of Abu Ghraib? But hey, Bush is content with beating a dead horse...

Britain's high court overturned the indefinite detention provision:

In its powerfully worded decision, the court said that the government's "draconian" measures unjustly discriminate against foreigners since they do not apply to British citizens and constitute a lopsided response to the threat of a terrorist attack.

The judges deemed it a clear violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, a declaration that complicates the British government's strategy on combating terrorism.

The ruling by the Law Lords, a panel of senior judges who sit in the House of Lords and act as the country's highest court, parallels a June decision by the United States Supreme Court that said "a state of war is not a blank check for the president."

Using the sharpest language of the nine judges, Lord Leonard Hoffman, said today the case was one of the most important decided by the court in recent years.

"It calls into question the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been very proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention," he wrote.

The British law essentially mirrors many of the Bush administration policies before the Hamdi, Rasul, and Padilla opinions were handed down, although the part about appointing lawyers with security clearance is interesting:

The law allows the Home Office to indefinitely detain, without charges, those foreigners it suspects of terrorist related activities who cannot be deported home for legal reasons. The detainees are free to leave Britain voluntarily at any time.

The detainees are not told why they are in prison and have no access to the evidence the government holds against them, primarily because the government believes it to be too sensitive to reveal.

They also cannot hire lawyers. Instead, the government appoints lawyers with security clearance for them and permits the lawyers to see the evidence and argue on the detainees' behalf. The lawyers, though, are barred from discussing any of the information with their clients.

Susan Collins from Maine threw a hat into the ring. She joins Chuck Hagel, who along with John McCain, Trent Lott, Joe Biden, and Jon Corzine have stated dissenting opinions on Rumsfeld:

Rumsfeld responded to a question about soldiers using scrap metal to improve protection on trucks, saying "you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have."

U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska, said troops in Iraq "deserved a far better answer than that flippant response."

"That might work in a newsroom where you can be cute with a television audience," he told CNN this week, "but not in a room where you're putting men and women in harm's way. I wonder what the parents thought."
[...]
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, joined the Republicans who -- while not asking for Rumsfeld's resignation -- want a change.

"I'm not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld," Lott told the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, according to the AP. "I don't think he listens enough to his uniformed officers."

The AP quoted him as saying, "I would like to see a change in that slot in the next year or so. I'm not calling for his resignation, but I think we do need a change at some point."

Of course, even if Rumsfeld were replaced, he would probably be replaced with another yes-man for Shrubya.

Linda Cropp is the villain, as the worst D.C. Council Chairman ever, voting for her own interests instead of those of her constituents:

What is utterly and absolutely not acceptable is the current behavior of Council Chairman Linda Cropp and nine of her colleagues who want to bait-and-switch baseball into a radically altered deal than the one which Williams negotiated exhaustively -- as his city's official representative -- over a two-year period.

In business, a deal is a deal, something Cropp refuses to understand. For her any deals, those made by others or even ones she has agreed to herself in recent days, are not deals at all. They are just a starting point for her next demand. And if she finally hears "No" to one of her new conditions, as she did on Tuesday from baseball, she threatens to sabotage the whole deal.
[...]
As a bonus, more than 80 percent of Nationals fans, about two million a year, would come from the suburbs and spend tens of millions of discretionary entertainment dollars in the District.

Cropp and others on the council, like Adrian Fenty and David Catania, realize all this. They just don't want the public to figure it out. They prefer to round up cheap votes for themselves by bashing baseball rather than bringing a team back to Washington, bringing urban development to a blighted area and adding millions of dollars to the city's tax base.

51% disagree with Bush's claim to "reform" (*coughs "eliminate"*) Social Security. Rumsfeld has fallen out of favor, supposedly because of his recent questioning on soldiers (funny how they let him talk again, now that the election is long over). I assume this was even before McCain said he had "no confidence" in Rumsfeld.

Not that it will matter, but the Democrats have the advantage on the economy. It's time to harness the public opinion and become a true opposition party.

Daily Show Today:

Jon Stewart showed a clip of "Dr." Bill Frist from ABC where he claimed first that he didn't know if AIDS could be transmitted through tears. Then he claimed that it might be possible. Did this guy get his MD in the Caribbean?

The clip was in a larger segment about the Bush administration's favoritism for abstinence-only programs that, of course, don't work, but which also contain many misleading statements and outright lies.

I still don't understand how the FCC could regulate cable. They might have a case for satellite because technically they dole out the airwaves, but the same isn't true for cable. Pretty cowardly of Mt. Wilson FM Broadcasters and Saul Levine:

Mt. Wilson FM Broadcasters requested the obscenity provision Oct. 28, within weeks after Stern announced he was moving to satellite radio.

Stern has said he is leaving Infinity Broadcasting, the country's No. 2 public radio operator and a Viacom unit, when his current employment contract expires in part because of the government's recent crackdown on television and radio programming deemed indecent.

In making his announcement, Stern railed against public radio and said he would try to destroy it when he joins Sirius (Research).

Mt. Wilson founder Saul Levine told Broadcasting & Cable that he was alarmed by Stern's pledge and "decided to fight back to protect the radio industry."

Good post.

The LATimes tells us what we all knew already:

The generation-long political retreat of Democrats across the South is disintegrating into a rout.

President Bush dominated the South so completely in last month's presidential election that he carried nearly 85% of all the counties across the region — and more than 90% of counties where whites are a majority of the population, according to a Times analysis of election results and census data.
[...]
His overwhelming performance left Sen. John F. Kerry clinging to a few scattered islands of support in a region that until the 1960s provided the foundation of the Democratic coalition in presidential politics. Kerry won fewer Southern counties than any Democratic nominee since the Depression except Walter F. Mondale in 1984 and George S. McGovern in 1972, according to data assembled by The Times and Polidata, a firm that specializes in political statistics.

In Southern counties without a substantial number of African American or Latino voters, Bush virtually obliterated Kerry. Across the 11 states of the old Confederacy, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma, whites constitute a majority of the population in 1,154 counties. Kerry won 90 of them.

Kerry did show a little hope in my old stomping ground:

The white-majority counties that Kerry held fall into a few distinctive categories. He won some poor, rural counties, particularly in outer Southern states such as Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky. Kerry won some of the few Southern counties with a significant trade union presence, like Jefferson County, Ky., which includes Louisville, and Jefferson County, Texas, around Port Arthur and Beaumont.

Kerry also performed well in college towns, capturing the counties that house the principal state university in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Texas and North Carolina. And he won the parts of the South most like the North: the southeastern Florida retirement havens of Broward and Palm Beach counties and the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington.

Kerry also showed strength in some relatively affluent majority-white communities with large numbers of public employees and college-educated professionals. These are places such as Mecklenburg County, around Charlotte, N.C., where Kerry won a higher proportion of the vote than any Democrat since FDR in 1944; Fairfax County, Va., which voted Democratic for the first time since 1964; Davidson, Tenn., around Nashville; and Leon County, Fla., around the state capital, Tallahassee.

Those wins, among voters who resemble the affluent and socially moderate suburbanites of the Northeast and Midwest, could offer a path for the party to compete in states such as Virginia and North Carolina.

Damn:

U.S. Sen. John McCain said Monday that he has "no confidence" in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, citing Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq and the failure to send more troops.

McCain, speaking to The Associated Press in an hourlong interview, said his comments were not a call for Rumsfeld's resignation, explaining that President Bush "can have the team that he wants around him."

Asked about his confidence in the secretary's leadership, McCain recalled fielding a similar question a couple weeks ago.

"I said no. My answer is still no. No confidence," McCain said.

And rightly so.

I thought it was just celebrities threatening to do so, but apparently some people have chosen to do it. Still de minimis, I'm sure. One interesting person on the list though:

South of the border in Bellingham, Wash., Charles Key, a 56-year-old Vietnam veteran, is planning his move to Canada.

"America no longer reflects my political and social values," said Key, whose ancestor Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Key is painfully aware of the irony. "The land of the free and the home of the brave always meant to me that America was supposed to stand for freedom and diversity and tolerance," he said. "And I don't think that it does anymore."

Paul Krugman tells us the real reasons Bush replaced John Snow and wants to eliminate Social Security -- to pay brokerage fees to his donors:

Second, a system of personal accounts, even though it would mainly be an indirect way for the government to speculate in the stock market, would pay huge brokerage fees. Of course, from Wall Street's point of view that's a benefit, not a cost.

There is, by the way, a precedent for Bush-style privatization. One major reason for Argentina's rapid debt buildup in the 1990's was a pension reform involving a switch to individual accounts - a switch that President Carlos Menem, like President Bush, decided to finance with borrowing rather than taxes. So Mr. Bush intends to emulate a plan that helped set the stage for Argentina's economic crisis.

If Mr. Bush were to say in plain English that his plan to solve our fiscal problems is to borrow trillions, put the money into stocks and hope for the best, everyone would denounce that plan as the height of irresponsibility. The fact that this plan has an elaborate disguise, one that would add considerably to its costs, makes it worse.

And maybe the fact that serious financial experts, the sort qualified to be Treasury secretary, understand all this is the reason why John Snow has just been reappointed.

Krugman makes a good point by saying that if all the money from private accounts were put into T-Bills, the plan would accomplish nothing, given the transaction costs of transferring all the money into private accounts. Of course, all the money from Social Security now goes into the Social Security Trust, which essentially is Treasury Bonds. Bush's plan is to move all this money from Treasury Bonds into the stock market.

The first problem is that the money does finance current government spending, which is running rampant under Bush. Someone has to pick up the slack here, and while there are lots of foreign investors in T-bills, but it's questionable whether they'd pick up all of it. The second is to counting on the stock market to produce higher returns, along with the auxiliary problems of having government having voting shares in corporations and such. And who knows what effect all this money flooding into the stock market will have on the economy?

Basically, the Bush administration in "privatizing" Social Security wants to go back to pre-FDR days when everyone was on their own. Social Security was made to *protect* people from losing their pensions in the stock market or other speculative ventures, and Bush wants to remove this protection because he feels that it's out of line with conservative principles. In addition, he wants to help his donors by giving them brokerage commissions. The claim is that this will help "fund the system," but the system is already solvent until at least 2042. The real reason is that all of this is ideological; Bush has no intention of keeping the system.

Bush says that payroll taxes for Social Security won't rise for those making above $87,900 (the limit will be $90,000 in 2005), and workers should be allowed to put up to 2% in private retirement accounts, and yet the Social Security system will survive? How does that work? Because Bush is trying to kill it off.

The Canadian Supreme Court, in an advisory opinion, took a step that American courts won't take in saying same-sex marriage is consistent with the Canadian Constitution. They took the extra step of separating marriage from the church in saying that as far as the government is concerned, it's a civil matter, redefining marriage as civil unions which are allowed for everyone:

In sweeping language, the unanimous opinion brushed aside objections that allowing same-sex couples to marry would violate the traditional definition of marriage stretching back several centuries. Such a view was valid at one time, the court said, in "a society of shared social values where marriage and religion were thought to be inseparable."

But, said Thursday’s opinion, "This is no longer the case. Canada is a pluralistic society. Marriage, from the perspective of the state, is a civil institution."

Dude:

A linguist from the University of Pittsburgh has published a scholarly paper deconstructing and deciphering the word "dude," contending it is much more than a catchall for lazy, inarticulate surfers, skaters, slackers and teenagers.

An admitted dude-user during his college years, Scott Kiesling said the four-letter word has many uses: in greetings ("What's up, dude?"); as an exclamation ("Whoa, Dude!"); commiseration ("Dude, I'm so sorry."); to one-up someone ("That's so lame, dude."); as well as agreement, surprise and disgust ("Dude.").

Lincoln Chafee has the right idea. We've been lied to for who knows how long. I thought lots of this would come clean after the election, but obviously it hasn't.

As obvious as this was to anyone except the RIAA, artists feel that file sharing doesn't hurt them:

Most musicians and artists say the Internet has helped them make more money from their work despite online file-trading services that allow users to copy songs and other material for free, according to a study released Sunday.
[...]
Artists were split on the merits of peer-to-peer networks, with 47 percent saying that they prevent artists from earning royalties for their work and another 43 percent saying they helped promote and distribute their material.

But two-thirds of those surveyed said file sharing posed little threat to them, and less than one-third of those surveyed said file sharing was a major threat to creative industries.

Only 3 percent said the Internet hurt their ability to protect their creative works.

And why is this obvious? Artists make almost nothing from record sales because the studios screw them. That's why studios for the most part have been the only people file suit. Exceptions to this are generally bands that make more money from record sales than most other artists, such as Metallica. Artists tend to find that file sharing is good, because it promotes them better. Since artists make money mostly from touring, and not from record sales which pay pennies per record, any promotion is good promotion.

Congrats to Jon Stewart for winning a Book of the Year award for America (The Book).

They can't be serious:

Anyone with information about the missing SpongeBobs is asked to call (305) 378-3998. If the tip leads to the safe return of the inflatables, the reward will be paid in "Burger Bucks," good for a year's supply of original Whopper sandwiches.

And we have our culprit for the provision in the House bill that would have allowed 2 committee heads and House staffers to access the tax return of any taxpayer:

A mid-level House aide said yesterday that he was the one who, during last month's drafting of a huge spending bill, added a provision that could give staffers on the House and Senate appropriations committees broad access to Americans' tax returns.

Richard E. Efford, a 19-year veteran of the House Appropriations Committee, said he did not inform any elected official before inserting the provision and advised his immediate boss, Rep. Ernest J. Istook Jr. (R-Okla.), only after it was too late to make changes. He said other House and Senate appropriations staffers in both parties were aware of the provision, however, and believed it gave them needed authority to enter facilities of the Internal Revenue Service to inspect how taxpayer funds were being used.

"I would guess we all thought it was a housekeeping thing that would help our bosses but did not need to be elevated up to them," said Efford, a mild-mannered man who described himself as "dumbfounded" by the uproar.
[...]
The matter, he said, was discussed with other committee staffers this fall. Efford said a Democratic staffer told him he had had a similar problem getting access to the IRS facilities. As a result, Efford said, he wrote language that would amend the tax code to give him and other Appropriations staffers the same inspection rights as Ways and Means personnel.

So, in order to be shady as a Republican House aide and get away with it, the rules are:
#1) pretend that you are "dumbfounded" by the uproar over privacy concerns
#2) blame a Democrat

The process is clearly broken as McCain points out. All kinds of legislation is written in secret (re: Dick Cheney's energy bill giving all kinds of handouts to his cronies in the industry) and there's often little chance for anyone to read it before voting on it.

I like this. Lycos Europe has a screen saver that sends HTTP GET requests to known spam servers. It doesn't abuse this -- we're not talking about DDoS attacks here, as it only does so up to a limit. They should pay for the bandwidth they clog up.

The other community approach to spam that I've been using is SpamNet by Cloudmark. Unfortunately, it's a service people have to pay for, but it works by sending signatures of spam messages to Cloudmark, so that other people can use those signatures to mark the same spam in their own mailboxes. It's pretty good at marking things that are spam and not marking things that aren't.

Male erection drug, stiffies all around.

Female arousal drug, FDA hearing.

On the other hand, perhaps something better than 1 more "satisfying sexual event" per 4 weeks than placebo would be worthwhile.

And on a side note, you just know these people were stoned when they came up with an all-cereal restaurant.

So...it's okay when an election is fraudulent in Iraq because it's not secure enough for people to vote, but it's not okay when there is voter fraud in Urkaine? Thanks for clarifying that. Of course, the Republican party is no stranger to vote suppression.

This is a bigger problem than Bush gives it credit for being:

Those arguing for delay have cited continuing dangers in the Sunni heartland of the country that would depress voter turnout, resulting in an imbalance of power in the new national parliament that could foment additional civil strife.

Iraqis are to elect a 275-member national assembly, with seats filled in relation to the number of votes received by the political parties and coalitions across the country. If few Sunni parties participate, it is unlikely that they would gain enough seats to have a significant impact.

The elected assembly will choose a president and prime minister and oversee the writing of a new constitution and organize elections by 2006. If Sunnis are underrepresented, they would be left with little voice in the drafting of the constitution - a seminal document that could be a blueprint for the country's governance for years to come.

While security is a severe problem mainly in four provinces and in parts of Baghdad, those provinces include most of Iraq's Sunni Arabs. Sunnis are a minority who represent an estimated 20% of the population - exact numbers are unknown because there has been no reliable census for several decades - but have dominated the country's political landscape for the past 80 years.

With the ouster of Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, Sunnis fell from power and many resent their sudden powerlessness. If they are prevented from voting by intimidation and attacks or ballot boycotts, it could undercut the election's legitimacy in the view of the larger Arabic world, which is predominantly Sunni.

Although there are likely to be violent attacks all over the country, their potency is likely to be far greater in Sunni areas because there is no countervailing force encouraging people to vote or offering protection. By contrast, in Shiite Muslim areas, most clerics are urging people to go to the polls. Sistani has gone so far as to say that voting is a duty on a par with proper religious practice.

Prof. Eugene Volokh from UCLA Law has an op-ed in the NYTimes about journalistic privilege. Of course, he doesn't make the same mistake that most newspaper columnists have made in analyzing the Plame situation versus other situations such as Myron Farber, which I've pointed out before about the Jim Taricani case and the New York Times about the Plame case:

The best solution may be to borrow a principle from other privileges, like those for confidential communications to lawyers, psychotherapists and spouses. The law has generally recognized that protecting the confidentiality of such communications is more important than forcing a person's testimony.

But it has also limited the privilege. Communications that facilitate crime or fraud, for example, are not protected. I may confess my crimes to a lawyer, but if I try to hire him to help me commit my crime, he may be obligated to testify against me.

Maybe a journalist's privilege should likewise be limited. Lawmakers could pass legislation that protects leakers who lawfully reveal information, like those who blow the whistle on governmental or corporate misconduct. But if a leaker tries to use a journalist as part of an illegal act - for example, by disclosing a tax return or the name of a C.I.A. agent so that it can be published - then the journalist may be ordered to testify.

Whoever leaked Plame's name to Douchebag of Liberty Robert Novak, I. Lewis Libby or not, committed an illegal act by disclosing that information to Novak. What few journalists understand is that this is analytically distinct from a case where the journalist has a secret source that merely tells him/her about an illegal act. In one case, the passing of information of illegal; in the other, the information is about something illegal.

This shouldn't even be a question for Ed Rendell, if you've been following this story. The bill would allow the right of first refusal by the phone companies in case cities in Pennsylvania roll out municipal Internet. Talk about catering to the telecom lobbyists.

Why should telecom have the right to block progress in cities? Maybe if the telecom companies actually provided a service with real value, instead of keeping prices artificially high like they do now, they wouldn't have to worry about being undercut.

Of course Swift Boat ads are fair game, but an ad for a church that accepts gays? Never:

The CBS and NBC Networks have refused to run an ad by a liberal church promoting the acceptance of people regardless of sexual orientation because the networks believe the ad is advocacy advertising.

The 30-second spot, run by the United Church of Christ, features two muscle-bound bouncers standing outside a church, selecting people who could attend service and those who could not. Among those kept out are two males who appear to be a couple. Written text then appears saying, in part, "Jesus didn't turn people away, neither do we."

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples...and the fact that the executive branch has recently proposed a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast," the church quoted CBS as saying.

That's right. The wingnut blogs can take their allegations of liberal media for CBS and shove it...

And just to show how pathetic this is, even the Hallmark channel and ABC Family accepted the ad! Other channels showing the ad include BET, Discovery, Fox, TBS, and TNT. How embarrassing is it to be left behind by Fox?

Newsweek has an interesting article on the small law firm Leeds, Morelli & Brown which has been extracting many settlements, particularly on Wall Street, for discrimation suits. I'm not saying that I disagree with what they're doing on principle, but their methods sound a little suspect, which I definitely don't appreciate. Furthermore, a mere correlation doesn't by itself indicate discrimation, contrary to name partner Leeds, who apparently missed the lecture on confounding variables in statistics.

Tom Ridge resigns. Now he can be replaced with another partisan yes man.

And we thought the first cabinet sucked...

The 3rd Circuit struck down the Solomon Amendment on a First Amendment basis:

A federal appeals court barred the government Monday from blocking funds to colleges and universities that deny access to military recruiters because of the Pentagon's policy banning openly gay men and women.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, said a 10-year-old federal law that allows the government to block such funds violates the schools' First Amendment right to prohibit on-campus recruiting in response to the Pentagon policy.

Law schools brought this suit because they're probably the most affected by the Solomon Amendment which requires them to accept JAG and other military recruiters, despite the fact that any other employer who discriminated against gays would not be allowed to recruit at those campuses. This was a huge deal at Yale Law School, because Yale stood to multiple hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for research if the law school didn't allow JAG to recruit on campus.

The Third Circuit covers Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and the U.S. Virgin Islands and is based in Philadelphia.

Given the overall ridiculousness of diplomatic immunity, it's good to see Congress doing something about the huge amount of parking fines that diplomats have accrued:

At the urging of New York lawmakers, Congress tucked the measure -- to cut aid to countries next year by 110 percent of the amount their diplomats owe in parking tickets and penalties -- into the huge $388 billion spending bill lawmakers approved over the weekend.

New York City, which houses the United Nations, would stand to recover about $195 million from about 200 countries, New York's senators said.

The Grand Canyon becomes a casualty of the Bush administration's pandering to Christian fundamentalists:

And, oh yes, it was formed about 4,500 years ago, a direct consequence of Noah’s Flood. How’s that? Yes, this is the ill-informed premise of “Grand Canyon, a Different View,” a handsomely-illustrated volume also on sale at the bookstores. It includes the writings of creationists and creation scientists and was compiled by Tom Vail, who with his wife operates Canyon Ministries, conducting creationist-view tours of the canyon. “For years,” Vail explains, “as a Colorado River guide, I told people how the Grand Canyon was formed over the evolutionary time span of millions of years. (Most geologists place the canyon’s age at some six million years). Then I met the Lord. Now I have a different view of the Canyon, which according to a biblical time scale, can’t possibly be more than a few thousand years old.”
[...]
Even worse, according to the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), an organization that includes many Park employees, papers obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that no review has ever taken place. Indeed, PEER claims that the Bush Administration has already decided it will stand by its approval for the book and that hundreds more have been ordered. “Now that the book has become quite popular,” explained an NPS flack to a Baptist news agency, “we don’t want to remove it.”

Even more troubling, PEER charges that Grand Canyon National Park no longer offers an official estimate of the age of the canyon, and that the NPS has blocked publication of guidance intended for park rangers that reminds them there is no scientific basis for creationism. The group has been increasingly concerned about what it calls the Park Service’s “Faith-Based Parks” and the agency’s seeming indifference to the separation of church and state. Among other moves, for example, NPS has allowed the placing of bronze plaques bearing Psalm verses at Grand Canyon overlooks. PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch is indignant, “If the Bush Administration is using public resources for pandering to Christian fundamentalists, it should at least have the decency to tell the truth about it.”

I don't really have all that much to say except this: if you have to use a semiautomatic to go hunting, you're sort of a wuss. At least give the deer a sporting chance!

This is rather amusing -- although I still think more schools should have a martini lounge:

Consultant Ray Soifer (Harvard MBA, 1965) has been tallying the career paths of fellow HBS alumni for several years, and what he has discovered confirms what every Yalie has always suspected: Harvard is bad for America.

