corrente

Global test (Atrios). Heh.

I think Bush might need some helpful hints to get through tomorrow's debate, where some of those present might not be adopting a suitably worshipful attitude toward Him. Readers?

This time, however, nobody can ground him. Except the voters, of course, in November.

Anyhow, here (via Josh Marshall) is an odd little fact:

Bush postpones election-year doctor's visit
After undergoing his annual medical check-up in August 2001, 2002 and 2003, US President George W. Bush has put the procedure off this year until after the November 2 election, his spokesman said.
(via AFP)

I wonder why? Is he getting all he needs from the twins? Or.... Could it be something more serious? Actually, when I read Marshall's post, I thought at once of this letter, from last month's Atlantic:

James Fallows’s description of John Kerry’s debating skills (“When George Meets John,” July/August Atlantic) was interesting, but what was most remarkable was Fallows’s documentation of President Bush’s mostly overlooked changes over the past decade—specifically, “the striking decline in his sentence-by-sentence speaking skills.” Fallows points to “speculations that there must be some organic basis for the President’s peculiar mode of speech—a learning disability, a reading problem, dyslexia or some other disorder,” but correctly concludes, “The main problem with these theories is that through his forties Bush was perfectly articulate.”

I, too, felt that something organic was wrong with President Bush, most probably dyslexia. But I was unaware of what Fallows pointed out so clearly: that Bush’s problems have been developing slowly, and that just a decade ago he was an articulate debater, “artful indeed in steering questions and challenges to his desired subjects,” who “did not pause before forcing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent mangled new ones.” Consider, in contrast, the present: “the informal Q&As he has tried to avoid,” “Bush’s recent faltering performances,” “his unfortunate puzzled-chimp expression when trying to answer questions,” “his stalling, defensive pose when put on the spot,” “speaking more slowly and less gracefully.”

Not being a professional medical researcher and clinician, Fallows cannot be faulted for not putting two and two together. But he was 100 percent correct in suggesting that Bush’s problem cannot be “a learning disability, a reading problem, [or] dyslexia,” because patients with those problems have always had them. Slowly developing cognitive deficits, as demonstrated so clearly by the President, can represent only one diagnosis, and that is “presenile dementia” Presenile dementia is best described to nonmedical persons as a fairly typical Alzheimer’s situation that develops significantly earlier in life, well before what is usually considered old age. It runs about the same course as typical senile dementias, such as classical Alzheimer’s—to incapacitation and, eventually, death, as with President Ronald Reagan, but at a relatively earlier age. President Bush’s “mangled” words are a demonstration of what physicians call “confabulation,” and are almost specific to the diagnosis of a true dementia. Bush should immediately be given the advantage of a considered professional diagnosis, and started on drugs that offer the possibility of retarding the slow but inexorable course of the disease.

"Started"? What does this guy mean, "started"?

The good poeple in the Department of "How Stupid Do They Think We Are?" have really been putting in the hours this week. Now there's more!

Bush and his vice president conceded Thursday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the Iraq war debate to a new issue - whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.

Ridiculing the Bush administration's evolving rationale for war, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry shot back: "You don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact."

This week marks the first time that the Bush administration has listed abuses in the oil-for-fuel program as an Iraq war rationale.
(via AP)

Has anybody been keeping track of the many shifting reasons Bush has given for going to war? This is yet another one.... Have we broken 10 yet? 100?

And, gee, if it weren't the "resolute" Bush "conceding" this... Well, I'd say it, um, "mixed messages." Maybe even a flip flop. Wouldn't you?

Unfortunately, Bush's flip-flops have blood all over their soles—from all the dead bodies he's walked over on his way to stealing another election. Nice image there, farmer, if you have a moment....









UPDATE From the WaPo coverage:

Bush did not take questions from reporters after reading his statement.
(via WaPo)

Gee, I wonder why not? The Anti-Peevishness Pills hadn't kicked in yet?

UPDATE Alert reader pansypoo tells me that I previously posted an image of "slides," not "flip flops." Well, OK. Readers, can any of you point us to a better image?

Dog with a bone on this, sorry… but after all the hard work we’ve done it would be, well, incendiary to try to flush it. Nothing anywhere about a contingency plan for how to handle any event that disrupts the Day that the Forces of Evil are Defeated (Nov. 2). Anywhere I can find, anyway. Thanks to shystee for the tip on Soaries. Nothing there, either, about a plan. But they’re sure kicking up a lot of dust about the possibility that it could happen:

“Attorney General John Ashcroft quietly has issued a sweeping directive that authorizes the FBI to use hundreds of law enforcement agents from other federal agencies to help investigate any terrorist plots that target the Nov. 2 elections. The directive - the first of its kind since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - allows the FBI to tap agents from the U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as part of a nationwide effort by FBI-led counterterrorism units to seek out and stop any plots against the elections…”

Whenever Asscroft does something “quietly,” it’s time to worry.

But the persistent warnings about terrorism also have drawn skepticism from some Democratic election officials and civil-rights advocates who have accused the Republican White House of creating a climate of fear that, among other things, could suppress voter turnout. Heavy voter turnout historically has favored Democrats in U.S. elections.

Engy Abdelkader, civil-rights director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says that Arab-Americans and other minorities could choose to stay away from the polls if they believe that federal agents will be questioning people there. "This could have a very politically chilling effect on our community," Abdelkader says. "We are monitoring this very closely."
via FBI to get help on Election Day plots

Meanwhile, some Democratic election officials are questioning whether there is a political angle to the Bush administration's repeated terrorism warnings. Rebecca Vigil-Giron, a Democrat who is New Mexico's top election official, says she wonders whether the warnings amount to a veiled Republican effort to suppress voter turnout. Historically, heavy turnout in U.S. elections has favored Democrats.

Attorney General John Ashcroft… this week rejected the notion that the Republican White House has hyped the threat to discourage voting. Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo says it is "absolutely absurd that we would seek to depress the vote."

Still, there is skepticism. Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, a Republican, says he was "flabbergasted" at the reaction last month when he sent letters to local election clerks urging them to develop plans to respond to "an immediate and present danger." Some local officials accused Rokita of trying to intimidate voters. "Given the concern about terrorism," he says, "I felt somebody ought to be out ... making sure we were talking to each other."
via Election warning causes anxiety

Skepticism? No, we’re trusting little sheep. Look, it just makes sense that if you suspect an attack could occur, you would plan for how to handle the elections if it did. But they’re not doing that. They’re pulling out all of the law enforcement stops to “investigate” vague warnings and ramp up fear. Could be CYA after 9/11, but it could be voter intimidation. WTF? I smell a setup.

And the rumblings on the street are that if anything should happen that smells like someone is polecatting up the polls on Nov. 2, the cry will rise up: “To the barricades, citizens!” Surely even the beltway zombies can see what would happen if the election craters. Can’t they? Oh, right. These are the ones who planned so carefully for iWaq and worked tirelessly to prevent 9/11. Never mind, Ms. Litella.

Fans of "South Park" are acquainted with the Underpants Gnomes and their motto (believed by many to be an underlying theme of the entire Bush administration), "(1) Steal Underpants, (2) ??? (3) Profit!"

We have our own Underpants Gnome. And he's a wanted man in Michigan:

(via Yubanet.com)

By: Michael Moore
Published: Oct 7, 2004

Dear Friends,

You may have heard by now that the Michigan Republican Party has called for my arrest. That's right. They literally want me brought up on charges -- and hope that I'm locked up.

No, I'm not kidding. The Republican Party, yesterday, filed a criminal complaint with the prosecutors in each of the counties where I spoke last week in Michigan.

My crime? Clean underwear for anyone who will vote in the upcoming election.

Each night on our 60-city "Slacker Uprising Tour" through the 20 battleground states, I've been registering hundreds (and on some nights, thousands) of voters at my arena and stadium events.

If they promise me that they'll do this [vote], I give the guys a 3-pack of new Fruit of the Loom underwear, and the women get a day's supply of Ramen noodles, the sustenance of slackers everywhere.

The satire of all this seems to have been lost on the Republicans. Or maybe it hasn't. The state of Michigan (where we spent most of last week) reported that over 100,000 young people recently registered to vote, a record that no one saw coming. The Slacker Tour has turned into a huge steamroller with a momentum all its own.

So, the Republican Party, to show their gratitude that so many young people will now be involved in our system, has demanded that I be sent to jail for trying to "bribe" students to vote.

My friends, they will not catch me. Though I may be on the run, and I may never be able to return home to my beloved Michigan, I make this solemn vow to you and yours: The slackers of America shall not be denied their noodles, they will proudly wear their clean underwear as free Americans, and they will vote Bush out of office come November 2nd (though they will not show up to the polls until well after noon)!

