The Staton Jones Report

December 16, 2006

Salon.com names S.R. Sidarth Person of the Year

Good choice.

Posted by Winston Smith at 06:15 PM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2006

Best Wishes Senator Johnson

Update: Right-wing class didn't last as long as I thought.

---

Big news today is that South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson suffered something stroke-like that had him in emergency surgery last night. According to an official statement:

Subsequent to his admission to George Washington University Hospital yesterday, Sen. Tim Johnson was found to have had an intracerebral bleed caused by a congenital arteriovenous malformation. He underwent successful surgery to evacuate the blood and stabilize the malformation. The Senator is recovering without complication in the critical care unit at George Washington University Hospital. It is premature to determine whether further surgery will be required or to assess any long term prognosis.

Reaction on the right has been conspicuously respectful even on Free Republic. Here is an example of this from right wing site, Decision 08:

Well, look, I want control of the Senate as much as the next Republican, but not this way: best wishes for a speedy recovery to Senator Johnson. Sheer human decency should overrule partisanship on a story like this…

I must repost the comment from Jim Pharo:

If you guys acted like this when you were running the place, you might still be in power (i.e., WWTDD — What Would Tom DeLay Do?”)

This brings me to my question. So... when is this newfound Republican civility going to deteriorate into mudslinging and howling outrage?

Maybe never. If Johnson dies or decides to resign, the Republicans will gain a Senate seat. They will probably accept this gracefully, given the circumstances, but I predict it won't be long before they start claiming a "mandate" kept them in power in the Senate, trying to erase the electoral beating of last month. But there's another possibility.

If Johnson neither dies nor resigns, he keeps the seat. He may be unable to function, but that's never been a problem for the Republicans. Strom Thurmond was obviously senile in his last couple of years in office, but the Republicans wheeled the poor old man around the Senate chambers anyway, just to keep the seat. So if Johnson turns out to be too disabled to realistically conduct his duties as Senator, but the Democrats convince him to hold the seat anyway, how long until the Republican wailing and gnashing of teeth begins? Who is going to be the first Freeper to call for someone to "remove Johnson's feeding tube"? How long before the talking points declaring that Thurmond was sharp as a tack until his last day are circulated?

My prediction? Well, if you don't know what a nanosecond is, you will after measure the duration of Republican civility in the face of a disabled Johnson holding his seat.

Posted by Winston Smith at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2006

Shot ... Score!

Posted by Steven at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

March 29, 2006

We've Liberated Istanbul!

OK, this is why it is bad that I read Free Republic more than I read the Daily Kos. Imagine my surprise when I saw an article on Free Republic claiming that "Howard Kagoolian PROVES MSM is lying about Iraq!" Howard Kagoolian is a moron running for Congress in California. He recently visited Iraq to show how great he thinks the war is. On his site, he posted some photos from his trip, including one that was supposed to demonstrate how peaceful the streets of Baghdad really are:

Wow. That's pretty peaceful. I mean, there's a of UPS truck unloading packages... wait a minute... UPS doesn't deliver in Baghdad! (outside the Green Zone)

Problem: that a picture of downtown Istanbul.

First, the obvious clues: Iraqis speak Arabic and write in Arabic script. Turks speak Turkish, which is written in a romanized script. "2.Noter" is a franchise offering notary and other business services — in Turkey. Edo is a brand of ice cream manufactured and sold — in Turkey. "Carşi" means "shopping center" — in Turkish. Additionally, the yellow cab is a common site in Instanbul, as is the box-like white public toilet on the street corner. The list goes on.

The same morons who refused to believe that Ben Domenech was a plagiarist were out to cheer on Kaloogian's lie and decry the "DUmmies" who were calling him out. Free Republic has since pulled the posting, noting only a "Possible blunder regarding photo." That means that they are so wrong, they can't even pretend to be right.

Now, below is a scene from a downtown Baghdad market:

You can see some subtle differences, such as the lack of UPS trucks, and the palm trees in the background. Notice the difference between the way the women dress. The architecture of the buildings is also radically different. If you look carefully, you'll notice other striking differences between the two photos.

On Kaloogian's new prospects for re-election: bwahahahahaha! Below is Kaloogian posing with — please swallow any liquids before reading further — General Custer.

Posted by Winston Smith at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2006

Follow The Money

As a regular scanner of Free Republic, I was witness to their "Q1 Freepathon" in which they asked for $66,000 in donations to keep their political cesspool all gooey with crypto-fascist badness. I see this once a quarter, but this time it was different. This time, it took a while to reach the goal. In addition, a persistent link to "Donate to FR" was added in the page header.

In a related story, MoveOn.org sent out an email yesterday seeking to raise $250,000 to help fund their upcoming efforts. Their hope was to raise this by the "end of the end of tommorow" — which would be today, a Thursday — although it was a weekly goal. By the end of the day, they had raised $389,900 from people giving an average of $60 a piece.

This morning, they send out another email challenging MoveOn.org members to hit a new target of $600,000 by the end of tomorrow (Friday). By the close of business Thursday, MoveOn.org had collected a total of $646,648. So, the new goal is $750,000 by the end of Friday, three times what they'd hoped to get this week.

Folks, George Soros and George Clooney are not responsible for these sums. These collections are averaging about $60 a person. Some people give $100, some less, probably a few are giving more. These are fed-up Americans like me — and probably you — who want to see some real change in Washington. Meanwhile, the Freepers can barely get $66,000 in a two-week in-your-face "Freepathon."

This is huge. This is the sign that it's no longer us die-hard dissidents opposing the madness of King George, it is the nation at large. The grass roots are sprouting.

Help fertilize them.

UPDATE:
MoveOn.org sent out an email this morning with the following tallies:

Total Donors: 15,054
Funds Raised: $922,143
Average Contribution: $60
Smallest Contribution: $2
Biggest Contribution: $5000
Most Often Contribution: $50
Members Who Gave Twice: 63
Original Goal: $250,000
Final Goal: $1,000,000
Short of Goal: $77,857

I think the numbers speak for themselves. It's not about "momentum" any more. It's about backlash.

Posted by Winston Smith at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2006

Just Walk Out

William Rivers Pitt has an excellent idea for the State of the Union address: walk out. Just get up, leave. On the steps of the building, give a Counter-State-of-the-Union address.

I have a wild and crazy idea.

George W. Bush's delivery of the State of the Union address will take place on Tuesday, January 31, a little more than a week from now. It is my strong belief that every single Democrat present in the House chamber for the speech should, at a predetermined moment, stand up and walk out. No yelling. No heated words. Every Democrat should simply stand silently and leave.

Crazy, I know. Crazy, and possibly the best idea ever put before a body of Democrats since the New Deal.

Understand this, congressional Democrats, and understand it well: you are not dealing merely with a body of political opponents in the GOP. You are dealing with a group of people that want you exterminated politically. The days of walking the halls of the Rayburn Building, sharing a bourbon with a colleague from the other side of the aisle, and hammering out a compromise are as dead as Julius Caesar. Collegiality is out. Mutual respect is out. They want you gone for good. Erased. Destroyed.

And you have been far too polite about this. The writing has been on the wall for a while now. Back in 1995, Republican Senator Phil Gramm said, "We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." That was eleven years ago. If you listen close, you can hear the beasts baying in the distance, waiting to slip the leash. Your limp tactics in the face of the assault upon you, your vacillation, your strange hope that maybe the GOP will be nicer tomorrow, has left you all smelling like Alpo.

...

Or you can stand up.

It takes a spine to stand up. Find yours. Get up and walk out of the State of the Union speech. Turn your backs on the blizzard of lies and empty promises that are sure to pour forth from that podium. Give it exactly what it deserves.

Walk outside to the steps of the Capitol Building and hold a Counter-State-of-the-Union. Lay out your plans for a better future. Explain how you will reform the system that spawned Mr. Abramoff. Demand answers and explanations about what is happening in Iraq, what is happening over at the National Security Agency, and why this administration believes itself to be completely above the law.

I can even offer a bit of text for your opening statement. "Three years ago during this very speech," your leading spokesperson can say from those steps, "Mr. Bush told us that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons - which is one million pounds - of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, al Qaeda connections, and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program. He said all this three years ago, during this all-important annual address, and all of it was a lie. The American people deserve an explanation."

Hey, leaving almost worked for the "Killer D's" in Texas. Maybe it's time to start in the Congress.

Posted by Steven at 05:22 PM | Comments (1)

December 04, 2005

Rove vs. New Orleans

Leave it to the Bush White House to put politics before, oh, saving lives. Documents recently released by the State of Louisiana reveal that Bush was more concerned with his political image and a raw power grab than actually sending help to New Orleans.

Shortly after noon on Aug. 31, Louisiana Sen. David Vitter (R) delivered a message that stunned aides to Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D), who were frantically managing the catastrophe that began two days earlier when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

White House senior adviser Karl Rove wanted it conveyed that he understood that Blanco was requesting that President Bush federalize the evacuation of New Orleans. The governor should explore legal options to impose martial law "or as close as we can get," Vitter quoted Rove as saying, according to handwritten notes by Terry Ryder, Blanco's executive counsel.

Thus began what one aide called a "full-court press" to compel the first-term governor to yield control of her state National Guard -- a legal, political and personal campaign by White House staff that failed three days later when Blanco rejected the administration's terms, 10 minutes before Bush was to announce them in a Rose Garden news conference, the governor's aides said.