Apparently Republicans slipped a measure into the budget bill that would allow two committee chairmen to see the tax return of anyone? Talk about an abuse of power. And do legislators actually read those bills?

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday that "accountability will be carried out" against whoever slipped a provision into an omnibus spending bill that would have allowed two committee chairmen to view the tax returns of any American.

"I have no earthly idea how it got in there," Frist said on CBS's "Face The Nation." "Nobody is going to defend this."
[...]
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said in a written statement that "The Republicans' lack of transparency and willingness to abuse their power is undermining democracy. It should be of grave concern to all Americans that their privacy could be invaded by such an outrageous provision."

Sen. John McCain said Sunday that the episode points up the problems created when Congress passes gigantic spending bills at the end of a session, before anyone has time to read them.

"If there is ever a graphic example of the broken system that we now have, that certainly has to be it," the Arizona Republican said on NBC's "Meet The Press." "How many other provisions didn't we find in that 1,000-page bill?"

And good for Pelosi:

The two lawmakers who would have gained that power -- Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, and Rep. Bill Young, a Florida Republican -- both said they wouldn't use it, and the Senate approved a resolution deleting the language.

Frist and outgoing Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota, agreed to hold the bill until the House could pass a similar fix, which could not happen before Wednesday.

Schumer said Pelosi told him she planned to hold up consideration of the bill in the House "until we find out who put this provision in."

Ron Artest is obviously a jackass, and everyone knew that before this brawl. Nonetheless, I'm rather disappointed at Detroit fans too. It seems more and more lately that fans have been doing some pretty outrageous things, and while it was definitely stupid of Artest to go into the crowd, I'm glad he landed some punches on a fan harassing him. I have as little sympathy for fans harassing players as I do players attacking fans, but the guy deserved it. Drunkenness isn't an excuse for stupidity.

I think the NBA needs to be more proactive about security, and certainly needs to start throwing out spectators who cause trouble, like they often do at Fenway. I'm also disappointed in Tom Wilson, CEO of the Pistons, for trying to blame everything on Artest. Wilson is responsible for there not being enough security at his arena. Artest is obviously at fault, but he's not the only one, and Tom Wilson needs to reign in his fans.

I'm expecting a lot of suspensions and frivolous lawsuits, the former deserved and the latter not. And I know some of those fans were trying to get involved just so they could sue NBA players with deep pockets, and they should be ashamed of themselves. Any fan coming out onto the court is as at fault as any player going into the stands.

Update:
In the only good move by Tom Wilson so far, he banned John Green of West Bloomfield, MI from the Palace and cancelled his season tickets. I thought Jermaine O'Neal deserved a bigger suspension given his unprovoked aggression and non-display of any sort of semblance of defending his teammate, and Stephen Jackson deserved a smaller one. Artest's was appropriate.

Update II:
Perhaps the best article about this whole ordeal speaks to the decline of the league in general.

Icing the kicker might actually work!?

So Jim Taricani of WJAR in Providence has been convicted of criminal contempt for not revealing who gave him an FBI tape of a city official taking a bribe. News people are likely up in arms over this, but let's think critically.

Once again, we can distinguish this case from Myron Farber. Because people were under court order not to disseminate the tape, the mere act of giving the tape to Taricani was illegal. This is analogous to the Robert Novak, Douchebag of Liberty, situation. The problem here is not that the information was illegal to air; it's that the way the information was given to someone was illegal. There is no First Amendment privilege involved here.

The fact that the news is still talking about the Monday Night Football T.O./Nicollette Sheridan sketch is ridiculous. You can catch things as "bad" or "worse" than that on any soap opera (Desperate Housewives or the traditional afternoon ones) or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or even something like Friends, for example. Hell, ABC even shows Bond movies during primetime. And, mind you, on the East Coast, Monday Night Football and Desperate Housewives air at the same time! I don't understand this outrage by the FCC for things that are clearly not outside the realm of reasonableness and certainly not outside of the realm of other broadcast TV shows.

If it was really so bad, why was it repeatedly shown on news shows?

Maybe it's just a reaction to the Janet Jackson thing, but it makes me think that the real outrage might be because it showed a white woman and a black man. I don't think it was racist like Tony Dungy said; I think the problem might be that Americans are intolerant.

Meanwhile, you can blow someone's head off on TV and no one cares...

Howard Stern has the right idea...

Well she has to be better than Rod Paige, depending on whether she actually has respect for educators, unlike Paige. Nonetheless, this quote doesn't show her to have much promise:

Before coming to the White House, Spellings worked for six years as a senior adviser to Bush when he was governor of Texas, where she also was responsible for developing education policy.

And we know how well that worked out...

With Condi Rice's deputy being named as National Security Advisor, this cabinet is shaping up to be much more fraught with incompetence than the last one. Of course, valuing yes-men instead of appropriate advisors is the MO of this administration -- just look at Colin Powell.

How big of an idiot do you have to be to do this while being videotaped?

The footage showed several Marines with a group of prisoners who were either lying on the floor or propped against a wall of the bombed-out building. One Marine can be heard declaring that one of the prisoners was faking his injuries.

"He's fucking faking he's dead. He faking he's fucking dead," says the Marine. At that point a clatter of gunfire can be heard as one of the Marines shoots the prisoner. Another voice can then be heard saying: "He's dead now."

The footage was obtained by a team from the American NBC network that was embedded with the Marine Corps during last week's seven-day battle to capture the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, which military commanders say has been a focus of Iraqi resistance. The film was then pooled and made available to other media.

It pisses me off greatly that some jackass soldier who can't control himself is putting my family and friends in danger. Do soldiers realize how great these videos are as recruiting tools for terrorists? How are we expected to support our troops when they can't support us?

And you know the Marines will let him off easy. It's pathetic and stupid. They need to make an example of this guy.

I believe it's called "get me the hell out of this corrupt organization":

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has submitted his resignation to President Bush, the White House said on Monday.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is the "likely" choice to succeed Powell, a senior U.S. official told CNN.

Rice is "the president's choice," and an announcement is likely this week, another senior U.S. official said.

Powell is the most prominent of four Cabinet officials whose resignations are expected to be announced Monday, sources told CNN.

The others will be Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Education Secretary Rod Paige and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, the sources said.

Everyone knew Powell would be resigning, given that he has gotten no respect from the administration, and he obviously has way too much integrity to stick around for another term. It's too bad because he was probably the best guy they had. As for the others, I guess maybe Rod Paige decided he wasn't doing well enough in the fight against terrorism by the NEA.

Frank Rich writes for this coming Sunday's NYT Magazine:

As Marshall Wittman, an independent-minded former associate of both Ralph Reed and John McCain, wrote before the election, "The only things the religious conservatives get are largely symbolic votes on proposals guaranteed to fail, such as the gay marriage constitutional amendment." That amendment has never had a prayer of rounding up the two-thirds majority needed for passage and still doesn't.

Mr. Wittman echoes Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?," by common consent the year's most prescient political book. "Values," Mr. Frank writes, "always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won." Under this perennial "trick," as he calls it, Republican politicians promise to stop abortion and force the culture industry "to clean up its act" - until the votes are counted. Then they return to their higher priorities, like cutting capital gains and estate taxes. Mr. Murdoch and his fellow cultural barons - from Sumner Redstone, the Bush-endorsing C.E.O. of Viacom, to Richard Parsons, the Republican C.E.O. of Time Warner, to Jeffrey Immelt, the Bush-contributing C.E.O. of G.E. (NBC Universal) - are about to be rewarded not just with more tax breaks but also with deregulatory goodies increasing their power to market salacious entertainment. It's they, not Susan Sarandon and Bruce Springsteen, who actually set the cultural agenda Gary Bauer and company say they despise.

But it's not only the G.O.P.'s fealty to its financial backers that is predictive of how little cultural bang the "values" voters will get for their Bush-Cheney votes. At 78 percent, the nonvalues voters have far more votes than they do, and both parties will cater to that overwhelming majority's blue tastes first and last. Their mandate is clear: The same poll that clocked "moral values" partisans at 22 percent of the electorate found that nearly three times as many Americans approve of some form of legal status for gay couples, whether civil unions (35 percent) or marriage (27 percent). Do the math and you'll find that the poll also shows that for all the G.O.P.'s efforts to court Jews, the total number of Jewish Republican voters in 2004, while up from 2000, was still some 200,000 less than the number of gay Republican voters.

When Robert Novak writes after the election that "the anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, socially conservative agenda is ascendant, and the G.O.P. will not abandon it anytime soon," you have to wonder what drug he is on. The abandonment began at the convention. Sam Brownback, the Kansas senator who champions the religious right, was locked away in an off-camera rally across town from Madison Square Garden. Prime time was bestowed upon the three biggest stars in post-Bush Republican politics: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger. All are supporters of gay rights and opponents of the same-sex marriage constitutional amendment. Only Mr. McCain calls himself pro-life, and he's never made abortion a cause. None of the three support the Bush administration position on stem-cell research. When the No. 1 "moral values" movie star, Mel Gibson, condemned the Schwarzenegger-endorsed California ballot initiative expanding and financing stem-cell research, the governor and voters crushed him like a girlie-man. The measure carried by 59 percent, which is consistent with national polling on the issue.

If the Republican party's next round of leaders are all cool with blue culture, why should Democrats run after the red?

Indeed. Democrats don't need to cater to intolerance. We've already won the heart of our country with our values. We need to strengthen our message and strengthen our perception of weakness on terrorism.

Ummm...I know Bush wants to use martial law to get the blue states in line, but what's the deal with tanks at the Westwood Federal Building? [via MyDD] The one day I decide not to drive down Veteran, there were tanks there!?!?

Not sure if he's better than John Ashcroft. Maybe just objectionable in different ways.

Gonzalez is the guy who approved torture at Abu Ghraib, and he used to work for Enron. Ugh.

And then to add insult to injury, he said:

"I will work hard to build upon [Ashcroft's] record," he said.

It sad that ABC affiliate stations feel the need to pull Saving Private Ryan Thursday night. It just shows you how messed up and pathetic Michael Powell's FCC policies are and how inconsistently they are applied:

Update (1:20PM):
Here is a reply from WSOC, one of the affiliates in question:

WSOC-TV completely honors the service of our nation's veterans. We respect the artistry with which the story of D-Day was told in "Saving Private Ryan" by filmmaker Steven Spielberg.

However, the ambiguity of recent Federal Communications Commission decisions about its legal standards relating to language made us question airing the movie beginning at 8:00pm, a time period that has been characterized as a "safe haven." Thus we sought to find compromise, but were unable to find a way to air the movie.

We asked ABC if we could edit the movie for language. This was not possible due to the network's contract with Mr. Spielberg. We then asked to begin the movie at 10:00pm, but this was not allowed. That left us where we are, unable to air the movie because of our uncertainty about FCC reaction. ironically, this is happening now after we aired ABC's broadcast of the movie twice before, receiving only limited complaints each time. Clearly, the climate has changed since this movie's last airing on broadcast television in 2002.

We appreciate your all viewers comments.

I got the word on the street from some folks that Richard Sander is guest-blogging at Volokh Conspiracy. Check it out.

What direction should the Democratic Party take now?

I don't like all these suggestions that the Democrats need to cater to the right and cater to intolerance. That backfires anyway, because currently the Democratic party is a coalition of various groups. If you cater to the right and their intolerance, you lose parts of our coalition.

What the Democrats need to present is a true opposition to the Bush agenda; the Democrats in Congress should make their own Opposition Statement. They need to set their own agenda for America.

The party needs to have a vision for America that's not merely a reaction to the Bush agenda, similar to what the Opposition is like in the UK Parliament. They need to show clear thought and that they are a clear alternative to Bush and the Republicans. This also helps with the "obstructionist" label that Republicans will try to paint. When you have a clear agenda, you're not an obstruction to the Republican agenda; you're merely pushing your own vision. At the same time, the Democrats need to ignore the "obstructionist" label; the Republicans don't care, so why should we be self-conscious?

Let's also remember there's no mandate here. Bush won merely 51% of the vote. 49% of the country voted against him. Even if he had the most votes for a candidate ever, he also had the largest number of votes against a candidate ever. Likewise, Kerry had the most votes for a Democratic candidate ever. A clear vision for change will have consequences that help counter the appearance of a mandate and also gives the Republican leadership clear message that their agenda is not the only view that will be found acceptable to the people.

I would like to have Kerry have a role in this. He would have been a good choice for Minority Leader, for example, to lead the opposition. And perhaps a large part of the Democrat's vision should be Kerry's plans had he won the election. Having a true agenda provides motivation to party members all across the nation; we have something to fight for, rather than something to fight against.

Someone else also suggested publishing a list of moderate judges. I'm not sure what the political implications of doing so are, but it doesn't sound like a bad idea on the surface. It might alienate other potential judges.

Regardless, our party needs to lead the charge. Instead of standing up to Bush, we need to stand up for ourselves.

The press will keep pushing this type of "Book of Job = no job" story, and while it's the hot topic, I don't know if it's the right issue:

On Sept. 10, 2001, Cary was earning about $55,000 a year. On Sept. 12, the decline began. No one was flying. No one was renting cars. Down went the commissions Cary gets when customers sign up for insurance coverage. "Maybe $35,000," he says of what he earns now, and that includes income from a second job he took a year ago, delivering pizzas on Friday and Saturday nights.

Forty hours a week at the car-rental counter, 12 hours a week running pizzas, the pinch of gasoline at $2 a gallon, savings drained, the realization that he and Tara are "kind of the working poor" -- and still it was moral concerns, rather than economic ones, that guided both of them on Election Day.

"I don't blame President Bush for anything that's happened with my income," Cary says. Rather, he looks at Bush as someone who believes in "personal responsibility," which Cary believes in as well. Don't complain. Solve. "There are jobs out there," he says, and as tired as he might be on Saturday night as he drives the streets of northern Ohio, he can use that time to listen to worship tapes, to think, to pray and to remind himself of what the priorities of a good life should be.

"Jobs will come and go. But your character -- you have to hang on to that," he says. "It's what you're defined by."

"It's been rough. Very rough. I mean scraping by," Tara says. But "to us, the biggest things were the moral things."

Put a styptic pencil on my bleeding heart, but I have absolutely no sympathy for these people. Every progressive should read What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank. These people are not able to see past their "values" to see that Republicans run them into their ground.

Let's look at it this way: For the people in the article above, "values" won out over economics. "Values" won out over an incredibly poorly led war. "Values" won out over failures in the fight against terrorism. But we must remember that "values" wasn't the single most important issue except for a small minority of people, like those in the article above.

And this is despite the fact that Bush doesn't really believe in these "values" except for electoral gain. You want to see a flip-flopper, look at Bush's actual stated positions on abortion and gay marriage instead of his perceived positions. Look at how Bush caters his economic positions to people like Murodch, who, through his hotel network, is the largest porn purveyor in the country.

Wedge issues don't always triumph, and Oregon is an example of the wedge failing. Oregon went for Kerry, but still voted 57% against gay marriage. Nonetheless, wedge issues bring out voters who consider nothing else, and on an issue like gay marriage, there are a fair number of these voters, but they are still a small minority.

I think it's more likely that terrorism won out as an issue. The perception has always been that Bush is stronger on terrorism. Even among people who thought both guys were idiots and would have been relatively okay with either candidate, they still had reservations on whether Kerry could keep us safe. They knew that Bush was driving us into the gutter with everything else, but they still mistakenly believed that Kerry was weak on terror. And I'm talking about moderates, not right-wingers.

If we look merely at the incompetence of the Bush administration, Kerry should have had a 15% lead going into the election. There has to be a reason besides values, because most people do not fall under the values umbrella. Terrorism is the likely issue.

The people who voted for Bush based on terrorism fail to see the reality that tough talk without appropriate action deters no one and that past history is no indication of future activity. There are many more effective reforms that could have been taken besides the ones that Bush has, none of which did anything to help port or air cargo security, as examples. The mere fact that many National Guard troops are in Iraq instead of here to assist us in case of a terrorist attack shows that Bush doesn't understand how terrorism works. Kerry should have played up BCCI, especially after it came out that Zarqawi's group's funds hadn't been frozen. I don't know if it would have helped, but I'm still at a loss as to why he didn't.

Of all the suggestions I've heard from various people. This one by Chris Bowers is certainly the most solid. The DCCC should put up a candidate in every single district in 2006.

I don't care if the candidate loses 99% to 1%, as did McClure against the unfortunately named Crapo in Idaho. Every district should have a challenger, and even the House challengers in Idaho got about 30%.

Bowers notes 36 districts, besides Bernie Sanders in Vermont, that had no challenger:

AL-6; AZ-3; AZ-6; CA-22; CA-41; FL-4; FL-7; FL-9; FL-21; FL-24; FL-25; GA-1; GA-6; GA-7; GA-10; KS-1; KY-5; LA-04; MS-01; MS-03; NY-25!!!!!!; OK-03; OK-04; PA-05; PA-10; PA-19; SC-01; SC-03; TN-07; TX-03; TX-10; TX-13; TX-14; VA-01; VA-06; VA-07 (emphasis added)

That includes 6 districts in Florida and 3 districts in PA, not to mention a couple in Arizona and 3 in Virginia. The DNC could have run up votes in Florida!

As Bowers points out, we made even Tom DeLay run scared! Even after his illegal redistricting effort where he used federal homeland security resources to redistrict Texas for his own benefit, he still only garnered 55%. That is pathetic. And it's because we contested it. That's something we can be proud of.

There are thousands of Democrats across the nation living in uber-Republican districts in swing states who are willing to come out and give a protest vote for the challenger. Furthermore, these people would have voted for Kerry. Symbolically and psychologically, these people need someone who could represent them in Congress. Furthermore, it ensures that we maximize votes for the Democratic presidential candidate, which increases the national vote count for our party (see Gore's popular vote win for why this is important).

Even the cost is de minimis, as Bowers points out. It takes only $10,000 for a candidate to run. For the 36 districts, this is $360,000, which is a mere fraction of the amount spent in highly contested races. Hell, Tom DeLay (TX-22) had to spend $2 million to defend against Richard Morrison who only had $60,000. Hatemonger Marilyn Musgrave (who only got 51%!) in CO-04 spent $3 million plus another $2 million from the NRCC to defend against Stan Matsunaka who only had $44,000.

Not only does this require candidates to raise more money, but even the national Republican party can get involved and have to spend money to defend the seat, drawing away resources from elsewhere where it could be much more damaging. DeLay and Musgrave should have had safe seats.

And in this election, Kerry could have gotten more than 48% of the vote if we had inspired Democrats everywhere to come out to support a challenger in those 36 districts.

We need to force Republicans to work at winning races. We need to inspire Democrats to come out to vote. We need to draw money away from highly contested races. I plead to the DCCC to put up a candidate in every single district in 2006.

The Los Angeles Times suggests Bill Clinton for head of the DNC. Not a bad idea if you ask me...

It looks like Prof. Sander's article is making the rounds. The Wall Street Journal did a write-up on it today, and it's due to be published in the Stanford Law Review this month. Unfortunately, I don't have a link to the WSJ article because I read it off of Westlaw.

The draft of the article is available on his site. Dean Schill of UCLA Law wrote an email today reaffirming the school's commitment to diversity and encouraging that Prof. Sander's article be a source of discussion.

His basic premise is that affirmative action in its current form hurts minority students because the data show that they end up at better schools, but achieve less than they would at a lower ranked school. From the WSJ article:

Usually, social conservatives decry preferences because of perceived unfairness to white applicants. Although critics have talked before of a "stigma" that damages black recipients, the new analysis stands out for its detailed focus on alleged harms to the careers of black students.

"We need to take seriously the idea that there are potential costs to minorities who benefit from racial preferences," Prof. Sander says in an interview.

Prof. Sander, who describes himself as a lifelong Democrat sympathetic to the goals of affirmative action, claims that abolishing preferences wouldn't reduce the number of black lawyers. In fact, he estimates it would likely increase the cohort of black attorneys emerging from the Class of 2004 by 8% and the number of those passing the bar the first time by 22%.
[...]
Prof. Sander relied primarily on data that the Law School Admission Council collected on 27,000 students who entered 160 U.S. law schools in 1991, including their grades in college, test scores and bar-exam results.

The study found a stark achievement gap between blacks and whites throughout the nation's law schools. Close to half of the black law students ended up in the bottom tenth of their class. African-Americans were more than twice as likely as whites to drop out -- and more than six times as likely to fail state bar exams after multiple tries.

Prof. Sander argues that the reason for this outcome stems from a "mismatch" between the credentials of the black students and the institutions they attend. Because they have weaker credentials, he says, the students achieve lower grades. And since grades are strongly correlated to success on the bar exam, he argues, these students failed the bar in higher numbers.

He argues that students who perform at the bottom of their classes at more selective colleges often are confused by tougher material taught at speeds that challenge higher-achieving classmates. At less selective colleges, the material tends to be simpler, so these students can pull into the middle of their class and pick up the baseline information needed to pass the bar exam. And he says there is a "cascade effect" on every tier of law school, from Harvard and Yale down the ranks, ensuring that, at each level, blacks perform worse and are less likely to become lawyers.

By the study's tally, 86% of blacks currently admitted to law schools would still gain admission without preferences. But they would attend less competitive schools, where they would compile stronger records. The remaining 14% -- 500 to 600 a year -- would likely drop out or fail the bar.

To preserve diversity, Prof. Sander recommends setting modest goals for racial preferences -- about 4% in law school classes -- instead of aiming for twice that figure, which he says is typical. Less selective schools would be able to meet that figure without affirmative action, he argues.

How will Bush a) cut taxes, b) privatize Social Security, and c) cut the deficit in half (albeit only in % of GDP)?

Anyone else skeptical?

I made the mistake of ordering a new cell phone through Cellular Choices, which deals with their customers through Inphonic. Although I emailed them regarding customer service before my phone was shipped, they still shipped me my phone incorrectly programmed. I cannot recommend buying a phone through them.

Most importantly, their customer service is terrible. I have already returned the incorrectly programmed phone (refused and returned to sender when I realized it wasn't programmed right, but couldn't reach their customer service department to talk to them about it) I received credit for it yesterday (still out money for shipping, of course, even though they messed up the programming), but I just received a reply to one of my emails today, 10 days later. They claim they will respond within 48 hours, but only one of my customer service emails was returned within that time. There was at least one other email that took 10 days, and at least one that hasn't been answered yet.

The customer service site through Inphonic offers no direct phone number to contact Celluar Choices, which was rather disappointing as I expect businesses to have proper contact information, and neither does Cellular Choices' website.

Update:
There were a few more problems that cropped up a few weeks later, such as Cellular Choices improperly cancelling my service, resulting in a disconnection charge and also charging activation, despite promising not to do so. Verizon straightened it all out.

Bill Kristol from The Weekly Standard said that Kerry didn't win because he didn't frame Iraq as a diversion from the war on terror. Excuse me? Did he watch the debates? This was in response to Jon Stewart:

"It's this idea that 85 to 15 in Manhattan. We were really between Washington and New York the centerpiece of the 9/11 attacks. We probably have more gay people, you know, per square inch than any other country, and yet we seem to be less concerned. You know, people that view terror and gay marriage as their top issues voted against the way Manhattan did, which is surrounded by gay marriage and terror."