Stay strong, stay slacker, and please remember to turn the underwear inside out every three days. As for the noodles, add boiling water, stir.

Yours,

Michael Moore

The kicker? This story showed up on the front page of Google News. Algorithms for Kerry! I love it.

(Letter edited for length. Some pretty funny parts left out, so if you have time or need a lift, go read.)

I used to be a journalist, if a features-and-obit writer can be dignified with the title. I was one during the Pentagon Papers case and joined in every protest against the government intrusions that I could. The First Amendment is absolute, dammit...

...except maybe just this once.

(via NYT but an AP story)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge held a reporter in contempt Thursday for refusing to divulge confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity.

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ordered New York Times reporter Judith Miller jailed until she agrees to testify about her sources before a grand jury, but said she could remain free while pursuing an appeal. Miller could be jailed up to 18 months.

Hogan cited Supreme Court rulings that reporters do not have absolute First Amendment protection from testifying about confidential sources. He said there was ample evidence that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, had exhausted other avenues of obtaining key testimony before issuing subpoenas to Miller and other reporters.

``The special counsel has made a limited, deferential approach to the press in this matter,'' Hogan said.

Fitzgerald is investigating whether a crime was committed when someone leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose name was published by syndicated columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak cited two ``senior administration officials'' as his sources.

``I think it's really frightening when journalists can be put in jail for doing their job effectively,'' Miller told reporters outside the courthouse.

Tell it to the 1066 dead, sweetheart.

Frank Rich (via Kos makes a useful point about, well, camera technique. Remember the old TV show, "To Tell the Truth"? It's alive and well:

If anything, the first Bush-Kerry confrontation has given split-screen television a new vogue. Having defied the efforts of both campaigns to squelch its use on Sept. 30, emboldened TV news organizations can run with it at will. So we saw on the Sunday after that debate, when Condoleezza Rice appeared on ABC's "This Week."

There she was quizzed about the report in that morning's Times saying that in 2002 she had hyped aluminum tubes as evidence of Saddam's nuclear threat a year after her staff was told that government experts had serious doubts. Ms. Rice kept trying to talk over the soft-voiced George Stephanopoulos's questions, but [Stephanopoulos] zapped her with a picture: a September 2002 CNN interview in which she had not, shall we say, told the whole truth and nothing but. As the old video played, ABC used a split screen so we could watch Ms. Rice, "This Is Your Life" style, as she watched the replay of her incriminating appearance of two years earlier. Maybe, like Mr. Bush at the first debate, she knew her reaction was being caught on camera. But even if she did, the unchecked rage in her face, like that of her boss three days earlier, revealed that her image and her story, like the war itself, had spun completely out of her control.
(via NY Times)

It's really a story for The Department of "How Stupid Do They Think We Are?" Just as we say to ourselves (as with the old yellowcake "crude forgeries" fiasco) "Don't they know we can use Google?" so the slightly-less-terrified (oh, "emboldened") SCLM are saying to themselves, "Don't they know we have archives?"

More like this, please.

I was having coffee with some friends this morning, and we were talking about how the voter registration drives had gone. Everyone agreed that new voter registration was a success, with probably hundreds of thousands of young new voters, mostly for Kerry, added this year. The news stories lately back that up. Everyone's doing followup on the phones once a week, too. Then the talk turned a little more paranoid, a little more tinfoil-hattish. How far would Bushco go to hold onto power? Out of the four of us, only two were willing to say he would stop at nothing. The other two, more trusting types, thought they’d play fair up to a point. What point? Well, they wouldn’t deliberately allow or stage a terror attack, for example. They wouldn’t dream of postponing or canceling elections. But, didn’t the head of the FEC float that idea already? Is there a plan in place for what to do about elections if such an attack occurred? Why has this story gone under the radar?

It got me to thinking (ouch!), so I did a little browsing on the topic after chores, and found a couple of things. First one’s from a blog I never heard of before:

“What is the probability that W's regime would attempt to use an attack for political purposes?" If you assess the probability of that at less than 100%, you need to ask the Easter Bunny or the Great Pumpkin to review the events of the last four years.

How much disruption needs to be caused to trigger a response? If one guy shoots up a precinct in Utah, we keep going, right? What if they blow up the Niagara Mohawk substation in Buffalo-- or Lower Colorado in Texas or one of the other major transmission points on the grid--and we have another huge blackout?Suppose the attack doesn't actually have a direct impact on voting-- a mega-worm that brings down major computer networks 72 hours before Election Day?Suppose there's a nerve gas attack in Houston in late October-- and we've cleaned up the chaos by election day, but we don't know who's to blame?You want to just wing any of those? You don't do that-- you assume that it just can't happen-- and you wind up open for... Well, say there's an attack on Election Day, in Manhattan, and that it's got 9/11-style consequences. You've got a bunch of people dead, fifteen million people unable to get to the polls-- many of whom live in Connecticut and New Jersey (and a large number who commute from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island). Let's say the perverted wits who chose to attack on "911" do this one at "High Noon", so the rest of the country has 7-10 hours to stew and rage. You ready to hear W. announce that the elections in six key blue states have to be postponed for a week or two-- but the rest of the county can keep voting and counting because "it's important to show the terrorists that they can't win." That's why you want a contingency plan for dealing with a terrorist attack during election season.

via We Report... You Deride

And another site advising folks to get their city councils to do what Hamtramck done:

“Be it resolved, the Hamtramck City Council speaking for the people of the City of Hamtramck wishes it to be known that no act of nature or man will prevent, hinder, or intimidate them from voting and expressing their will…”

via Welcome to GuvWurld

Hey, it could happen. I looked for a contingency plan somewhere; searched the FEC site. Haven’t found a thing. That’s a little worrisome. Any correntians know of one? Is this truly tinfoil hat territory? What would Bushco do if any of these nightmare scenarios played out? I mean, regardless of who caused them? Mebbe we should be demanding to know, What's the Plan?

I haven’t gone back down past the revival tent, but when I do, I have the Wittman article for the “pastor.”

I know, there were so many. But the subchapter S cheap shot was the lowest of the low. The Amazin' Froomkin quotes Ragout:

Bush frequently makes the same claim on the campaign trail, praising small businesses as "job creators," and charging that Kerry's plan will raise their taxes: "Ninety percent of small businesses pay tax at the individual income tax rate, because they're either subchapter-S corporation or a sole proprietorship."

So it was more than a little hypocritical when, later in the debate, Cheney charged that Edwards had used a "special tax loophole" to avoid taxes during his days as a lawyer. The loophole? Incorporating under subchapter-S, of course!

In their stump speeches, subchapter-S corporations are virtuous job creators, but when their opponent starts a perfectly typical corporation of this type, he's a tax dodger. What a cheap shot.
(via Ragout)

Silly. It's only right to become Subchapter S if you sign a loyalty oath and show up at a torchlight parade for the Partei! IOKIYAR!

It might turn out, against all conventional wisdom—surprise!—that the Vice Presidential debates were decisive after all.

The meme that the Republicans are, um, factually challenged seems to be taking hold.

Why? Because when Cheney says he never met Edwards, and there are photos and witnesses that prove he's lying, that's the kind of toddler-level lie that anyone can understand.





So it would be a truly delicious irony if Cheney Cheney-ed himself. With Patrick Leahy watching from the second row. (And Elizabeth Edwards nailed Cheney—insofar as that is possible—on it, right on the stage after the debate. Sweet!)

Oh, you know, those business school professors—so liberal! Here's what they have to say (via Maxspeak; check out the signatories):

We also urge you to consider the distributional consequences of your policies. Under your administration, the income gap between the most affluent Americans and everyone else has widened. Although the latest data reveal that real household incomes have dropped across the board since you took office, low and middle income households have experienced steeper declines than upper income households.

I bet we'll hear a lot this Friday from aWol about the "ownership society"; but we won't hear anything about who owns what—or who owns who.

To be sure, the general phenomenon of mounting inequality preceded your administration, but it has continued (and, by some accounts, intensified) over the past three and a half years.

Some degree of inequality is inherent in any free market economy, creating positive incentives for economic and technological advancement. But when inequality becomes extreme, it can be socially corrosive and economically dysfunctional. Problems of this sort are visible throughout much of the developing world. At the moment, the most commonly accepted measure of inequality – the so-called Gini coefficient [WikiPedia] – is far higher in the United States than in any other developed country and is continuing to move upward. We don’t know where the breakpoint is for the U.S., but we would rather not find out. With all due ["heh"] respect, we believe your tax policy has exacerbated the problem of inequality in the United States, which has worrisome implications for the economy as a whole. We very much hope you will take this threat to our nation into account as you consider new fiscal approaches to address the nation’s most pressing economic problems.