The standoff, illuminated among more than 100,000 pages of documents released Friday by Blanco in response to requests by Senate and House investigators, marks perhaps the clearest single conflict between U.S. and Louisiana officials in the bungled response to New Orleans's surrender to floodwaters and chaos.

While attention has focused on the performance of former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael D. Brown, and communications breakdowns that kept Washington from recognizing for 12 to 16 hours the scope of flooding that would drive the storm's death toll above 1,200, the clash over military control highlights government officials' lack of familiarity with the levers of emergency powers.

Blanco's top aides relied on ad hoc tutorials from the National Guard about who would be in charge and how to call in federal help. But in the inevitable confusion of fast-moving events, partisan differences and federal/state divisions prevented top leaders from cooperating.

A Blanco aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the people around Bush were trying to maneuver the governor into an unnecessary change intended to make Bush look decisive.

"It was an overwhelming natural disaster. The federal government has an agency that exists for purposes of coming to the rescue of localities in a natural disaster, and that organization did not live up to what it was designed for or promised to," the aide said. Referring to Bush aides, he said, "It was time to recover from the fiasco, and take a win wherever you could, legitimate or not."

First they drive the wedge of partisanship into every level of government, and then have the chutzpuh to say that government doesn't work, and people die.

Posted by Steven at 09:37 PM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2005

DeLay's Lines Illegal in Justice's Eyes

Tom DeLay's political masterpiece, the redistricting of Texas in 2002, was clearly illegal in the eyes of the Justice Dept. lawyers asked to review it. The seventy-three page memo has been under an "unusual" gag order for the last two years (this Administration has made black holes look transparent) in an obvious effort to hide the fact that the whole thing was illegal, immoral, and a raw power grab by DeLay (that worked).

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department's voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.

"The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect," the memo concluded.

The memo also found that Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options.

But the Texas legislature proceeded with the new map anyway because it would maximize the number of Republican federal lawmakers in the state, the memo said. The redistricting was approved in 2003, and Texas Republicans gained five seats in the U.S. House in the 2004 elections, solidifying GOP control of Congress.

J. Gerald "Gerry" Hebert, one of the lawyers representing Texas Democrats who are challenging the redistricting in court, said of the Justice Department's action: "We always felt that the process . . . wouldn't be corrupt, but it was. . . . The staff didn't see this as a close call or a mixed bag or anything like that. This should have been a very clear-cut case."

The Democrats are pursuing a case against this redistricting that will soon go to the Supreme Court. If Bush doesn't finish packing it with right-wing nut jobs, it may actually result in a ruling against the GOP and (what, again?) another round of redistricting. Here's hoping that democracy prevails.

Posted by Steven at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2005

TRMPAC Indicted

Tom DeLay's PAC was indicted today in Travis County.

The illegal corporate cash Tom DeLay used to build new protective political levees for the GOP has led to five more indictments from a Travis County, Texas, grand jury this morning. If only Bush/DeLay would have put a similar effort into real levees to save real lives rather than enhance and protect their own lust for power.

Indicted was Tom DeLay’s political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, for the illegal use of corporate money in its campaign to win a majority in the Texas House of Representatives and pull off an unprecedented mid-decade Congressional redistricting plan. A state group, the Texas Association of Business, was also accused in four indictments.

That plan, widely criticized, might now help Republicans avoid voters’ wrath for Katrina’s devastation, the war in Iraq, and the sacking of the U.S. Treasury by the rich, the trashing of public education and the crisis in public health care.

DeLay was not indicted. But he’d better delay any celebration. DeLay was not exonerated. He’s avoiding prosecution (for the moment) only because of a quirky jurisdictional issue. He lives in another county in Texas. If his residence in Austin or D.C., like those indicted, he would be toast.

Make no mistake: the committee DeLay founded and controlled, day by day and minute by minute, has been formally accused of violating the law in service to DeLay’s pursuit of power. He is culpable.

If New Orleans levees had been necessary to DeLay’s power grab they would have been the strongest in the world. The sad truth is that corruption at the heart of Bush/DeLay Republicans has rendered them incapable of using the power they seek for anything but its own reinforcement.

One more brick in the prison wall that will eventually hold Tom "The Hammer" DeLay.

Posted by Steven at 05:07 PM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2005

Florida Lightning Rod Will Run for Senate

Katherine Harris, the GOP's vote-fraud insider of 2000, has announced she's running for Senate in 2006. She's an automatic lightning rod for both the GOP and the Democratic candidate, and is sure to raise the stakes, and the price, of the race into the tens of millions.

Ms. Harris, a Republican who gained international fame during the 2000 presidential vote recount as Florida's secretary of state, has been mulling a Senate run almost since winning election to Congress in 2002. She considered joining the race for Senator Bob Graham's seat when he retired last year but held off at the last minute, saying, "All in good time."

At that point, some Republican leaders feared a Harris candidacy would dredge up too many bitter memories of the recount, potentially fueling Democratic turnout and hurting President Bush's re-election campaign here. In what was seen partly as a pre-emptive strike against Ms. Harris, Republicans in Washington encouraged Mel Martinez, then Mr. Bush's housing secretary, to run. Mr. Martinez narrowly won Mr. Graham's seat.

But Mr. Bush is now safely in his second term, no other strong candidates have emerged to face Mr. Nelson, and Ms. Harris's star quality and fund-raising powers have endured.

In a statement, Ms. Harris, a fourth-generation Floridian who represents the state's 13th District from Sarasota, said she would not formally announce her candidacy and campaign staff until July. She hinted that defeating Mr. Nelson, who was elected to the Senate in 2000 after spending 12 years in the House of Representatives and has already raised millions of dollars for the race, would be tough.

Here's hoping she gets beaten to a pulp.

Posted by Steven at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

May 31, 2005

The Last DC Secret

Former FBI offical Mark Felt, long a prime suspect as the WaPo informant Deep Throat, has 'fessed up. One of the longest-kept secrets in Washington has been broken.

I'm somewhat pleased that he broke it himself, and that he's still alive and can (if he so wishes) answer questions about the Watergate scandal and his role (and motivations) in bringing down the Nixon Administration. It's still an incompletely documented chapter, and an important one, in American history.

I'm somewhat disappointed that DT was not, as often suspected, someone still in power in DC; because it didn't seem possible that anyone out of the loop could stay protected and anonymous. But that's just being partisan and petty.

No comment yet from the WaPo, Woodward, Bernstein, or Bradlee.

Update: Woodward has confirmed. So have Bernstein and Bradlee. Can't get more official than that.

Posted by at 01:57 PM | Comments (1)

Nader Calls for Impeachment of Bush

Today's Boston Globe is carrying an essay by Ralph Nader that calls for the beginnings of impeachment of Bush/Cheney.

THE IMPEACHMENT of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, should be part of mainstream political discourse.

Minutes from a summer 2002 meeting involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveal that the Bush administration was ''fixing" the intelligence to justify invading Iraq. US intelligence used to justify the war demonstrates repeatedly the truth of the meeting minutes -- evidence was thin and needed fixing.

President Clinton was impeached for perjury about his sexual relationships. Comparing Clinton's misbehavior to a destructive and costly war occupation launched in March 2003 under false pretenses in violation of domestic and international law certainly merits introduction of an impeachment resolution.

Eighty-nine members of Congress have asked the president whether intelligence was manipulated to lead the United States to war. The letter points to British meeting minutes that raise ''troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war." Those minutes describe the case for war as ''thin" and Saddam as ''nonthreatening to his neighbors," and ''Britain and America had to create conditions to justify a war." Finally, military action was ''seen as inevitable . . . But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The president and vice president have artfully dodged the central question: ''Did the administration mislead us into war by manipulating and misstating intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to Al Qaeda, suppressing contrary intelligence, and deliberately exaggerating the danger a contained, weakened Iraq posed to the United States and its neighbors?"

If this is answered affirmatively Bush and Cheney have committed ''high crimes and misdemeanors." It is time for Congress to investigate the illegal Iraq war as we move toward the third year of the endless quagmire that many security experts believe jeopardizes US safety by recruiting and training more terrorists. A Resolution of Impeachment would be a first step. Based on the mountains of fabrications, deceptions, and lies, it is time to debate the ''I" word.

This will never happen, of course, but the President has decieved the nation and committed exactly the same kind of crime that the GOP did use to impeach Clinton. When will the GOP learn that everything evil they do will come around to bite them on the ass?

Posted by Steven at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2005

Clinton Aide Found Not Guilty

A campaign aide to Hillary Clinton was found not guilty of fraudulently reporting campaign donations today in Los Angeles.

A federal jury here on Friday found a former top campaign official for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) not guilty of charges that he intentionally covered up the lavish costs of a 2000 celebrity fundraising gala.

David F. Rosen, Clinton's national finance director during her first Senate race, had faced up to 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine if convicted on two charges of lying to the government when he understated the event's costs by nearly $800,000 in filings to the Federal Election Commission. Rosen claimed the event's hosts misled him about their true expenses.

Though Clinton was not charged in the matter, and prosecutors repeatedly said they did not believe she was involved, the case had been closely watched by critics of the former first lady, especially at a time of heated speculation about her possible aspirations for a 2008 presidential run.

Rosen, a 38-year-old newlywed who said his Chicago consulting firm had lost all its clients since his indictment, expressed relief when the jury returned with an acquittal after six hours of deliberation.

"It was hard for me to hold back tears," he told the Associated Press. "It was the happiest moment, next to my marriage, in my life."