He also contended that "values" is a word made up by the so-called "mainstream liberal media," after he said that "values voters" voted 4-1 for Bush, and the "anti-values voters...."

Stewart followed soon after:

"I always think of this wild word 'elite.' 'Cause they always throw it around, you know, the 'liberal elite.' And I kept thinking to myself, you know, the Christian Right; what's more elite than thinking only you will go to heaven?"

TalkLeft has a story about Joe Republican, who wants to live in a world where he is a self-made man who believes people should take care of themselves.

Paul Krugman encourages No Surrender:

One faction of the party is already calling for the Democrats to blur the differences between themselves and the Republicans. Or at least that's what I think Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council means when he says, "We've got to close the cultural gap." But that's a losing proposition.

Yes, Democrats need to make it clear that they support personal virtue, that they value fidelity, responsibility, honesty and faith. This shouldn't be a hard case to make: Democrats are as likely as Republicans to be faithful spouses and good parents, and Republicans are as likely as Democrats to be adulterers, gamblers or drug abusers. Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country; blue states, on average, have lower rates of out-of-wedlock births than red states.

But Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, opposition to minority rights). All they will do if they try to cater to intolerance is alienate their own base.

Does this mean that the Democrats are condemned to permanent minority status? No. The religious right - not to be confused with religious Americans in general - isn't a majority, or even a dominant minority. It's just one bloc of voters, whom the Republican Party has learned to mobilize with wedge issues like this year's polarizing debate over gay marriage.

Rather than catering to voters who will never support them, the Democrats - who are doing pretty well at getting the votes of moderates and independents - need to become equally effective at mobilizing their own base.

In fact, they have made good strides, showing much more unity and intensity than anyone thought possible a year ago. But for the lingering aura of 9/11, they would have won.

What they need to do now is develop a political program aimed at maintaining and increasing the intensity. That means setting some realistic but critical goals for the next year.

Mobilize.

Best wishes to the Edwards family for a fast recovery.

Although most of these sorts of things have been said out of anger, frustration, and resentment, it's interesting to hear the analogies of what our country is like now. They're all a bit disturbing to me because of the degree of division people are noticing and advocating, but this is the sort of atmosphere we live in with Bush.

Some have likened it to 1920s Germany, as in the era of denial as to what kind of values our leader really has and how they will be manifested in the next four years. The cultural bigotry and the focus on military jump out at people. The more obvious comparison was 1950s McCarthyism.

The most interesting is still the Civil War comparison. Angry Bear hit on this, as did my friend B.C. (who also was one of the people relaying the Germany analogy, although I've seen that a few places). To paraphrase B.C., one group wants states' rights after realizing they have a separate economy and set of values, while the other group wants to impose its will upon the whole nation. Only this time, the North and South have reversed.

Angry Bear's post adds to this by noting how there is a net Blue State donation to Red States of 13 cents through federal taxes. Furthermore, most of the top 10 "donor states" are Blue States, and most of the top 10 "donee states" are Red States (all except DC, and if we say DC isn't a state, Hawaii is next). One thought is that cutting federal taxes would be a net benefit to Blue States because they are subsidizing other states. This would cut Red State welfare, such as agriculture subsidies, highway money, and several other things. Red States could fund their own programs, and would likely have to raise taxes severely, while Blue States would be able to cut their net taxes by removing subsidies. The idea is that if Red States are so divisive that they think their social values triumph their economic decline, let them think it.

I would imagine that the current "conservatives" would love cutting federal taxes (while increasing spending considerably, despite their love for Reagan), but I don't know if this would ever fly. Such a plan would be bad for policy, from a Democrat standpoint, of course. Nonetheless, Republicans have gotten where they are through politics, and particularly divisive politics by driving wedge issues, such as the stereotypical guns, god, and gays. Lyndon Johnson knew that he had lost the South for the Democrats for 50 years when signing the Civil Rights bill into law, and these issues are why.

The theory is, for example, to let the federal government overturn Roe v. Wade (if that would even happen, see below), leave it to the Blue States to legalize it, and see how the Red States like it when their daughters turn up pregnant. If Democrats are such heathens, then why does Massachusetts have the lowest divorce rate of any state, while Arkansas has the highest of anywhere but Nevada (which is an obvious outlier). The idea is to give the Red States what they want and see how they like it. If they think their way of life is better, prove it. This would likely rebuild the old progressive urban-rural coalition, where rural areas accept some changes in order to receive farm subsidies.

Pragmatically, many Blue States have Republican governors (see e.g. Mitt Romney, George Pataki, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and it works the other way too with Janet Napolitano, among others). And there are certainly Democrat areas of Red States. This all reminds me about what Barack Obama said at the DNC, which I've already quoted twice. Some theorize that Red State urban types would move to Blue States, but I don't think that works. We're all tied together in some way, even if it doesn't seem like it.

But we do have fundamental problems here, and perhaps problems with fundamentalism too. Just to throw out one money issue, why don't Los Angeles and New York get the lion's share of homeland security funding? Do we really think that Montana will be the site of a terrorist attack, or is it to appease Red States? While Patrick Leahy was the engineer of this plan, Bush had the responsibility to override it.

Now that brings me to another hot topic that appears to be in the news a bit lately theorizing that maybe Bush won't be as bad as he was in the first term. Some think that maybe he'll be a centrist uniting leader. Unfortunately, I don't think so, and I speak not through pessimism, but pragmatism. Bush had the opportunity after 9/11 to unite the country, and he didn't do it. I don't think he'll be able to do it under less extraordinary circumstances given his track record.

But the right attitude isn't pessimism. It's mobilization. I myself am planning to start a PAC, and more details about this will be forthcoming. The real question is what direction should the party take. Is federalism the answer? Or is it how some suggest that we may have to concede some of the wedge issues because of the policy/politics divide? Someone suggested the NRA already won guns, so that leaves god and gays. I'm not quite sure what the solution is.

If the Democrats were to move in such a course, we should remember that Roe v. Wade, for example, was under a relatively conservative court. Four of the appointees to that court were Nixon's, and this was even after the relatively liberal Earl Warren and Hugo Black and the moderate John Harlan were no longer on the court. It was still a 7-2 decision. We should also remember, that even a Blue State such as Oregon banned gay marriage. I'm not saying I agree with this, but it's something to take into account.

It's much harder to motivate people with anger than disappointment, as J.B. said to me. We've had an era of goodwill and an era of mobilization for the last 2 years. We owe it to ourselves to keep it up. Ideally we'd be able to unite the country in a way Bush has never been able to do, but we need to figure out how. Stay strong, and peace be with you.

I'm wondering why there's no email from the campaign yet...

Will we find out now how bad Iraq really is?

And will there be consequences of that?

I'm going to have to go with Kos here. Howard Dean for DNC Chair. We need someone to motivate us.

And Dick Durbin for Minority Leader too. We need someone with a safe seat.

I guess it's four more years of quality blogging and four more years of poor media coverage.

If you thought the last four years sucked, wait for the next four. Ohio voted itself out of jobs, I suppose...

How were the exit polls that far off? Especially in Florida?

Drudge Report is spewing all kinds of bullshit today. As usual, ignore him.

Alaska: Murkowski vs. Knowles
Colorado: Coors vs. Salazar (formerly Ben Nighthorse Campbell)
Florida: Castor vs. Martinez (formerly Bob Graham)
George: Isakson vs. Majette (formerly Zig Zag Zell Miller)
Lousiana: John vs. Kennedy (multi-party vote -- we want a runoff)
Kentucky: Bunning vs. Mongiardo (might be out of reach)
North Carolina: Bowles vs. Burr (formerly John Edwards!)
Oklahoma: Carson vs. Coburn (formerly Don Nickles)
Pennsylvania: Spector vs. Hoeffel (likely out of reach)
South Carolina: DeMint vs. Tenenbaum (formerly Fritz Hollings)
South Dakota: Daschle vs. Thune

It's looking tight, but there's a slim possibility we could have John Edwards presiding over the Senate once again.

My votes are in! The long list of propositions on the California ballot definitely slowed the whole process down (maybe that was the idea for Republicans?). I live 1.5 blocks from my polling location, which is strange for being a commercial venue (which doesn't open for business until 10AM!), and I got there around 7:05 in my black hooded sweatshirt, and left at perhaps a little after 7:50. Pretty damn good turnout for this early in the morning, I would guess.

Tonight we Mosh, my friends.

By the way, I'm having a few people over tonight to watch the returns, and I'm thinking the beer selection should be Labatt Blue and something with Red in the title. Maybe not Red Stripe, but if you have any ideas, let me know.

This is what it's all about. Tomorrow we'll know that hope is on the way.

Thinking about this election, there are a number of important factors to consider. It’s important to evaluate properly what we know about both candidates. While Underzealous has obviously leaned Democratic in this election, it's important to look at both sides, as I am much more likely to have supported George H.W. Bush or Reagan than I have ever been able to support George W. Bush. Although an election for a second term is often a referendum for the incumbent, it is also good when we are able to support the challenger because of his strengths and leadership, instead of merely being "Anybody But Bush." John Kerry is that leader.

One thing that people quickly forget is that we’re talking about the next leader of the free world here. In order to lead, one must first be a credible leader. A leader must be able to inspire others to follow him or her. We’re citizens of the world whether we like it or not. This isn’t to say that we’re allowing others to control our destiny, but in order to lead, others must be willing to follow us.

Read more!

From Kerry's website:

John Kerry speaks to an enormous crowd gathered for a rally near the state capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin. Kerry was introduced at the event by rock music legend Bruce Springsteen.

Photographer: Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc. from Sharon Farmer

Large Version | Hi-Res Version

No matter what happens tomorrow, let's all remember what Barack Obama said on July 27, 2004 at the DNC:

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.

Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America.

There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America -- there is the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach Little League in the blue states and have gay friends in the red states.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?

Bob Herbert's NYT column talks about the mess in Iraq juxtaposed with Republican voter suppression efforts:

Overseas, our troops are being mauled in the long dark night of Iraq - a war with no end in sight that has already claimed the lives of more than 1,100 American troops and thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of innocent Iraqis.

At home, the party of the sitting president is systematically stomping on the right of black Americans to vote, a vile and racist practice that makes a mockery of the president's claim to favor real democracy anywhere.

This will never be seen as a shining moment in U.S. history.

So a few of my friends and I were talking about Jeb Bush the other day. Suppose he had beaten Lawton Chiles in 1994. Do you think he would have been the presidential candidate instead of Dubya? While George W. does have seniority over John Ellis, Shrubya is the family screwup, drunk, coke addict, whatever, and he was lucky enough to be elected in 1994, while Jeb seems to be more responsible, intelligent, and eloquent, and happened to lose in 1994. I'm thinking deep down there has to be some resentment there, because everyone in the Bush family knows this too. Just a thought...

What a hypocrite. Lynne Cheney used her 7 year old granddaughter as a campaigning poker chip. So why is it that no one's allowed to say that Mary Cheney, an employee of BC 2004, is openly a lesbian?

Mary Cheney is openly a lesbian.
Mary Cheney is openly a lesbian.
Mary Cheney is openly a lesbian.
Mary Cheney is openly a lesbian.
Mary Cheney is openly a lesbian.
Mary Cheney is openly a lesbian.
Mary Cheney is openly a lesbian.
Mary Cheney is openly a lesbian.
Mary Cheney is openly a lesbian.

Okay. Done now.

Bush may have used a 5 syllable word with Tom Brokaw. I don't know if he pronounced it right, however, since I didn't see the video:

President George Bush: "You're trying to make me a prognosticator?

I wonder if he even knows what it means. Karl Rove probably wrote it out phonetically for him in his crib notes.

If you haven't seen Eminem's amazing GOTV video "Mosh" yet, you should. I will be voting in a black hooded sweatshirt on Tuesday. If we get out the vote, we will win. And they will try to suppress us, because they know they can't win if people vote. We believe in democracy; they don't. Let's show them that our way of life is better:

[Kids' Voices]
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
And to the Republic for which it stands
One nation under God
Indivisible...

[Eminem]
It feels so good to be back..

I scrutinize every word, memorize every line
I spit it once, refuel and re-energize and rewind
I give sight to the blind, my insight through the mind
I exercise my right to express when I feel it's time
It's just all in your mind, what you interpret it as
I say to fight, you take it as I'mma whip someone's ass
If you don't understand, don't even bother to ask
A father who has grown up with a fatherless past
Who has blown up now to rap phenomenon that has
Or at least shows no difficulty multi-task
And in juggling both perhaps mastered his craft
Slash entrepreneur who has held onto few more rap acts
Who's had a few obstacles thrown his way through the last half
Of his career typical manure moving past that
Mr. kisses ass crack, he's a class act
Rubber band man, yea he just snaps back

[Chorus:]
Come along follow me as I lead through the darkness
As I provide just enough spark that we need to proceed
Carry on, give me hope, give me strength
Come with me and I won't steer you wrong
Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog
To the light at the end of the tunnel
We gonna fight, we gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march
Through the swamp, we gonna mosh through the marsh
Take us right through the doors (c'mon)

All the people up top on the side and the middle
Come together lets all bomb and swamp just a little
Just let it gradually build from the front to the back
All you can see is a sea of people some white and some black
Don't matter what color, all that matters we gathered together
To celebrate for the same cause don't matter the weather
If it rains let it rain, yea the wetter the better
They ain't gonna stop us they can't, we stronger now more than ever
They tell us no we say yea, they tell us stop we say go
Rebel with a rebel yell, raise hell we gonna let em know
Stomp, push, shove, mush, Fuck Bush, until they bring our troops home (c'mon)

[Chorus]

Imagine it pouring, it's raining down on us
Mosh pits outside the oval office
Someone's tryina tell us something,
Maybe this is god just sayin' we're responsible
For this monster, this coward,
That we have empowered
This is Bin Laden, look at his head noddin'
How could we allow something like this without pumping our fists
Now this is our final hour
Let me be the voice in your strength and your choice
Let me simplify the rhyme just to amplify the noise
Try to amplify the times it, and multiply by six...
Teen million people, Are equal at this high pitch
Maybe we can reach Al Queda through my speech
Let the president answer a higher anarchy
Strap him with an AK-47, let him go, fight his own war
Let him impress daddy that way
No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our own soil
No more psychological warfare, to trick us to thinking that we ain't loyal
If we don't serve our own country, we're patronizing a hero
Look in his eyes its all lies
The stars and stripes, they've been swiped, washed out and wiped
And replaced with his own face, Mosh now or die
If I get sniped tonight you know why,
Cause I told you to fight.

[Chorus]

And as we proceed,
To Mosh through this desert storm,
In these closing statements, if they should argue
Let us beg to differ
As we set aside our differences
And assemble our own army
To disarm this Weapon of Mass Destruction
That we call our President, for the present
And Mosh for the future of our next generation
To speak and be heard
Mr. President, Mr. Senator

[Kids' Voices]
Do you guys hear us...hear us...[laughing]

lyrics posted without permission under fair use

Congratulations to the Green Bay Packers for defeating the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons 28-14.

For those unaware, every time the Washington Redskins wins their last home game before the election, the incumbent party wins, and every time they lose, the incumbent party loses.

A lot of conservatives, particularly bloggers, seem to be whining about so-called liberal media bias lately. I know that most conservatives like to think that they are victims oppressed by the liberal "elite," in their projection of elitism, but come on.

The media isn't "liberal," whatever that's taken to mean; it's corporate! GE owns NBC. Disney owns ABC. Viacom owns CBS. Fox, well that goes without saying. Time Warner owns CNN. Microsoft and GE own MSNBC. Are you telling me that these corporations engage in liberal bias? They engage in corporate bias, and that is certainly not liberal bias.

If there is any corporate bias with respect to politics, it's for the party they think will win. Why? Because they are looking out for themselves and their shareholders. Corporate bias means that they have to make nice with the ruling party. Are you telling me that when the media thought that the Kerry campaign would tank because of the Swift Boat Liars stuff that they were broadcasting all of the allegations day-in day-out because of liberal bias? Bullshit. They thought they were getting in good with the Bush administration.

But conservatives always have to play the victim. Lately the complaint is negative stories about Bush. But let's go to the videotape:

In the limited sample (which included four newspapers, two cable news programs, and seven shows on broadcast networks), more than half of all Bush stories were negative in tone during this period. One-quarter of all Kerry stories were negative, according to the study.

"This is the mirror image of what happened four years ago," the report states, when Bush benefited from coverage in the same debate period, enjoying twice as many positive stories as Al Gore.
[...]
In all, from all outlets, 817 stories were coded and decoded.

In the final accounting, 59% of stories that were mainly about Bush told a mainly negative story, while 25% of Kerry stories played out that way. One in three stories about Kerry were positive, one in seven for Bush.

In 2000, in the same period, 56% of stories about Vice President Al Gore were mainly egative[sic].

The same article that conservatives are using to claim bias in favor of Kerry says that there were all kinds of biased articles towards Bush in 2000. Nice try.

This claim of liberal bias is just wanting to be the victim, time and time again. Name something positive Bush has done. Seriously. He lost all 3 debates. His domestic policy is in shambles. He pissed his pants when 9/11 happened and didn't do anything to secure the country properly afterward. His foreign policy is in shambles. He projected his own flip-flops onto Kerry. Iraq is in chaos.

And that brings up another example of a stupid claim. Most conservatives seem to think that talking about Iraq at all is bias in favor of Kerry. Perhaps if Bush had conducted the war properly, it wouldn't be such a negative factor for him? Maybe? Maybe? Just a thought...

Anyone else think this Hawaii thing is just a way for Bush to try to get Kerry to divert funds and attention? I'm calling bullshit on those polls. California in 2000 anyone?

Another video so close to the election, eh?

Bin Laden sharply criticized President Bush for his behavior on the morning of September 11, 2001, when the president was reading "My Pet Goat" to a group of schoolchildren in Florida at the time he was informed of the attacks.

"It never occurred that the highest leader of the military armed forces would leave 50,000 people to face the horror that they faced all by themselves when they needed him most," bin Laden said.

"He was more interested in listening to the child's story about the goat rather than worry about what was happening to the towers. So, that gave us double the time for us to execute our attacks."

As Jon Stewart might say, it seems to me that Mr. Bin Laden is trying to call Bush a pussy.

If I asked you when this was actually said, would you believe me if I said Oct 29, 2004?

At an airport rally at a hangar in Montoursville, Pa., Cheney said the U.S. invasions of "Afghanistan and Iraq will be studied for years for their brilliance."

I encourage Mr. Cheney to join the real world at some point.

Looks like Bush did drop the chalupa on this one:

A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The tape, broadcast on Wednesday night by the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, appeared to confirm a warning given earlier this month to the agency by Iraqi officials, who said that hundreds of tons of high-grade explosives, powerful enough to bring down buildings or detonate nuclear weapons, had vanished from the site after the invasion of Iraq.

These explosives didn't disappear before the fall of Baghdad. Our troops had the opportunity to secure these explosives and Bush didn't tell them to do so.

So apparently there's a big controversy over having Tom Cruise as the host of the Nobel Peace Prize concert (along with Oprah) because he's a scientologist. Scientologists generally try to prevent any sort of release of their religious materials, so we have no idea what they stand for, but this quote by a Scientology rep makes me think that the Nazis probably thought they were doing the same thing as scientologists think they're doing, so it's not really a good defense:

Cruise’s rep didn’t return The Scoop’s calls for comment, but a rep for the Church of Scientology defended the religion and attacked its critics, telling Expressen “I usually say: ‘Would you support an organization that works for a peaceful world and a world without drugs?’ You can wonder what Andreas Heldal-Lund’s goals are in his life, is it to persecute other religions? He works against an organization that definitely will improve the world and that works for human rights.”

Just to add some fodder here, I don't think they should have picked Tom Cruise, or even Oprah for that matter. How about Billy Crystal? Or even better, Jon Stewart?

Someone just sent me this article by John Shelby Spong entitled "Understanding the Christian roots of my political depression", and here's a little excerpt:

In 2004 we have seen the pattern repeated. John Kerry, a veteran who served with honor and distinction in Vietnam was told in countless surrogate ads that his service was not worthy and that his three purple hearts and his Silver Star for heroism were cheaply won. For a candidate who ducked military service by securing a preferential appointment to the Texas National Guard, part of which was served in Alabama , this takes gall indeed.

Then Senator Zell Miller, his face contorted with anger, recited a litany of weapons systems that he said Senator Kerry had opposed. What he failed to say was that most of these military cuts were recommended by a Secretary of Defense named Richard Cheney in the first Bush Administration! The last time I looked, the Ten Commandments still included an injunction against bearing false witness.

Yes, other campaigns bend the truth but these tactics go beyond just bending, they assassinate character and suggest traitorous behavior. When that is combined with the fact that this party does this while proclaiming itself the party of religion, cultural values and faith-based initiatives is the final straw for me. I experience the religious right as a deeply racist enterprise that seeks to hide its intolerance under the rhetoric of super patriotism and "family values." For those who think that this is too strong a charge or too out of bounds politically, I invite you to look at the record.

It was George H. W. Bush who gave us Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, calling him "the most qualified person in America." Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall, who had been the legal hero to black Americans during the struggle over segregation. Clarence Thomas, the opponent of every governmental program that made his own life possible, is today an embarrassment to blacks in America . To appoint a black man to do the racist work against black people is demonic. Consistent with that pattern, this administration entered an amicus brief against the University of Michigan 's Law School because in the quest for a representative student body that Law School used race as one factor in determining admissions. The strange 'Orwellian' rhetoric again was deceiving. "We want America to be a nation where race is not counted for anything and all are to be judged on merit alone." Those are fair sounding words until one factors in centuries of slavery and segregation, or the quality of public education in urban America which just happens to be predominantly black. Next one cannot help noticing the concerted Republican effort to limit black suffrage in many states like Florida where it has been most overt, and to deny the power of the ballot to all the citizens of Washington , D.C.

Does anyone doubt that the people of Washington have no vote for any other reason than that they are overwhelmingly black?

Given the latest quote by Rudy Giuliani, blaming the Al Qaqaa debacle on the troops instead of those who manage the troops, does anyone else think that he's been brainwashed by the Bush administration just a little too much? He used to say at least somewhat intelligent things, but now not so much. Especially given the evidence that has come out, Giuliani's quote makes absolutely no sense, because everyone was damn well aware of Al Qaqaa and the explosives there.

And what's with his eye thing? He randomly opens his eyes really wide to punctuate things or something. Has he always done that? He did it on the Daily Show and he did it on the clip from Eschaton.

Has anyone noticed that most polls are so inconsistent with each other that they all seem like bullshit?

Here's the link to the amazing video of "Mosh," Eminem's GOTV song.

Bush's campaign has barred access to his website from anywhere outside of the U.S. and Canada in the wussiest move ever:

The Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has barred people outside the United States from viewing its Web site following an electronic attack that took down the campaign's Internet address for six hours last week, according to computer security experts.

Since midnight on Monday, no one outside the United States except people in Canada could see the site, said Rich Miller, a security analyst for Netcraft, a Web site monitoring firm in Bath, England. Internet users from other countries instead see a white page featuring the message: "Access denied: You don't have permission to access www.georgewbush.com on this server."