Sensible and farsighted economic management requires true discipline, compassion, and courage – not just slogans. Given the tenuous state of the American economy, we believe that the time for an honest assessment of the problem and for genuine corrective action is now. Ignoring the fiscal crisis that has taken hold during your presidency may seem politically appealing in the short run, but we fear it could ultimately prove disastrous. From a policy standpoint, the clear message is that more of the same won’t work. The warning signs are already visible, and it is incumbent upon all of us to pay attention.

Remember this gem from aWol?

What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base.
(The Tiffany Network)

Somehow, I don't think Bush is going to pay a lot of attention. Eh? Anyhow, I say if we don't give the super-rich more of what they already have so much of, the terrorists have won.

Gimme an F! F!

Gimme an A! A!

Gimme a C! C!

Gimme a T! T!

Gimme an S! S!

What's that spell? FACTS!

What's that spell? FACTS!

What's that spell? FACTS!

And now we break into (the same old) song:

Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in the Iraq sands....

OB/GYNs, vanishing docs, malpractice reform.... (fact check)

[1] Cheney overstates Wyoming doctors' premiums by a factor of six.

Cheney stated: "[In Wyoming] rates for a general practitioner have gone from $40,000 a year to $100,000 a year for an insurance policy."

The Facts: In 2004, the insurance rate for the state’s leading underwriter (Doctors Company) for family general practice was $15,322 (no obstetrics, no surgery), according to a non-partisan report from the Wyoming Legislative Service Office.[1]

[2] Cheney’s disappearing doctor figure is contradicted by hard numbers

Cheney stated: "We’ve lost one out of 11 OB/GYN practitioners in the country."

The Facts: Cheney apparently relied on a survey commissioned by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) in which 9 percent of respondents said they had ceased practice. But every year thousands of obstetricians stop delivering babies as they get older. The ACOG survey did not attempt to determine whether malpractice rates were a statistically significant factor affecting OB/GYNs’ decisions.

In fact, the number of board-certified OB/GYNs in the United States grew by 18.1 percent from 1999 to 2004, according to the American Board of Medical Specialties

[3] John Kerry and the liberals in Congress blocked medical malpractice reform.

The Senate voted on three malpractice bills. Senator Kerry did not vote to "block" any of these bills. In each case, Majority Leader Frist was required to get 60 votes for the bill to proceed to the floor. And in each case, the Republicans were unable to muster even 50 votes from their 51-seat majority to bring the bill up for debate.

Much more info - for further details see: Public Citizen -- Cheney’s Claims in V.P. Debate and New Bush-Cheney Medical Malpractice Ad Continue Campaign of Deception and Distortion | Government Data and Studies Show Bush-Cheney Claims About Insurance Rates and Access to Doctors Have No Foundation

*

Two very good debates and an actual half hour of decent NBC newscast tonight does not an election victory make. The subversion of government agencies continues:

(via WaPo)

Officials at a federal program that runs hospitals and clinics serving Native Americans this summer prohibited employees from using those facilities to sign up new voters, saying that even nonpartisan voter registration was prohibited on federal property.

Staff members at several Indian Health Service hospitals and clinics in New Mexico, a presidential battleground state where about one-tenth of the population is Native American, were trying to register employees, patients and family members who use the facilities.

Several of those involved in the registration effort questioned what they saw as a double standard, given that the federal government encourages registration on military bases, where voters traditionally have favored Republicans.

Several Bush administration agencies have been criticized after taking steps to block or question other registration efforts.

The Homeland Security Department sought to block a nonpartisan group from registering new citizens outside a Miami naturalization ceremony in August.

The Justice Department has launched inquiries into new registrations submitted by Democratic-leaning groups in several key states. Democrats say the probes are politically motivated.

I snipped a discussion of the Hatch Act, which is being blatantly violated here by the Bushco people. And the fact that the DNC and civil rights groups were unaware this was going on, meaning it might be a recent move. I'd like to see some of the Recount Emergency Fund go preemptively to publicizing this crap.

Yes, Tom "Don't call me French!" DéLay's behavior is too noxious even for the House Ethics Committee. So, they gave him thirty lashings with a wet noodle (as Ann Landers used to say):

The House ethics committee Wednesday criticized House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for conduct that appeared to link political donations to legislation and for improperly contacting U.S. aviation authorities for political purposes, House sources said Wednesday.

The committee's findings were an extraordinary second rebuke of the Texas Republican's ethical conduct in just six days.

The committee of five Democrats and five Republicans deferred to Texas authorities allegations that DeLay violated state campaign finance rules.

They punted to the great state of Texas? Why on earth?

The committee's findings - a report admonishing his conduct - nonetheless spared him a lengthy investigation by the ethics panel.

Well, that's a relief. Investigating DéLay would mean that the terrorists have won!

And now the money:

By concluding the case with no more than a report on DeLay's conduct, the investigation is unlikely to affect his ability to push the Republican agenda through the House if the GOP retains its majority.

Last Thursday the same committee, in an investigative report, admonished DeLay for offering to support the House candidacy of a Michigan lawmaker's son, in return for the lawmaker's vote for a Medicare prescription drug benefit.

The committee acted on a three-part complaint from Rep. Chris Bell, D-Texas. The allegations accused DeLay of soliciting political contributions from Westar Energy, a Kansas company, in return for legislative favors; violating Texas laws prohibiting corporate political donations; and improperly contacting aviation authorities to track down a plane carrying Texas Democratic legislators who were trying to defeat a DeLay-engineered congressional redistricting plan.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the report had not yet been released.

Westar executives made a $25,000 donation to an organization affiliated with DeLay just before attending a two-day get-together at a Virginia resort with the House GOP leader.

Described by a DeLay spokesman as "a golf fund-raising event," several executives from the Topeka-based company went to the 15,000-acre Homestead resort in early June 2002 for what participants said was an energy issues round table.

The committee said there was a "significant gap" between the Westar allegations - accusing DeLay of actually soliciting contributions in return for legislative favors - and the panel's findings.

"The information we obtained indicates that neither Representative DeLay nor anyone acting on his behalf improperly solicited contributions from Westar, and Representative DeLay took no action with regard to Westar that would constitute an impermissible special favor," the report said.

Hmmmm... As opposed to a permissible special favor? And why no mention of Enron (back)?

However, the committee said the golf fund-raising event "created the appearance of impropriety."

Uh huh, "appearance." But I don't think it's the sense of sight that's at issue, eh? You know, some scientists got a Nobel prize the other day for figuring out the sense of smell. But I guess the news hasn't penetrated Republican Washington.... But wait! There's more!

The allegations of improper contact with the Federal Aviation Administration focused on calls from DeLay's office on May 12, 2003, to locate the plane of a Texas Democratic House member.

The lawmaker and Democratic colleagues left the state for Oklahoma to prevent a vote in the Legislature on a GOP redistricting plan.

A report from the Transportation Department's inspector general found that DeLay's request set off a search that spread over eight hours and involved at least 13 FAA employees.
(via AP)

Gee, it's almost like DéLay thinks the entire government is a tool for the Republicans. Oh, wait....

UPDATE And the beauty part—if that's the phrase I want—is that DéLay's just had plastic surgery on his eyelids. We will now await all the excited discussion from the millionaire pundits about how plastic surgery means "Tom DéLay doesn't know who he really is." And so on. Not!

UPDATE The text of the Ethics Committee memo.

The great Howard Dean scare of - 2003? Density-land details yet another Cheney lie:

And, just for the ironic hell of it:

My concerns about the Senator is that, in the course of this campaign I've been listening very carefully to what he says, and he changes positions on the war on Iraq. It's a -- changes positions on something as ff -- fundamental as what you believe in your core, in your heart of hearts is right for -- in Iraq. I -- you cannot lead if you send mexed miss -- mixed messages. - George W. Bush, First Presidential Debate, Coral Gables, Florida, Sep. 30, 2004

You've got to be able to speak clearly in order to make this world a more peaceful place. - George W. Bush, Springfield, Ohio, Sep. 27, 2004.

Obviously making the world a more peaceful place, as long as 'W' is doing the talking, is a ff -- fundamental core improbability.

*

Before long, they'll be jumping out of windows in the West Wing:

When McCain threatened Bush in the 2000 primaries, we got the first real glimpse behind the curtain of Bush World -- with its vicious and ferocious assault on McCain's patriotism and character. What the Bushies used against McCain was an unholy coalition of the two primary wings of the Republican Party -- the Corporate Warriors and the Prayer Warriors. These unlikely allies united against McCain despite the fact that he had a strong pro-life record and a conservative congressional record.