The Hillary haters were licking their chops over this, on the same day that a surprising statistic came out about Hillary:

Is Hillary an inevitability? That's the question sparked by a new Gallup poll, which shows that 53 percent of Americans would vote for the junior senator from New York if she ran for the White House in 2008. The poll marks the first time Gallup has found majority support for the idea of a Hillary Clinton presidential run.

According to the poll, as reported by USA Today, "29 percent were 'very likely' to vote for Clinton for president if she runs in 2008; 24 percent were 'somewhat likely.' Seven percent were 'not very likely' and 39 percent were 'not at all likely' to vote for her."

We'd like to finish with the hilarious quote from Judicial Watch about Hillary:

But officials with Judicial Watch, an organization that has long been critical of the Clintons, pledged to pursue the Rosen case further. The group recently asked the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate Clinton's role in the matter.

"Obviously, the Justice Department made a political calculation and decided not to pursue the case against Rosen aggressively," the group's director of litigation Paul J. Orfanedes said in a statement.

That's right, the Bush Judicial Department "made a political calculation" and decided to go light on Hillary. Give me a fricking break.

Posted by Steven at 11:47 PM | Comments (1)

May 12, 2005

Hillary and ... Newt?

WTF? The New York Times is offering an article about how Hillary and Newt (yes, the Grinch himself) are getting chummier and chummier. According to the article, he even praised her as a possible Presidential candidate. I'm the first to say that she should strive for the Senate Majority Leader position and forget about the White House, but I can see that the ice floes are cracking in such a way that she might just be planning for '08 after all.

Which would be bad the for the Dems. She cannot win in the Red States.

What do Newt Gingrich and Hillary Rodham Clinton want from each other?

In the 1990's, these two rivals stood on nearly opposite ends of the political spectrum; he led the assault on the Clinton presidency and helped derail the ambitious health care plan she championed.

But oddly enough, something has changed since then, and it has people talking.

Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, has been working alongside the former first lady on a number of issues, and even appeared with her at a press conference on Wednesday to promote - of all things - health-care legislation.

But more puzzling than that, Mr. Gingrich has been talking up Mrs. Clinton's presidential prospects in 2008, to the chagrin of conservative loyalists who once regarded him as a heroic figure. Last month, he even suggested she might capture the presidency, saying "any Republican who thinks she's going to be easy to beat has a total amnesia about the history of the Clintons."

What gives?

For Ms. Clinton, standing side by side with her husband's onetime nemesis gives her the chance to burnish her credentials among the moderates she has been courting during her time in the Senate.

But in comments this week, she portrayed the rapprochement as one born of shared policy interests, not calculated politics.

"I know it's a bit of an odd-fellow, or odd-woman, mix," she said. "But the speaker and I have been talking about health care and national security now for several years, and I find that he and I have a lot in common in the way we see the problem."

For his part, Mr. Gingrich, who helped lead the impeachment fight against President Bill Clinton, called Mrs. Clinton "very practical" and "very smart and very hard working," adding, "I have been very struck working with her."

The Clinton-Gingrich connection comes as Mrs. Clinton has increasingly staked out moderate positions in several areas. She has recently promoted a more gradual approach to guaranteeing health care for more Americans, a departure from her efforts in the 1990's, when Republican critics like Mr. Gingrich accused her of advocating a big-government takeover of the health care system.

Posted by Steven at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2005

Voters to Bush: Just Say No

What part of NO don't you get, Shrub? Voters are turning away from Bush's agenda in hybrid Droves.

But by a 2 to 1 ratio, the public rejected easing Senate rules in a way that would make it harder for Democratic senators to prevent final action on Bush's nominees. Even many Republicans were reluctant to abandon current Senate confirmation procedures: Nearly half opposed any rule changes, joining eight in 10 Democrats and seven in 10 political independents, the poll found.

The wide-ranging survey also recorded a precipitous decline in support for the centerpiece of Bush's Social Security plan -- private or personal accounts -- despite the fact that the president and other administration officials have been stumping the country in a 60-day blitz to mobilize support. The Post-ABC poll found that a bare majority -- 51 percent -- opposed such accounts, while 45 percent supported them.

The poll also registered drops in key Bush performance ratings, growing pessimism about the economy and continuing concern about U.S. involvement in Iraq.

On the issue that has consumed the capital's political community this spring, four in 10 said that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, under fire for alleged ethics violations, should resign his leadership post, while a third of the public said he should remain in his job. Among the 36 percent who said they have been following the allegations against DeLay, nearly two in three said DeLay should step down.

Taken together, the findings suggest that Bush is off to a difficult start in his second term, with Democrats far less willing to accommodate him and his agenda than his reelection victory last November may have foreshadowed. Beyond that, the survey highlights the divisions within the Republican Party, whether that involves Bush's signature Social Security proposal or the intersection of religion and politics that has become a defining characteristic of today's GOP.

A total of 1,007 randomly selected adults were interviewed by telephone April 21-24 for this Post-ABC News poll. The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus three percentage points.

The survey found that Bush's overall job approval rating stood at 47 percent, matching his all-time low in Post-ABC News polls. Half disapproved of the job he is doing as president.

Posted by Steven at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)

Congress Running Scared

Who watches the watchers? Congresscritters are scrambling to clean their files of incriminating memos, receipts and paperwork now that the DeLay fiasco is showing signs of spreading to others.

Members of Congress are rushing to amend their travel and campaign records, fearing that the controversy over House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will trigger an ethics war that will bring greater scrutiny to their own travel and official activities.

Some offices have sharply limited staff travel, and some members are not traveling at all because of the intense review they believe they will face in coming months.

Lawmakers are paying old restaurant bills, filing missing forms and correcting erroneous ones as journalists and political opponents comb through records and DeLay (R-Tex.) attempts to answer questions about travel financing and his past relationships with lobbyists.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wrote to the Federal Election Commission on April 15 to report that he had discovered that the Washington restaurant Signatures had not charged his credit card -- as he said he had directed -- for a 2003 fundraiser for 16 people that cost $1,846. The event was hosted by Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist and part-owner of the restaurant who is now under congressional and criminal investigation for his handling of millions of dollars in fees from Indian tribes. Abramoff was not at the event.

"I never thought about this event again until it was brought to my attention very recently that no payment or reimbursement for the event has ever appeared on our FEC report," Vitter wrote. He wrote to Signatures at the same time, directing the management to "charge my credit card today."

Scurry little rats! The audit is coming! The audit is coming!

Posted by Steven at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2005

Rope-a-Dope

Nice article on Harry Reid's strategy of not getting in the way of the GOP destroying itself:

President George W. Bush started 2005 in triumph, with lofty poll numbers, sweeping goals, a tightened grip on both houses of Congress and a united Republican Party. Now those numbers are falling, his domestic programs are in trouble and the GOP is increasingly divided and wary of igniting an Armageddon-like confrontation with the Democrats over rules by which the Senate votes on presidential nominees for the federal bench. "Some of our guys are getting a little bit nervous," said a GOP strategist with close ties to Bush. "And with good reason."

Reid, with 37 years in politics, is prospering partly by doing what shrewd boxers do in the early rounds to survive: let the other guy overreach. Proudly unphilosophical, he thinks the Democratic Party needs no soul-searching. "I believe in simplicity," he says. "Health care, pensions, energy independence�that's my agenda." Meanwhile, he's glad to watch the president travel the country, attempting to sell his theory of Social Security personal savings accounts. "The more he talks about it, the less popular it gets," Reid says.

Posted by at 01:45 AM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2005

Ratzinger Put Bush in the WH

The new Pope is no stranger to politicizing religion. Salon has an essay by Sidney Blumenthal that re-highlights the connection between Ratzinger and Bush in the last election cycle.

President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. "Not all the American bishops are with me," he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season.

About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on abortion were committing a "grave sin" and must be denied Communion. He pointedly mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" -- an obvious reference to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a Roman Catholic. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger wrote, priests must be ordered to "refuse to distribute it." Any Catholic who voted for this "Catholic politician," he continued, "would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion." During the closing weeks of the campaign, a pastoral letter was read from pulpits in Catholic churches repeating the ominous suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the Democrat was nothing less than consorting with the forces of Satan, collaboration with "evil."

In 2004 Bush increased his margin of Catholic support by 6 points from the 2000 election, rising from 46 to 52 percent. Without this shift, Kerry would have had a popular majority of a million votes. Three states -- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico -- moved into Bush's column on the votes of the Catholic "faithful." Even with his atmospherics of terrorism and Sept. 11, Bush required the benediction of the Holy See as his saving grace. The key to his kingdom was turned by Cardinal Ratzinger.

So now we have a former Nazi telling priests to denounce the actual war hero from the pulpit so that a rich poseur could take the mantle of the Presidency in the name of Christ? Which chapter of Illuminatus! are we in, again?

Read the whole essay -- it's quite disturbing, especially if you are Catholic.

Posted by Steven at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2005

Save Phil

From his cousin, Bill. Just click, and Save Phil.

Posted by at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2005

Diebold Delivered

"committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year", Walden O�Dell (CEO of Diebold Election Systems). Christopher Hitchens, no leftie by anyone's count, is offering his analysis of the Ohio vote, and it's pretty damning ... against Bush.