The move happened one week after the Bush-Cheney and Republican National Committee sites were unavailable for almost six hours. Security experts said the outage probably was the result of a "distributed denial-of-service attack," in which hackers use tens of thousands of hijacked computers to overwhelm Web sites by flooding them with bursts of digital data.

This guy is too much of a coward to show his website to the free world, and yet we're supposed to vote for him to lead it?

Via Eschaton, here's an a Bush quote:

"For a political candidate to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief." - George W. Bush, 10/27/04

This isn't about voter fraud. It's about voter obstruction and voter intimidation. GOP campaigners are pathetic because they know they can't win if people actually come out and vote.

Check out this article from the Washington Post about Ohio from yesterday.

Update:
And now even more despicable:

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."
[...]
In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows.

The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.

This is 2004, not 1904. This sort of stuff needs to stop.

Love the dig at Darth Cheney:

"The Bush administration first tried to convince the American people that this was not a big deal -- not a big deal that 380 tons of high-grade explosives were now likely in the hands of terrorists and insurgents. Then, the White House shifted and they said that officials guarding explosives, dumps was not really a high priority -- but guarding the Iraqi Oil Ministry was," Kerry said. "As more information was revealed in the press, the White House switched to their most comfortable position -- the situation was bad but it was not their responsibility. Vice President Cheney, who is becoming the chief minister of disinformation, he echoed that it's not the administration's fault and even criticized those who raised the subject."

Howard Stern had a phone call on the air on KGO's Ronn Owens' show with the Worst FCC Chairman Ever™:

"Let's face it. You got to the head of the FCC, you got to the front of the class the way George W. Bush got out of the draft -- and it's completely fair for me to question," Stern said.

The FCC chairman defended his credentials and snapped, "I think it's a cheap shot to say just because my father's famous, I don't belong in my position."
[...]
Moments later, Stern called Powell "an enigma" and said, "You're the judge, you're the arbiter, you're the one who tells us what we can and can't say on the air. And yet I really don't even think you're qualified to be the head of the commission. Do you deny that your father got you this job?"

"I would deny it exceedingly. You can look at my resume if you want, Howard. I'm not ashamed of it and I think it justifies my existence," said Powell, adding that he served as the chief of staff of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division and was a private attorney.

"If you don't believe the commission should have any rights to draw limits, I think that's a respectable position but it doesn't happen to be the law," he said.
[...]
He added, "I don't think we've made any particular crusade of the Howard Stern Show or you."

"Yeah, OK, Michael," Stern replied. "That's why I've received the largest fines in history."
[...]
"I don't take this personally," Stern said. "I don't think that you personally hate me. I think what you've been doing is dangerous to free speech. I don't think just against me, I think things have gotten way out of control."

This is why we love Clinton:

"One of Clinton's laws of politics is this: If one candidate's trying to scare you, and the other one's trying to get you to think; if one candidate's appealing to your fears, and the other one's appealing to your hopes; you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope," he said.

I saw this article this morning, and it's ridiculous. The New York Times details how the U.S. has lost control of all of the explosives from Al Qaqaa in Iraq, a munitions storage facility, despite advance warnings from the IAEA, including warnings to Paul Bremer. This is the kind of severe incompetence that we've seen from the Bush administration, resulting in the U.S. being less safe from terrorism:

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.

The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

As he should, Kerry seized on this gross incompetence by the Bush administration. In yet another case of projection, the Bush campaign responded non-sensically, saying that Kerry was desperate because he seized on the news, when in reality, the Bush campaign is desperate because of their low internal polling. What the Bush campaign fails to realize is that it's hardly "grasping" when you're handed the fodder. Bush himself had this quote:

"This is the worst kind of Monday morning quarterbacking," Mr. Bush said of Mr. Kerry's criticism. "And it's what we've come to expect from my opponent."

The problem is, Mr. Bush, that if we had the proper Sunday afternoon quarterbacking, we wouldn't be in this situation right now.

Also, in an insult to women everywhere, the NYT misstated the gender of Dan Bartlett (uncorrected as of 10:35PM):

Asked about accusations from the Kerry campaign that the White House had kept the disappearance secret until The Times and CBS broke the story on Monday morning, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said the White House had decided "to get all the facts and find out exactly what happened in this case, and then whether there are other cases."

Ms. Bartlett went on to say, "So doing it piecemeal - I don't think that would have been the responsible thing." He said that so far, no other large-scale cases of looting of explosives had been found.

Wow. As we've seen on other shows, John O'Neill is such a hack. Talking points much?

The broadcast is a debate from October 20 between John O'Neill, leader of the Swift Boat Liars, and Glenn Smith, author of "Unfit Commander," at PJ's Sports Bar in Houston.

Many of the questioners were really good, especially the guy pointing out that many of the weapons in Iraq were the ones that Rumsfeld sold them, according to the reports on Iraq.

I've been following this Hendrick Motorsports plane crash [subscription required], and there is sad news to report. No one on the plane survived, including Ricky Hendrick, a member of my high school graduating class, and at least two other members of the Hendrick family. My thoughts go out to the Hendrick family, and we'll miss Ricky at the reunion this week.

I saw this last night. Ashlee Simpson got caught lip synching, started doing a "hoe-down" (apparently), and then walked off stage.

Usually a "hoe-down" on SNL means that Britney Spears tripped...

40 minute warning for you East Coasters. Still a few hours over here.

The Los Angeles Times has an article on the growth of Sinclair. It manages to get some words in about the skeeziness of CEO David D. Smith. The main point seems to be that Sinclair generally pushes the FCC limits on ownership, but then the FCC approves the deals anyway.

At the very end of the article on the intelligence bill that's currently in conference, the Washington Post threw in a few lines on Porter Goss and how the CIA feels about him:

Meanwhile, a Democratic campaign official confirmed a Financial Times report yesterday that Rand Beers, national security adviser to the Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, said that the new CIA director, Porter J. Goss, would "likely" be asked to resign if Kerry wins the presidency on Nov. 2. "It is to be expected," the official said, noting that other political appointees to that post, including onetime CIA director George H.W. Bush, who later became president, were also asked to leave.

"Kerry ought to announce that publicly," a former CIA official said yesterday, "because it would get him votes among agency employees." They resent Goss bringing as aides a handful of GOP staff members from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which he had chaired.

Took them long enough:

We do, however, fault Mr. Bush for exaggerating to the public the intelligence given him privately and for alienating allies unnecessarily. Above all, we fault him for ignoring advice to better prepare for postwar reconstruction. The damage caused by that willful indifference is incalculable. There is no guarantee that Iraq would be more peaceful today if U.S. forces had prevented postwar looting, secured arms depots, welcomed international involvement and transferred authority to Iraqis more quickly. But the chances of success would have been higher. Yet the administration repeatedly rebuffed advice to commit sufficient troops. Its disregard for the Geneva Conventions led to a prison-torture scandal in both Iraq and Afghanistan that has diminished for years, if not decades, the United States' image and influence abroad. In much of the world, in fact, U.S. prestige is at a historic low, partly because of the president's high-handed approach to allies on issues ranging far beyond Iraq.

These failings have a common source in Mr. Bush's cocksureness, his failure to seek advice from anyone outside a narrow circle and his unwillingness to expect the unexpected or adapt to new facts. These are dangerous traits in any president but especially in a wartime leader. They are matched by his failure to admit his errors or to hold senior officials accountable for theirs.
[...]
Which brings us to his reckless fiscal policy. Mr. Bush inherited a budget in surplus but facing strains in the long run as retiring baby boomers intensify their claims on the nation's resources for pensions and health care. A recession that was gathering as he took office, and the economic blow delivered by the Sept. 11 attacks, would have turned surplus into deficit under the best of circumstances.

But Mr. Bush aggravated those circum- stances and drove the deficit to record levels with tax cuts that were inefficient in providing economic stimulus and that were tilted toward the wealthy. Despite the drains on the Treasury from the war in Iraq, he insisted that all the cuts be made permanent; no one, no matter how rich, was asked to sacrifice. Mr. Bush's rationales have shifted, but his prescription -- tax cuts -- has remained constant, no matter what the cost to future generations. The resulting fiscal deficit has dragged down the national savings rate, leaving the country dependent upon foreigners for capital in an unsustainable way. Mr. Bush says the answer lies in spending discipline, but he has shown none himself; see, for example, the disgusting farm subsidies he signed into law.
[...]
None of these issues would bring us to vote for Mr. Kerry if he were less likely than Mr. Bush to keep the nation safe. But we believe the challenger is well equipped to guide the country in a time of danger. Mr. Kerry brings a résumé that unarguably has prepared him for high office. He understood early on the dangers of non-state actors such as al Qaeda. To pave the way for restored relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, he took on the thankless and politically risky task of convincing relatives that no American prisoners remained in Southeast Asia. While he wrongly opposed the first Persian Gulf War, he supported the use of American force in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Read more!

The New York Times has a disturbing article about teams of Republicans set up to challenge voter qualifications in an attempt to suppress the vote by intimidation:

"Our concern is Republicans will be challenging in large numbers for the purpose of slowing down voting, because challenging takes a long time," said David Sullivan, the voter protection coordinator for the national Democratic Party in Ohio. "And creating long lines causes our people to leave without voting."
[...]
Reno Oradini, the Cuyahoga County election board attorney, said a challenge would in effect create impromptu courts at polling places as workers huddled to resolve a dispute and cause delays in voting. He said he was working with local election officials to find ways of preventing disruptions that could drive away impatient voters and reduce turnout.

It's certainly a sign of weakness, but more importantly, this is a dirty trick. The only way Republicans can win in Ohio is to suppress the vote, and it's pathetic.

The NYT writes on how the election threat by Tom Ridge was based on no specific evidence whatsoever. More fearmongering by Tom "Homeland Security Doesn't Do Politics" Ridge:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - In early July, the Homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, declared that credible intelligence showed Al Qaeda intended to launch a "large-scale attack" inside the United States to "disrupt our democratic process." More than three months later, counterterrorism officials in the United States and overseas say they are still concerned, but have uncovered little specific evidence of a plot timed to the election.

Extensive investigations into the most significant reported threat unearthed this year, a years-old Qaeda surveillance operation thought to be aimed at five financial institutions in New York, Newark and Washington, has found no sign that it had evolved into concrete operations.

There are now doubts among intelligence officials that a group of eight men arrested in Britain last August planned to strike in the United States around the presidential election, as suspected at first.

And an informant on Al Qaeda, who told authorities last spring that there might be an election-season attack in the United States, has recently been discredited, the officials said.

Looks Jon Stewart is the big new thing for the media to talk about. The New York Times decided that he's not just a comedian because he has serious views. The Washington Post did more of an introduction for people who don't know who he is.

Bush tried to fool everyone by referring to the WTC bombing, but there are other problems here, such as Bush's own choice for head of the CIA:

Now, it may be that the ad is referring to a slightly different amendment, an omnibus deficit-reduction bill that Sen. Kerry proposed in 1994. It would have imposed cuts across several federal agencies, including a $1 billion cut—for that year and each of the following five years—in the intelligence budget. Kerry didn't link these cuts to specific programs, though the NRO scandal was emerging, and it was widely known that waste and inefficiency pervaded intelligence programs, especially in the high-tech sectors. The amendment didn't pass, mainly because omnibus budget cuts of all sorts rarely pass.

If this is the bill that the "Wolves" ad refers to, Sen. Kerry might be charged with legislative vagueness, but hardly with pushing "deep" cuts that "would have weakened America's defenses." The annual intelligence budget totaled about $30 billion at the time. In other words, Kerry's bill would have cut it by 3 percent.

By the way, Kerry was hardly alone in proposing intelligence cuts. Around the same time, in 1995, Rep. Porter Goss—who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee—co-sponsored another omnibus budget-trimmer, which among other things would have cut intelligence personnel by 4 percent a year in each year from 1996 to 2000. Goss, of course, is the man that President Bush recently appointed as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. If the wolves are coming after anyone, they have more cause to howl at Porter Goss—and, by implication, George W. Bush—than at John Kerry and the Democrats.

Newsweek has an article I read yesterday that has a good summary of the fight against "Stolen Honor" as played by Sinclair. The beautiful results were a deluge of emails and calls to Sinclair advertisers, the decent ones of which dropped out, and Sinclair's stock taking a dive, as we noticed throughout the week. I wish I had shorted it:

Sinclair's pocketbook came under immediate assault. Big institutions, including some unions and pension funds, pressured their fund managers to dump Sinclair's stock, according to an institutional investor for one of the country's largest trade unions—which traditionally align with the Democratic Party. Realizing their portfolios were at risk, some Wall Street decision-makers—money managers, investment advisors, pension funds and individual investors—burst into open revolt. New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, a Democrat, is the sole trustee for the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which owns about 250,000 shares of Sinclair stock. In a letter to Sinclair executives, Hevesi criticized the negative publicity generated by the controversy and the subsequent impact on the company’s stock.

In three days, Sinclair's stock slid nearly 15 percent. Yesterday, a collection of Sinclair's shareholders called in the lawyers. Glickenhaus & Co., a New York money-management firm that owns significant shares of Sinclair, informed the broadcaster that they would sue unless it altered plans to air the film. Additionally, a group led by a New York hospital-employees pension fund announced that it was suing the broadcaster to recover damages from alleged insider trading and any fallout from the "Stolen Honor" controversy. The group served Sinclair with papers yesterday. Calls to the broadcaster for comment went unreturned.

The shareholders' insider-trading allegation is based on a large volume of trades that occurred just before Sinclair's advertising went south. Shareholders also sought damages for any drag "Stolen Honor" might have on revenues, via fines or boycotts. "This company has been very hurt by its decision to run a political movie," said the shareholders’ attorney, William Lerach, a noted securities litigator and prominent player in Democratic circles. Sinclair's stock price dropped from $8 to $6.50 in the past three weeks, but rebounded to $7 Wednesday after the company said it wouldn’t run “Stolen Honor” in its entirety.

Although I find any and all Gallup numbers questionable still, the Gallup poll points to Kerry in Ohio:

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Thursday night indicated Bush and Kerry were about even in Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes.

Among likely voters, Kerry was ahead by 1 point, 48 percent to 47 percent. Kerry had a 6-point edge, 50 percent to 44 percent, among registered voters.

Jonathan Alter suggests that the Red Sox winning game 7 might be good for Kerry. His argument doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's an amusing read:

The only thing Americans like more than a winner is an underdog who upsets a winner, especially a scraggly bunch sticking it to the uptown trust-fund crowd. When the Sox were losing and he wasn’t hitting, Johnny Damon looked like one of those longhaired Vietnam War protesters that Kerry used to hang out with. (While the Yankees’ Kevin Brown appeared like a well-scrubbed spokesmen for the Republican National Committee). But after he drove in six runs in Game 7, Damon’s hippie look is cool again—and Bush’s attack on Kerry as a dangerous Northeastern liberal is sounding a bit tinny.

The whole subtext of the Bush campaign is to make “Massachusetts” into a code word for un-American values. That’s harder now, in Red Sox Nation.

And if this election goes into extra innings, like Campaign 2000, remember this: the Red Sox battled back and won this time. It could happen again, in November.

In any case, go St. Louis! (Bush I is an Astros fan, even though, as he did with every company he managed despite his Harvard MBA, Bush II ran the Rangers into the ground -- he traded Sammy Sosa, for god's sake!!)

Tom "Don't Call Me Frenchie" DeLay got subpoenaed for using the Department of Homeland Security for his personal benefit. Here's the email from DFA:

Things are getting worse for Tom DeLay. News broke this morning that he has been subpoenaed to testify about his office sending Homeland Security agents after his political opponents.

He has to be in court on Monday.

The news comes the morning after your contributions put the first-ever TV ad by Democracy for America on the air in his district.

The ad went up at 6:00 p.m. last night and is still running. Next week Al Franken will be headlining an event in New York to beef up the rotation and keep the ad up through Election Day. It will stay on the air as long as you keep it going.

This race is close--and getting closer. An Associated Press story from before the subpoena picked up on the discontent with DeLay in his hometown. From that article:

"I think he ought to quit," said Amin Abdulla, 45, who owns an ice cream shop and who has voted for DeLay in the past. "I was in denial for the last year. But the reality is I'm disappointed to see how much he's abused power. He takes it for granted.

"I would recall him in a heartbeat," Abdulla said.

A lot can happen in the next week and a half. Don't just follow the story of Tom DeLay's collapse--be a part of it:

http://www.retiretomdelay.com

Thank you,

Lindsay Lewis
National Finance Director
Democracy for America

P.S. Here is a link to the full story on the subpoena:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/10/21/delay.subpoena.ap/

At this link, you can see if your Republican representative took illegal money from Tom DeLay. You can also have a letter sent to your representative about this matter, as I did for Sue Myrick (R-NC09).

Despite the Republican strategerists' attempt to find a Republican demographic and call them swing voters, Kerry has made gains among women:

In early September, Mr. Bush led Mr. Kerry among women, 48 percent to 43 percent in the CBS News poll. As of Sunday, in The New York Times/CBS News poll, Mr. Kerry was leading among women who are registered voters, 50 percent to 40 percent. Other polls show Mr. Kerry with a smaller lead among women, but a lead nonetheless.

The Times/CBS poll showed Mr. Kerry solidifying an already strong lead among single women. It showed him pulling ahead of Mr. Bush among women over 50, though not by much, after being behind.

One of the few categories of women in which Mr. Bush leads Mr. Kerry is among those who are married, who tend to vote Republican. But Mr. Kerry has shrunk the gap. As of Sept. 6, Mr. Bush had an edge of 27 percentage points over Mr. Kerry among married women; as of Sunday the gap had shrunk to 7 points.

The ads also reflect intense competition for suburban women, who tend to be married with children. The Times/CBS poll shows that in the last six weeks, Mr. Kerry has improved his standing with these swing voters. In September, Mr. Bush was beating Mr. Kerry by 10 percentage points among registered suburban women. The poll showed Mr. Kerry leading by eight percentage points.

The article also touches on single women, who are probably the weakest voting demographic in terms of turnout. Kerry has a wide lead in this demographic, but as has been mentioned numerous times, turnout is the problem.

This is ridiculous. Bush was talking to Pat Robertson before the war. This is what happens when you're so mentally ill that you think you're the Messiah. Did Bush believe that Iraqis would think that Americans are the righteous and throw down their weapons instead of fighting? Someone needs to bring us back to the Reality-Based Community:

The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of casualties, but the president told him, "We're not going to have any casualties."

Pat Robertson, an ardent Bush supporter, said he had that conversation with the president in Nashville, Tennessee, before the March 2003 invasion U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. He described Bush in the meeting as "the most self-assured man I've ever met in my life."

"You remember Mark Twain said, 'He looks like a contented Christian with four aces.' I mean he was just sitting there like, 'I'm on top of the world,' " Robertson said on the CNN show, "Paula Zahn Now."

"And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.' "

Robertson said the president then told him, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."

Paul Krugman writes about the high likelihood of a draft under another Bush term:

There were two reasons some of us never believed Mr. Bush's budget promises. First, his claims that his tax cuts were affordable rested on patently unrealistic budget projections. Second, his broader policy goals, including the partial privatization of Social Security - which is clearly on his agenda for a second term - would involve large costs that were not included even in those unrealistic projections. This led to the justified suspicion that his election-year promises notwithstanding, Mr. Bush would preside over a return to budget deficits.

It's exactly the same when it comes to the draft. Mr. Bush's claim that we don't need any expansion in our military is patently unrealistic; it ignores the severe stress our Army is already under. And the experience in Iraq shows that pursuing his broader foreign policy doctrine - the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive war - would require much larger military forces than we now have.

This leads to the justified suspicion that after the election, Mr. Bush will seek a large expansion in our military, quite possibly through a return of the draft.

Mr. Bush's assurances that this won't happen are based on a denial of reality. Last week, the Republican National Committee sent an angry, threatening letter to Rock the Vote, an organization that has been using the draft issue to mobilize young voters. "This urban myth regarding a draft has been thoroughly debunked," the letter declared, and quoted Mr. Bush: "We don't need the draft. Look, the all-volunteer Army is working."

In fact, the all-volunteer Army is under severe stress. A study commissioned by Donald Rumsfeld arrived at the same conclusion as every independent study: the U.S. has "inadequate total numbers" of troops to sustain operations at the current pace. In Iraq, the lack of sufficient soldiers to protect supply convoys, let alone pacify the country, is the root cause of incidents like the case of the reservists who refused to go on what they described as a "suicide mission."

Only, it won't be released until after the election at the insistence of the Bush administration:

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

I thought I posted on this yesterday, but don't see the post. Republicans are trying to suppress votes by moving polling places at the last minute, led by certified racist Matt Robb, a Republican ward leader. Specifically, they want to move polling places in 63 precincts, 53 of which have less than 10% white voters. With guys like Matt Robb around, Jim Crow isn't too far out of our history, and this is in a northern state.

The LeftCoaster analyzes the latest Gallup poll's internals:

Because according to Gallup’s poll this week, they expect the electorate to be 85% white, 41% conservative while only 19% liberal, and a third to make over $75,000 per year.

This data doesn't match the 2000 exit polls very well, as Steve Soto shows. One particularly pertinent example is that the sample assumes 11% of voters are 18-29 when 2000 exit polls said 17%. That's easily a material difference.

This article by Dana Stevens on Slate totally misses any sort of intelligent analysis of Stewart's appearance on Crossfire. Instead of realizing that Jon Stewart was trying to make a point, while Tucker Carlson was being an asshole, Stevens suggests that Jon Stewart may have lost some of his appeal in the media by taking on Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. The truth of the matter is that Begala and Carlson are partisan hacks. The media has been shirking its duty, and Stevens along with many others has her head too far up her ass to realize it.

To suggest that Stewart's appearance was a "freak out" is a pretty unintelligent response. Anyone who has heard Jon on O'Reilly and on NPR knows how he feels about Crossfire and about cable news in general. Stewart got his chance to air his views on Crossfire on the show itself, and he took full advantage of the opportunity. Simply repeating talking points is not debate. Repeating talking points is not analysis, as cable news claims it to be. It's about time someone confronted the culprits.

Jon Stewart gave Crossfire constructive criticism in between the traded insults. Apparently Tucker Carlson and Dana Stevens aren't capable of dealing with such things.

Update:

Check out this NYTimes article for a substantive response to the show.

British MPs are mad about Tony Blair and Geoffrey Hoon pondering the movement of troops to Iskandariyah at the request of Bush. Even members of Parliament who voted for war question why Britain should move troops for Bush's political gain:

Furious Labour politicians warned Tony Blair last night that they had drawn a line in the sand over the American request for the deployment of more British troops.

Previously loyal MPs who had supported Mr Blair in the vote on the war in Iraq said: "This far, and no further."

Government whips reported back to Mr Blair of their alarm at the change of mood on the Labour back benches. "The worm has turned," said one anti-war Labour MP.

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, was also being blamed for mishandling a holding statement on the deployment of troops after making it clear that Mr Blair could not say "no" to President Bush. "He made a bad mistake," said one minister.
[...]
He infuriated Labour MPs when he told them that if Britain said "no" to President George Bush "we will have failed in our duty as an ally". MPs are incensed that Mr Blair appears to be taking them for granted. Sir Gerald Kaufman, who voted for the war, warned Mr Blair against putting lives of British troops at risk to support the Republican President against his Democratic challenger, John Kerry, in the presidential election on 2 November.

