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heh.
This brief video ably sums up our unduly appointed misleader's tenure in office.
It'd be nice if country radio had the integrity and cojones to play this anti-Bush country song by a crew of Nashville session musicians.
It'll never happen, of course. But it's a fun (and free) listen.
If you've somehow not picked up, Mr. and Ms. Swing Voter, on the fact that Republicans have no qualms about using dirty (read: illegal) tricks to suppress voter turnout in communities that don't traditionally vote their way, it's time you caught up. And Paul Krugman's column in today's New York Times is an excellent plce to start.
Here's a bit of it:
Block the Vote
by Paul Krugman...Florida is the site of naked efforts to suppress Democratic votes, and the votes of blacks in particular.
Florida's secretary of state recently ruled that voter registrations would be deemed incomplete if those registering failed to check a box affirming their citizenship, even if they had signed an oath saying the same thing elsewhere on the form. Many counties are, sensibly, ignoring this ruling, but it's apparent that some officials have both used this rule and other technicalities to reject applications as incomplete, and delayed notifying would-be voters of problems with their applications until it was too late.
Whose applications get rejected? A Washington Post examination of rejected applications in Duval County found three times as many were from Democrats, compared with Republicans. It also found a strong tilt toward rejection of blacks' registrations....
That excerpt focuses on Florida, where electoral shenanigans have, sadly, become business as usual.
But the rest of the article reminds us that similar dirty pool is being played in many other states around the country, including Oregon, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, and many others.
Could anything be more vile and un-American than voter intimidation and even robbing ing American citizens of their legal right to vote?
They're flirting with fascism, Mr. and Ms. Swing Voter. Pull the plug on these shameful practices on November 2nd, please. Show these lying thugs the door once and for all.
Are you okay with this, Mr. and Ms. Swing Voter?
The Associated Press reports that...
Three Medford [OR] school teachers were threatened with arrest and escorted from the event after they showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Protect our civil liberties." All three said they applied for and received valid tickets from Republican headquarters in Medford.The women said they did not intend to protest. "I wanted to see if I would be able to make a statement that I feel is important, but not offensive, in a rally for my president," said Janet Voorhies, 48, a teacher in training.
"We chose this phrase specifically because we didn't think it would be offensive or degrading or obscene," said Tania Tong, 34, a special education teacher....
Pretty appalling -- even downright un-American -- wouldn't you agree?
And get this -- those three paragraphs were buried at the very bottom of a lengthy story about Bush campaigning in Oregon. I can't begin to fathom why AP's Jeff Barnard considered what happened to these three women an afterthought -- it ought to be the lede, no?
Ask yourself this, Mr. and Ms. Swing Voter -- can you imagine John Kerry booting people from one of his campaign events in this fashion? Heck, can you imagine even Dubya's daddy or Ronald Reagan doing it?
Of course not.
These are not conservatives, Mr. and Ms. Swing Voter. They are radicals. Borderline (and poised to cross that border if they're reelected) fascists.
Please pay attention. Please spread the word. Please ask yourself and your undecided friends if this is the direction they want our country to continue in.
From today's Los Angeles Times (free registration required):
GOP Consulting Firm Investigated for Voter Fraud Claims
Oregon opens criminal probe into charges that Democratic voter forms were thrown out.
By Ralph Vartabedian, Times Staff WriterOregon's attorney general opened a criminal investigation Wednesday into allegations that Democratic voter registration forms were destroyed or discarded by a political consulting firm working for the Republican National Committee.
The allegations involve a voter registration drive conducted by Sproul & Associates, a Phoenix-based consulting organization that was hired by the RNC earlier this year and is headed up by the former executive director of the Arizona Republican Committee, Nathan Sproul.
Sproul has become entangled in controversial allegations in at least three states where his company was conducting registration drives paid for by the RNC....
Allegations about destroyed or dumped [Democratic] registration forms have been lodged in two of Sproul's registration drives, in Nevada and Oregon....
There's no low to which they won't stoop.
You've probably heard Dubya's biggest lie in last night's debate exposed already, Mr. and Ms. Swing Voter, but just in case:
"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations." -– Dubya, 10/13/04
What a poor memory you have, Mr. President!