First, the county-by-county and precinct-by-precinct discrepancies. In Butler County, for example, a Democrat running for the State Supreme Court chief justice received 61,559 votes. The Kerry-Edwards ticket drew about 5,000 fewer votes, at 56,243. This contrasts rather markedly with the behavior of the Republican electorate in that county, who cast about 40,000 fewer votes for their judicial nominee than they did for Bush and Cheney. (The latter pattern, with vote totals tapering down from the top of the ticket, is by far the more general�and probable�one nationwide and statewide.)

In 11 other counties, the same Democratic judicial nominee, C. Ellen Connally, managed to outpoll the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominees by hundreds and sometimes thousands of votes. So maybe we have a barn-burning, charismatic future candidate on our hands, and Ms. Connally is a force to be reckoned with on a national scale. Or is it perhaps a trick of the Ohio atmosphere? There do seem to be a lot of eccentrics in the state. In Cuyahoga County, which includes the city of Cleveland, two largely black precincts on the East Side voted like this. In Precinct 4F: Kerry, 290; Bush, 21; Peroutka, 215. In Precinct 4N: Kerry, 318; Bush, 11; Badnarik, 163. Mr. Peroutka and Mr. Badnarik are, respectively, the presidential candidates of the Constitution and Libertarian Parties. In addition to this eminence, they also possess distinctive (but not particularly African-American-sounding) names. In 2000, Ralph Nader�s best year, the total vote received in Precinct 4F by all third-party candidates combined was eight.

In Montgomery County, two precincts recorded a combined undervote of almost 6,000. This is to say that that many people waited to vote but, when their turn came, had no opinion on who should be the president, voting only for lesser offices. In these two precincts alone, that number represents an undervote of 25 percent, in a county where undervoting averages out at just 2 percent. Democratic precincts had 75 percent more under- votes than Republican ones.

In Precinct lB of Gahanna, in Franklin County, a computerized voting machine recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry. In that precinct, however, there are only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up. Once the �glitch� had been identified, the president had to be content with 3,893 fewer votes than the computer had awarded him.

In Miami County, a Saddam Hussein-type turnout was recorded in the Concord Southwest and Concord South precincts, which boasted 98.5 percent and 94.27 percent turnouts, respectively, both of them registering overwhelming majorities for Bush. Miami County also managed to report 19,000 additional votes for Bush after 100 percent of the precincts had reported on Election Day.

In Mahoning County, Washington Post reporters found that many people had been victims of �vote hopping,� which is to say that voting machines highlighted a choice of one candidate after the voter had recorded a preference for another. Some specialists in election software diagnose this as a �calibration issue.�

Machines are fallible and so are humans, and shit happens, to be sure, and no doubt many Ohio voters were able to record their choices promptly and without grotesque anomalies. But what strikes my eye is this: in practically every case where lines were too long or machines too few the foul-up was in a Democratic county or precinct, and in practically every case where machines produced impossible or improbable outcomes it was the challenger who suffered and the actual or potential Democratic voters who were shortchanged, discouraged, or held up to ridicule as chronic undervoters or as sudden converts to fringe-party losers.

This might argue in itself against any conspiracy or organized rigging, since surely anyone clever enough to pre-fix a vote would make sure, just for the look of the thing, that the discrepancies and obstructions were more evenly distributed. I called all my smartest conservative friends to ask them about this. Back came their answer: Look at what happened in Warren County. On Election Night, citing unspecified concerns about terrorism and homeland security, officials �locked down� the Warren County administration building and prevented any reporters from monitoring the vote count. It was announced, using who knows what �scale,� that on a scale of 1 to 10 the terrorist threat was a 10. It was also claimed that the information came from an F.B.I. agent, even though the F.B.I. denies that.

Warren County is certainly a part of Republican territory in Ohio: it went only 28 percent for Gore last time and 28 percent for Kerry this time. On the face of it, therefore, not a county where the G.O.P would have felt the need to engage in any voter �suppression.� A point for the anti- conspiracy side, then. Yet even those exact-same voting totals have their odd aspect. In 2000, Gore stopped running television commercials in Ohio some weeks before the election. He also faced a Nader challenge. Kerry put huge resources into Ohio, did not face any Nader competition, and yet got exactly the same proportion of the Warren County votes.

Whichever way you shake it, or hold it to the light, there is something about the Ohio election that refuses to add up. The sheer number of irregularities compelled a formal recount, which was completed in late December and which came out much the same as the original one, with 176 fewer votes for George Bush. But this was a meaningless exercise in reassurance, since there is simply no means of checking, for example, how many �vote hops� the computerized machines might have performed unnoticed.

There's a whole lot more in the article, also appearing in Vanity Fair. I urge you to read it, and think about how hard they worked to steal OH by 110k votes.

Footnote

The quote by O'Dell at the top ... doesn't it strike you as a strange thing for a vendor of voting booths to be saying about his product? I've always thought he tipped his hat (as evil CEOs are wont to do because no "yes man" is brave enough to tell him not to) that Diebold's machines are hackable. The evidence is in OH, and is being withheld and/or destroyed (they're probably reloading the machines with a different binary just in case they have to hand one over to third-party examiners).

Posted by Steven at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2005

The Golden Rule

Those who have the gold, make the rules. Or at least try to get them rewritten.

Down here in Texas, our Travis County DA, Ronnie Earle, has an ongoing investigation of TRMPAC -- Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee, which is basically a Tom DeLay hive of well-funded GOP types. Earle has handed down several indictments already, and rumor is he may even nail DeLay later this year; we'll see. In the meantime, forces are afoot to see that this sort of thing doesn't occur again. Try to play by the rules? No! Change the rules so certain actions are no longer criminal. (One specific indictment is expenditure of corporate donated funds for actual campaigning, because by law such monies are restricted to overhead and administrative expenses.)

Let's just go to the block quote:

This week attorneys in Austin are debating whether the treasurer of Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee violated the law.

Bill Ceverha faces a civil lawsuit from Democrats who lost elections in 2002. They say the money that funded their opponents' campaigns was spent illegally.

While attorneys on both sides of the TRMPAC case dissect the state's campaign finance laws, outside parties are weighing in on the topic.

"I'm going to be lobbying on these issues, that's correct," attorney for the Texas Association of Business Andy Taylor said.

In his new vocation as lobbyist Taylor plans to urge lawmakers to reevaluate the state's campaign finance laws. He believes Texas Election Code needs clarification.

"Even the experts can't agree on what the law requires," Taylor said.

The experts Taylor's referring to are the attorneys in the TRMPAC civil trial. In that trial, Ceverha's attorneys are arguing over how corporate dollars can be spent legally in an election.

"No one should have to guess whether or not political activity is legal," Taylor said.

I guess there's no call for taking the benefit of doubt and using restraint, is there?

Taylor said he has seven donors who will pay to employ him as a lobbyist. Those donors are: Walter Mischer, Michael Stevens, Vance Miller, Fred Zeidman, Charles McMann, Louis Beecherl and Bob Perry.

Perry was the financier of the group Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.

Men can be known by the company they keep.

"Anyone who gives significant amounts of political contributions in Texas would care about making sure those contributions are legal. But it's not limited to them. They stand shoulder to shoulder with everyone in Texas who can wants to participate in the political process," Taylor said.

But the law that Taylor and his donors say needs clarification only applies to corporate contributions. Individual donations aren't in dispute.

Under current Texas law it's only illegal for corporations to give money to candidates running for office.

"That law was clarified 100 years ago when it was first written down. So, I think that clarification around the laws in this case is nonsense," Craig McDonald, Executive Director of Texans for Public Justice, said.

Clearly not one of the "experts" Taylor cites above.

Texans for Public Justice was the group that brought the original complaint against TRMPAC. That complaint led Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle to open a criminal investigation of the PAC.

So far, three of TRMPAC's associates, including its executive director, John Colyandro, have been indicted on criminal charges of accepting illegal contributions and money laundering.

"Any clarity that Mr. Taylor and his seven large contributors want to bring to that law should be viewed with alarm by every Texan who is not one of Mr. Taylor's seven," Earle said in a written statement. "The law was never vague until certain large monied interests sought to evade it in order to control Texas elections. Then they said it was vague."

Sometimes I think divine smiting may be the only way to rid the planet of these people.

Posted by at 01:14 AM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2005

Nice Shoot'n, Wead

Doug Wead, the man who taped Gov. Bush admitting to smoking pot and alluding to doing cocaine, has given the tapes to Bush's lawyer, effectively destroying them. Had he turned them over to the White House, they would have to be in the public record. Alas, it is not to be. Another 18 1/2 minute gap, no?

Posted by Steven at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2005

Reach Out And Crush Someone

This is just a long spouting of Karl Rove's usual bullshit (has there ever been a Karl-with-a-k in history that humanity in general looks back upon fondly?), but he makes two errors in this statement:

�The next time one of your smarty-pants liberal friends says to you, �Well, he didn�t have a mandate,� you tell him of this delicious fact: This president got a higher percentage of the vote than any Democratic candidate for president since 1964,� Rove said.

First, grammatical: the proper verb is doesn't, Karl.

Second, tactical: conservatives have no liberal friends. It simply is Not Done in 2005. So Karl is giving useless advice, which does seem to be a habit (and a career) of his.

He screws up the entire mandate concept as well, but let's just let that go....

If you've been following Propagannon on AmericaBlog or other sites, you know by now that mountebank "reporter" Jeff Gannon, aka James Guckert, was granted far more access to the White House and the preznit than any real reporter could hope for, and reading between the lines, to have achieved this must have had some high-powered patron within the White House itself. Given his second job (hard working American that he is) as a male escort, it may even be a former (or current) client of his personal services business.