"I have not changed my view on the war but I do not want my government to be manipulated by one of the most unscrupulous US administrations that the US has ever seen," he said.

Many Labour MPs believe Mr Bush wants a decisive victory before polling day, and he needs British troops to relieve US troops before they mount an attack on insurgents in Fallujah.

Daily Kos has links to SUSA polls in Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. Kerry pulled ahead by 1% (50-49) in Florida, 6% (51-45) in Pennsylvania, and is down 3% (50-47) in North Carolina. N.C. is somewhat surprising because Bush was up about 7% there previously. Independent voters in all three states prefer Kerry. In North Carolina, Democrat support of Kerry is weaker than the other two states.

Military/Vets polled higher for Kerry in Florida and Pennyslvania, but lower for Kerry in North Carolina. Also, Hispanic voters and Asian/Other voters overwhelmingly supported Kerry in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, but this wasn't the case in Florida. For Hispanic voters, this isn't suprising in Florida, given the large number of Cuban-Americans. However, I'm not sure what voting bloc is causing the shift among Asian/Other voters in Florida.

One more interesting tidbit is that Pennsylvania had a break down by religion. 84% of Jews prefer Kerry, and 100% of Muslims prefer Kerry, neither of which is surprising, but they're interesting to note. Note also that these are likely subsamples that are relatively small, so the margins of error are higher.

What the fuck?

Bush, in an Associated Press interview, said of Kerry, “He’s trying to scare our seniors. It is wrong to try to scare people going into the polls.”

The Republican incumbent said Kerry’s charges were just “old-style politics.” Bush said the United States will remain “on alert” about the possibility of a terrorist strike on U.S. soil before the election, but said, “we have no specific threat information on that. Otherwise, we would have let people know.”

“The United States and other countries have been concerned about the possibility of an election-related terrorist strike ever since the Madrid bombings,” said the president, who added that he had taken part in a National Security Council meeting earlier in the day to talk about threat information.

Flippy...floppily...ahh, strong leadership. Who's trying to scare whom into going to the polls?

Bush DID say he was going to privatize Social Security in that article by Suskind, and Suskind confirmed this on NPR this morning. And furthermore, the DOD does have plans for a draft on the back-burner, even if Congress doesn't approve at the moment.

The LATimes writes on the incumbent rule, which has been quoted quite frequently in the blogosphere. The incumbent president has never gotten even a whole percentage point over his percentage from the last Gallup poll before the election since Truman, when Gallup polls were less frequent and the previous poll was mid-October. Of course, with the way Gallup polls have been biased lately, who knows what will happen. It is true that Kerry has been doing well among independent voters. Given that this election will be decided in the swing states, I still wonder how much national polls represent those states.

"We know from the history of presidential elections that when a president is polling below 50% going into the election, he usually loses," said Alan I. Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist. "That is true of incumbent office holders in general. The incumbent usually ends up getting the percentage that he is getting in the final polls — that's it."
[...]
"This is a very well-known incumbent where people have strong views," said Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg, a Kerry advisor. "His number [in the last polls] I believe is his number [on election day]."

Even some senior Republican strategists privately agreed that the experience of the last half-century supported that argument. In the history of polling dating back to 1952, no incumbent president has run even 1 full percentage point better on election day than he did in the final Gallup Poll before the vote.
[...]
History isn't always predictive, but races involving White House incumbents have produced a clear pattern over the last 50 years.

Since Gallup began systematic polling in 1952, eight incumbents have sought reelection. Bill Clinton in 1996, Jimmy Carter in 1980, Gerald Ford in 1976, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 all attracted a smaller share of the vote on election day than they did in the final Gallup survey. Richard M. Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984 finished almost exactly at their final polling numbers.

George H.W. Bush in 1992 ran seven-tenths of a percentage point ahead of his final poll number, the biggest increase for any incumbent since 1952. The one exception to this pattern was in 1948, when Gallup polled less often, and the final survey, begun in mid-October, missed Harry S. Truman's late surge; Truman exceeded his final poll number by a full 5 percentage points.

Conversely, challengers — like Reagan in 1980, Carter in 1976, Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Adlai Stevenson in 1956 — have frequently polled higher on election day than in the final survey.
[...]
But independent pollster John Zogby was dubious that Bush would be able to split those who remained undecided to the end. In Zogby's Sunday poll, two-thirds of undecided voters said they were dissatisfied with Bush's job performance.

"Bush is not going to get them under any circumstances," he predicted. The key uncertainty, Zogby said, was whether "Kerry can persuade them to come out to vote."

Bob Herbert's latest column is entitled "A War Without Reason."

In other non-news, which I won't grace with a link, William Safire continues to show himself to be a political hack by writing about Mary Cheney.

I heard about this on NPR (BBC on NPR) this evening. At the request of the U.S., the British government is pondering moving about 650 troops to Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, which is a much more risky post. The U.S. wants to move into Fallujah, and says that the movement of British troops would be helpful in the endeavor. There are two questions the British government has: 1) is this a good idea militarily?; 2) is this a good idea politically?

According to the BBC, the military question will be answered by British generals, and the Independent has details on the possible deployment. However, the political question is charged for a few reasons. First is that the British troops would be under more direct command of U.S. generals (currently there is the allied command, which does grand strategy, instead of detailed operations). However, another big reason is because many people think that Bush wants the British troops in a more risky position so that he can claim before the election that the U.S. is not taking on most of the burden. The BBC today has an article about the political discussions:

Geoff Hoon is to address the Commons on Monday about proposals to put some British troops under US command in Iraq.

The defence secretary is expected to confirm a formal request for assistance has been received from the Americans.

But he will stress any decision would be entirely operational and not part of a deal to help President George Bush.
[...]
Shadow defence secretary Nicholas Soames has warned the government not to look like it goes along with everything the US demanded in the run-up to next month's presidential election.

"We need to watch the timing of all this and be careful that this isn't just being used as a kind of political gesture to reassure the Americans of Prime Minister Blair's support for the American efforts," he told the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme.

A Downing Street spokesman said there was "no political dimension" to any redeployment and no link to the US elections. [...]
Former foreign secretary Robin Cook fears UK troops will be blamed for US aggression if redeployed.

Mr Cook, who resigned from the government over the decision to invade Iraq, said: "The real risk of sending a British battalion into the US sector is that our troops could become associated in Iraqi minds with US methods."

Lord Alton of Liverpool writes an article asking how someone could deny that what's happening in Darfur is genocide. Although Alton praises the U.S. for recognizing genocide in Darfur, the U.S. took long enough to realize such things. Certainly a declaration of genocide is a serious matter for international consequences, but I'm not convinced that sitting on the sidelines as most of the world has done is the way to go, as Rwanda showed:

While the international community procrastinated last week about whether events in Darfur constitute genocide, I visited the Ardamata refugee camp in Geneina, where 30,000 people are sheltering. Tribal leaders there testified to a campaign of killing, rape, burning and looting by the Janjaweed militias which have killed an estimated 70,000 people and displaced 1.4 million others.

Three months ago, the UN described the situation in Darfur as "the world's worst humanitarian crisis". On my two-day visit, I found that nothing much has changed. The government of Sudan has reneged on its promise to disarm the Janjaweed. Their campaign has the sole objective of eradicating the black tribes and installing the Arabs in their place. If this isn't genocide, then it's difficult to imagine what on earth is.

I have sent a full report to Tony Blair and will ask a question about Darfur in the House of Lords today. My report is a catalogue of systematic violence driven by ethnic hatred and aided by the Sudanese regime. We heard first-hand accounts of the rape of girls as young as 10 and women as old as 80. Men wept as they recounted the humiliations and killings. The report is on the website of the human rights group the Jubilee Campaign, which arranged the visit (www.jubileecampaign.co.uk).
...
Yet Britain is one of 135 signatories to the 1949 Geneva Convention Against Genocide. This is not merely declamatory, it places a duty on the signatories to "prevent and protect" and subsequently to prosecute and to bring to justice those who commit crimes against humanity.

Pandagon reports that Bush is doing a "major" address in South Jersey tomorrow. I'm guessing this is another one of his fake speeches, instead attacking John Kerry, that the networks will pick up, such as the one after Bush dropped the chalupa at the debates previously.

Rove is really showing signs of weakness. First he gives up the "flip-flopping" label in favor of saying Kerry is consistently liberal. Which is it, Karl? Flip-flopping or consistent? Then, he uses a lame attack based on Kerry mentioning Mary Cheney, which the networks eat up. Now there is the second desperation speech. Look for a lot more desperate attacks of the Rovian variety in the next two and a half weeks.

The networks should be saying, "Fool me once..." this time. And I bet they wouldn't flub it like Bush did. But seriously, they should do what Pandagon said, but because they have no integrity, they won't:

No matter how you look at it, this address is a sign of weakness for the Bush team. If they're so desperate for a change in the news cycles that they're playing the terrorism card, the internal polling just isn't looking good enough. And major addresses like this run a high risk of backfiring. The hype needed for the press corps. to attach the "major" qualifier creates serious expectations for the speech. If he steps up to the plate and proposes nothing new, an irritated media will spin the President's lack of new ideas on the subject and talk about the lost debates that forced the Garden State bait-and-switch. If he proposes a significant shift, it implicitly admits that he wasn't doing a good enough job for the first four years. It's a lose-lose, at least if the media does it's job right (yeah, yeah, big if).

At a New Yorker breakfast, the New York Daily News reports that Jon Stewart had some choice words to say about our favorite Douchebag of Liberty:

But that didn't stop "The Daily Show" anchor Jon Stewart from jumping all over the 73-year-old conservative columnist at the center of a Justice Department probe into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush White House antagonist Joseph Wilson.

"Bob Novak could end this whole thing tomorrow," the "fake news" apostle declared at a New Yorker magazine breakfast at the Bryant Park Grill. "There's millions of dollars being spent on this investigation, and people are going to jail, but his evil is not allowed even in the darkened abyss of his soul - some would say soul."

Stewart added: "He leaked a CIA source for punitive reasons - for ugly, partisan purposes."
[...]
Piling on, Stewart continued: "I would not have him on the show. I have standards. I wouldn't do it. He shouldn't be on television. CNN should not have him on the air. He should not be amongst civilized people."

First of all, the AP reports that the 343rd Quartermaster Company had unarmored trucks, which is something the army admits:

The U.S. Army Reserve soldiers who refused orders to drive a dangerous route were members of one of a few supply units whose trucks are still unarmored, their commanding general said Sunday.

The soldiers, now under investigation, had previously focused on local missions in safer parts of southern Iraq and had never driven a convoy north along the attack-prone roads passing through Baghdad.

"Not all of their trucks are completely armored. In their case, they haven't had the chance to get armored," said Brig. Gen. James E. Chambers, commanding general of 13th Corps Support Command, which sends some 250 convoys ferrying Army fuel, food and ammunition across Iraq each day.

But there's also a report that the helicopter fuel to have been delivered was contaminated, which is being denied by the Army:

The grandfather of a soldier who was part of an Army contingent that refused to deliver supplies in Iraq says his grandson called him Saturday morning and told him he had just been released from detainment.

Harold Casey of Louisville said his grandson, Justin Rogers, and other soldiers were put under armed guard after refusing to deliver supplies in Iraq.

The incident in Iraq was first reported Friday by The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss. Relatives of soldiers told the Mississippi newspaper that the troops refused to go on the mission because it was too dangerous, in part because their vehicles were in poor shape.

On Saturday, Casey said Rogers, 22, told him that the main reason he and his fellow troops refused to go on the mission was that the fuel they were transporting was contaminated.

"The fuel was contaminated for the helicopters," Casey said his grandson told him. "It would have caused them to crash. That's why they refused to deliver the fuel. They saved lives."

I guess it'll take another day or two to sort out what the truth is. If what Casey says is true, these guys are heroes.

This article has been going around the blogosphere from Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau detailing how the Bush administration failed in Iraq. It's a sad story. As many people know, Rumsfeld ignored General Shinseki and essentially fired him. That was followed by numerous errors, mostly likely several of which coming from mistaken trust in warlords and thugs, including Chalabi:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The article also has an accompanying graphic about expectations vs. reality for the war.

I finally got a chance to read the NYT Magazine article by Ron Suskind on Bush. This article is SCARY. I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying that Bush might have clinical mental problems here, having too much of a messiah-complex in his "crusade." More and more it comes out that regardless of facts, Bush acts according to whatever he thinks. The particularly telling example was the Sweden issue. Even evangelicals like Jim Wallis who know better show doubt in Bush. The whole article is just disturbing:

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that "if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3." The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

"Just in the past few months," Bartlett said, "I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do." Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: "This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

"This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts," Bartlett went on to say. "He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence." Bartlett paused, then said, "But you can't run the world on faith."

Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. "I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns" -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. "'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?'"

Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts."

Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. "I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!'"

[...]

As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: "In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!" (Whitman, whose faith in Bush has since been renewed, denies making these remarks and is now a leader of the president's re-election effort in New Jersey.)

Read more!

The news about Jeb Bush's felon list not including Hispanics is old news. However, the fact that the list was used regardless certainly isn't. Not only has Jeb Bush disenfranchised Floridians, he has tried to disenfranchise only the ones that would vote for Kerry, and then he lied about it:

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ignored advice to throw out a flawed felon voter list before it went out to county election offices despite warnings from state officials, according to a published report Saturday.

In a May 4 e-mail obtained by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Florida Department of Law Enforcement computer expert Jeff Long told his boss that a Department of State computer expert had told him "that yesterday they recommended to the Gov that they 'pull the plug'" on the voter database.

The e-mail said state election officials "weren't comfortable with the felon matching program they've got," but added, "The Gov rejected their suggestion to pull the plug, so they're 'going live' with it this weekend."

Long, who was responsible for giving elections officials his department's felon database, confirmed the contents of the e-mail Friday to the Herald-Tribune. He said he didn't remember the specifics, but that Paul Craft, the Department of State's top computer expert, had told him about the meeting with Bush.

A software program matched data on felons with voter registration rolls to create the list of 48,000 names. Secretary of State Glenda Hood junked the database in July after acknowledging that 2,500 ex-felons on the list had had their voting rights restored.

Most were Democrats, and many were black. Hispanics, who often vote Republican in Florida, were almost entirely absent from the list due to a technical error.

Bush's spokeswoman, Jill Bratina, denied allegations that the governor ignored warnings about the list.

"It's also irrelevant because the list isn't being used," Bratina said Saturday.

Calling it a "technical error" is quite disingenuous. How does one accidentally remove all the Hispanics from the list?

NYTimes, Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Charlotte Observer [login], San Francisco Chronicle, Kansas City Star, and Miami Herald in favor of Kerry.

Chicago Tribune [login], Dallas Morning News [login], and Rocky Mountain News in favor of Bush.

Perhaps the most stinging rejection of Bush comes from the Winston-Salem Journal which endorsed neither.

My problem with the Bush endorsements is that they sometimes stick to talking points to bash Kerry, as opposed to the use of Bush's record in the Kerry endorsements. I assume the unintelligent analysis in the Bush endorsements in some cases comes from there being little positive in the Bush record to defend, which makes the columns seem far less convincing. In contrast, the Kerry endorsements are respectful of Bush while still being convincing in the other direction.

"Voters who had developed ideas about Kerry from his opponent's caricatures may have been surprised by the person they saw in the three televised debates. Knowledgeable, pragmatic, with an agile, focused mind -- Kerry was the same man in all three appearances." -Boston Globe

"The decision for war came first; the way to justify it came second, and has changed often." -Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"To change your mind easily and often is a sign of frivolousness; to never change it is a sign of brain death." -Charlotte Observer

"The president has cut taxes like a Reaganite conservative and spent money like a Great Society liberal, with the only sure result being a soaring deficit just as the baby boomers begin to retire." -Miami Herald

"President Bush has been an unstinting supporter of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, but, unfortunately, there has been little follow-up to his own 'road map' for peace following its rollout. Mr. Kerry, a longtime friend of Israel, has vowed to keep the White House engaged in the effort to achieve peace and security for the Jewish state -- an indispensable ingredient for progress." -Miami Herald

"When Kerry suggested security improvements in the second presidential debate, however, Bush indicated he did not think they were affordable. They are. As Kerry noted, Bush just has other priorities." -Kansas City Star

"Thanks to Mr. Bush, Jay Bybee, the author of an infamous Justice Department memo justifying the use of torture as an interrogation technique, is now a federal appeals court judge. Another Bush selection, J. Leon Holmes, a federal judge in Arkansas, has written that wives must be subordinate to their husbands and compared abortion rights activists to Nazis." -New York Times

Also from the Observer, a Letter to the Editor in response to Charles Krauthammer's insistence that Al Qaeda wants Kerry:

Read more!

Kerry swept the debates by a wide margin according to the polls, among other things:

Registered voters gave Kerry the overall debate win 57% - 27% over Bush. Bush lost the final debate Wednesday by a 9 point margin, 37% - 28%. (Bush lost the first debate by 36 points, 59% - 23%.)
[...]
In the debates, Kerry bested Bush on:

• Took positions closer to your own: Kerry 54% - Bush 39%
• Understands the issues: Kerry 49% - Bush 40%
• Seemed more presidential: Kerry 49% - Bush 44%
• Being more believable: Kerry 48% - Bush 44%.

The candidates tied on which was more likeable: Kerry 47% - Bush 45%. Kerry now rates 48% favorable - 37% unfavorable while Bush is 49%-40%.

The economy is the most important issue for more than 1 in 4 registered voters, 26%. Kerry has opened a 6 point lead over Bush, 49% - 43%, on handling of the economy: Just before the first debate, the candidates were even, 44% for each.

Let's bring it home, John.

Some say that the subconscious cannot lie. That must be the case for Bush here. Either that or "cocaine's a hell of a drug":

Insisting that he has no plans to institute a draft, and that any suggestions of a possible draft are a Democratic scare tactic, Bush said, "I made it very plain: We will not have an all-volunteer army."

I believe Tim Ryan noted why young people don't believe Bush.

In the same article, one must wonder whether John Snow has taken up booze:

Kerry also slammed comments Treasury Secretary John Snow made during a recent trip to Ohio, when he called the Kerry campaign's depiction of job losses a "myth."

Kerry said his message to President Bush is: "The people who have lost jobs on your watch are not 'myths,' they are our neighbors, they are middle class Americans, and they deserve better.

In fact, Ohio is among states that have lost the most jobs (if I remember correctly, either 49th or 50th -- Michigan was way up there too). I suppose John Snow would be too blind to see that, being Bush's crony.

The 11th Circuit tells Ashcroft to suck it:

Fears of a terrorist attack are not sufficient reason for authorities to search people at a protest, a federal appeals court has ruled, saying September 11, 2001, "cannot be the day liberty perished."

A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Friday that protesters may not be required to pass through metal detectors when they gather next month for a rally against a U.S. training academy for Latin American soldiers.

Authorities began using the metal detectors at the annual School of the Americas protest after the terrorist attacks, but the court found that practice to be unconstitutional.

"We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War of Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over," Judge Gerald Tjoflat wrote for the three-member court. "September 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country."

Judge Tjoflat, we salute you.

Wait wait wait. So now women prefer Bush, and men prefer Kerry!?!?!? That's what the Newsweek article says:

Bush has a clear advantage with women, who prefer him 49 percent to 43 percent. Kerry has a slight edge with men, 50 percent to 46 percent. The Democrat also commands 50 percent of the youth vote (with Bush at 41 percent) and 54 percent of the senior vote (to Bush's 39 percent.) But Bush dominates the 30-49 set (56 percent to 39 percent). Voters aged 50 to 64 are split evenly, with 46 percent backing Bush and 48 percent Kerry.

Among the 64 percent of all registered voters who say they watched at least some of the latest debate, which focused largely on domestic issues, most (44 percent) declare Kerry the winner while 36 percent say Bush outperformed his challenger. Sixteen percent call it a draw (61 percent picked Kerry as the winner of the first debate). Kerry is viewed by debate-watchers as having a better command on the issues (49 to 43 percent), seeming more confident and self-assured (53 to 39 percent) and more likely to understand the concerns of “people like you” (49 to 43 percent). Still, Bush's demeanor on Wednesday led more people to see him as more personally likeable (48 to 43 percent).

More than one third (35 percent) of those polled say the debates will have a moderate or high influence on who gets their vote. And based on what they have learned from all debates, a quarter (25 percent) of the country’s voters say they have become more inclined to vote for Kerry, compared to 16 percent who say they have been swayed by Bush. But most (56 percent) say the debates have had no difference in choosing who gets their vote.
...
Meanwhile, the president’s approval ratings remain below the halfway mark (47 percent) for the second time since the GOP convention in late August. Nearly half of all voters (48 percent) still say they do not want to see Bush reelected, while 47 percent say they do. And more than half (55 percent) are dissatisfied with "the way things are going in this country" (compared to 40 percent satisfied).

Did they switch the numbers around? Did they oversample married women? Did they undersample non-white voters? I don't get it.

For example, the Time poll from last week said women prefer Kerry 50-38 and men prefer Bush 51-35. How could there possibly be that big a shift from week to week?

In the Annenberg military active-duty, National Guard, and reserves troops and families survey, 62% of the sample thought that not enough troops were put in place, but also that 59% thought too large a burden was put on National Guard and reserves troops. [direct link to survey, part 1]

There are some other statistics, but this one jumped out at me, given the direct opposition by the Pentagon as a quasi-propaganda measure:

A slight majority of the military and families, 51 percent, said showing photos of flag-draped coffins being returned to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware would increase respect for the troops.

That broke down to 47 percent of troops and 56 percent of family members. Less than 10 percent of the sample said it would decrease respect for the troops.

The Pentagon has refused to release government photos of the coffins, saying it has begun enforcing a policy installed in 1991 intended to respect the privacy of the families of the dead soldiers.

Here is the text of Tim Ryan (D-OH)'s speech on the House Floor in opposition to H.R. 163, the house bill about the draft (go to page H8124) [also in PDF form] -- the video was posted earlier:

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

I rise in opposition of this bill, but I would like to clarify something. We are not trying to scare kids. This President's foreign policy is what is scaring the kids of this country. And people have said today, why are people believing this? Why are people believing this big Internet hoax?

It is the same people who told us that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11; the same people who told us Saddam Hussein had something to do with weapons of mass destruction; the same people who told us we would be able to use the oil for reconstruction money; the same people who told us we would be greeted as liberators, not occupiers; the same people, the same President who told us the Taliban is gone; the same President who told us that Poland is our ally 2 days before they pull out; the same President who tells us Iraq is going just great; the same President who tells us the economy is going just great; the same people who told us the tax cuts were going to create millions of jobs; the same people who told us that the Medicare program only cost $400 billion when it really cost $540 billion.

So please forgive us for believing what you are saying. Please forgive the students of this country for not believing what you are saying. Not one thing, not one thing about this war that has been told to the American people or that has been told to these college students has been true. Not one thing. Bremer says we need more troops. The Pentagon says we need more troops, and this President cannot get them from the international community. There is only one option left. Let us be honest with the American people.

The Charlotte Observer has a detailed report on the Rock Hill-based 343rd Quartermaster Company -- for those unaware Rock Hill is a suburb of Charlotte, so the Observer will likely be keeping up with this story better than most national sources [login required]:

The Army is investigating reports that several members of a Rock Hill-based Reserve platoon refused orders to deliver fuel in a convoy because they thought it was too dangerous.