"I don't know where he [Osama Bin Laden] is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him. ... I truly am not that concerned about him." –- Dubya, 3/13/02
I spent a lovely hour yesterday with my friends Heike and Christopher. They live in Hamburg, Germany, so our visits are rare -- we last saw each other in 1997 -- and it was a treat to get to catch up with them a little bit (despite Heike's first words to me after we greeted each other with a warm hug: "You're so grey!").
I first met Heike and her pal, Britta, in 1992 when they were paying their first visit to New York. They ended up bunking at my place for a few days, and we've been fast (if long-distance) friends ever since.
I remember that, at some point during that ten-day visit a dozen years ago, the subject of Germany's Nazi past came up. I can't remember the context. Perhaps we were discussing a movie or a novel that was set in that era -- we certainly weren't engaged in a heated political discussion. The topic snuck up on us, that I remember.
And I can recall feeling discomfited that the conversation had somehow taken that turn. Though Heike and Britta were born many years after Germany democracy was restored and could hardly be held to account, I feared that their country's Nazi past was perhaps a source of shame and embarrassment for them, and I regretted that the subject had come up.
I was reminded of that day yesterday when the subject of the pending election was raised as we sat enjoying a lovely autumn afternoon in Union Square Park. Heike and Christopher each asked how the pre-election period was going. Was Dubya likely to be shown the door?
For his part, Christopher seemed almost embarrassed for me -- for all Americans, really -- as he strove to assure me that he and Heike -- and indeed, all the citizens of Germany, Europe, and even the world -- understood that something had gone horribly awry here, that they did not hold us collectively responsible for Dubya's bullying and bumbling ways.
Of course, German citizens are perhaps better positioned than most to understand how things can go wrong in a country, despite the inherent decency of its citizenry.
I appreciated Christopher's empathetic reassurances even as I cursed the men who made him feel the need to express them. I look forward to the day when, if I don't necessarily agree with every move our president makes, I'm at least not ashamed of his actions.
I'm not generally a great admirer of Thomas Friedman's work, but he spoke eloquently for me -- and many millions more here in the United States and around the world -- in his New York Times column today.
Here's a snippet:
I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear the president and vice president slamming John Kerry for saying that he hopes America can eventually get back to a place where "terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." The idea that President Bush and Mr. Cheney would declare such a statement to be proof that Mr. Kerry is unfit to lead actually says more about them than Mr. Kerry. Excuse me, I don't know about you, but I dream of going back to the days when terrorism was just a nuisance in our lives. ... Mr. Kerry was actually touching something many Americans are worried about -- that this war on terrorism is transforming us and our society, when it was supposed to be about uprooting the terrorists and transforming their societies.The Bush team's responses to Mr. Kerry's musings are revealing because they go to the very heart of how much this administration has become addicted to 9/11. The president has exploited the terrorism issue for political ends -- trying to make it into another wedge issue like abortion, guns or gay rights -- to rally the Republican base and push his own political agenda. But it is precisely this exploitation of 9/11 that has gotten him and the country off-track, because it has not only created a wedge between Republicans and Democrats, it's also created a wedge between America and the rest of the world, between America and its own historical identity, and between the president and common sense....
There's more here, and it's well worth reading.
As you may be aware, the House recently held a vote on a bill to reintroduce the draft.
That bill was introduced some months back by Rep. Charles Rangel of New York. His purpose in doing so was to remind voters (and the member of Congress) that the burdon of defending this nation is not shouldered equitably. The armed forces are peopled disproportionately with minorities and others who have not enjoyed the full benefits we associate with the American Dream.
As Michael Moore pointed out in FARENHEIT 9/11, looking at the two houses of Congress combined, only one member has a son or daughter serving overseas. As has long been true, the sons and daughters of the elite (in both parties) easily avoid hazardous military service, even in times of war. (Of course, in his day, John Kerry refused to take advantage of his station in life and not only volunteered to serve in Vietnam but to take on some of the most hazardous duty there was -- but I digress.)
So Rep. Rangel put forth a bill that would require all young people -- rich and poor -- to serve their country. He did so to make a point.
And the Republican leadership put it to a vote last week to make a point, too: They want us to believe that they are adamant against the reinstitution of the draft. We can't now know for sure if they're sincere or not, but I'm not willing to bet my nieces and nephews' lives on it. Given the bellicose ways of our unduly appointed misleader, additional manpower is going to have come from somewhere, should Dubya be reappointed.