I know it's distasteful, but there's a compelling salaciousness in trying to guess which person (or persons) inside the White House is GannonGuckert's patron (or client). It could be the modern-day equivalent of "Who Shot J.R.?" Let's note that "delicious", even when used properly, isn't the sort of red-blooded, manly adjective that a hyperconservative, senior operative would typically bandy about for attribution.

Posted by at 06:27 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2005

Heading South?

From the Nobody Reads the Polls Dept. After the November election I commented that "I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Bush at approval ratings below 40% in a couple of years". Well, it looks like it's time for some of the older folks to wake up and smell the cat food:

WASHINGTON - The public's confidence in President Bush's job performance and the nation's direction has slipped in the opening weeks of his second term, particularly among people 50 and older, according to an Associated Press poll.

Adults were evenly divided on Bush's job performance in January, but now 54 percent disapprove and 45 percent approve. The number who think the country is headed down the wrong track increased from 51 percent to 58 percent in the past month.

Posted by at 08:48 AM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2005

Need A Ride?

The Navy, which has responsibility for shuttling around the president in the official Marine One helicopter, has placed an contract for new helicopters. Specifically, $6.1 billion for 23 helicopters. Do the math and that averages out to $265.2 million each, though the list cost would probably be less after sinking the non-recoverable engineering costs in the first one or two.

But wait a minute; twenty-three helicopters? What the hell does any president, not just the current sitting doofus, need with that many? Let's think: one in DC, of course, plus a spare. Air Force One can haul one around the world. Probably one on standby in Waco for whenever Yosemite George takes his bi-weekly vacation to Crawford. That's four; double that for the Veep and throw in a couple extra and I still don't see the need for more than ten, which would save about three billion.

I do not see the need for 23 new helicopters. Party of fiscal responsibility, my tuchus.

Posted by at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2005

Oh, The Irony

Oh, the irony. This Sunday, Ukraine will inaugurate a man to the office of President who fought a corrupt election campaign, complete with poisoning, to become the people's true choice for a leader. Sadly, today the U.S. is coronating a false President who stole his office not once, but twice.

Independent election observers said the re-run elections on 26 December had been much fairer than the earlier rounds.

The re-run was held after Mr Yushchenko's supporters staged massive protests over the outcome of a November poll, alleging vote-rigging by Mr Yanukovych.

Deliberations at the Supreme Court continued until 0230 (0030 GMT) on Thursday, when chief presiding justice Anatoly Yarema announced that the court was to uphold Mr Yushchenko's election victory.

"The decision is final and cannot be appealed," Mr Yarema said.
The announcement came after Ukraine's newspapers printed early editions carrying official results of the election, in which Mr Yushchenko beat his rival by eight percentage points.

Mr Yushchenko's victory celebrations had been put on hold by dogged appeals from his rival, who alleged widespread vote-rigging and electoral fraud.

Supporters who remained in the city awaiting the court's decision were jubilant at the judgement.

For those who say we cannot rerun an election, I say, "Bullshit!" If counting every vote isn't the goal (and the GOP clearly thinks not) then why call it democracy? Oh, the irony.

Posted by Steven at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2005

It's Official: Americans Really Are That Stupid

Like Barnum said, "There's one born every second." In a perfunctory pre-election poll, CNN has decided to highlight the fact that half of the people in America will believe pretty much anything they see on the news. Read about the jaw-dropping optimism that allows full-grown adults to express opinions such as:

Fifty-two percent said he will be an outstanding or above average President in his second term.

I'd be stunned by anyone expecting "above average," but outstanding?

Even when stupidity is in the minority, it still manages to be a bloated minority:

Only forty-six percent said that Bush cut their taxes — the signature domestic achievement of his first term.

Of course, forty-six percent of Americans had nothing resembling an actual tax cut.

Read the CNN article and see for yourself.

Posted by at 02:58 PM | Comments (1)

January 03, 2005

Miracle On Constitution Ave.

The GOP has decided not only to not push for a thorough gutting of the House ethics guidelines, but also to reverse an earlier change that allows committee leaders to retain their chairs even if under indictment -- a change originally made to guard top Rethuglican Tom DeLay (R - Sugarland, TX, home address available through Harris County website). DeLay himself grabs credit:

House Republicans suddenly reversed course Monday, deciding to retain a tough standard for lawmaker discipline and reinstate a rule that would force Majority Leader Tom DeLay to step aside if indicted by a Texas grand jury.

The surprise dual decisions were made by Speaker Dennis Hastert and by DeLay � who asked GOP colleagues to undo the extreme act of loyalty they handed him in November. Then, Republicans changed a party rule so DeLay could retain his leadership post if indicted by the grand jury in Austin that charged three of the Texas Republican's associates.

...

Jonathan Grella, a DeLay spokesman, said DeLay still believed it was legitimate to allow a leader to retain his post while under indictment. But Grella said that by reinstating the rule that he step aside, DeLay was "denying the Democrats their lone issue. Anything that could undermine our agenda needs to be nipped in the bud."

Wow. This almost approaches strategic thinking, but it retains the ethics guidelines, which is very much a good thing, and keeps DeLay on the ropes, which probably doesn't hurt him any but must be keeping a lot of top attorneys tied up rather than moving on to other dirty work, so there's a pewter lining. It's also interesting to see that the Agenda is considered more important than Tom DeLay, though I'm not sure what to make of that in toto.

It'd have been more satisfying seeing the Dems grab a victory on this matter through debate and vote, but this works for me. And Ronnie Earle is still working on matters in Austin.

Posted by at 11:13 PM | Comments (1)

December 30, 2004

GOP: Now the Party of the Revote

Guess who wants a revote now? The GOP in Washington state, after suffering their first real exposure to "Count Every Vote, Every Vote Counts" want to ... throw out the results of the election and hold another one. I guess that, like history, they're going to keep repeating democracy until we get it their way ... I mean, "right".

Edged out of the closest governor's race in state history, Republican Dino Rossi urged his opponent to accept a revote, saying the uncertainty surrounding the back-and-forth election was bad for the state. Democrat Christine Gregoire's camp immediately rejected the idea as "irresponsible." Rossi made the plea for a revote after eight weeks of confusion and three vote counts. A revote would have to be approved by the Democrat-controlled state Legislature.

"The uncertainty surrounding this election process isn't just bad for you and me -- it is bad for the entire state," Rossi said, reading from a letter he said he sent to Gregoire. "People need to know for sure that the next governor actually won the election."

An unprecedented statewide hand recount -- the third vote count -- put Gregoire, a three-time attorney general, ahead for the first time, by just a tiny fraction of 1 percent.

Rossi, a real estate agent and former state senator, won the initial tally last month by 261 votes, triggering an automatic machine recount. He won that count, too, by 42 votes.

While noting that he could contest the election, Rossi said a legal challenge could drag on for months. The better way to clear up the mess, he said, would be to ask lawmakers to pass a bill calling for a special election as soon as the state Legislature convenes in early January for the 2005 session.

The Grand Ole Hyprocrites are at it again ...

Posted by Steven at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

December 23, 2004

Democratic Miracle

A miracle has occurred in Washington state -- the Democrat challenger for the governor's office has ten more votes than the Republican candidate in the second, hand recount of votes.

After a bitter and protracted recount fight in the Washington governor's race, elections officials announced Wednesday that the Democratic candidate, Christine O. Gregoire, was leading her Republican opponent by 10 votes - a minuscule margin but a stunning reversal of the Nov. 2 election results.

The preliminary results elated Democratic Party officials and came only hours after the party scored another victory, when the State Supreme Court agreed with the Democrats' contention that more than 700 newly discovered and erroneously disqualified ballots in heavily Democratic King County should now be considered.

Since those ballots came from a county where Ms. Gregoire, 57, already had a solid lead, the ruling could allow her to increase her extraordinarily tiny edge in a race that is the closest in state history and one of the closest in the nation's history.

The day's events dealt a serious blow to state Republicans and Dino Rossi, 45, a businessman and former state senator, who had been certified the winner of the Nov. 2 vote after eking out a margin of 261 votes out of almost three million cast. He later won a machine recount by 42 votes.

The Republicans are infuriated over the recount and are on the verge of jihad with regard to the Washington State Supreme Court ruling (how dare we count every vote?). They are vowing to go on a vote fishing trip in Republican Washington counties, but alas for the suddenly converted "count every vote" Republicans, the ruling also solidifies the certified results upon which they originally gave their blessing when claiming the win after the election. So, they have to reach deep into their collective hypocrisy reserve (which has to be nearly empty) to challenge the same results that they had previously used to claim the office, and seek to have additional votes added to the roles when they so loudly (and largely undemocratically) declared that such votes were fraudulent in the first place.

It's never been about getting the most votes with them, just winning the office any way they can. Why do they bother holding elections?

Posted by Steven at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2004

Snacks of Mass Constriction

I had this idea, but am most gratified to see that someone else did too, and is doing something with it.

For a piddling $5.00, the entire planet might be better off. I hope they're sending the thick, chunky ones. With lots of salt.

Posted by at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

December 03, 2004

Wonder what they'll try next?

A Republican has now lost -- twice! The recount actually increased Heflin's margin of defeat (by one).

You just know that the Texas GOP isn't going to let this one die. Lost in election, lost in recount -- third time will be the charm, but how will they do it? House speaker edict? Texas SC ruling? Hammer DeLay sending in the Rangers? Stay tuned.