The alliance of Mammon and the religious right was consummated in opposition to McCain's support for campaign finance reform. The embodiment of this coalition was a key operative who implemented the anti-McCain assault in South Carolina -- former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, a Karl Rove crony who was also on the payroll of Enron. Reed had been my boss when I worked as legislative director of the Christian Coalition. Before the primaries, Reed warned me that he would implement an under-the-radar slime assault on McCain if he posed a threat to Bush -- just what happened in South Carolina after Bush's loss to McCain in the New Hampshire primary.

Anyone who was involved in the 2000 McCain campaign, as I was, knows exactly who is responsible for the "Swift boat" slime attack on Senator Kerry -- in Bush World, all low roads lead to Rove.

When I was at the Christian Coalition, I witnessed first-hand the alliance of the deregulation, no-tax crowd with the religious conservatives. Ironically, the rank and file of the religious right are hardly the country club set. They are largely middle-class Americans who don't rely on trust funds or dividend checks for their livelihoods. But the leaders of the religious right have betrayed their constituents by failing to champion such economic issues as family leave or access to health insurance, which would relieve the stresses on many working families. The only things the religious conservatives get are largely symbolic votes on proposals guaranteed to fail, such as the gay marriage constitutional amendment. The religious right has consistently provided the ground troops, while the big-money men have gotten the goodies.

The realization that the religious right had essentially become a front for the money men of the Republican Party was a primary source of my disenchantment with that movement. And without a doubt, the GOP has merely become a vehicle for unbridled corporate power. Such a party cannot provide a home for a movement that strives for national greatness.

Marshall Wittman, former McCain aide, and now in the employ of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Yeah, he’s still pretty right-wing. Yeah, I disagree with around 80% of his ideas. But when a former McCain aide says that “the GOP has merely become a vehicle for unbridled corporate power,” I can’t help but smile. And when that same person pulls the curtain from the backroom machinations of the Christian Coalition, I smile like a jackass eating briers. And when he quits the GOP and goes to work for DLC, I find one more disillusioned refugee from Bushco.

I, for one, will hand this article to every Deluded Christian for Bush I meet. Especially the poor ones. Like the guy I drove by today--he's got a big revival tent out front, but his house is a rusty trailer and his ride is a busted-ass old Ford 150. And he's got a monstrous BushCheney poster out front. Bet he thinks he's supporting a good, moral party. Wonder if he'd be shocked to learn that he's a "front for the money men," and right from the mouth of one who was inside the machine?

The whole enchilada can be found at Escape from the Elephant House at the DLC site.

While everybody's getting excited about silly little Cheney lies from last night, there's one great big lie I haven't seen brought up anywhere. At least the biggest lie since the crap that "everything changed on 9-11."

Here's the quote. It's only the second question, Edwards has just slammed one Big Lie ("Sadaam=Al Qaida") and one Big Inconvenient Fact, that we turned away from finishing the job in Afghanistan to go after the neocon wet dream of Iraq. Here's the quote I think is important:

(via debate transcript)

CHENEY: The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror.

And the point is that that's the place where you're most likely to see the terrorists come together with weapons of mass destruction, the deadly technologies that Saddam Hussein had developed and used over the years.

Now, the fact of the matter is, the big difference here, Gwen, is they are not prepared to deal with states that sponsor terror. They've got a very limited view about how to use U.S. military forces to defend America.

Ol' Crashcart Dick accidentally let slip a very big truth there. I'm sure he didn't mean to, but he revealed just how the ones who are "practicing pre-Sept. 11 thinking" here are him and his cronies.

You know the saying that, when all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail? This is the problem BushCheneyCo is stuck in. To them, states are everything. If it doesn't have a border, and a capital, and a governmental structure of some kind, they haven't the slightest clue what to do with it.

What was it Rumsfeld said before the attack on Afghanistan even started? It "didn't have enough targets." Here we have all these exceedingly cool (not to mention extremely expensive) weapons like smart bombs, cruise missles, satellite targeting systems et al. It would be crazy to waste them, as somebody sneered, blowing up a $10 tent and a donkey or two.

This is true. These systems were designed to fight a Cold War era battle against Russian tanks on the plains of Poland (see, we remembered Poland!) and East Germany.

But alas...East Germany is no more, Poland is our ever so valued ally in Iraq, and we've got all these weapons just sitting there which are no damn use at all against a non-state-based entity like Al Qaida.

The solution? Turn away from the hard fight, that would require re-thinking and complete redesign of at least a portion of "US military forces"--or might not require military forces at all to produce the desired results. It might require translators more than tanks, linguists more than lasers, bribes more than bombs, historians more than helicopters.

It might take an acknowledgement that a country that couldn't be conquered by either Alexander the Great or Mikhael Gorbachev is going to have to be tackled by something other than conventional military means.

They really thought it would be easier to conquer Iraq. It had borders, it had a capital, all that stuff. It was a game they knew how to play.

They had the biggest damn hammers ever invented. Afghanistan looked like a crooked little bent-up thumbtack while Iraq looked like a nice big fat railroad spike.

Fact: We need to learn the rules of a whole new game called non-state-sponsored terrorism.

It was a fact clear to everybody in America by about noon Eastern on September 11, 2001. We've now lost three critical years refusing to even look at the manual, because it was easier to drag out the board for another round of "Dungeons & Dragons" and we already had all the pieces anyway.

When we are hit by another attack we will regret wasting this time. But that attack will be as much the fault of Bush and Cheney as the first one was.

Fact 1: Cheney said he never met Edwards. We already know he met Edwards once. Now he met Edwards at least twice.

Fact 2: We already know about Cheney saying "factcheck.com" (heh instead of "factcheck.org. But you know what? Factcheck.org nails Cheney on Halliburton.

Somehow, I'm getting the idea that Cheney has a problem with facts. In fact, you could say Cheneys factually challenged. Cheney has a problem recognizing facts, and he denies facts when they don't fit in with his preconceived ideas. Plus, he just makes shit up. Just like his boss, eh?

[VP debate, Cleveland OH, 2004]:
CHENEY: Well, the reason they keep mentioning Halliburton is because they're trying to throw up a smokescreen. They know the charges are false. They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com [sic], an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton.

This is a wonderful thing... In the middle of the veep debate, Mr. Dick "Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney told America that we could find out the truth about what he claimed John Edwards was distorting by going to a non-partisan web site called "factcheck.com." Well, see for yourself!

Yup. Go see for yourself. You'll enjoy this: Fact Check.com

Ha ha...thanks for the tip Mr. Cheney!

(thanks for real GL)

*

"The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." - Dick Cheney to John Edwards, VP debate, Cleveland OH, Oct. 5, 2004.





Preliminary figures in the online polls. This is in the order I hit them starting circa 10:15 p.m.CDT through about 11 (curse dialup anyway):

Faux: C-41% E-57%, 39,639 votes

MSNBC: C-30% E-70% 370,100 votes

CNN: C-18% E-78% 137,117 votes

KYW: C-16.09% E-83.91% 2928 votes

LATimes: C- 2.2% E-96.4% 7899 votes

Akron: C-2% E-98% 32529 votes

Newsday: C-3.9% E-96.1% 18136 votes

Houston : C- 9% E-90% (forgot to write down total vote, dammit)
Chronicle

Orlando : C-3/9% E-96.1% 19287 votes
Sun-Sentinel

Sorry about the formatting, Blogger doesn't seem to want to let me arrange these into columns without a lotta html formatting I don't want to bother with this time of night. But them's the figures.

So it's lookin' good so far. You want the truth? I thought Edwards was not at his best, and Cheney was. But the fact is that that's the best Darth Voldemort can manage, to keep repeating the lies faster than Edwards can refute them. You could see the frustration, and it led to all the overlap as the time from one question had to be half-spent on the one before.

Gwen Ifil did better than I expected with the quality of questions, but aside from the "That's all you're gonna get!" to Cheney's one whine that he needed more turd-polishing time, a poor job of overall management.

Oh, and Dick? Even if she'd given you more polishing time, in the end it would still be a turd. Hard to hold that up as an inspiration to the people to give you four additional years to produce more of them.

I'm not sure Edwards managed to wrestle Cheney into his coffin, let alone drive a stake through his heart (if any)—but I'd say Edwards held his own, and that's what counts.

Astonishing Cheney continues to push the AQ/Iraq Big Lie—though this time he shifted, not very deftly, to Zarquai (sp?) from Bin Laden. How does Cheney manage to do the gravitas thing so well, when he gets huge stuff like this so very, very wrong?