The whole thing was a dog-and-pony show meant only to make a (false) point.
But during the debate preceding the vote, a little-known representative from the 17th congressional district in Ohio, one Tim Ryan, rose to make one of the most succinctly eloquent condemnations of the current regime I've heard to date.
In short, he freaking nailed it.
You can read the text of the brief speech here. But, really, you should make the effort to watch the streaming video of it here.
You'll need Windows Media Player to view the clip, and it's divided into two segments. The first is only 22 seconds long, and when it ends, be patient -- the second segment will automatically begin playing soon thereafter, though it may take a few seconds depending on your connection speed. Take my word for it, it's worth the wait.
On his radio program today, Al Franken was pitching the idea of sending dough to the Ohio Democratic Party, something that strikes me as a very good idea. Ohio is the Mother of All Swing States, and the race is very tight there now, so I'm sure
every donated dollar would come in very handy.
I told you they're lying, thieving skunks, Mr. and Ms. Swing Voter.
Bush special envoy embroiled in controversy over Iraq debt
Consortium plans to cash in as Baker asks countries to end £200bn burdenNaomi Klein for The Guardian
President Bush's special envoy, James Baker, who has been trying to persuade the world to forgive Iraq's crushing debts, is simultaneously working for a commercial concern that is trying to recover money from Iraq, according to confidential documents.
Mr Baker's Carlyle Group is in a consortium secretly proposing to try to collect $27bn (£15bn) on behalf of Kuwait, one of Iraq's biggest creditors, by using high-level political influence. It claims Mr Baker will not benefit personally, but the consortium could make millions in fees, retainers and commission as a result.
Other countries, including Britain, have been urged by Mr Baker to relieve the new Iraq regime of its $200bn debt burden. Iraq owes Britain approximately $1bn.
One international lawyer described the consortium's scheme as "influence peddling of the crassest kind".
Jerome Levinson, an expert on political and corporate ethics at American University in Washington, told the Guardian: "The consortium is saying to the Kuwaiti government, 'Through us you have the only chance to realize a substantial part of the debt. Why? Because of who we are and who we know'."
When George Bush appointed Mr Baker, a former secretary of state, as his unpaid envoy on December 5 2003, he called Mr Baker's job "a noble mission". But Mr Baker is also a senior counsellor and an equity partner with a reported $180m stake in the merchant bank and defence contractor the Carlyle Group....
There's much more here, if you can stomach it.
This stinks to high heaven.
Voter Registrations Possibly Trashed(Oct. 12) -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.
Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.
The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.
The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.
Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.
"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.
Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.
So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.
The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there....
The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.
There's more here.
Are you paying attention, Mr. and Ms. Swing Voter? How about you, Mr. and Mrs. Reasonable Republican? (I know there are still some of you out there.) Is this the America you grew up in? Is this the country you want your children and grandchildren to grow up in? Look the other way now, and it will get immeasurably worse -- on that, you can count.
From the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal-Gazette:
Bush’s civil rights recordThis reeks, even for Washington’s toxic partisan hijinks.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will not discuss a 180-page report on President Bush’s abysmal record on the subject of civil rights until after the election.
If you want to read the report, go to www.usccr.gov. Just don’t expect any one of the seven commissioners to talk about it.
Republican members of the commission so objected to the report’s timing that the commission voted 6-1 to withhold comment until Nov. 12.
“I think it’s an unfair report, and I think it’s a politically biased report, and I think its release at this time is politically motivated,” Commissioner Jennifer C. Braceras told The Associated Press.
Odd, one would think that the commissioner’s duty was to the people, not the president....
You gotta love good, solid common sense from the heartland.
From MediaMatters.org:
Bob Schieffer, CBS chief Washington correspondent and host of Face the Nation, is scheduled to moderate the third and final presidential debate on October 13. As moderator, Schieffer will be responsible for formulating the debate questions and following up after the candidates respond. However, Schieffer has described in the past his "golfing friendship" with President George W. Bush "during the 1990s" and has said, "It's always difficult to cover someone you know personally." These and other past statements by Schieffer raise the very question that Schieffer himself suggested: Can he perform the role of objective moderator given the "difficult[y]" of "cover[ing] someone you know personally"?