Posted by at 12:25 AM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2004

Obviously, Voter Fraud Was Rampant (the GOP Says So)

This in my mailbox this morning.

Dear Republican Family,

I hope you are still savoring the 2004 Election Night results and the tremendous gains made by Republicans at every level around our State. What incredible victories that we were able to give thanks for this Thanksgiving!

Unfortunately, in a few areas in Texas, it has become painfully clear that this terrific election was marred by flagrant voter fraud. As exposed in the national media, the Democrat strategy in this election was to falsely allege voter fraud and intimidation in an attempt to misdirect, mislead, and gain favorable media attention - not to mention trying to manipulate and bully Republicans into remaining quiet about the voter fraud and intimidation in which the Democrats themselves were engaged.

By now, youve probably heard about the election contests that three Republican State House members or candidates have filed. Unfortunately, you have probably not heard the reasons why - voter fraud and other highly questionable election practices in select areas. In these three races, investigators have found blatant disregard for the law or extremely suspicious activity that requires further review. Below are just a few examples of the brazen voter fraud that has been uncovered so far.

* In one small county 400 apparently living people voted who were not registered.
* In that same county, deceased people also cast ballots.
* One box in that county contained 113 ballots that were not signed by an Election Judge, and every vote was for the Democrat candidate.
* In another county, at least a hundred people who lived outside of the county illegally voted in one district. They even had the audacity to give their actual addresses, some hundreds of miles away.
* In that same district, dozens of people voted twice - once by mail and again in person.
* In another county, almost 60 people "assisted in mail-in ballots." Some were paid as much as $3,500 for the job of hand delivering the votes by interested Democrat campaigns in the county.

While investigators have identified outright voter fraud and other suspicious balloting in a few counties, one Democrat county - Travis - has repeatedly denied at least one candidate access to information that should be of public record - in what has certainly obstructed the inspection of those records and may be an attempt to deny him due process of law.

This outrageous and illegal abuse of the American political system goes far beyond the usual margin of election-day error. Such abuse has resulted in the apparent loss of at least two GOP State House seats - State Rep. Talmadge Heflin in House District 149 and Eric Opiela in House District 35. State Rep. Jack Stick in House District 50 lost by a few hundred votes, but has not been able to properly investigate the county records to determine whether the same voter fraud found elsewhere played any part in his race.

While the law allows a candidate to ask for a recount, this process simply permits the ballots previously counted to be counted again. It does not allow substantive questions about those ballots to be addressed. Substantive matters include determining whether or not illegal ballots were counted or that legitimate ballots were ignored. Rather, Texas law requires that these types of questions be answered in an election contest.

In light of the voter fraud and suspicious activity uncovered in House Districts 35, 50, & 149, an election contest is the only way for the people in these districts to be confident that their representatives are the ones they chose. Each Republican victim in these districts has decided, at great personal sacrifice, to file an election contest - so that the truth - whatever it may be is revealed. And, I fully support their efforts.

Obviously, Republicans dont expect to win every race, but we do expect elections to be honest, open, and legal in every respect. Our great American right of self-governance is threatened when voter fraud goes unchallenged. It is our responsibility to vigorously protect and defend that right and all others that the founders bestowed on us.

Democrats and many in the media would like to sweep this under the rug, ignoring what is simply shameful. But I believe the principal at stake here is far more important that the candidates involved or winning and losing a political race.

All Texans, not just Republicans, lose when voter fraud is not rooted out, exposed, and destroyed at its very core. We cease to be the United States of America, home of the brave and the free, when we do not right such injustice.

One of the responsibilities we must take on as Republicans is to end all shoddy election practices that linger from a century of Democrat dominance in Texas. This will require the commitment of all of us.

Challenge our friends in the media who are ignoring this blatant voter fraud. Write to your local paper and demand they report both sides of the story. Also, make sure that your State House members, who will be hearing the election contests, pledge to keep an open mind and make their decisions on the facts and the law presented in each case.

Doing the right thing when it is difficult is the true test of principle. We must make voter fraud a thing of the past in every single part of the great State of Texas. We can do this together.

Sincerely,

Tina J. Benkiser
Chairman

One thing this points out right away is that despite beating the shit out of the Texas Democrats, the GOP won't be satisfied until this is a one party state. They might note that most recent "one party States" were: the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic and Iraq.

"Honest, open and legal" are certainly the words that come to mind when I think about the power grab by Tom DeLay. Afterall, winning elections didn't work, so they just redistricted themselves seven new seats, and even then, they're obviously having to fight for these seats.

Posted by Steven at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)

At Last, Getting Something From Your Government.

Prior to the November 2 election, I went to the Travis County website to verify my and my wife's registrations. We were in good standing; we voted. And I didn't think much more about it. But then I realized -- that was a pretty cool search engine. I looked up a couple of well-known Austinites, and the ones that were registered were there, home addresses, voter ID numbers, and whatnot.

And then I considered: what about other Texas counties? And that's how I found Tom DeLay's home addy, which Skates posted a while back. And I went to Harris County's website, which is where Houston is, and found a particular Houston Astros player's home addy, for the sole purpose of sending him a short letter asking him to re-sign with the Astros for 2005.

Wowzer; think of who else lives around Houston. The Enron gang: Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling. The ex-Preznit Bush and wifey. (I doubt they actually reside there much, but it's where they're registered as voters.)

Not all counties have a voter registration search engine -- McLellan County, for example, where Crawford is.

You can have a lot of fun with this knowledge. And remember, such power can be used for Good or for Evil, so please use only for Good.

Harris County voter registration search engine.

Former President Bush.

Posted by at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2004

Disenfranchise This!

Take a gander at this voter registration. Do you think he had to fill out a ... ballot?

VOTER REGISTRATION CERTIFICATE FORT BEND COUNTY			U.S. REP.	STATE SEN.	STATE REP.	COMM. PREC.	CITY
			22	17	26	4	SL-SL4
Cert. No	Gender	Valid From	MUD	LID	ESD	JUSTICE PCT.	ISD
5532	M	Jan. 01, 2004
Date of Birth	Prec. No	Thru				4	FB
Apr. 08, 1947	4119	Dec. 31, 2005
Name and Permanent Residence Address:			Alternate Mailing Address:
DELAY, THOMAS DALE			DELAY, THOMAS DALE
2806 SAINT ANNES DR			2806 SAINT ANNES DR
SUGAR LAND TX 77479			SUGAR LAND TX 77479
Status:  * ACTIVE *

Posted by Steven at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2004

Ohio Recount

I know a lot of you think this is ridiculous or at least, pointless, but Recount Ohio is trying to count every vote, despite what the GOP did going in, and what Kerry didn't do afterwards. Sign the petition (unless you're a spineless Democrat).

Posted by Steven at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)

Shrinking the Red Menace

Maps can convey all sorts of useful information, which explains why most Americans are utterly unfamiliar with them. Of course, that rule of thumb goes out the window when someone comes up with a map that's essentially inaccurate.

For example, any one with a standard 50-state map of the US can see that Texas is twice the size of Alaska. Wrong. Not only is Texas the second largest State, but the fact is that Alaska could split into two smaller States making Texas the third largest State.

Similarly, the map of the continental U.S. in the upper left, promotes the false impression that the vast majority of the United States is dominated by Republicans (shown in Red). This is, again, inaccurate, so expect to see this map a lot over the next four years. Don't expect to see much of this map, however:

This map shows the continental U.S., colored Republican Red and Democrat Blue, but with the surface area of each region scaled by population density. It's the work of M. T. Gastner, C. R. Shalizi, and M. E. J. Newman of the University of Michigan, and it summarized here. There is free software to draw your own maps and everything.

Heil Bush.

Posted by at 05:13 AM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2004

Bush Rode (Unexpected) Wave of Evangelicals Back to WH

Here's a new twist. Rove didn't engineer Bush's victory. He is taking credit for the work of millions of Christian Fundamentalists who were energized by the "gay marriage" issue.

Some Democrats suspected that the ballot initiatives were engineered by Rove and the GOP, but religious activists say otherwise. In Michigan, state Sen. Alan Cropsey (R) introduced a bill to ban same-sex marriage in October 2003 and assumed it would have the support of his party. Instead, the Roman Catholic Church in Michigan became the amendment's main booster, spending nearly $1 million to secure its passage.

"I couldn't say anything publicly, because I would have been blasted for it, but the Republican Party was not helpful at all," Cropsey said. "It's not like they were the instigators. They were the Johnny-come-latelies, if anything."

Michael Howden, executive director of Stronger Families for Oregon, said it was a similar situation in his state. "There's been no contact whatsoever, no coordinating, no pushing" by anyone at the White House or in the Bush campaign, he said.

Charles W. Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries, recalled a meeting early this year when Christian leaders warned White House aides that the marriage issue was likely to appear on state ballots and be a factor in the presidential election. "The White House guys were kind of resisting it on the grounds that 'We haven't decided what position we want to take on that,' " he said.

Remember, Bush was trying to stay close to the middle on the "Defense of Marriage Amendment" but now that he has been propelled back into office thanks to these loonies, he's loudly proclaiming his support for the Amendment.

Since the GOP is now going after the NAACP for mixing politics and 403(c) functions, when will the violation of separation of Church and State become an issue against this Administration?

Posted by Steven at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)

GOP Voters Are Just Plain Dumb

Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times today points out that among "values" voters, factual accuracy is also a victim.