NOTE Digby thoughtfully provides the numbers to call. And be sure to vote early and often.

UPDATE Heh.

And?

UPDATE Live transcript here.

It couldn't be that the Edwards/Cheney debate is on tonight, could it? No! They would never do that!

More than a week after a court-imposed deadline to turn over all records of President Bush's military service, the Texas Air National Guard belatedly produced two documents Tuesday that include Bush's orders for his last day of active duty in 1973.

Why is it that when these guys say "all" the documents, it's never, ever true?

The orders show Bush was on "no-fly" status for his last days of duty because he had been grounded almost a year earlier for skipping an annual medical.

The Texas Air National Guard did not explain the delay in releasing the records.

The 1973 orders come from the most controversial period in Bush's years in the Texas Air National Guard. After May 1972, Bush skipped training for six months, failed to appear for the required physical examination, got permission to train at an Alabama unit whose commanders say he never showed up and put in a flurry of training in 1973 in an effort to meet minimum requirements before leaving for Harvard Business School.

Nice summary of the facts. Amazing how the winger circlejerk about the fonts and the superscripts obscured the real events, isn't it?

Bush has insisted he fulfilled all of his Air National Guard duties and says he is proud of his service.

I still don't see why being grounded is something to be proud of.

Democrats have criticized Bush's Guard performance, saying he shirked his duties in his final years in the service.

By July 1973, Bush was finishing a four-month stretch that included 40 days of active-duty service and drills. The orders released Tuesday direct Bush to report for equivalent active-duty training for eight days in July 1973.

The equivalent-training notation means Bush was making up for active-duty training he either had already missed or would be unavailable for in the future. The orders do not say what Bush would be doing since he could not participate in the job code listed on the orders - F-102A fighter pilot.

So, um, how could Bush have fulfilled his obligations to our country?

The last day of the orders is July 30, 1973, Bush' final day in the Texas Air National Guard. Previously released documents include a form Bush signed that day stating he had been counseled on his plans to leave his Texas unit because he was moving out of the area.

Bush started Harvard Business School in September 1973 and the Texas Air National Guard honorably discharged Bush into the Air Force Reserves, effective Oct. 1 of that year. The Air Force discharged Bush in November 1974.
(via AP)

So, again, what on earth does Bush have to be proud of?

If you're into Illinois politics you should be reading ArchPundit. He not only does for one state what dKos does nationwide, he brings desperately-needed humor to a very intense time:

(via ArchPundit)

Brought to you by the irrascible libertarian [Chicago Tribune columnist] Steve Chapman

How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb?

None.

"There's nothing wrong with that light bulb. It has served us honorably. When you say it's burned out, you're giving encouragement to the forces of darkness. Once we install a light bulb, we never, ever change it. Real men don't need artificial light."

If you're an Alan Keyes fan (well, not a fan of him personally, I mean his campaign--see "desperately needed humor" note above) you should read the comments thread on this one. Warning: smelly toad jokes involved.

No humor here.

I don't know Knoxville, its on the other side of a fairly long state from me. Perhaps window-shattering gunfire is common in this neighborhood, although it strikes me as unlikely that a BC/04 HQ would be located in anyplace too crime-ridden. Do however note what happened just across the street later the same day.

Just want to get it on the record that in the unlikely event this DOES turn out to be politically related, whoever did it is scum. Even if it's another case of Rovian preemptive ratfucking to make Democrats look bad:

(via USA Today)

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Gunshots shattered the plate-glass front doors of a local Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters Tuesday morning before volunteers reported to work.

Police believe someone pulled up to the Kingston Pike Shopping Center storefront of Bush-Cheney Victory 2004, the state GOP's grass-roots support organization, between 6:45 and 7:15 a.m. ET and began firing.

No one was inside and no one was injured.

Knox County Democratic chairman Jim Gray called the attack "despicable."

"I can't imagine what kind of thinking inspired it or maybe what amount of alcohol," Gray said. "My second thought is, maybe it was just someone who got tired of their darn Kerry signs being stolen."

Sigh. Shoulda stuck with your first thought, Jim. At any rate, note this item:

A bank robbery at a BB&T branch across the street about 11 a.m. heightened the activity.

Okay, we don't take the NYT off the shit list as long as Judith "Kneepads" Miller is still drawing a paycheck without even an "oopsie!" of acknowledgement that her whoring for Chalabi helped bring about the qWagmire.

But they go a long way towards restoring their formerly-deserved reputation for greatness when the run this, even under a dumb headline like "The Scales Fall."
Krugman:

Last week President Bush found himself defending his record on national security without his usual protective cocoon of loyalty-tested audiences and cowed reporters. And the sound you heard was the scales' falling from millions of eyes.

Trying to undo the damage, Mr. Bush is now telling those loyalty-tested audiences that Senator John Kerry's use of the phrase "global test" means that he "would give foreign governments veto power over our national security decisions." He's lying, of course, as anyone can confirm by looking at what Mr. Kerry actually said. But it may still work - Mr. Bush's pre-debate rise in the polls is testimony to the effectiveness of smear tactics.

Isn't that a relief, to see that written so nonchalantly? It's no longer "NEWS FLASH: PRESIDENT LIES!"

Just, "He's lying, of course" a couple of paragraphs into the article. The "of course" just says it all. Go read the rest and enjoy.

More lucky duckies!

U.S. planned job cuts soared to an eight-month high in September while new hiring rose only slightly, a report said on Tuesday.

Employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said employers announced 107,863 layoffs in September, 41 percent more than in September 2003 and 45 percent more than in August of this year, when 74,150 were laid off.

Job losses in September were particularly heavy in the computer, transportation, telecommunications and consumer products industries, the report said.
(via MSNBC)

I blame gay marriage.

I’m on the road and I made the mistake last night of turning on the teevee at the motel. Turned it to PBS, and American Experience was on. About RFK. About what was and what might have been.

"In 1968, during that brief campaign for the Democratic nomination, Robert Kennedy would say over and over again, 'There must be a revolution.' Not a revolution in the streets, but in the minds and hearts and souls of our people. He believed that. He wanted -- not just to change laws -- but he wanted to change people. He wanted to change the mind-set. He wanted to build a sense of community. Dr. King called it 'the beloved community,' some of us call it an interracial democracy, some of us call it one house, the American house. But he wanted to see all of us make that great leap. Under his leadership we would've made that great leap." John Lewis, Civil Rights Activist

"I think of it all the time. I think this would be a different country if he had lived -- a lot better country. And, I think, a more responsive, more humane country -- and a more equal, more generous society." Anthony Lewis, Journalist

Woulda, coulda, and shoulda.

Watching this reminded me of the deep, deep anger I felt at being cheated out of MLK and RFK. It reminded me of the descent into cynicism about politics that I still haven’t completely shaken.

But it also reminded me that hope is on the way. Or so I’m promised. Yeah, the idealist is still alive, somewhere deep under this calloused skin.

I found out that since I’m registered Green, I can hang out at the polling place in my precinct and keep an eye on things Nov. 2 as long as I don’t sport any political messages. The Dems already have someone, but any party who has any candidate on the ticket is eligible if they don’t already have a rep. At least that’s how it is in my county. So I reckon I’ll be hanging around to make sure the ballot boxes are locked up proper and delivered and so forth and that there ain’t no polecats at the polls.

Today is the last day to register to vote in Missouri, Illinois and New Mexico. Outside the library here there’s a group getting the job done. Think I’ll go help before I gotta get back to werk. (High speed connection at the library—wheeeee!)

Another former administration has turned into a critic -- this time echoing Kerry's criticism of the Iraq disaster.

Oh yeah. I forgot to tell you that it's L. Paul Bremer.

Ooops.

The administration's long knives will be out for him next.

How many turncoats has this administration produced now?

They can't all be disgruntled losers, can they?

Sheesh, has blogger been the worst ever lately, or is it just me? Eesh. Lost posts, multiple posts, server madness.... I wish they'd stop "improving" it and just get it to work.

Time to put out the candle in my tiny room under the stairs in The Mighty Corrente Building.

Your enemy in Iraq, that is. Here's what the Army thinks:

U.S. military commanders say Iraq's insurgency is roughly made up of four groups:

FORMER REGIME MEMBERS: Iraqi nationalists fighting to rebuild secular power lost when Saddam Hussein was deposed.

ABU MUSAB AL-ZARQAWI ALLIES: Al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group; Ansar al-Islam, militia of Kurdish Islamic radicals; and Ansar al-Sunna, which seems to be Iraqis and others who follow conservative Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia.

SUPPORTERS OF ISLAMIC THEOCRACY: Iraqis who want to install governmental system based on Islamic law, much like in neighboring Iran.