If true, it could be the first instance in Iraq in which U.S. soldiers refused direct orders in a combat mission, a military expert says.

Families of soldiers from the 343rd Quartermaster Company said the reservists considered a mission this week to deliver fuel and water to Taji, in northern Iraq, too dangerous because the trucks had no protection and weren't fast enough to escape attacks.

The Washington Post reports on reservists from the 343rd Quartermaster Company as well:

The soldiers were concerned about the roadworthiness of their trucks and the lack of a helicopter escort for the mission, according to Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who said he had talked with the wives of two of them who live in his district.

From Salon, Dr. W. Kendall Tongier, M.D. of Dallas discusses the possibility of Bush's having had a stroke:

"As a physician and a professor, I tend to pick up on signs and symptoms of physical problems better than most other people. I am highly concerned with what I saw. The drooping left side of the President's face, his mouth and nasolabial fold (the crease in the face running from the nostril to the side of mouth) may be indicative of a recent stroke, TIA (transient ischemic attack)) or, possibly botox injections. I sincerely hope this was nothing more than botox injections. The other options are truly scary given an upcoming election for President in three weeks."

A bad botox job, perhaps? It looked fixed by the following day when Bush was stumping.

It appears that Sean Hannity is too much of a coward to allow the transcript or video clip of Wesley Clark on Hannity & Colmes to be put on the Fox site. All I could find from the Wednesday show was this partial transcript.

Anyone have a transcript or video of the Wesley Clark segment?

Jon Stewart handed Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson their asses on Crossfire on Friday. Holy crap.

Video here [via Pandagon]. See also Salon's recap [subscription or Daily Pass required].

On a side note, I'd assume that Robert Novak refused to do the show with Stewart, being a Douchebag of Liberty and all.

Quotes of the Day from Jon Stewart:

"Here's just what I wanted to tell you guys.... Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America."

"No, no, no, you're not too rough on them. You're part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks."

"So what I would suggest is, when you talk about you're holding politicians' feet to fire, I think that's disingenuous."

"You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably."

[on if comedy will be harder if Kerry wins] "The only way it would be harder is if his administration is less absurd than this one. So, in that case, if it's less absurd, then, yes, I think it would be harder. ... But, I mean, it would be hard to top this group, quite frankly."

[to Tucker Carlson] "You're as big a dick on your own show as you are on any show."

Here's selective parts of the transcript [many of the (CROSSTALK) and (LAUGHTER) indications have been omitted]:

Read more!

Finally we have an article on polling organizations not being able to poll cell phone users from CNN, even though everyone in the blogosphere has been saying this for months, given the number of people under 30 who don't have landlines:

A growing number of people rely solely on cell phones to make and take calls, putting them out of reach of polling organizations trying to get a fix on the American electorate.

Many cell-only users are young and mobile, a demographic that often doesn't vote. That makes survey researchers confident their polling, which excludes cell phone numbers, reflects the opinions of those likely to have an impact on Election Day. Still, with reports of unprecedented voter registration, many young voters could be flying under the pollsters' radar.

"Pollsters don't think the cell phone issue will affect them this year, but they are worried about it," said Michael Brick, a survey methods specialist at Westat, a research firm in Rockville, Maryland. "This may be the last round of presidential elections before it does have an effect."
...
About 5 percent of all households receive telephone service only by cellular phone, according to a face-to-face survey done earlier this year by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Among young adults up to age 24, the number is close to three times as high.

J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Secretary of State in Ohio, thought he could get away with disenfranchising chiefly Democrats by not counting provisional ballots. A federal court ruled against him:

The decision Thursday, by Judge James G. Carr of United States District Court in Toledo, blocked a directive by J. Kenneth Blackwell, the secretary of state, that election workers not give provisional ballots to people who appear at the wrong precincts.

A 2002 law says that voters whose names do not appear on a precinct's rolls should be given provisional ballots, which require them to sign affidavits saying they are eligible to vote in that "jurisdiction." Their votes are set aside while election workers determine whether those people are eligible to vote.

Provisional ballots are meant to ensure that people are not disenfranchised because of administrative errors or because they moved.

Under Mr. Blackwell's directive, the word "jurisdiction" was interpreted to mean precinct, and he ordered that provisional ballots not be given to voters who turned up at the wrong precincts. He said polling workers should instead direct those people to the correct polling stations.

But the Ohio Democratic Party sued, saying that in Election Day confusion, voters might be unable to locate their correct precincts. They said lower-income people moved frequently and were more likely to go to the wrong precincts. They asserted that the word "jurisdiction" referred to counties, and that voters should get provisional ballots as long as they are in the right counties.

Judge Carr agreed. If the law on provisional voting, he wrote, "saves but a single vote, its purposes will have been accomplished, and its adoption justified."

Blackwell is clearly being partisan here. Since when is a jurisdiction a precinct? Do we have precinct boards of election? Absolutely not -- we have COUNTY boards of election.

Furthermore, Blackwell's interpretation would make the law in question entirely useless. We vote by precinct; if anyone shows up at a different polling place, by default the person wouldn't be allowed to vote.

Krugman writes about Sproul & Associates, a.k.a. Voters Outreach of America and other Republican tactics to suppress votes:

Earlier this week former employees of Sproul & Associates (operating under the name Voters Outreach of America), a firm hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters, told a Nevada TV station that their supervisors systematically tore up Democratic registrations.

The accusations are backed by physical evidence and appear credible. Officials have begun a criminal investigation into reports of similar actions by Sproul in Oregon.

Republicans claim, of course, that they did nothing wrong - and that besides, Democrats do it, too. But there haven't been any comparably credible accusations against Democratic voter-registration organizations. And there is a pattern of Republican efforts to disenfranchise Democrats, by any means possible.

Some of these, like the actions reported in Nevada, involve dirty tricks. For example, in 2002 the Republican Party in New Hampshire hired an Idaho company to paralyze Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts by jamming the party's phone banks.

The LATimes takes on a Bush campaign lie of how many times Bush has raised taxes. In fact, if you believe the lie, as the article states, then you would also have to believe that Cheney is left of Che Guevara!

Kerry raised taxes 98 times over 20 years? That's nothing. Bush is about to do the same 63 times in a single day.

He voted 98 times to raise taxes. I mean, these aren't make-up figures. — George W. Bush

If there's a single piece of data President Bush wants to bring to your attention, it's that John Kerry, during his 20 years in the Senate, voted to raise taxes 98 times. Bush repeats this often, usually in a tone of incredulity. But Kerry is a piker. When Bush signs the big corporate tax bill passed this week by the Republican Congress, he will be approving 63 different tax increases with a single stroke of the pen.

Revenue provision B 8, for example — "Disallowance of certain partnership loss transfers with partner loss limits for transfer of interest in electing investment partnerships" — might not be great fodder for a Kerry campaign commercial, but a tax increase it most definitely is.

But let us take the 98 votes at face value. Does this prove Bush's contention that Kerry sits far outside the mainstream? You can't answer that without some basis of comparison. In 1992, George H.W. Bush painted Bill Clinton as a hopeless liberal, the primary evidence for this claim being the fact that Clinton allegedly raised taxes 128 times as governor of Arkansas. So that would make Kerry, with his 98 tax hikes, some … let's see, 23% less liberal than Clinton, who is viewed (outside conservative circles) as a moderate.

Meanwhile, Kerry's campaign has a detailed list of 642 Kerry votes to reduce taxes. (Maybe Bush should be painting Kerry as a crazed tax-cutting zealot totally unconcerned about fiscal responsibility.)

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney as a member of Congress from Wyoming voted to raise taxes 144 times. If 98 tax-hike votes make Kerry a far-out liberal, than Cheney would have to be placed somewhere in the ideological vicinity of Che Guevara.

At first when I heard on NPR today that Al Zarqawi's organization was only now cracked down upon by being called an FTO, I was surprised. But if you think about it, it could make some sort of sense. If the government wanted to monitor the cash flow of Al Zarqawi, it would be easy to do so, and so there would be some incentive not to shut down cash flow immediately. Then, when you have enough information, you freeze the accounts.

Kerry wins convincingly:

It's no wonder the Bush team, hobbled by such a record, acts as if it can win only if voters treat this election as a referendum on Kerry's fitness for office. It should be clear by now that Kerry is not for some Stalinist government healthcare system, that he won't give Paris a veto over U.S. foreign policy and that he doesn't think terrorism is merely a nuisance. He was thoughtful and firm in all three debates, despite his enduring stiffness. The shrillness of the Bush camp's attacks on Kerry betrays an unbecoming desperation, and adds to the sense that the challenger came out the convincing winner.

Daily Kos has a great post about Ed Gillespie's threats to Rock the Vote -- essentially Gillespie is saying "stop saying what I don't want you to say, even though there's no proof that what I say is true." I'm thinking Gillespie is a little yellow, threatening a law suit when someone doesn't agree with him. Never has a judge had a better case for using Rule 12(b)(6) -- for the non-law folks, that's "failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted":

Ed Gillespie is threatening Rock the Vote. (PDF version of full letter.)

The GOP is asking the Rock the Vote group to "cease and desist" its suggestion that the government may bring back a military draft.
"Your "Draft Your Friends" campaign is being conducted with malicious intent and reckless disregard for the truth," Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie told the nonpartisan group in a letter Wednesday.

Rock the Vote has linked draft concerns to its appeal to register young voters. The group has produced a public service announcement warning of the possibility of a draft, and its Web site tells visitors "You have been drafted" to report to a polling place.

Republicans contend the draft talk is a Democrat-inspired scare tactic to drum up votes against President Bush.

And Rock the Vote has fired back:

Dear Chairman Gillespie,

The letter I received from you yesterday was quite a surprise. It struck us as just the sort of "malicious political deception" that is likely to increase voter cynicism and decrease the youth vote. In fact, it is a textbook case of attempted censorship, very much in line with those that triggered our organization's founding some fifteen years ago.

I am stunned that you would say that the issue of the military draft is an "urban myth"that has been "thoroughly debunked by no less than the President of the United States."

I have some news for you. Just because President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary Rumsfeld, and for that matter Senator Kerry, say that there is not going to be a draft does not make it so. Just because Congress holds a transparently phony vote against the draft does not mean there isn't going to be one. Anyone who thinks that the youth of America are going to take a politician's word on this topic is living on another planet.

By your logic, there should be no debate about anything that you disagree with. There's a place for that kind of sentiment (and your threats), but its not here in our country.

There are questions that the politicians are running away from. How long can we keep 138,000 U.S. troops or more on the ground in Iraq? What if full-scale civil war erupts there, as the CIA has warned is a realistic possibility? Would the next President be faced with a choice of pulling out of Iraq rather than institute a draft? Would women be drafted? What exactly would the draft-age be?

According to the Pentagon's own internal assessment, there are "inadequate total numbers" of troops to meet U.S. security interests. The current issue of Time magazine reports that, "General John Keane, who retired last year as the Army's No. 2 officer, says the continued success of the all-volunteer military is not guaranteed" Keane has told Congress that adding more than 50,000 troops to the Army would require thinking about a return to the draft."

But you want young people to believe that the draft is just an "urban myth." I was expecting that you were going to present some facts to back up your assertion. But, instead, you have demanded that we stop talking about it.

Poor GOP, its voter supression and censhorship efforts are being exposed. What to do, what to do...

Via Eschaton, Robert George has a brilliant column in The New Republic. A small excerpt:

At the Republican National Convention, George W. Bush mocked John Kerry's claim of having "conservative values." But what are conservative values? Two of the core principles at the heart of modern conservatism are a belief in the virtue of smaller government and a conviction that government must be accountable to the public. Those principles were enunciated ten years ago in the Contract with America, which helped Republicans take full control of Congress for the first time in four decades. That document sought "the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public's money." In this context, Bush's first term has represented a betrayal of conservative values.

It's not simply a matter of outrageous spending or enlarged government programs--both offenses of which this administration is guilty, as manifested in a 25 percent domestic discretionary spending hike, a half-trillion-dollar Medicare expansion, and the ripping away of free-market agricultural reforms enacted over the past decade. The president continues to pursue tax cuts, as any conservative president would. But a government that cuts taxes and continues to spend ultimately becomes as amoral as one that raises taxes and spends.

Yet the Bush administration's free-spending fiscal record only hints at its larger rejection of conservative principles. The more fundamental betrayal arises from the administration's central focus: an ill-defined "war on terror" that has no determinable endpoint and that is used to justify an unprecedented expansion of executive power. To make matters worse, this administration shows little inclination to demand accountability from those who serve within it. In turn, the Republican Congress--ignoring its 1994 vow to "restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives"--appears disinclined to check the powers of the executive. Together, these factors endanger the long-term health of the republic.

The video of Bush from his gubernatorial goobernatorial (spelling changed due to the character of the candidate) campaign as compared to Bush now seems to have made its legs around the web. I saw it a few days ago, and I forget where, but the general thought then was more about some sort of brain damage, due to his drug use and 20-odd years of alcoholism.

What added to the theory was that the difference was so striking and that Bush did cancel his physical this year, citing the campaign, only he had several off-days at his ranch in Crawford.

I'd throw some healthy skepticism into this. He could have actually had someone whispering in his ear for that particular debate. There's always a problem of taking these things out of context -- someone chose one debate from his gubernatorial campaign and compared it to the debate last week. How are his other speeches from 10 years ago and from now?

The new theory is that he may have had a stroke!?

Has he been doing any sort of physical exertion lately? (falling off his mountain bike lately?) Any exercise? (Bush is a big workout fiend ordinarily) That would certainly kill a stroke theory.

During the debate last night he was drooling, and if you look at the left side of his mouth (his left side, the viewer's right side), it markedly droops while he talks. MARKEDLY DROOPS. All of us noticed it at the debate party I was at, and several observers noticed it online. I spoke with another journalist friend after the debate and he said his producer mentioned to him after the second debate that he thought Bush was ill because he seemed to be favoring one side of his body when he walked. That was apropos of nothing, until last night when we notice the same thing with Bush's mouth.

Did anyone notice any drooping during debate #2 from which the video was taken? Was he even favoring the same side that night? I'm not saying the theory is wrong, but it deserves some reasonable doubt.

This whole Lynne Cheney being outraged doesn't make any sense. Why is Lynne Cheney mad? Because John Kerry said that her daughter is gay? Mary Cheney is OPENLY gay and an adult. It's not as if Kerry outed her.

How about one theory: Lynne Cheney is afraid that other Republicans are bigots and will not vote for Bush/Cheney if they know that Cheney has a gay daughter?

Or perhaps Lynne Cheney is afraid other Republicans will see her and Dick Cheney as gay sympathizers?

Either way, her statement is motivated by bigotry, and it doesn't matter if it's her own bigotry or someone else's. Her daughter doesn't act like she's ashamed of being gay. Lynne Cheney shouldn't act like she's ashamed of her daughter being gay either.

Update:

I think AmericaBlog has it right. Where was Lynne Cheney's outrage when the Republican party has gay-bashed? Where was Lynne Cheney in defending her daughter then? A Democrat defends her daughter, and she gets pissed, but when it comes to doing so herself, she backs down. Why does Lynne Cheney have no principles?

And indeed, Bush did invoke Teresa Heinz Kerry, but Kerry defends Mary Cheney, and the Republicans go apeshit. Idiots.

"Being lectured by President Bush about fiscal responsibility is like Tony Soprano talking about law and order."

-John Kerry

I also thought it was pretty dumb for Bush to deny that he said he wasn't concerned about Osama Bin Laden, when everyone has seen the clip of him saying that.

Nice move! Kerry mentioned that Tom Daschle gave Bush a hug after 9/11 when Bush actually did a good job for a few days.

Why doesn't Kerry ever mention BCCI as part of his record? BCCI was a bank that laundered money for terrorists and drug cartels. Kerry was the driving force behind taking down BCCI while on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier in his Senate career. He recognized the early terror threat and did something about it.

The only place I've seen it mentioned was the Philadelphia Inquirer endorsement of Kerry.

Bush said "I don't know" to the question "Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?" Cop out!?

I'm sick of this term "activist judges" as it is popularly used. When you hear a politician say "activist judge," it is a code word for "judge who made a decision I don't agree with." These so-called "activist judges" are making a decision based on the law at bar; they're not legislating.

I'm still convinced the Bush health plan is still "Walk It Off" (endorsed by football coaches everywhere).

I was rather amused that Bush just said that we should import flu vaccine from Canada, because the vaccine from the UK is unsafe (which is true). Isn't this the same president who said that we shouldn't re-import drugs from Canada because such things are unsafe?

"Flippy...floppily...Ahh, strong leadership."

J.B. sent me the link for Non Sequitur today. Good stuff!

I was flipping through the channels and caught a few minutes of a "Home Improvement" rerun:

"Convictions and beliefs? What does that have to do with religion?" --Tim Allen as the alliterative Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor

Money magazine has put out a detailed list of tax issues (they call it pocketbook because they talk about a few more things, but it's mostly tax) for Bush and Kerry.

The one that jumped out at me was the replacement of the Hope and Lifetime Learning Credits with a new credit with a longer name that is $4,000. For law students and business school students, that's a bonanza, as it is for families paying undergrad tuition.

Lampooning Bush on Leno like a good VP should:

John Edwards has a theory about what was hidden underneath an unusual wrinkle that appeared on the back of President Bush's suit jacket during his first debate with John Kerry.

"I think it was his battery," a grinning Edwards told Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show" on Tuesday.

"I think tomorrow, before the debate, John Kerry ought to pat him down," Edwards said, referring to the final Bush-Kerry matchup, scheduled for Wednesday in Arizona.
...
Leno asked Edwards if he could beat the president in a foot race.

Edwards, who said he jogged about five miles Tuesday, reminded the audience he played football as a student.

Bush, he noted, was on a cheering squad.

Bush "was on the side, with his pompoms," the North Carolina senator said. "I don't know, can you run fast with those cheerleading outfits on?"
...
When Leno showed a clip of Kerry windsurfing, Edwards said, "If I had to spend 90 minutes on a stage with George Bush, I'd want to clear my head too."

80-20 has endorsed Kerry. I just got an email today pointing out the media that have picked up the story. In fact, this endorsement came out last Sunday (October 3), but I am behind the times, because I just noticed 5 minutes ago that for some reason 80-20 emails have been going to my spam folder. Here is a tidbit about the polling of Asian-Americans from the 80-20 blog post linked above:

In pragmatic terms for the Kerry campaign, the "endorsement with reservation" may imply the following: A recent poll showed the choice of Kerry/Bush among AsAms is 43/36, with 20% undecided. Having endorsed Kerry/Edwards, 80-20 predicts that by election time, we'll increase Kerry's current 7 point lead to at least 30 among AsAms. However, had 80-20 decided on a full endorsement two weeks ago, it would have delivered 80% of the Asian American votes, resulting in a 60 point margin of victory for Kerry among AsAms.

For those unaware of 80-20, it's an organization of Asian-Americans that advocates an 80% Asian-American block vote for one candidate to show that Asian-Americans can be a voting force and to show that politicians should pay attention to Asian-American issues.

Daily Kos has the scoop on a company called Voters Outreach in America a.k.a. America Votes that has been shredding Democrat voter registrations in Nevada, and also has assisted Nader. The original story is from KLAS, a station in Las Vegas.

Apologies for the blog rebroadcasts, but they are pretty important stories. I'm really busy for the next week or so (and for that matter in class for prime parts of the newsday even when I'm not as busy), and I figure more blogging is better than less blogging.

Media Matters has a list of mutual funds and pension funds that invest in Sinclair. Given that these funds investing in Sinclair may not be in your best interests, financially or otherwise, I'd recommend talking to your mutual fund managers about it. [via Eschaton]

Also, as it turns out, Sinclair has financial interests in broadcasting the anti-Kerry video. Our good man Matthew Yglesias at TAPPED has the story:

WHAT'S IN IT FOR THEM? You wouldn't know it from the name "Sinclair Broadcast Group," but it turns out that through their wholly owned subsidiary Sinclair Ventures, Inc., SBC is a major investor in a company called Jadoo Power Systems which has won some major military contracts during the Bush years. Defense contracts aside, as Fortune has reported, "Jadoo's biggest coup came after President George W. Bush touted hydrogen as an alternative to foreign oil in his State of the Union speech last January . . . The startup got some unexpected free publicity when Bush held a TV camera using one of Jadoo's lightweight fuel cells on his shoulder as media photographers captured the moment. Jadoo plans to begin selling such batteries to the broadcast market early next year."

Bush gives "unexpected free publicity" to a Sinclair subsidiary, Sinclair gives a little unexpected free publicity to John Kerry's opponents. One hand washes the other.

My heart goes out to the Reeve family. Bill Frist is making a row in Congress over one of Edwards' comments invoking Christopher Reeve on stem cells. I wanted to make sure I was thinking about various aspects of this before commenting on it, and also to confirm that I'm not being partisan or insensitive about this, so aspects of this post were discussed with others before I wrote it. Also, I am particularly aware of what I say in the matter because at least one of my friends is a friend of Alexandra Reeve, Reeve's daughter.

Obviously this sort of comment is a definitely close in time to Reeve's death and as a result might be considered insensitive. There are certainly problems in politicizing someone's death like this, and if we're going beyond deontology, there are bad consequences of such things. Certainly such things are difficult for the Reeve family, especially when times are certainly hard enough for them already already.

On the other side, I am mindful that Edwards is not mischaracterizing what Reeve himself would say. Reeves was an activist and a "powerful voice," and Edwards made the sort of statement that Reeve would make. I'm not a moral relativist, but I certainly find what Edwards said a more accurate characterization of what Reeve might have said than many of the things that were said after Reagan's death. I also think Edwards made the comment in a relatively tasteful matter, even if his timing wasn't the best.

I guess a final word on this might be what J.B. said. She pointed out that this is exactly the sort of thing a politician does. And as a corollary, I'd say that Frist's reaction is also exactly what the opposing politician does in cases like this. As for that, I would say that Frist's comment could be considered "crass" as well because of both what he said and the way he said it. It doesn't seem any less crass to take political advantage of such a statement. Such is the form of politics. That doesn't make things all right, but it does serve as an explanation for such behavior.

Update (10/13):

To underscore what I wrote yesterday, CNN.com, for example, has moved the Reeve story from general news to the "Entertainment" category.

The 108th Congress met even less than the "Do-Nothing Congress!" I wonder how many they named after Ronald Reagan.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland noted that as of Friday, the day before the House adjourned, it had met on only 102 days in 2004, the lowest in decades. He noted it compared to 110 days in 1948, the year that President Truman won re-election by running against the "do-nothing Congress."

Democrats said that even while in session, Congress has spent its time on such tasks as naming 92 post offices and passing 34 resolutions honoring athletic teams.

The DNC filed with the FCC because Sinclair is violating FEC rules. Sinclair is trying to claim this is a news story, but they know that Stolen Honor involves as much news as John O'Neill and the Swift Boat Liars' book of lies:

At least 18 Democratic senators are seeking a federal probe of Sinclair Broadcast Group's plans to air an anti-Kerry film next week, just two weeks before the election, a news report said Tuesday.