I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.

This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.

The survey, and an accompanying report, showed that there's a fair amount of cluelessness in the ranks of the values crowd. The report said, "It is clear that supporters of the president are more likely to have misperceptions than those who oppose him."

I haven't heard any of the postelection commentators talk about ignorance and its effect on the outcome. It's all values, all the time. Traumatized Democrats are wringing their hands and trying to figure out how to appeal to voters who have arrogantly claimed the moral high ground and can't stop babbling about their self-proclaimed superiority. Potential candidates are boning up on new prayers and purchasing time-shares in front-row-center pews.

A more practical approach might be for Democrats to add teach-ins to their outreach efforts. Anything that shrinks the ranks of the clueless would be helpful.

If you don't think this values thing has gotten out of control, consider the lead paragraph of an op-ed article that ran in The LA. Times on Friday. It was written by Frank Pastore, a former major league pitcher who is now a host on the Christian talk-radio station KKLA.

"Christians, in politics as in evangelism," said Mr. Pastore, "are not against people or the world. But we are against false ideas that hold good people captive. On Tuesday, this nation rejected liberalism, primarily because liberalism has been taken captive by the left. Since 1968, the left has taken millions captive, and we must help those Democrats who truly want to be free to actually break free of this evil ideology."

Mr. Pastore goes on to exhort Christian conservatives to reject any and all voices that might urge them "to compromise with the vanquished." How's that for values?

Bush voters believe the untrue. They think he found WMD. They think Saddam was part of Al-Qaeda. No matter how well intentioned they are, these "values" voters are just plain stupid. The Democratic Party would do well by getting them a free newspaper written to their reading level (which used to be eight grade in this nation, but now averages around third grade level -- true!).

Posted by Steven at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)

November 05, 2004

Conason on Debacle 2004

Joe Conason offers some historical perspective:

In the dark post-election mood that lingers, the defeated should find history both restorative and instructive. Restorative because the past reminds us that both victors and vanquished tend to mistake the dimensions of the immediate event, whose true significance cannot be known until years or even decades later. Instructive because the past tells us so much about how the conditions of our present distress came to exist -- and, most important, how we can change them.

So for the moment set aside the triumphal proclamations from the Republican leadership and their echoes in the media, along with the petty recriminations against John Kerry, who has devoted his life to public service and deserves admiration for the honorable campaign he waged against unscrupulous opponents. As a presidential candidate he had his virtues and flaws, which obviously differed from those of George W. Bush -- and will surely differ from those of the next Democratic nominee.

A longer perspective is more pertinent and more relevant to the future than listening to televised imbeciles maundering about the "death of liberalism." (Had the Democrat won by three points and a couple dozen electoral votes, nobody would be touting the "death of conservatism.") Progressives and reactionaries in America have both survived much sharper electoral rejections than this one. Both sides tend to overreact to such rejection in an election's emotional aftermath.

Exaggeration is the rule, not the exception, in the post-election autopsy. Sweeping pronouncements about this year's close, hotly contested campaign should be considered skeptically, especially when Republican propagandists start to talk about their "mandate" and their "permanent majority." Such claims are convincing only to citizens (and journalists) suffering from amnesia.

Only six years ago, the self-appointed guardians of "moral values" wailed their despair when midterm voters rejected the Republican impeachment jihad, and pundits pondered the political demise of the religious right. Paul Weyrich, architect of the modern religious right, described Bill Clinton's escape from judgment in near-apocalyptic terms, as a signal for the "godly" to withdraw from politics. The Republican House members defenestrated the outspoken proponent of "moral values" then serving as speaker, and his would-be successor, too. But in the next election two years later, the Republicans came back to win the White House (with the assistance of Florida state officials and the Supreme Court), and kept control of both houses of Congress.

Twelve years ago, Clinton won the presidency and ousted a Republican president whose humiliation included receiving only 37 percent of the popular vote. The Democrats began the Clinton administration with control of both House and Senate. Two years later, they lost both houses in the stunning "Contract With America" midterm, which brought Newt Gingrich to power as speaker. (We all know what soon happened to him -- see 1998 above.) The great minds of the nation declared Clinton "irrelevant," predicting in their wisdom that he could not possibly win reelection and must be replaced by the Democrats. They were wrong, of course...

If I recall correctly, Bill Clinton had approval ratings north of 70%, even while he was being impeached.

There are, of course, many differences between all those past elections and this one. None of this historical review is meant to suggest that Democrats shouldn't reassess their message, their vision, and their means of communicating with voters -- or that the nation and the world won't suffer the effects of another four years of misrule by the Republicans. Both tone and substance obviously require improvement. It is meant to suggest, however, that the Democratic Party and its progressive allies began this year to create the conditions for future advances -- and that with resources, determination and commitment, those advances may be much nearer than they seem. Building for the future is also the best and only way to resist the worst excesses of the next four years.

Posted by at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)

November 04, 2004

Picking up the Pieces

Good post from TPM:

For the Democrats, what I fear most (and what I've privately worried about for months) is this: Energy cools after an election. That's inevitable. But organization and institutions can survive. And it is within institutions and organizational infrastructure that energy and power exist and persist.

Certainly it would have been more pleasant (and perhaps better) to nurture all the organization and infrastructure that has been built up over the last two years under a President Kerry. But my concern over the last few months has been that if Bush won, all of these groups and organizations and incipient infrastructure would simply be allowed to wither, as though it had been tried and found not to have worked.

That, as a factual judgment, I think is just plain wrong. And if that were allowed to happen it would truly be tragic. The truth is that what Democrats have begun to build over the last two years is tremendously important. It just wasn't enough, not yet.

I remember talking to Simon Rosenberg, the head of the New Dem Network, at the Democratic convention last summer. You'll remember, he and his group were profiled in the Times magazine around that time. The article, in brief, was about plans to create a Democratic-leaning counter-establishment along the lines of what Republicans did two generations ago -- with an alternative media, activist groups, organized political giving, in short a political infrastructure.

He told me he thought it would take ten years to accomplish. And I told him my one worry was that it could all be strangled in its crib if Kerry didn't win.

Well, here we are. And this is the test for people who care about this kind of politics and these sorts of values -- making sure that what has been started is not allowed to falter. This isn't 1964 or 1972 or 1980. This wans't a blow-out or a repudiation. It was close to a tie -- unfortunately, on the other guy's side. Let's not put our heads in the sand but let's also not get knocked of our game. Democrats need to think critically and seriously about why this didn't turn out 51% for Kerry or 55% for Kerry (and we'll get to those points in the future). But it would be a terrible mistake to stop thinking in terms of those ten years Simon described.

Take time to feel the desolation and disappointment. But I remain confident that time is not on the side of the kind of values and politics that President Bush represents. It took conservatives two decades to build up the institutional muscle they have today. Though I was always nervous about the result, I thought we could win this election. But it was always naive to believe that that sort of institutional heft could be put together in 24 or 36 months.

President Bush and the Republicans now control the entire national government, even more surely now than they have over the last four years. They do so on the basis of garnering the votes of 51% or 52% of the population. But they will use that power as though there were no opposition at all. That needs to be countered.

I also think the chances are pretty good that the GOP will overreach on their mandate and produce a backlash. The chickens are going to come home to roost on this administration's reckless policies, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Bush at approval ratings below 40% in a couple of years. The wall of denial is already starting to crumble. It just couldn't happen fast enough for Kerry.

Posted by at 08:52 PM | Comments (5)

November 02, 2004

Sad But True Dept.

Check out this blog:

Posted by Steven at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2004

Video Vote Vigil

This website is exposing GOP voter fraund and intimidation efforts in real time.

We are going to catch some thugs red-handed. And we're going to deter others. To the right is a woman a blogger caught in the act on Sunday trying to convince African-American voters in Fort Lauderdale that she was a "pro-abortion, lesbian Kerry supporter from San Francisco." We think that a strong possibility of being captured on video will have a deterrant effect that will prevent these shenanigans. So help us lift the curtain on these anti-democratic agitators. Help us protect our vote.

The supression machine is fully aware that voter turnout is their enemy, and they are doing everything in their power to suppress the vote, especially in key battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Joe Bob sez check it out.

Posted by Steven at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)

Electoral Vote Update

The guys at Electoral Vote are calling the election 306-218 for Kerry (in the Electoral College). This prediction is based on Kerry winning FL and OH, and even more strangely, in NM and CO being exact ties (and thus not contributing to either's total).

I think FL will fall to Bush because they just have too many ways to scare Black voters, cheat (Diebold), and otherwise disenfranchise Dem. voters. But if Bush loses OH (which he should), he's going down in flames. Also, today a judge ruled that the GOP cannot challenge voters (mostly Black) at the polling sites like anti-abortion protestors do at clinics (and the analogy is apt, terrifying and says a lot about the real differences in the two parties).

Posted by Steven at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

Voter Intimidation Rising

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A bogus letter circulating in South Carolina, purporting to be from the NAACP, threatens the arrest of voters who have outstanding parking tickets or failed to pay child support. The NAACP said Friday the letter is a scare tactic and called for an investigation.

"I'm outraged," said Jill Miller, director of the Charleston County Board of Election and Voter Registration. "This is so bogus."

The Rev. Joe Darby, vice president of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (news - web sites), said he received the one-page letter � which had a Columbia postmark with no return address � at his Charleston home.