MAHDI ARMY: Radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, only insurgent group based in Shiite Muslim community, Iraq's largest social bloc.
(via AP)

Wait a minute. There's a name I'd expect to see on that list. Al? Albert? Starts with a Q, maybe? Not Iraq. That ends with a Q. I know it'll come to me...

Jesus's General.

So why doesn't Bush go to church, anyhow? Too hungover?

I got on the Kerry campaign mailing list a couple of months ago somewhat nervously. I hate spam with a passion and somehow get very little of it despite all those newspaper registrations, but figured this would open the floodgates.

It hasn't. I get maybe one mail a week unless something big breaks. This strikes me as one of those things, and exceedingly apropos of several other posts of late. We can register like crazy, and GOTV until our car tires wear off, and it won't mean a damn if we get nailed with recount demands all over hell and gone we can't pay for. Not that dear sweet Karl Rove would ever think of doing such a thing.

Dear Supporter,

Right now I need all of you to join me and make a pledge: the mistakes of the 2000 election will NEVER be repeated again. The day after the election, as the recount began, Al Gore's campaign was already outgunned, outmanned, and outmatched -- we learned one lesson: be prepared. With the race so close in so many states, we need to be prepared for any possibility -- and that means being ready for any recounts.

The Federal Election Commission has just granted our request to raise funds now to cover recount expenses. Your contribution to Kerry-Edwards 2004 GELAC (General Election Legal and Accounting Compliance fund) will provide the resources to make sure we are prepared to win any post Election Day battles.

Make a contribution to our GELAC fund today:

Contribute John Kerry

Our GELAC fund also pays for the administrative costs at the campaign -- by paying for these expenses with GELAC funds, the campaign is able to spend more of its limited public funds on critical campaign expenses such as media, candidate travel, and direct contact with voters.

Make our public funds more valuable and make sure we are prepared for any possible recount.

Thank you,

Mary Beth Cahill
Campaign Manager

Let your conscience/bank balance/credit limit be your guide. But let your thoughts be cast back and your memories linger on the Dade County White-Collar Brownshirt Rioters as you decide how many zeros to add.

Lock up the spoons! Or the aluminum tubes, as the case may be...

The man named by the new CIA (news - web sites) director for the third-highest position at the agency said on Monday he would not take the job following reports that he was caught shoplifting more than two decades ago.

"As a result of recent press articles and attendant speculation, I have decided that I cannot accept an appointment as CIA's executive director," Michael Kostiw said in a statement.

He will however work at the agency as a senior adviser to the new director, Porter Goss, the former Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.
(via Reuters)

What baffles me is why Goss thinks its OK for a shoplifter to be a senior advisor, if it isn't OK for a shoplifter to be an executive director.

Oh, wait—IOKIYAR!

After lying, looting is what Republicans do best!

“The June issue of Mother Earth appeared draped in black, its cover representing a tomb bearing the inscription: “IN MEMORIAM--AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.” The sombre attire of the magazine was striking and effective. No words could express more eloquently the tragedy that turned America, the erstwhile torch-bearer of freedom, into a grave-digger of her former ideals… a dozen men burst into my office. The leader of the party excitedly cried: “Emma Goldman, you're under arrest! And so is Berkman; where is he?” It was United States Marshal Thomas D. McCarthy. I knew him by sight; of late he had always stationed himself near the platform at our No-Conscription meetings, his whole attitude one of impatient readiness to spring upon the speakers. The newspapers had reported him as saying that he had repeatedly wired Washington for orders to arrest us.

"I hope you will get the medal you crave," I said to him. "Just the same, you might let me see your warrant." Instead he held out a copy of the June Mother Earth and demanded whether I was the author of the No-Conscription article it contained. "Obviously," I answered, "since my name is signed to it. Furthermore, I take the responsibility for everything else in the magazine. But where is your warrant?"
McCarthy declared that no warrant was necessary for us; Mother Earth contained enough treasonable matter to land us in jail for years. He had come to get us and we had better hurry up…”
-Emma Goldman, 1917, via We defy law and presidential orders

Was it Bismarck who said, the only thing that history teaches us is that history teaches us nothing? The unholy godchildren of McCarthy will come for us again if we don’t clean house and send every one of these evolutionary throwbacks to the pond from which they slithered.

Registration ends today in Colorado and Arizona. New Mexico tomorrow. Dunno about your neck of the emerging gulag. After all of the registration deadlines have passed, then all that’s left is getting out the word, getting people to the polls, making sure that Kerry posters and stickers and buttons are out, letters to the editor are out, and speeches are made, bullshit called and votes cast and watched. We don’t want nobody polecattin’ up the polls. After the 3rd, I gotta be sure to clean up posters and etc., too.

Because no matter what, we gotta do what we can to make sure that there is not another “tragedy that turned America, the erstwhile torch-bearer of freedom, into a grave-digger of her former ideals.”

Nowadays the icy hand of fear is kept on our necks, and lying and looting are the ideals of the day. But I seem to recall ideals like equality, liberty, justice, truth, tolerance, harmony, and compassion. Wasn’t there a time these ideals were taken seriously, not just used as empty speech? And wasn’t there a time that some action was being taken by peoples and governments to achieve ideals?

Today, I will try to get three new Dems registered before it’s too late. And I will wear my Kerry buttons with special pride. And I’ll try to practice a few of these ideals in a more open way. Love banishes fear. Hey, it’s a start.

This morning I heard a reporter on the NPR program Day To Day report that the "coalition" had concluded its succesful assault on Samarra, which has included aerial bombardment - that is bombing from the air a crowded city with crowded residential areas. Next up, according to this report, all the other "no-go"zones, otherwise known as cities like Najaf anf Fallujah, and Baghdad.

Riverbend responds with a post titled, Samarra Burning.

Watching the military attacks on Samarra and hearing the stories from displaced families or people from around the area is like reliving the frustration and anger of the war. It's like a nightmare within a nightmare, seeing the corpses pile up and watching people drag their loved ones from under the bricks and steel of what was once a home. To top it off, we have to watch American military spokespersons and our new Iraqi politicians justify the attacks and talk about 'insurgents' and 'terrorists' like they actually believe what they are saying... like hundreds of civilians aren't being massacred on a daily basis by the worlds most advanced military technology.

As if Allawi's gloating and Bush's inane debates aren't enough, we have to listen to people like Powell and Rumsfeld talk about "precision attacks". What exactly are precision attacks?! How can you be precise in a city like Samarra or in the slums of Sadir City on the outskirts of Baghdad? Many of the areas under attack are small, heavily populated, with shabby homes several decades old. In Sadir City, many of the houses are close together and the streets are narrow. Just how precise can you be with missiles and tanks? We got a first-hand view of America's "smart weapons". They were smart enough to kill over 10,000 Iraqis in the first few months of the occupation.

The explosions in Baghdad aren't any better. A few days ago, some 40 children were blown to pieces while they were gathering candy from American soldiers at the opening of a sewage treatment plant. (Side note: That's how bad things have gotten- we have to celebrate the reconstruction of our sewage treatment plants).

Obviously there's more, all of it deeply disturbing; force yourself to read it, anyway. And then read this article about the reaction of ordinary Iraqis to the bombs that were loosed by some form of the insurgency, killing forty children who had gathered the "celebration" Riverbend references. The title more or less says it all: Iraqis Blame U.S. for Massacre of Children. Their reaction might not be entirely fair, but its entirely understandable.

"The Americans are the first terrorists and the people who carried out the attack are the second terrorists," he added. It was the largest number of children killed in any single insurgent attack since the conflict erupted 17 months ago.

Al-Badri's is a common lament here. Confronted by daily bombings, kidnappings, deadly crossfires and soaring violent crime, many Iraqis blame most of their ills on the Americans. Many say that they and their children would not be dying today had the U.S. not invaded their country 17 months ago.

Any wonder that, as Lambert reports, Saddam might actually win a democratic election these days. How can any American think we can "win" anything of lasting value in terms of getting ourselves out of Iraq and not leaving it in some kind of hellish chaos from this?

A US military commander said Sunday he estimated that 10 percent of the dead were civilians while local hospital officials said that percentage may be much higher.

Ambulances guarded by US military vehicles were going around Samarra to collect the bodies of the dead, while Iraqi national guardsmen roamed the streets in pickup trucks or stood at intersections.

Many buildings in the city's commercial district were either riddled with bullets or partially destroyed, the streets littered with burnt out vehicles.

Despite the bloodshed and destruction, Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib said the mission was the most successful to date, and hinted at more action to regain control of no-go areas ahead of the January 2005 elections.