The Democratic senators have asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate whether Sinclair's plan to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" is an improper use of public airwaves, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the documentary is an illegal contribution of airtime to President Bush's campaign.

Terry McAuliffe told CNN the complaint, filed Monday, charges that Sinclair's plan is an "illegal in-kind contribution to the Bush-Cheney campaign," and he said it is the first time the DNC has ever filed an FCC complaint against a media organization.

"We have done it because of the extraordinary circumstances around this. This is a group that is going to preempt their airtime to run a 90-minute documentary attacking Senator Kerry," McAuliffe said on CNN's American Morning. "This is a use of corporate funds. Under the law, you cannot use corporate funds to go out there and advocate for a party or a political candidate."

After mocking Bush and Cheney for insisting that the Duelfer report justified going to war, Jon Stewart said:

"Some people look at a glass and see it as half full, and other people look at a glass and see a dragon."

He then proceeded to knocking Bush's sham speech on Wednesday. After showing Bush saying his moronic stump speech segment, "He says the tax increase is just for the rich. You've heard that kind of rhetoric before. The rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason: to stick you with the tab."

"Let me get this straight. Don't tax the rich because they'll get out of it. So your policy is tax the hardworking people because they're dumbasses; they'll never figure it out. So vote for me."

And then of course, he nailed Bush for saying Saddam Hussein was the center of terrorism instead of actual dangerous nations, saying a zombie-like "The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Too tired to fight it. Must learn repetition."

Bill O'Reilly wasn't a total jackass as he often can be on his show, but was actually sort of humorous sometimes. That's not to say some of his viewpoints aren't a little askew, but he's obviously smarter than he lets himself appear on his own show.

Kerry's likeability is higher than Bush's, so the media can stop saying Bush is more likeable, as some of the bloggers said earlier:

Asked their opinion of the candidates, 51 percent said they had a favorable opinion of Bush, versus 46 percent unfavorable.

Kerry's rating was comparable -- with 52 percent of likely voters saying their opinion of the Democrat was favorable, versus 44 percent who said it was unfavorable.

Asked which candidate "cares about the needs of people like you," 49 percent of likely voters chose Kerry, versus 42 percent who chose Bush.

Also, in the horserace, Kerry is ahead, and people think decisively that he won the debate too:

The poll, conducted Saturday and Sunday, shows 49 percent of likely voters indicating a preference for Kerry versus 48 percent for Bush. Independent candidate Ralph Nader garnered 1 percent.
...
Although an instant poll of debate watchers taken Friday night showed the meeting to be without a clear winner, Gallup's two-day poll showed 45 percent of respondents picked Kerry as the winner. Just 30 percent chose Bush as the debate winner.

Bush's support as president remains below the 50 percent threshold, with just 47 percent of those polled noting approval of the way he is handling his job. Forty-nine percent said they disapproved.

Time and time again, Bush has preferred politics and trying to win the election over trying to win the war in Iraq and saving American soldiers' lives. Why should we believe Bush when he says that he fights the war in Iraq with resolve, when he clearly places such things on the shifting winds of politics? This article makes it clear; a vote for Bush will put more soldiers' lives at stake:

The Bush administration will delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections in November, say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives could affect the U.S. presidential race.

Although American commanders in Iraq have been buoyed by recent successes in insurgent-held towns such as Samarra and Tall Afar, administration and Pentagon officials say they will not try to retake cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi -- where insurgents' grip is strongest and U.S. military casualties could be the greatest -- until after Americans vote in what is likely to be a close election.

"When this election's over, you'll see us move very vigorously," said one senior administration official involved in strategic planning, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Once you're past the election, it changes the political ramifications" of a large-scale offensive, the official said. "We're not on hold right now. We're just not as aggressive."
...
During his recent trip to Washington, Allawi expressed his interest in reclaiming insurgent-controlled cities in the Sunni Triangle in time for the January election, even in light of the potentially negative political impact in Iraq that a bloody military operation could have.

Yet officials say the man who owes his job to President Bush -- and who might not have such a warm relationship with a President John F. Kerry -- does not want to press his case too hard before the U.S. election in November.

"A lot of his political future depends on our election," the senior administration official said.

Ken Caminiti died of a heart attack at age 41. While in recent years, his drug and steroid use have overshadowed his star qualities as a baseball player, he'll be remembered for being a true gamer:

Ken Caminiti, the 1996 National League MVP who later admitted using steroids during his major league career, died Sunday. He was 41.

Caminiti died of a heart attack in the Bronx, said his agent-lawyer Rick Licht. The city medical examiner’s office said an autopsy would be performed Monday, spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said.
...
Licht said Caminiti hoped to get back into the game, possibly in a position that would allow him to mentor younger players about avoiding the mistakes he made. Caminiti did return to baseball this year, serving as a spring training instructor with San Diego.

“He didn’t look good,” Towers said. “I’m not surprised.

“The best way to describe him is that he was a warrior in every sense of the word. I can’t tell you how many times I remember him hobbling into the manager’s office, barely able to walk, and saying, ‘Put me in the lineup.”’

Licht said Caminiti was in New York this past weekend to help a friend, but did not go into detail.
...
Caminiti’s defining moment during his MVP season came on Aug. 18, 1996, in the oppressive heat of Monterrey, Mexico, as the Padres prepared to face the New York Mets in the finale of the first regular-season series played outside the United States and Canada.

Battling dehydration and an upset stomach, Caminiti took two liters of intravenous fluid, then hit two home runs for four RBIs in an 8-0 victory.

“I didn’t think I was going to play that day,” he recalled after the season. “I’d have to thank the training staff for getting me on the field that day. They made a bigger deal than I thought it was.”

Towers and Licht both recalled the enormous ovation Caminiti received during a 2003 ceremony marking the Padres’ farewell at Qualcomm Stadium. The team moved into a new ballpark this season.

Licht said he had to go to Houston to persuade Caminiti to make an appearance, and Towers remembered the former star was nervous.

“He didn’t know what kind of reaction he would get,” Towers said.

After being showered with cheers, Caminiti told Licht it was his greatest day in baseball.

Breaking news:

BEDFORD, New York (AP) -- Christopher Reeve, the star of the "Superman" movies whose near-fatal riding accident nine years ago turned him into a worldwide advocate for spinal cord research, died Sunday of heart failure, his publicist said. He was 52.

Reeve fell into a coma Saturday after going into cardiac arrest while at his New York home, his publicist, Wesley Combs, told The Associated Press by phone from Washington, D.C., on Sunday night.

Reeve was being treated at Northern Westchester Hospital for a pressure wound that he developed, a common complication for people living with paralysis. In the past week, the wound had become severely infected, resulting in a serious systemic infection.

The Philadelphia Inquirer gave a ringing endorsement of Kerry and will present a 21-day series of articles detailing both sides, but particularly why the endorsement is what it is [subscription required]:

The case for Kerry has two parts. The first is the record of George W. Bush. The evidence is compelling, though tallied in sorrow: His was a presidency of high promise that lapsed into multiple disasters.

On his watch, useful surpluses have become a sea of red ink. The economic rebound he bought with tax cuts is mild, barely more than would have occurred in the natural cycle. Those slanted tax changes have left society more unequal, its safety net frayed. His team's habits of ignoring science and punishing dissent hamper the search for solutions.

His plan for a second term is not to repair those mistakes, but to expand and entrench them.

Most worrisome, his response to the stunning blows of 9/11 has gone fatefully awry. He has left Americans less safe than they could be and America less admired than it should be.

Those are strong words. You deserve to see them documented thoroughly.

That is why, beginning today, we present a 21-day editorial series. It will review the facts of the Bush record on an array of issues, from homeland security to Head Start, contrasting it with Kerry's ideas. The first appears below. Most days, on the facing page, a prominent supporter of President Bush will provide a contrasting view.

You deserve a fair and frank debate.

You also deserve a fair picture of the second half of the case for change: the record and views of John Kerry.

This, very few of you have gotten during a petty, dispiriting campaign. Some blame rests with the Democrat. He has not framed the debate with the force and clarity he must master to be an outstanding president.

More blame, though, rests with Bush. Awash in millions from the corporate donors to whom his White House caters so avidly, the President has spent more time ridiculing Kerry through distortions than presenting his own plans.

It goes on to talk about Kerry's record. The endorsement also mentions BCCI, which hopefully will get more press coverage in the next 3 weeks:

The BCCI probe showed Kerry spotting early on a key thread in the global web of terror.

Thwarting terrorism is a president's core job in these haunted times. Kerry's approach is more thorough than that of Bush, whose two main tools seem to be bombs and bombast. Bush's reckless missteps in Iraq have cost a painful toll in lives, credibility, alliances, Islamic anger and lost opportunities.

Kerry is right to press hard on: tracking down loose nuclear material in Russia and elsewhere; repairing alliances that can help spot terror cells and roll up financing networks; better securing our chemical and nuclear plants and ports.

It is absurd to claim that, had Kerry been president on that awful day in 2001, he would merely have shrugged and sent a strongly worded memo to the World Court. Any president would have done much of what Bush did in late 2001 - with less soaring eloquence perhaps. But few would have raced as he did into the deadly detour of Iraq.

George Will's latest column is entitled "Why America Leans Right," and is a rather conclusory examination of why conservatives have been able to take over more and more of America's government. However, Will fails to note that the corporate media is also inherently more conservative than the less consolidated media of the past.

The column also makes little reference to how religion has fueled the culture war, instead making it a reason in itself. Furthermore, the significant effort to rid the world of communism after World War II isn't mentioned either. Granted, it's a short column, Will does a poor job of explaining why any of the factors would cause such a shift and mostly frames it as liberalism destroying itself without saying how:

Conservatism's 40-year climb to dominance receives an examination worthy of its complexity in "The Right Nation," the best political book in years. Its British authors, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge of the Economist, demonstrate that conservative power derives from two sources -- its congruence with American values, especially the nation's anomalous religiosity, and the elaborate infrastructure of think tanks and other institutions that stresses that congruence.

Liberals, now tardily trying to replicate that infrastructure, thought they did not need it because they had academia and the major media. But the former marginalized itself with its silliness, and the latter have been marginalized by their insularity and by competitors born of new technologies.

Liberals complacently believed that the phrase "conservative thinker" was an oxymoron. For years -- generations, really -- the prestige of the liberal label was such that Herbert Hoover called himself a "true liberal" and Dwight Eisenhower said that cutting federal spending on education would offend "every liberal -- including me."
...
Europe, post-religious and statist, is puzzled -- and alarmed -- by a nation where grace is said at half the family dinner tables. But religiosity, say Micklethwait and Wooldridge, "predisposes Americans to see the world in terms of individual virtue rather than in terms of the vast social forces that so preoccupy Europeans." And: "The percentage of Americans who believe that success is determined by forces outside their control has fallen from 41 percent in 1988 to 32 percent today; by contrast, the percentage of Germans who believe it has risen from 59 percent in 1991 to 68 percent today." In America, conservatives much more than liberals reject the presumption of individual vulnerability and incompetence that gives rise to liberal statism.

The Washington Post details the Toyota plant in Georgetown, Kentucky as one using a significant number of temporary workers so they can avoid hiring full-time ones. The Toyota plant is non-unionized, which some theorize is partly because Toyota can claim they use the temps to buffer the permanent staff from layoffs in bad times. The truth is that the temps have been serving longer and longer terms for lower pay without being moved onto permanent staff, so Toyota saves both on wages and on benefits, while continuing to bump more full-time employment to temps:

Hicks has spent four years as a temp worker building cars for Toyota Motor Corp., making manifolds and dashboards for Camrys, Avalons and Solaras sold all over the United States. He works alongside full-fledged Toyota employees who earn twice his salary, plus health and retirement benefits.

When Toyota announced it would be coming to Georgetown, Ky., in 1985, it promised to invest $800 million in the community and employ thousands, with thousands more jobs coming through its suppliers. By 1997, the plant exceeded all expectations, with 7,689 full-time workers, a payroll over $470 million, and a ripple effect creating more than 34,000 other jobs in the Bluegrass state.

But by 2000, Toyota was carefully controlling any additions to the workforce. When Hicks left his family in Knott County, Ky., to seek work at the plant 140 miles away, the only door left open was through a temporary agency, Manpower Inc. At $12.60 an hour, the job would not even let him afford the $199-a-week health insurance premium for his family of five. But Hicks said Manpower assured him that after a year -- two at the outside -- he would be on Toyota's payroll, earning $24.20 an hour, with health insurance, a dental plan, retirement benefits, incentive pay, the works.

"I could stand on my head for a year or two for a $20-an-hour job with benefits," he shrugged.
...
Toyota managers say they will try to hire all of their long-term temporaries by the end of the year or in early 2005, after they see how many Toyota workers accept an early retirement package. Forty-seven temps were hired in late September. The management move came after The Washington Post spent a week in Kentucky examining the temporary employment issue at the Georgetown plant. Before September's hires, it had been two years since the plant hired a full-time "team member," Toyota managers said, a period during which the plant shed 240 full-time positions. Temporary employment during that time rose by 124.

Toyota also tries to do its best at screwing temps, as this anecdote points out:

Toyota is famous for the "kaizen" -- continuous improvement -- checks that it pays to workers who come up with suggestions that save money. Earlier this year, Hicks and Chris helped devise a change that cut two jobs from their small quadrant of the assembly line. The change meant more work for everyone, but it was more efficient. Toyota rewarded the idea by sending out $500 checks to every member of the team, every full-time member, that is.

The two temps who came up with the suggestion got nothing. Their group leader did feel bad. He gave each of them a $25 gift certificate to the Toyota company store.

Then a full-time worker slipped them both $50.

"You guys got us this money," Chris recalled him saying. "Sorry I can't give you more."

Hmmmm....So Rumsfeld wants to remove troops after the January elections:

The United States may be able to reduce its troop levels in Iraq after the January elections if security improves and Iraqi government forces continue to expand and improve, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.

Didn't Bush say that giving a specific time table for removing troops emboldens the enemy? Let's go to August 11 in New Mexico:

Bush used a speech Wednesday night in Albuquerque, N.M., to say Kerry’s pledge to bring large numbers of troops home from Iraq within a year would embolden the Iraqi insurgency and jeopardize the mission.

“We all want the mission to be completed as quickly as possible, but we want the mission to be complete,” Bush told an “Ask President Bush” event.

“The mission is not going to be completed as quickly as possible if the enemy thinks we’re going to be removing a substantial number of troops in six months,” he said.

So if the enemy thinks we're going to be removing troops in 3 months, that's less dangerous than if the enemy thinks we're going to remove troops in 6 months? I think we have a name for that..."Flippy. Floppily...Ahh, strong leadership."

Mary Landrieu (D-LA) is on the floor giving a speech in support of our troops (turn to CSPAN2) from the National Guard and the Reserve, on time yielded from Tom Daschle. The Senate corporate tax bill put up by the Republicans has no provision for relief to our troops. Cheers to her for supporting our troops because they deserve better.

By many counts, Condeleeza Rice reported the 24th rationale for the Iraq war this morning:

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: SADDAM’S “INSATIABLE APPETITE”: It's obviously a risk but I think to say that this was a greater risk now than before Saddam Hussein was out of power simply doesn't face the fact that Saddam Hussein had an insatiable appetite for weapons of mass destruction. He had an unflinching hatred for the United States. He had every reason to cooperate with our enemies. This was a gathering and growing threat and it was time to take care of it.” [Condi Rice, Fox News Sunday, October 10, 2004]

Kessler details Bush's path to recasting rationales about the war.

Recasting rationales, eh? I bet some people might even call that "flip-flopping."

The Washington Post has an article today that has the opinions of military service members, who tend to give a starkly different story than what you hear in the news:

Scrawled on the helmet of Lance Cpl. Carlos Perez are the letters FDNY. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York, the Pentagon and western Pennsylvania, Perez quit school, left his job as a firefighter in Long Island, N.Y., and joined the U.S. Marine Corps.

"To be honest, I just wanted to take revenge," said Perez, 20.

Now, two months into a seven-month combat tour in Iraq, Perez said he sees little connection between the events of Sept. 11 and the war he is fighting. Instead, he said, he is increasingly disillusioned by a conflict whose origins remain unclear and frustrated by the timidity of U.S. forces against a mostly faceless enemy.

"Sometimes I see no reason why we're here," Perez said. "First of all, you cannot engage as many times as we want to. Second of all, we're looking for an enemy that's not there. The only way to do it is go house to house until we get out of here."
...
"I feel we're going to be here for years and years and years," said Lance Cpl. Edward Elston, 22, of Hackettstown, N.J. "I don't think anything is going to get better; I think it's going to get a lot worse. It's going to be like a Palestinian-type deal. We're going to stop being a policing presence and then start being an occupying presence. . . . We're always going to be here. We're never going to leave."
...
"Every day you read the articles in the States where it's like, 'Oh, it's getting better and better,' " said Lance Cpl. Jonathan Snyder, 22, of Gettysburg, Pa. "But when you're here, you know it's worse every day."

Pfc. Kyle Maio, 19, of Bucks County, Pa., said he thought government officials were reticent to speak candidly because of the upcoming U.S. elections. "Stuff's going on here but they won't flat-out say it," he said. "They can't get into it."
...
"The reality right now is that the most dangerous opinion in the world is the opinion of a U.S. serviceman," said Lance Cpl. Devin Kelly, 20, of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Lance Cpl. Alexander Jones, 20, of Ball Ground, Ga., agreed: "We're basically proving out that the government is wrong," he said. "We're catching them in a lie."

Read more!

The Halperin memo seems to be causing quite the stir. But let's be honest here; if you are to objectively report news, you have to expose lies for what they are. While both sides push the facts here, in order to be a good reporter, you have to figure out which occurrences are material and which aren't.

The right-wing blogosphere is going nuts over this, saying it's bias, but this is what the media should have been asking itself years ago. It's bias to suggest that the media shouldn't report material lies just because they're from the side you support.

Michael Kinsley writes about the Judith Miller issue and anonymous sources in general, using the public interest argument:

It is certainly true that anonymous sources are a valid and important tool of journalism. It is also true that undercover agents are a valid and important tool of espionage. Journalism and espionage both serve the public interest, most of the time. Does the journalism profession really want to get into an argument about whose secrets are more important? That is the argument it is careening toward with the insistence that the legal system should allow journalists absolute protection for their sources, even if that leaves espionage with no legal protection at all.

In some ways, a reporter's agreement to guarantee anonymity to a source is a commercial contract like any other. The government enforces contracts so that people will be encouraged to make them. But some commercial contracts don't serve the public interest. Drug deals, for example. That's why you can't take your dealer to court over the kilo of cocaine he promised.

Today's question is not about enforcing an agreement. It's about forcing a journalist to break one. But the underlying issue is the same: Does it serve or harm the public interest for covert intelligence agents to be outed? If it doesn't serve the public interest, why should the government encourage this outing by letting journalists avoid the duty of every citizen to testify in a criminal investigation?

In contrast, the NYTimes editorial, granted they are defending their own, doesn't make as much sense. First they go over the history of the story where Douchebag of Liberty Robert Novak actually revealed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, and point out that Ms. Miller indeed didn't publish anything on this matter. That's fine; she didn't publish anything.

Then they make a conclusory argument about how the founders wanted the press as a 4th estate, but forgetting to mention the public interest aspect of this. Furthermore, they make an analogy to the imprisonment of Times reporter Myron Farber, but this case is analytically distinct from the Farber case: In the Farber case, the reporter had merely received confidential information about a criminal event. In this case, the anonymous government source telling Miller the information was the criminal event.

Now that's what I call Lima Time!

The Gallup poll showed independents thinking Kerry had won the debate last night in St. Louis, 53-37. The overall number was 47-45 for Kerry, but party ID showed Republicans at 38%, Democrats at 32%, and Independents at 30% [via MyDD].

Also, in Colorado, The Left Coaster reports that the party internals give an 8% edge to the GOP for the Gallup poll of "likely voters" there, with the overall race a tie at 49%. However, exit polls in 2000 say a 1% edge for the GOP. While the actual GOP edge in this election will probably be between 1% and 8%, Steve Soto brings up a good point for Colorado, as he does in the same post for New Mexico and Wisconsin.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution endorses Kerry in today's editorial, saying "It's time to give competence a chance."

Also, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer endorses Kerry in tomorrow's editorial section.

Bush's lie on discretionary spending didn't go unnoticed by Kos. Kos cites the libertarian-conservative Cato Institute calling Bush the Mother of All Spenders:

Nixon/Ford: 6.8% per year

Carter: 2.0% per year

Reagan: -1.3% per year

Bush I: 4.0% per year

Clinton: 2.5% per year

Bush II: 8.2% per year

All percentages are adjusted for inflation.

Also, check out the chart at Kos's site as determined by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Sinclair and its skeezy CEO, David Deniston Smith, are trying to classify a partisan film against Kerry as news. Note that this is the same company that failed to support our soldiers when it pulled Nightline the night that Ted Koppel read the names of soldiers. The film is going to pre-empt regular programming on Sinclair stations, in furtherance of a right-wing agenda:

The conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose television outlets reach nearly a quarter of the nation's homes with TV, is ordering its stations to preempt regular programming just days before the Nov. 2 election to air a film that attacks Sen. John F. Kerry's activism against the Vietnam War, network and station executives familiar with the plan said Friday.
...
Station and network sources said they have been told the Sinclair stations — which include affiliates of Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, as well as WB and UPN — will be preempting regular programming for one hour between Oct. 21 and Oct. 24, depending on the city. The airing of "Stolen Honor" will be followed by a panel discussion, which Kerry will be asked to join, thus potentially satisfying fairness regulations, the sources said.

Kerry campaign officials said they had been unaware of Sinclair's plans to air the film, and said Kerry had not received an invitation to appear.
...
Still, although broadcast stations are required to provide equal time to major candidates in an election campaign, the Sinclair move may not run afoul of those provisions if Kerry or a representative is offered time to respond. Moreover, several sources said Sinclair had told them it planned to classify the program as news, where the rules don't apply.

Calling it news, however, poses its own problems, said Keith Woods, dean of the faculty at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in St. Petersburg, Fla., that teaches professional ethics. "To air a documentary intended to provide a one-sided view of Kerry's record and call it news — it's like calling Michael Moore's movie news," he said, adding that the closer to an election that a controversial news report is aired, the "higher the bar has to go" in terms of fairness.

Contact your local Sinclair stations, people. And in case you forgot why David D. Smith of Sinclair is skeezy...

Update:

Eschaton has another update on David D. Smith of Sinclair's "perverted sex act" up.

Update #2:

There is a list of Sinclair's stations available here.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights put out a report attacking Bush's poor civil rights record.

The report is available here, despite Republican attempts to block publishing it until after the election.

I like Lima Time as much as anyone else, as a Doger fan, but whose genius idea was it to switch from the Yankee game when it was tied in the 9th to the Dodger game without showing one of the games on FX? Both Fox and FX are showing the Dodger game at the moment, and the Yankee game is AWOL.

Update:
They briefly started showing both games simultaneously with A-Rod on second in the Top of the 11th until he scored on the wild pitch -- the Yankee game has a larger inset and the audio, while the Dodger game is smaller in the bottom right corner -- but now they're back to the Dogers.