Did someone say something about a liberal media?
Are you listening, Mr. and Ms. Swing Voter?
Think Tank: Iraq War Distracted U.S.
by Mark LaVie, Associated Press WriterTel Aviv, Israel -- The war in Iraq did not damage international terror groups, but instead distracted the United States from confronting other hotbeds of Islamic militancy and actually "created momentum" for many terrorists, a top Israeli security think tank said in a report released Monday.
President Bush has called the war in Iraq an integral part of the war on terrorism, saying that deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein hoped to develop unconventional weapons and could have given them to Islamic militants across the world.
But the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University said that instead of striking a blow against Islamic extremists, the Iraq war "has created momentum for many terrorist elements, but chiefly al-Qaida and its affiliates."...
There's more here.
Consider the source, please, and note how strongly their stance differs from the lies spewed by Bush, Inc.
Good for the Dems for protesting the Sinclair Broadcast Group's shenanigans with a letter to the FCC, but as long Michael Powell's running that partisan dog-and-pony show, that isn't going to get it done.
Contacting Sinclair's advertisers is the way to go. And that's where you and I come in. This website provides a very helpful list of companies who have been advertising on Sinclair stations. Call them, each and every one, and let them know you won't buy their products if Sinclair doesn't change its ways.
These are the people our "freedom-loving" administration is in bed with.
Saudi women barred from votingThe Saudi interior minister has said women will not be allowed to vote in the country's municipal elections starting in February 2005.
In response to a question about women's getting the vote, Prince Nayef bin Sultan said simply: "I don't think that women's participation is possible."
An election law published in August did not explicitly ban women from voting....
There's more here.
Doesn't that just make you swell with pride?
The new MoveOnPAC ad, this one directed by Rob Reiner, is well worth watching (and supporting with a few of your hard-earned dollars).
I spent the weekend in Dallas, Texas, hooting and hollering over a college football game and mostly missing any news of Friday's debate. I have to admit it was nice to spend a couple of days focused on something so silly and not concentrating so much on the troubled times we're living in.
My team won, by the way.
I Tivo'd the debate, but have seen and heard it rehashed so thoroughly since my return to New York that I'll probably skip watching it.
Meanwhile, here are a few bits of news that cropped up while I was away:
The Sinclair Broadcast Group is at it again, (mis)using the public airwaves:
Sinclair to air anti-Kerry show
by Jon Friedman, CBS.MarketWatch.comNEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns the largest chain of TV stations in the United States, plans to shelve regular programming next week to broadcast a documentary accusing Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry of betraying American prisoners during the Vietnam War, according to a news report Monday.
Separately, the Democratic National Committee on Monday said it would file a complaint against Sinclair with the Federal Election Commission. The DNC complaint will accuse Sinclair of making an "illegal in-kind contribution" to President Bush's re-election campaign, according to a DNC news release.
According to the Washington Post's Web site, Hunt Valley, Md.-based Sinclair has ordered its 62 stations -- some of which are in swing states such as Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin -- to show "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" during prime-time hours two weeks before the Nov. 2 election. The Sinclair station group extends to 24 percent of U.S. television households.
"Stolen Honor" focuses on Kerry's antiwar testimony to Congress in 1971 and its effect on American POWs in Vietnam. Kerry testified that U.S. forces frequently committed atrocities in Vietnam. The program, produced independently of Sinclair, contains interviews with former prisoners of war.
The report quoted Kerry's campaign spokesman, David Wade, as calling the documentary "lies" and "a smear."
Sinclair generated headlines last April when it ordered seven of its ABC-affiliated stations not to show a "Nightline" segment that included the reading of the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. At the time of the controversy, a Sinclair executive called that broadcast "contrary to the public interest."...
And the Right accused Hillary Clinton of abusing her position?
Lynne Cheney office in booklet controversy
by Ricardo Alonso- Zaldivar and Jean Merl
Los Angeles TimesWASHINGTON -- The Education Department this summer destroyed more than 300,000 copies of a booklet designed for parents to help their children learn history after the office of Vice President Dick Cheney's wife complained that it mentioned the National Standards for History, which she has long opposed.