But a leading Sunni Muslim religious group blasted the Samarra operation calling it a "massacre" and warned the interim government that its US-influenced strategy will plunge the country into more chaos.

"Who is going to respect elections paved by the blood of Iraqis and built on their skulls?" asked Sheikh Mohammed Bashar al-Faidi, spokesman for the respected Committee of Muslim Scholars, during a press conference at Baghdad's Umm al-Qura mosque.

US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice praised the US-Iraqi cooperation in the operation.

Or this:

SAMARRA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S.-led forces tightened their grip on a rebel-held city on Sunday in the first step of a campaign to take back all of Iraq but ignited complaints about the cost in lives and suffering.

Aid organizations said they were concerned about a lack of water and power in the city of Samarra and the fate of hundreds of families forced to flee. Questions arose also about the number of civilians killed.

A man who gave his name only as Abu Qa'qa, and who said he had fled Samarra on Sunday, told reporters in Baghdad he had seen stray dogs picking at corpses in the street. He said he had seen several incidents of civilians being killed.

"I swear I saw dogs eating the body of a woman," he said.

His report could not be independently verified.

Also on Sunday, a hospital near Baghdad said it had received the bodies of a man and a woman, both believed to be Westerners, found by police on Saturday. The man had been beheaded with a sword and the woman shot in the head.

Neither carried any identification and doctors in the town of Mahmudiya said only that their features looked Western.

Around 3,000 U.S. troops and 2,000 Iraqi soldiers stormed Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, on Friday, determined to rid the city of its insurgent population.

"This has been a successful operation ... We're very confident that the future of Samarra is good," Major-General John Batiste, the commander of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, which led the assault on Samarra, told CNN.

The U.S. military has vowed to take back all rebel strongholds before the end of the year, ahead of elections due in January.

What a shame that no reporter ever thinks of asking Ms Rise a question like, "Who is going to respect elections paved by the blood of Iraqis and built on their skulls?"

I was never a big Martha Stewart fan, but that's just me. I lack the gene or whatever is required to make people care about, much less have any talent for, decorating and fashion and such. That said, the fact that she is headed for the Big House this week and Ken Lay is still walking around free as a bird really pisses me off.

And now this.

(via Newsday)

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Budget cuts and staffing shortages will make it difficult to protect Martha Stewart at the minimum security prison where she will serve five months for lying to federal investigators, the union representing correction officers there said Monday.

"During the day there is one officer for 550 inmates," said Kent Gilkerson, a correction officer at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in southeastern West Virginia and local president of the Council of Prison Locals. "At night there's two."

Gilkerson attributed the drop in staffing to federal budget cuts
The American Federation of Government Employees said staffing at 105 federal prisons is at its lowest levels in 14 years.

"The funny thing is, there was an outrage that at Abu Ghraib (the military prison in Iraq) one soldier was watching 500 inmates," national president of the Council of Prison Locals Phil Glover said. "They (the Bush administration) need to look at their own federal prison system."

Now this is not to predict that Martha is going to come out a hardened criminal, knife scars on face and a crystal meth habit. But for the "regular" people of somewhat lower social standing and public attention, just what do we think we're accomplishing by locking folks up in these conditions?

Given that dildoes that have been running things for the last 3 years, I'm frankly surprised that this was a problem. (Warning: not entirely work safe.)

And about time!

At a stop in Ohio earlier Sunday, Kerry told a voter concerned about ballots cast by military personnel overseas that Democrats are aware of voting problems and are concerned.

"We're seeing efforts by the Republicans, unfortunately, in various parts of the country to suppress votes and intimidate people, to do things that bring back memories that are pretty bitter in the American mind from the year 2000."
(via Chronicle)

Bitter in the American mind... I like that. There's America, and then there's the Partei.... More of this, please.

Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher on former Newark Star Ledged and now Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi:

Fassihi observed that the insurgency had spread "from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq." The Iraqi government, he wrote, "doesn't control most Iraqi cities.... The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health--which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers--has now stopped disclosing them. Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

"A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq."

For journalists, Fassihi wrote, "the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood....

"The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day.

"I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathists to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive."

And what of America's "hope for a quick exit"? Fassihi noted that "cops are being murdered by the dozens every day, over 700 to date, and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly....

"Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?

"I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad...."

Making clear what can only, at best, appear between lines in her published dispatches, Fassihi concluded, "One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle."
(via Editor and Publisher)

Not "mistakes," Fassahi. "Miscalculations."

Back to the daily grind...

UPDATE We always knew Goss's promise not to politicize the CIA was just a lie—he's a House Republican, after all—but we didn't think he'd go so far as to put four of his staffers in charge of the place.

Well, get this: One of those staffers, former ChevronTexaco lobbyist Michael V. Kostiw left the CIA "under pressure" in 1982—for shoplifting (WaPo).

And why am I not surprised?

After lying, looting is what the Republicans do best!

And wouldn't it be great if blogger didn't suck? Why do you think they call it a "watch", anyhow? Oh, wait, now nothing at all happens when I publish. Or not. Multiple posts, stuff in the on the edits list, nothing on the site, more of the same... Well, heck, maybe there'll end up being 10 of these things posted. Good night.

Sore losers. More Sludge.

Go check out that drivel. I can't bear to repeat it. (Via Pandagon). Wonder how long it will take the whores to blow this one up into a story?

Now—

Is this too LOTR, or what?

I mean, Kerry (Bilbo) asks Gollum (Bush) "What have I got in my pocket?" and Gollum (Bush) starts gibbering and blinking and drooling. Which is just what happened to Bush in the debate, after all. I rest my case!

Say, remember Les on WKRP in Cincinatti? The one with the lines round his desk so that none dare approach? Bush set up the debate stage just like that—lines so nobody could come near Him. Anyone else think that was so nobody could spot the earpiece?

"If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from last time and doing it better the next time."
--Noam Chomsky, What Uncle Sam Really Wants (p. 98)

Sustained pressure, indeed. First one drop of water, then ten, then a hundred, a thousand, hundreds of thousands, millions…and the steel door gives way. From August to November, what with harvests and expos and festivals, a fair of some sort a week within a hundred mile radius. I love it. And then there’s the Oktoberfests, farther afield… yikes!

There aren’t really any big stories to tell from the latest visit to the latest fair. But there is pressure, building and building, and I feel it, and sometimes it’s in the small stories. We’ve got to do it better this time. Sketches:

--An old Native American vet, wearing his very best old uniform, with ribbons and medals, is leaning on a cane at the livestock exhibit after the parade. I spot a Kerry-Edwards button on his lapel. Wish I had a camera. He looks like he’s carved out of mahogany. I can’t imagine anyone debating him. They would wither as soon as he opened his mouth.

--Two kids at the Dem table, and unlike the old folks who are usually at these tables, they’re working the crowd. “Would you like to register?” “We have candy over here.” They’re out in front of the table. I felt ashamed of my own recent table behavior. “How old are you?” I ask. “Can you vote?” “No,” the girl says happily, “I’m only sixteen and my brother’s thirteen. But our dad is running for state legislator, and he’s gone to get some food, so we’re taking over.” Indeed.

--A woman walking through the little midway with a huge Bush-Cheney poster, shaking it and shouting “whoooooo-eee!” and doing some weird dance. Everyone was getting out of her way. Nobody seemed enthused by this cheerleader. Most seemed annoyed, others frightened. One woman said, “Go home!” I suggested calling the cops to one of the carnies. “She might be mentally unbalanced, you know.”

--I gave away all of my Top 10 Lies sheets. And I sold all of my veggies. Well, okay. If you got one, you got the other. A package deal.

--I saw a guy I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. He said I looked a lot older. I told him it was Bushco, aging me ten tears for every one. He said something offhand, but it stuck. Said his parents, married for fifty years, weren’t speaking because his dad was rabidly pro-Bush and his mom was rabidly anti-Bush. “Kind of sad,” he said. “I thought he was a uniter.” He’s right. I haven’t seen this kind of division in a long time—parents against each other, kids against parents, neighbors against neighbors, siblings, friends, falling victim to Bushco’s kulturkampf.

But some things are worth fighting for. Pressure, pressure! As gentle, aromatic and constant as the cooker on the stove…arrggghh! until it whistles. Yes, this regime is done, to a turn.

You follow a reporter's work for awhile, you get a feeling for what they care about and how they write things. And when you see a story most notable for what it doesn't say, your ears go up and you detect a whiff of editorial intervention:

(via WaPo)

Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer

CACI International Inc.'s president of U.S. operations, L. Kenneth Johnson, will retire Nov. 1.

The Arlington government contractor said in a statement that the 58-year-old Johnson, its second in command, is leaving "to pursue personal interests and spend more time with his family and grandchildren." It said he would continue to work with the company as a consultant.