He said it was an attempt to frighten minorities from voting Tuesday because the letter-writer assumes black people are in trouble with the law.

"This is old South Carolina politics," said Darby. "I don't think anybody will fall for this."

Darby said he wants the State Law Enforcement Division to investigate.

The letter also says voters must have a credit check, provide two forms of photo identification, a Social Security (news - web sites) card, a voter registration card and a handwriting sample.

"None of that is true," said Miller. "I certainly hope no voter would be taken in by this."

Miller said voters need to show just one piece of identification � a voter registration card, a South Carolina driver's license or a motor vehicles department-issued photo ID card.

Some old tricks just never lose their punch in the South. Gotta love those GOP fanatics.

Thanks to Dennis for pointing this one out.

Posted by Steven at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2004

Letter to the Editor

A co-worker of mine wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times that was published today:

To the Editor:

A high regard for logic impels me to point out that if the United States had not invaded Iraq, the explosives at Al Qaqaa would have continued to be inspected and secured by the International Atomic Energy Agency ("Bush Hits Back at Kerry Charge Over Explosives," front page, Oct. 28).

We may never know for sure whether the explosives went missing just before or shortly after the invasion, but we do know that the invasion was a critical factor in their disappearance.

I fault John Kerry for voting to give the president the authority to go to war in Iraq, but I accuse George W. Bush of the far more serious misdeeds of listening only to the people around him who wanted the war, of conducting the war with too few troops and of failing to plan adequately for the postwar period.

Constance Lewis
Lincoln, Mass., Oct. 28, 2004

Posted by Steven at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

Krugman: Bush's Mistakes Review

Today's Krugman column reviews Bush's tremendous screwups in his administration. They include:

• Al Qaqaa (the explosives dump that dissappeared)
• Letting Osama get away
• Letting Zarqawi get away
• The situation in Iraq is Chaos
• $70 billion more for the War in Iraq

After all, Al Qaqaa illustrates in a particularly graphic way the failures of Mr. Bush's national security leadership. U.S. soldiers passed through Al Qaqaa, a crucial munitions dump, but were never told that it was important to secure the site. If administration officials object that they couldn't have spared enough troops to guard the site, they're admitting that they went in without enough troops. And the fact that these explosives fell into unknown hands is a perfect example of how the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist threat.

The story of Al Qaqaa has brought out the worst in a campaign dedicated to the proposition that the president is infallible - and that it's always someone else's fault when things go wrong. Here's what Rudy Giuliani said yesterday: "No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough?" Support the troops!

But worst of all from the right's point of view, Al Qaqaa has disrupted the campaign's media strategy. Karl Rove clearly planned to turn the final days of the campaign into a series of "global test" moments - taking something Mr. Kerry said and distorting its meaning, then generating pseudo-controversies that dominate the airwaves. Instead, the news media have spent the last few days discussing substance. And that's very bad news for Mr. Bush.

Holy shit, the news media decided to do their job and report reality instead of Rovality. It's a miracle!

Posted by Steven at 08:37 AM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2004

Massachusetts Miracle 2/3rds Here!

Boston Wins World Series -- Ends "Curse" of 86 Years!

They beat the Yankees, and won the Series.

John Kerry Will Win on Tuesday!

We believe!!!

Posted by Steven at 10:51 PM | Comments (0)

Bush Losing the Hummer Vote

This from our friend in Dallas:

You know Bush's [reelection] is in the poo ...

When you see a fully tricked-out Hummer in Dallas with a Kerry/Edwards sticker. And I'm seeing more and more of the stickers all over the place here. Hee.

Thanks to Melanie Fletcher

Posted by Steven at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

Check Your Email Addresses, GOP!

Over at GeorgeBush.org they've been getting some interesting e-mail from the GOP insiders. The infamous Palast memos are there (where GOP planners scheme ways to block voters in Dem. districts).

Joe Bob sez check it out.

Thanks to Dennis Parslow for the link

Posted by Steven at 08:38 AM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2004

Massachusetts Miracle Pretzel

Posted by Steven at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)

Poland Will Leave Coalition After Elections

Remember Bush's asinine comments about "not forgetting Poland" during the debate was a complete ruse. Poland is pulling out of Iraq as soon as the elections are finished here. That tells me that the only reason they're there is to bolster Bush's re-election chances.

Q: Poland's defense minister, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, just announced plans to withdraw all 2,500 of your troops from Iraq next year.

It is not true. Our minister of defense mentioned that we would like to end our mission at the end of 2005, but that is not the official position of the government.

Posted by Steven at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)

Good Summary of GOP "Wolves" Ad

Check out Scott Rosenberg's summary of the Bush "Wolves" ad running on TV. This piece of crap is written and delivered in a way, much like the drumbeat to push the Iraq War, that suggests one thing while actually saying something else.

Posted by Steven at 10:02 PM | Comments (1)

October 21, 2004

Massachusetts Miracle

Jonathan Alter tells us why the Yankees' loss to the Red Sox could be bad news for George W. Bush:

The underlying idea was to create a bandwagon effect. Karl Rove believes that voters like a winner, in the same way that some fans like going with proven success. If the candidate or team looks unstoppable, the theory says, a bunch of other fair-weather fans jump aboard in October.

The Red Sox victory makes the Bush-is-inevitable line harder to pursue. A last-minute come-from-behind win by Kerry suddenly seems more plausible, which in turn will rally Democrats to work harder on Election Day. If Kerry goes in to the final weekend down by five points, well, the Red Sox won, for the first time ever, when they were down by three games.

Bush�s basic argument is that electing Kerry would upset the natural order of things, where grownups like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld�no matter how incompetent at the plate�keep us safe at home. Now the natural order of baseball�where the Yankees beat the Red Sox every year�has been upended, making it suddenly more plausible to throw out the incumbent in Washington, too. In the showdown series, change beat the status quo.

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.

Posted by at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2004

Snapshot: Electoral Vote Predictions (Oct 20)

The guy who runs Electoral Vote Predictor has put up a final prediction page that is based on four simple rules:

- Voters who already have made a choice will stick to it

- The undecideds will break 2:1 for the challenger (Kerry)

- In states where Nader is on the ballot, he will get 1%; otherwise 0% (was 2.74% nationally in 2000)

- The minor candidates such as Badnarik, Cobb, etc. will get 1% of the vote (was 1.01% in 2000)

The actual breakdown of votes is (Kerry states are blue, Bush states are red):

Oct. 20th Electoral Vote Prediction (Kerry: 311 Bush:227)

Posted by Steven at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2004

Guess Who's Having Computer Problems?

Well, my daughter, to tell the truth.

But also Florida, the state that "solved" the hanging chad problem with a piece of shit solution known as touch-screen voting.

In Palm Beach County, the center of the madness during the recount four years ago, a Democratic state legislator said she wasn't given a complete absentee ballot when she asked to opt for paper instead of the electronic touch-screen machines. Several voting sites in Broward County had problems with laptops connected to elections headquarters. And a brief computer system crash in Orange County paralyzing voting in Orlando and its immediate suburbs.

Get. A. Paper. Ballot. People.

Posted by Steven at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

Supreme Court Orders Texas Redistricting Back to Lower Court

The Supreme Court ruled against Tom "The Hammer" DeLay, ordering the lower court that ruled the GOP led redistricting coup not illegal to reconsider the case. The good news is that the redistricting may not stand. The bad news is that it won't change the district lines currently in contention, which grossly favors the GOP.

The Supreme Court kept alive a Democratic constitutional challenge to a Republican redistricting plan in Texas today, ordering a three-judge district court to reexamine its January decision upholding the plan.

The court's action will not affect the 2004 elections in Texas. Voting for the state's 32 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives will go forward under the contested plan, which was approved in 2003.

But the Supreme Court told the district court to take account of the justices' split decision in April in a similar case in Pennsylvania. In that case, Veith v. Jubelirer, the court upheld a pro-Republican plan but refused to rule out the possibility that extreme partisan gerrymandering could violate the Constitution.

This means that Texas's lines, which were redrawn with the aid of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R.-Tex.) to boost the GOP's share of a congressional delegation that is now evenly divided, could still be struck down and redrawn at some later date. Republican hopes for control of the House hinge on the new Texas lines.

The GOP contends that since they have a plurality of voters in Texas, they deserve to have a plurality in the GOP representation in the House. This sounds as ridiculous as President Bush saying he's earned the right to another term.

There is no "right" to rule in a democracy. There is a "right" to rule in a monarchy or theocracy. Perhaps that is what they are thinking?

Posted by Steven at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2004

It's The Same People Who ...

Check out this clip from C-SPAN of Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) during the Draft Bill debate in the House.

Now do you have any doubts that Bush will re-instate the Draft?

Posted by Steven at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2004

Rove Gets Ready for his Frog March

The Rovester paid a visit to the Grand Jury on Friday. About frigging time ...

Rove spent more than two hours testifying before the panel, which White House spokesman Scott McClellan said showed that Rove was "doing his part to cooperate" in the probe, as ordered by Bush.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said prosecutors have assured Rove he is not a target of the criminal investigation.

"He appeared voluntarily today. He answered every question that was put to him," said Luskin, who added that he would provide no further details because prosecutors "have advised us that public disclosure would interfere with the investigation."

Rove's good. He's probably not going to get burned with this, even if it was almost certainly his idea. Others always take the hit for Bush, that's his magical ability. But it'd be great to see them made to pay for this treasonous act.

Posted by Steven at