In June, during a routine update, the Education Department began distributing a new edition of a 10-year-old how-to guide called "Helping Your Child Learn History." Aimed at parents of children from preschool through fifth grade, the 73-page booklet presented an assortment of advice, including taking children to museums and visiting historical sites.
The booklet included several brief references to the National Standards for History, which were developed at the University of California, Los Angeles in the mid-1990s with federal support. Created by scholars and educators to help school officials design better history courses, they are voluntary benchmarks, not requirements.
At the time, Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Cheney, led a vocal campaign complaining that the standards were not positive enough about America's achievements and paid too little attention to figures such as Gen. Robert E. Lee, Paul Revere and Thomas Edison.
At one point, Lynne Cheney denounced the standards as "politicized history."
In response to the criticism, the UCLA standards were heavily revised, most critics were mollified and the controversy faded -- but not for Cheney and her staff.
As the wife of the vice president, Cheney has no executive position in the federal government. But when her office spotted the references to the National Standards for History in the new edition of the history booklet, her staff communicated her office's displeasure to the Education Department.
Subsequently, the department decided it was necessary to kill the new edition and reprint it with references to the standards removed. Though about 61,000 copies of Helping Your Child Learn History had been distributed, the remaining 300,000-plus copies were destroyed....
From the Progress Report:
Taliban Threat: Two weeks ago, President Bush announced, "[The] Taliban no longer is in existence." He was egregiously mistaken. The Taliban may not be in power in Kabul, but they have been making a steady comeback throughout the countryside. The Afghan death toll attributed to the Taliban rose by 45 percent this year, and more than 40 election workers have been killed or wounded by the Taliban in the past four months. Moreover, as a new paper commissioned by the Center for American Progress, "Security in Afghanistan: The Continuing Challenge," warns, the Taliban "continue to enjoy substantial support in the provinces and tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, regardless of enhanced efforts in 2004 by the Pakistani government to cooperate with the United States in the counter-terror fight."...
Bush and Blair get called on the carpet by those in the know:
Former UN arms inspectors slam Bush, Blair after weapons reportLONDON (AFP) -- Two former senior UN weapons inspectors in Iraq (news -- web sites) criticized US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for clinging to ever-weaker arguments to justify their war on Iraq.
In separate comments in The Independent on Sunday, Hans Blix, the former UN chief arms inspector until the US-British invasion in March 2003, and Scott Ritter, a senior inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, backed a US official report concluding Iraq had no banned weapons before the war.
The authors of that report, although Bush appointees, "have had to acknowledge that the reality on the ground was totally different from the virtual reality that had been spun," Blix wrote.
Charles Duelfer, who headed the Iraq Survey Group, said in the 1,000-page report released Wednesday that Saddam had destroyed most of his chemical and biological weapons after his 1991 Gulf War defeat and that his nuclear program had "progressively decayed."
Duelfer said the Iraqi leader had however hoped to renew his weapons quest if sanctions were lifted -- and both Blair and Bush have rushed to use that to argue their pre-emptive strike was necessary.
"This is the new straw to which the governments concerned have begun to cling," Blix wrote....
The Roanoke Times nails the draft issue:
The military draft and a credibility gap
Talk of a draft won't be silenced by promises from an administration that can't shoot straight.House Republicans forced a vote on the military draft Tuesday so they could slam the idea down. President George W. Bush says he's not considering reinstating the draft, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says it won't be necessary.
Yet, fear of the draft continues to be the talk of college campuses and Internet blogs. It's as if America's draft-age youth don't believe the nation's leaders. Why would that be?
Let's see, the Bush administration made war on Iraq to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists, but the weapons did not exist. Evidence of them, Americans learn, was never as strong as they were led to believe.
President Bush said major combat was over in Iraq in May 2003, but many more troops have died in fighting since he declared "Mission Accomplished" than before.
The president insists the U.S. occupation of Iraq is leading inevitably to freedom and democracy even as widespread insurgency thwarts reconstruction and threatens to make a mockery of any election.
And now Bush assures skeptical young adults that, even after our November election, Uncle Sam won't need them badly enough to draft them.
That's what Americans hear from this president. What they see are National Guard members and reservists going to Iraq -- more than once -- to fill gaps. And they hear from others, including military officers, that the force on the ground is not big enough to pacify Iraq....