"I know that he wants to spend more time with his family and young grandchildren, and I think he's just moved to that period of his life," [CACI Chief Executive J.P. "Jack"] London said, adding that Johnson was "like a duck in the water here."

Well gosh, so we know this is all about "time with the family" since they mention it no less than twice, and by the CEO rather than a PR flunkie who usually handles such tasks.

Good thing we just let all kinds of things fall down the Memory Hole like we're supposed to. Otherwise we might see this story and think that Ms. McCarthy, who has been watching this company like a hawk, might just maybe have intended to add some background on recent corporate activities that took place on Mr. Johnson's watch:

Civilian interrogators working on an Army contract were accused of mistreating prisoners in two separate incidents, including pouring water on the head of a prisoner forced into an uncomfortable "stress position." The interrogators' employer, CACI International Inc., plans to investigate further, spokeswoman Jodi Brown said.

Can you say "clearing the decks ahead of incoming indictments," class? I knew you could!

There were any number of points JF Kerry raised in the debate the other night which havent' gotten nearly the attention they deserve. For one, his mention of the "14 bases" that we really shouldn't be building in Iraq if we want to have the slightest credibility when claiming we're not there to colonize their asses.

The other was his unspeakably cruel mention of the fact that during the "catastrophic success" which was the Battle of Bagdhad, we guarded the Oil Ministry but not, well, anything else. Surely in a year and a half we've at least managed to find useful work for all the scientists and engineers unemployed since the Weapons of Mass Destruction (Program Related Proposal Activities etc.) were shut down? Suuuure we have....

(via AP, via Jackson MS Clarion-Ledger

The dangers of Baghdad and a shortage of cash have set back the U.S. effort to put Iraqi weapons scientists to work rebuilding their country and keep them off the global job market for makers of doomsday arms.

To steer them to civilian projects and training, the State Department had planned a dozen workshops and seminars for hundreds of idled specialists from Iraq's old nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, beginning in the first half of 2004.

It also envisioned an early project, a desalination plant, as a model for other ventures employing scientists, engineers and technicians who once built weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear physicists might work in radiotherapy, for example, and chemists at environmental monitoring stations.

But the department got no new funds for the program, and none of these plans has gotten off the ground, nine months after U.S. officials said they would "jump-start" the initiative to discourage weapons experts from emigrating and offering their services to the highest bidder.

In fact, the program's on-the-ground manager arrived in Baghdad only three weeks ago.

Prospects for the jobs-for-scientists program had dimmed when the Bush administration, facing a projected $521 billion budget deficit this year, "flat-lined" spending in many areas. Its request to Congress calls for the same $50 million for this purpose in fiscal year 2005 as allocated in 2004, when all of it was spent on a continuing, 12-year-old program in the former Soviet Union to employ ex-weapons builders. No new money is specified for Iraq.

Iraq's new Ministry of Science and Technology pays stipends of about $50 to $200 a month to hundreds of others. But this "is not enough to stabilize them," said Obeidi, who left Iraq last year for the United States and was a director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Commission.

So we can't afford to protect chemical plants and subways in the US because of the danged budged deficit, and we also can't keep WMD scientists off the breadlines because of same. Anybody noticing a theme here?

Actually, more clueless, if that's possible.

Sorry, I've been away writing a book. I'm back, so let's get right down to business: We're in trouble in Iraq.

I don't know what is salvagable there anymore. I hope it is something decent and I am certain we have to try our best to bring about elections and rebuild the Iraqi Army to give every chance for decency to emerge there. But here is the cold, hard truth: This war has been hugely mismanaged by this administration, in the face of clear advice to the contrary at every stage, and as a result the range of decent outcomes in Iraq has been narrowed and the tools we have to bring even those about are more limited than ever.

So far, so good, you're probably saying to yourself. Who could disagree with those statements, other than Mr. Bush's base? But look what happens in the very next paragraph: Mr. Friedman asks, "What happened?" Presumably, he means, what happened while he was gone, because he goes on to specify that, tut tut, the Bush administration got its doctrines mixed up; instead of applying the Powell Doctrine to Iraq, you remember that doctrine, the one about overwhelming force ruthlessly applied, the Bushites applied it to the Kerry campaign; the Republican convention is appropriately disparged and Friedman mentions the ad blitz that didn't stop short of outright distortion. Meanwhile, in Iraq:

If only the Bush team had gone after the remnants of Saddam's army in the Sunni Triangle with the brutal efficiency it has gone after Senator Kerry in the Iowa-Ohio-Michigan triangle. If only the Bush team had spoken to Iraqis and Arabs with as clear a message as it did to the Republican base. No, alas, while the Bush people applied the Powell Doctrine in the Midwest, they applied the Rumsfeld Doctrine in the Middle East. And the Rumsfeld Doctrine is: "Just enough troops to lose."

Good God! That's what's been missing from our policy toward Iraq - "brutal efficiency?" The fact is, this administration's message to Iraqis has been quite clear as well as unwavering - we're here to liberate you, we want you to be free, we want for you the blessings of democracy and the free market, we will not abandon you, we are resolute, be assured we will not leave your country until we're sure we've accomplished what we came here to accomplish: The problem has been that increasing numbers of Iraqis reject the message, in large measure because our promises have proved to be empty. What we have brought to Iraq with a brutal efficiency that is above reproach, if brutal efficiency is what you're after, is complete chaos, unrepresentative government, constant violence, destruction, and death. And in our blundering, we've managed to set the stage for an emerging civil war.

But Tom Friedman is as stalwart as the administration for which he shilled so continuously, before taking his book-writing sabbatical.

Being away has not changed my belief one iota in the importance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq, to help move the Arab-Muslim world off its steady slide toward increased authoritarianism, unemployment, overpopulation, suicidal terrorism and religious obscurantism. But my time off has clarified for me, even more, that this Bush team can't get us there, and may have so messed things up that no one can. Why?

According to Tom, the reason is that in every situation where there was a choice to be made between doing what was best for our policy in Iraq vs the demands of the rightwing ideology of the Bush base, the Bush base won out. Specific examples presented are the failure to fire the evangelical Christian General spouting anti-Islam rhetoric, the failure to apologize to the UN for not finding WMD so we could convince them to join us in doing what we always meant to do, shape an Iraqi government to our liking, failure to impose a "Patriot" 50 cents gas tax to pay for the war, the failure to fire Rumsfeld to show the world how seriously we took what happened at Abu Ghraib, that type of thing.

But there's something that really gets Tom Friedman's goat.

What I resent so much is that some of us actually put our personal politics aside in thinking about this war and about why it is so important to produce a different Iraq. This administration never did. Mr. Kerry's own views on Iraq have been intensely political and for a long time not well thought through. But Mr. Kerry is a politician running for office. Mr. Bush is president, charged with protecting the national interest, and yet from the beginning he has run Iraq policy as an extension of his political campaign.

Gee, Tom, what I resent so much is the way you exempt yourself from any errors of judgement in your own advocacy of this awful war and the administration whose "baby" it's always been. Maybe, Tom, the problem in your own thinking is crystallized in that bit about why it was/is so important to produce a different Iraq, because the only people on earth who can produce an Iraq that is still a geographical and national entity of any stripe are the people who live there - Kurds, Shia, Sunnis, rural, urban, fundamentalist, secularist, tribal and cosmopolitan. Could we have played a decent, limited role in helping along a free, independent, and democratic Iraq, an Iraq where human rights we valued and exercised? It's possible. In that case, though, instead of a clear message coming from us to the Iraqis, maybe what we needed to do was a little listening ourselves. Yunno, Tom, it's never too late to start, listening, that is, to Iraqis, and to observers on the ground, there, who aren't shilling for anyone. And what about your own contempt for "politics," and presumably for democracy.

Friends, I return to where I started: We're in trouble in Iraq. We have to immediately get the Democratic and Republican politics out of this policy and start honestly reassessing what is the maximum we can still achieve there and what every American is going to have to do to make it happen. If we do not, we'll end up not only with a fractured Iraq, but with a fractured America, at war with itself and isolated from the world.

What on earth does that mean? No "partisan" discussion of Iraq? Should we just call off the election, like we called off those first elections Jay Garner was planning to hold within weeks of our taking Baghdad?

The real problem here is not that we're discussing this issue in a political context, the problem is the constraints put on that discussion by writers like yourself, who refuse to take an honest look at the fundamental misconceptions upon which the invasion and occupation of Iraq were promulgated.

The idea that the Iraqi people could have been whipped into shape by a superior culture through the use of force was always destined for the wastebin of history. Would that its advocates were, too.