Highlights from the New York Times editorial on the debate:

One of the uncommitted voters in the audience sensibly asked President Bush to name three mistakes he'd made in office, and what he had done to remedy the damage. Mr. Bush declined to list even one, and instead launched into an impassioned defense of the invasion of Iraq as a good idea. The president's insistence on defending his decision to go into Iraq seemed increasingly bizarre in a week when his own investigators reported that there were no weapons of mass destruction there, and when his own secretary of defense acknowledged that there was no serious evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

Even worse, the president's refusal to come up with even a minor error - apart from saying that he might have made some unspecified appointments that he now regretted - underscores his inability to respond to failure in any way except by insisting over and over again that his original decision was right.
...
Mr. Kerry demonstrated, at the very minimum, a stature that was equal to the president's. If Mr. Bush was hoping to recover all the ground he lost last week, he failed in his mission.

The president seemed to fall back frequently on name-calling, denouncing his opponent as a liberal and a tool of the trial lawyers. "The president's just trying to scare," Mr. Kerry said. It will be another few weeks before we see how well that works.

I heard this on the radio, and still have to watch my DVRed version, but this jumped out at me:

Bush said Kerry's tax-cut rollback would raise taxes on 900,000 small businesses. This is misleading. Under Bush's definition, a small business is any taxpayer who reports some income from investments, partnerships or trusts. By that definition, every partner at a huge accounting firm or at the largest law firm would represent a small business.

Although Bush expressed surprise at Kerry's assertion that the president earned $84 from his investment in a timber company and, thus, qualified as a small business — "I own a timber company? That's news to me. Need some wood?" — the Web site www.factcheck.org backed up Kerry's assertion. [emphasis added]

Here's the relevant quote from Factcheck.org:

In fact, according to his 2003 financial disclosure form, Bush does own part interest in "LSTF, LLC", a limited-liability company organized "for the purpose of the production of trees for commercial sales." (See "supporting documents"....)

So Bush was wrong to suggest that he doesn't have ownership of a timber company. And Kerry was correct in saying that Bush's definition of "small business" is so broad that Bush himself would have qualified as a "small business" in 2001 by virtue of the $84 in business income.

Kerry got his information from an article we posted Sept. 23 stating that Bush on his 2001 federal income-tax returns "reported $84 of business income from his part ownership of a timber-growing enterprise." We should clarify: the $84 in Schedule C income was from Bush's Lone Star Trust, which is actually described on the 2001 income-tax returns as an "oil and gas production" business. The Lone Star Trust now owns 50% of the tree-growing company, but didn't get into that business until two years after the $84 in question. So we should have described the $84 as coming from an "oil and gas" business in 2001, and will amend that in our earlier article. [emphasis as in the article]

The other interesting thing is that Cheney was attacking John Edwards for using subchapter S (the same subchapter Bush is using as an example above), which is specifically for small business, to say that Edwards used creative accounting to avoid Medicare taxes. Edwards was running a small business!! I thought the Bush administration was supposed to be in support of small businesses.

Furthermore, under subchapter S, people pay individual taxes. Most individuals running small business under subchapter S do not fall under the highest 2 brackets, so Bush's assertion that Kerry would raise taxes on small business doesn't make sense.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says that Bush's plan to cap damage awards for medical malpractice wouldn't lower healthcare premiums very much:

On the hot-button subject of medical malpractice, both men skipped over details that did not suit their cases. As he often does, Bush suggested that limiting non-economic damages would sharply reduce health care costs for most Americans. Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found that legislation capping damage awards to $250,000 would lower physician malpractice premiums by 25 percent to 30 percent. But that reduction "would lower health care costs by only about .4 percent to .5 percent, and the likely effect on health insurance premiums would be comparably small," the CBO said.

The problem is that Bush and many other people who make this same argument, such as Judson Cox or Dr. Craig VanDerVeer in Charlotte, have a fundamental misunderstanding of how health insurance works. Although the press coverage of big malpractice cases is widespread, the actual incidence of those cases is very low. Health insurance costs are shared in the aggregate, so any individual case has very little impact on premiums. Given that the proportion is low to begin with, it doesn't make sense to say that capping damages would have a significant effect on premiums.

Furthermore, data support this conclusion. The best predictor of health care premiums is how the economy is doing. If you look at the article above, you will see that premiums closely track the economy, but damages from malpractice suits have largely stayed the same (perhaps tracking inflation more so than anything else, but I don't have anything to back up this particular assertion).

The reason is that insurance companies have much of their holdings in investments. When investments are crappy, such as how the economy has been under Bush, premiums climb astronomically because insurance companies need to recoup those losses. When the economy is good, all the bond and securities holdings of insurance companies do well, so premiums aren't as high.

While it is true that OB/GYNs in rural areas are being squeezed out by high insurance premiums, it's not because malpractice suits are raising insurance costs. Bush asserts this reason in his attempt to appease the rich, but it doesn't make any sense given the data. The poor economy has raised insurance costs.

I only heard part of the debate on the radio in the car, and still need to watch my DVR, but I thought one of Kerry's most effective lines in response to Bush (with that shrill rebuke on Gibson) talking about having a coalition was that if Missouri was a country, it would be the 3rd largest member of the coalition.

Update (6:45PM):
Oliver Willis has video from that moment of Bush going apeshit on Gibson [via Kos].

I spoke to B., one of the Webmasters at JohnKerry.com, on the phone earlier. He was really friendly, and was working with me on why I haven't been able to load John Kerry ads in the last several hours. Apparently, I'm not the only person using Adelphia who has had this problem. Anyone else using Adelphia able to view ads on JohnKerry.com?

There appeared to be a traceroute problem at the Adelphia servers to Akamai as well, so that hints at the problem.

Update (10/9, 5:50PM):
Just tried the ads, and all is well now.

The biggest difference the Time poll is highlighting is John Kerry doing better among women:

George Bush and John Kerry are again deadlocked, 45% Bush – 45% Kerry, among likely voters in the three-way race, as they head into tonight's town hall meeting, according to a TIME Poll taken Oct. 6-7. Nader is down to 3%.

On being "likeable," a key strength for Bush in 2000, Bush now trails Kerry, 70% - 65%. (Bush had a slight 4 point lead on likeability before the debate.) Bush still leads Kerry by a wide margin, 81% - 42% on "sticking to his positions."

Just before the first debate last week, Bush was up by 6 points among likely voters in the TIME Poll. Kerry's win last Thursday (59%-23%) not only tied the race, but 30% of voters said that they were more likely to vote for Kerry because of the debate. This compares to only 14% more likely to vote for Bush.

A key reason for Kerry's resurgence was that he recaptured a large lead among female voters. Females now support Kerry over Bush by 12 points, 50%-38%. Pre-debate, the TIME Poll found women split evenly, 44% Kerry, 43% Bush. By contrast, in early August, Kerry led among women by 14 points. Bush is now up 16 points among males, 51% Bush, 35% Kerry.

Tuesday's vice presidential debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards had little impact, according to the TIME Poll. Despite Cheney's small winning edge over Edwards (33%-28%), equal numbers of voters said the debates made them more likely to vote for Bush (15%) or Kerry (16%), and 68% said it had no impact.

I was just watching CNN. They showed the results of a poll that said 50% of Californians would not be inclined to vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger if he ran for president. Der Gropenfuhrer only picked up 26%, and 24% were undecided on whether the Governator should be allowed in the White House. The poll's probably moot, since a constitutional amendment would have to pass, but it shows the 65% approval rating quoted doesn't necessarily transfer to the presidency.

Digby has the story on how Cheney was involved in Saddam's oil-for-food scam. Cheney's own Halliburton created European subsidiaries to evade the sanctions put on Iraq, which resulted in both Halliburton and Saddam making millions. Furthermore, Cheney himself lobbied the U.S. government to lift sanctions on Iran so that Halliburton would be able to make money there too. Digby caps off the brilliant post with:

We've come full circle. They have so lost touch with reality that Cheney is now implicating himself in Saddam's WMD programs and he doesn't even realize it.

Lies, lies, and more lies it seems like from the past week. Eleanor Clift goes into more details, including the shifting rationales on Iraq, and there were also a few interesting quotes:

Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill know that Iraq is a mess. A few brave senators like John McCain, Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar have spoken out, but most are staying silent in solidarity with their party. They’ll tell the truth after the election. The incompetence, hubris and arrogance of this administration has cost American lives and treasure, and left whoever is president over the next four years a situation that will be almost impossible to correct. "If we could hear the inner deliberations of this administration, it would scare us," says a former Republican operative, who knows how the Bushies play the game. "They know they've been caught. Their strategy is to throw up enough monkey dust to get through the next four weeks."
...
This is the moment of truth for American foreign policy. Will Bush's bald-faced lies carry the day? Can Cheney con the American public into four more years? The Duelfer report this week "shows Bush jumped the gun," says Allen Holmes, a policy analyst who served under Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush I in the State Department, and under President Bill Clinton in the Defense Department. "A lot of people told [Bush] we didn't need to go to war. He wasn't listening. He created a battlefield in Iraq. The jihadists love it, particularly when innocent women and children are killed. It's a recruiting tool."

Holmes is a member of Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, which counts retired general Anthony Zinni, retired admiral William Crowe and former Air Force chief of staff Tony McPeak among its founding members. Holmes never found the case for going to war in Iraq a compelling one. He thinks Bush wanted to finish the job his father started, which he finds ironic because "in dad's book, he says the reason he didn't go to Baghdad is he didn't want to own the chaos we're involved in today."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 96,000. Well, that would be great, except that 150,000 jobs a month are needed just to keep up with the population. And unemployment is still way up from the 4% that Bush inherited.

Note that August numbers were revised downward from 144,000 to 128,000 and that economists had forecast around 158,000 jobs. Of the 96,000 for September, 37,000 are government jobs, so the increase among businesses is particularly low.

Note also that the household employment survey shows that we're down 201,000 jobs. This is the number the GOP likes to point to when the payroll numbers aren't as good.

Furthermore, job growth is still down overall for the year. George W. Bush has presided over the only job loss over a presidential administration since the Great Depression, which shows you how much this adminstration has destroyed the economy. Presidents during World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam presided over job growth, so the Bush excuse of a world of uncertainty doesn't seem to work.

Thomas Boswell made a veiled reference to Bush on the Washington Post sports page:

To think, once upon a time, baseball didn't have wild cards. Games like those we're seeing this week did not exist. Rafael Furcal couldn't have hit his walk-off 11th inning home run on Thursday to tie the Braves-Astros series, giving us a second sudden-death win in 24 hours. Some foolish folks, like me, opposed the whole idea indignantly. Yet baseball's owners knew better. In fact, they almost knew better unanimously. Only one owner voted against the format. He owned the Texas Rangers.

But what does Bush know about baseball? He traded Sammy Sosa!

Bush's ad buys in Washington are sharply down, according to the LATimes, which is not surprising given Zogby's numbers there:

President Bush sharply curtailed television advertising in Washington state this week, a sign that national Republicans may be privately conceding the state's 11 electoral votes.
...
The Bush-Cheney campaign broadcast only a handful of commercials targeting the state's largest TV markets Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, according to independent data compiled for The Times.

For most of September, Bush was airing on average 20 or more spots a day in Spokane and Seattle combined.

Equally telling, neither Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney has visited Washington since well before the Republican National Convention. Bush was last there to raise money in a Seattle suburb on Aug. 13.
...
Television ad-buying data show that Bush's profile this week in the state is waning, after Bush spent more than $3.5 million there this year.

The president's campaign aired five spots Tuesday on local stations, not counting his ads on national cable channels, according to the independent ad monitor TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group. He recorded a similar low volume Sunday and Monday.

In Portland, Ore., by contrast, the president is running dozens of ads each day and is in a dogfight with Kerry for the state's seven electoral votes. Bush plans to visit Portland and Medford next week.

"It's probably safe to start calling Washington for Kerry based on media buys," said Evan Tracey, chief operating officer for TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group. "Bush is down below the watermark of reasonable advertising."

This LATimes article is about the Town Hall debate, but what jumped out at me was this quote:

When a woman in Newark, Ohio, recently told him that she was a recovering Republican, Kerry quipped: "Do you have to go through a program for that, or do you just someday listen and embrace reason?"

The Los Angeles Times reports on Lynne Cheney urging a recall by the Department of Education mentioning National Standards of History:

The Education Department this summer destroyed more than 300,000 copies of a booklet designed for parents to help their children learn history after the office of Vice President Dick Cheney's wife complained that it mentioned the National Standards for History, which she has long opposed.

In June, during a routine update, the Education Department began distributing a new edition of a 10-year-old how-to guide called "Helping Your Child Learn History." Aimed at parents of children from preschool through fifth grade, the 73-page booklet presented an assortment of advice, including taking children to museums and visiting historical sites.

The booklet included several brief references to the National Standards for History, which were developed at UCLA in the mid-1990s with federal support. Created by scholars and educators to help school officials design better history courses, they are voluntary benchmarks, not mandatory requirements.

At the time, Lynne Cheney, the wife of now-Vice President Cheney, led a vociferous campaign complaining that the standards were not positive enough about America's achievements and paid too little attention to figures such as Gen. Robert E. Lee, Paul Revere and Thomas Edison.

At one point in the initial controversy, Cheney denounced the standards as "politicized history."

In response to the criticism, the UCLA standards were heavily revised, most critics were mollified and the controversy faded — but not for Cheney and her staff.

Of course, the reason Mrs. Cheney wants to recall these booklets is not because they are inaccurate. Rather, it's for ideological reasons:

Read more!

Paul Krugman's latest column, entitled "Ignorance Isn't Strength," go read it now.

MSNBC has the video:

“John Kerry strongly supports stem cell research. George Bush is putting limits on it,” Fox says in an ad Kerry’s campaign unveiled Thursday. “Stem cell research can help millions of Americans whose lives have been touched by devastating illnesses. George Bush says we can wait. I say lives are at stake and it’s time for leadership. That’s why I support John Kerry for president.”

Here's the link to the Kerry Press Release.

The Washington Post comments how Bush's appearances in front of the press, or rather, the lack there of, as well as how much he's shielded from any form of possible dissent. Beyond the obvious questions, such as what kind of president is such a coward that he can't face the press, it makes me wonder what else is being shielded from Bush in this alternate reality:

The president has stopped taking questions from the small pool of reporters who cover his photo opportunities, and he has answered questions from the White House press corps twice since Aug. 23, both times with interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi at his side. His last prime-time news conference was April 13.

The tradition of the White House news corps shouting questions at the president has largely faded during this term because Bush reacts testily and does not answer, and his staff typically sets up events so he does not have to walk near reporters.
...
Although all presidents are kept somewhat removed from reality because of security concerns and their staffs' impulse for burnishing their image, Bush's campaign has taken unprecedented steps to shield him from dissenters and even from curious, undecided voters. On the way to the forum outside Cleveland, the media buses that went ahead of Bush were temporarily marooned in a church parking lot because police had been told to divert all buses since they could contain demonstrators.

Bush's handlers have pulled the presidential bubble especially tight during the campaign, but he often has kept his distance from the public and the media throughout his term. He rarely plays tourist on trips, and has held the fewest solo news conferences of any president since records were kept.

Bush has held 15 solo news conferences since taking office. At the same point in their presidencies, according to research by Martha Joynt Kumar of Towson University in Maryland, Bill Clinton had held 42; George H.W. Bush, 83; Ronald Reagan, 26; Jimmy Carter, 59; Gerald R. Ford, 39; Richard M. Nixon, 29; Lyndon B. Johnson, 88; John F. Kennedy, 65; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, 94.

When reporters asked in mid-September about a chance to question the president about his National Guard records, White House press secretary Scott McClellan replied that Bush "takes questions on a regular basis," adding, "We always take your concerns under consideration."

Does anyone know what happened to Billmon at the Whiskey Bar? His last post said he was going to sea for a week, but that was on August 15.

Tim Ryan (D-OH) on the House floor gives a passionate speech on why young people don't believe Bush when he says there will be no draft because the Bush administration has lied on every aspect of the war [via MyDD].

Update:
MyDD has also reposted this as a Quicktime instead of Windows Media.

Kerry is tied at 47-47 among registered voters and is ahead 50-46 among "likely voters" according to the AP/Ipsos Poll:

The AP-Ipsos Public Affairs poll, completed on the eve of the second presidential debate, showed a reversal from early September, when the Republican incumbent had the momentum and a minuscule lead. With bloodshed increasing in Iraq, Kerry sharpened his attacks, and Bush stumbled in their initial debate.

Among 944 likely voters, the Kerry-Edwards ticket led Bush-Cheney 50 percent to 46 percent. The Oct. 4-6 survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The race was tied 47-47 percent among all registered voters, with a 2.5 point margin of error. Other polls show the race just as tight.

Nearly three-fourths of likely voters who were surveyed said they had watched or listened to the first presidential debate last week. Some 39 percent said they came away with a more favorable view of Kerry, while just 8 percent felt better about Bush.

"I was more comfortable with Kerry after the debate," said Louis Robinson, a 66-year-old retiree from Pittsburgh. "I just like the way he carried himself." Nearly a third of likely voters who watched said the debate gave them a less favorable view of Bush.

More importantly, given this is a state-by-state battle, Kerry has improved in perception categories across the board. Bush's approval is at 46% and almost 60% think the country is on the wrong track.

You can see now why the Bush administration is so desperate that they are sending terror alerts out to schools.

This link is culled from various sources on Judith Miller getting an 18 month jail sentence pending appeal.

The one thing that jumped out at me is how strident she is:

"I think it's really frightening when journalists can be put in jail for doing their job effectively," Miller told reporters outside the courthouse.

I'm not sure what she thinks her job is. Outing undercover agents to undermine national security? I believe we call that treason in some circles. Yes, journalists do have the responsibility of reporting the truth, but that's not at the expense of other principles that should be obvious. Furthermore, it's illegal. What Judith Miller did was not in the public interest and wasn't journalism.

The article also mentions I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby whom many conjecture is the source of the information.

This article describes what Martha Stewart's life might be like in prison. I have two thoughts:

1) Is this for real?

Although it does look much less intimidating than other prisons.

2) They should make the whole ordeal into a reality show.

It would also ensure that she's safe, if someone was worried about that, although I think that whole guard story was blown out of proportion to try to get her nicer accomodations. But more importantly, it would ensure that everyone is nice to her, since they know they might be on TV.

The sequel to "This Land" is premiering tonight on Leno.

Cheney mischaracterized the Pinehurst Pilot [via Josh Marshall]:

The Pilot hasn’t “taken to calling him” anything. In fact, the vice president’s obscure reference sent us scrambling to our library. And sure enough, we did publish an editorial 15 months ago, on June 25, 2003, headlined, “Edwards Should Do His Day Job.” In it, we noted that Sen. Jesse Helms used to be called “Senator No.” And we added: “Four and a half years into his first term, John Edwards is becoming known as Senator Gone.”
...
But we also wrote: “Members of the senator’s staff point out that Edwards’ attendance record this year has been better than the three other Democratic senators who are campaigning for president — Joe Lieberman, Richard Gephardt and Bob Graham. And the aides also say none of the votes Edwards missed was close, so his presence on the floor would not have changed the outcome.”

Furthermore, this is certainly Edwards' "hometown" paper as Cheney claimed. And given that both Edwards and Cheney presided over the Senate twice on Tuesdays, I'm not sure Cheney has much of a claim on anything.

Here's the quote of the day:

"My opponent says he has a plan for Iraq. Parts of it should sound pretty familiar -- it's already known as the Bush plan."

"In Iraq, Senator Kerry has a strategy of retreat; I have a strategy of victory."

-- President Bush, in the same speech, this morning in Pennsylvania.

So...Kerry has the same plan as Bush, but some how the strategy is different? What do we call that? "Flippy...floppily...ahh, strong leadership."

The new Zogby numbers are from September 30 through October 5 (note that these numbers are mostly after the first presidential debate):

Kerry is up marginally in Arkansas, Florida, Nevada, and Ohio, while Bush is up marginally in Tennessee.

Kerry is up solidly in Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

Kerry is up, but it's still within the margin of error in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin.

Bush is up, but still within the margin of error in Missouri and West Virginia.

I think the biggest deals here are that it's so close in Ohio, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Bush won those states by 4-5% in 2000, so that's a HUGE deal, especially since Gore won NONE of the South, except perhaps Florida. Kerry is also doing pretty well in New Hampshire up 6.6%, a state which Bush won in 2000.

I'd still like to see what the numbers in Colorado and North Carolina are. I have a feeling North Carolina might be out of reach, although Elizabeth Edwards was shoring up the base at North Carolina A&T, but Colorado has been very close lately.

This Washington Post article is on the front page today:

Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq's weapons programs, said Hussein's ability to produce nuclear weapons had "decayed" continuously since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program."

The findings were similar on biological and chemical weapons. While Hussein had long dreamed of developing an arsenal of biological agents, his stockpiles had been destroyed and research stopped years before the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. On chemical weapons, Duelfer said Hussein hoped someday to resume an effort after U.N. sanctions ended, but had no stocks and had not researched making the weapons for a dozen years.

Duelfer's report, delivered yesterday to two congressional committees, represents the government's most definitive accounting of Hussein's weapons programs, the assumed strength of which the Bush administration presented as a central reason for the war. While previous reports have drawn similar conclusions, Duelfer's assessment went beyond them in depth, detail and level of certainty.

"We were almost all wrong" on Iraq, Duelfer told a Senate panel yesterday.

This Washington Post article summarizes how all the rationales for the Iraq war have been shot down. What rationales are left? Personal vendetta because Saddam sent assassins for Shrub's dad? Oil money for Bush's cronies? More money for Cheneyburton? Something to try to gain re-election?

Here's another question: why is this story not on the front page? Why is it on A35?

The human cost of this war has been over a thousand Americans killed, over seven thousand injured, and several thousand Iraqis killed and wounded. Are the rationales left for the war worth that human cost? Bush seems to think so, and he's willing to continue to lie about how this war is going. Surprisingly enough, it seems like the only person not lying in the Bush administration at the moment might be Condeleeza Rice:

Kerry has had his own problems on Iraq: He accepted that the administration intelligence on Iraq was correct and voted to authorize the use of force. But he has said that he gave Bush authorization in order to give him credibility in the showdown with Iraq, and that he would have given U.N. weapons inspectors more time to complete their work.

Bush said yesterday that Hussein "chose defiance and war, [and] our coalition enforced the just demands of the world," but Iraq actually had allowed the United Nations to send inspectors into the country, although Iraqi officials had balked at allowing scientists to leave the country for questioning. The inspectors left not because Iraq kicked them out but because the United States said it was about to launch an invasion and their safety could not be guaranteed.

Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, adding weight to Kerry's argument, said yesterday: "Had we had a few months more, we would have been able to tell both the CIA and others that there were no weapons of mass destruction [at] all the sites that they had given to us."

Kerry campaign officials jumped on the report, saying it is one more piece of evidence that the war in Iraq was a mistake and was based on evidence that was either faulty or exaggerated by administration officials. Susan Rice, a senior foreign policy adviser to Kerry, said the Bush campaign is "grasping at straws" as it strains to maintain a link between the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war with Iraq.

Rice said the White House made a "very dangerous strategic error" by focusing on Iraq, which turns out to have had no banned weapons, while ignoring or mishandling the much more dangerous threat posed by Iran and North Korea -- countries known to have active nuclear programs.