A Few Outrages, and Positives, Too

First stop on our review of the news is Halliburton. Yup, they are being investigated. I'm sure you're all surprised. Kate, pick yourself up off the floor. InsultComicDog, your jaw is slack -- get it in shape, man! I love this bit by the Halliburton spokesperson:

Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said the company is cooperating with various investigations, but she dismissed the latest revelation as election politics. She noted Congress' auditing arm, the Government Accountability Office, found the company's no-bid work in Iraq was legal.

"The old allegations have once again been recycled, this time one week before the election," Hall said. "The GAO said earlier this year that the contract was properly awarded because Halliburton was the only contractor that could do the work.

"We look forward to the end of the election, because no matter who is elected president, Halliburton is proud to serve the troops just as we have for the past 60 years for both Democrat and Republican administrations," she said.

"Election politics?" She's talking about the Bush Administration's FBI. Does she understand anything?

Iraqis are claiming to have some of those looted explosives while the Bush Administration, highlighted on the Drudge Report, has been blaming the RUSSIANS! The Iraqi story is at CBS, so the Bushite chorus will discount it immediately. It's a wonder CBS has the cojones to print it.

Ok, that's a bit to chew on for now. Before I forget, I want to post up a picture of the crowd in Madison Wisconsin today:

Dang, our boy is attracting them in droves. This is big even for liberal Madison, home of The Onion, a source that gives us this:

MIAMI, FL—With the knowledge that the minority vote will be crucial in the upcoming presidential election, Republican Party officials are urging blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities to make their presence felt at the polls on Wednesday, Nov. 3.

"Minority voters should make their unique voices heard, especially the African-American voting bloc, which is always a major factor in every election," said Florida Republican Party voter-drive organizer Mark Monreal, as he handed out flyers at a community center in the mostly black Miami neighborhood of South Farms. "That's why we put up hundreds of brightly colored banners featuring Martin Luther King Jr. and the 'Vote November 3' reminder. We needed to make sure they know when we want them at polling places."



"You can't walk through a black neighborhood here in Miami without seeing our 'Don't Forget Big Wednesday!' message up on a billboard, tacked to a phone booth, or taped to a bus shelter," Monreal added. "The Republican Party has spared no expense in this endeavor."
Have a nice evening, folks. Don't forget to argue with your neighbor tomorrow about Bush's record. Don't forget to point out to your mailman about how Bush has lied about the explosives in Iraq. And definitely don't forget to urge EVERYONE to vote!

Blood Brothers

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a Vietnam era veteran. The desperate last-minute tactics that the Bush administration and their party shills and media whores have been using today are beyond reprehension. We can only hope that every active duty serviceman (and woman) has been paying attention as the day wore on.

Not that I'm not already completely and thoroughly disgusted with this crew - but that they hype their bravado and engage in faux "support the troops" sloganeering, when exactly the opposite is true, makes my veteran blood boil.

The men and women of America's armed forces continue to be used as pawns in the Bush administration's royal power play. Perhaps that's because so few of the chickenhawks actually served, and never experienced a sucking chest wound on a battlefield. I hear from reliable sources that such an experience changes a person.

Here's a couple of examples of overt disrespect for those in the armed forces, ripped from today's GOP headlines:

Rudy Giuliani:

The actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?

BushCo CGI plants phony GI's in ad:

INDIANOLA, Iowa - President D'Esperation's campaign acknowledged Thursday that it had doctored a photograph used in a television commercial to remove the president and the podium where he was standing. The campaign said the ad will be re-edited and reshipped to TV stations.

A group of soldiers in the crowd was electronically copied to fill in the space where the president and the podium had been, aides say...

And finally, from my new best friend, Josh Marshall:

Back on December 6th of last year, you’ll remember, the Washington Post reported that in 2004, four of ten Army divisions would not be combat ready for up to six months. Specifically, they would be rated at C-3 or C-4, the Army’s two lowest readiness levels.

Since then, Army internal reporting and a classified Government Accounting Office study of the combat readiness of all US ground forces have further underscored the problem. The Secretary of the Army and others were briefed on the GAO study, which is still under review, earlier this month. Senior uniformed Army officials are, of course, also receiving regular briefings on the situation.

The picture this reporting paints for Guard readiness is, I’m told, considerably more bleak than the December news about readiness in the Army...

I could rant all night. The examples of the Bush Administration flat out disrespecting our troops overseas (and their families back home) is fast becoming the stuff of military legend.

Someone on another blog or online forum brought up a really good point - maybe the dissin' of the troops in the past few days is the reason why access to the georgewbush.com site has been cybertastically embargoed outside the borders of the U.S. It would be interesting to read how much internet access GI's in Iraq are getting these days. It's also rather curious why BushCo is not already making a big stink about overseas military ballots yet. Hmmm. Perhaps the word is getting around to the men and women in uniform, and their families.

Ya think?

A little heads-up

I'm sorry I didn't notice this earlier for you East Coast folks, but for those of in Central, Mountain and Left Coast timezones, Jim Wallis, the leader of the Sojourners organization that released the statement that inspired this post as well as this one, will be on CBS Evening News tonight with Dan Rather.

Try to catch it if you are at all interested in the nationalistic drift of the conservative Christian movement in this country.

The Whole World is Watching!

We have it on good authority. The whole world is watching now, and will be watching the "election" on November 2nd. I caught an idea from a commenter at Eschaton. Those of us going to polls anytime between now and then should take along our digital (or otherwise) cameras, just in case. You know, in the interest of "history". So whether poll-watching or poll-casting act like a good scout and Be Prepared!

I got mine ready. Lock and load, as my baby sister says. ;-)

WAYBACK MACHINE: Cognitive Dissonance

This ASZ blog post was originally written as a two-part posting on 7/21 & 7/22/04, and was selected by the author for the ASZ Wayback Machine project. All text is exactly as originally posted. Formatting has been updated to fit current Blogger templates, and in many cases, original links may no longer work.

The Roots of Cognitive Dissonance - Part I (7/21/04)

I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday. And now I understand why folks at the middle-high / high end are going, "Bad economy? What bad economy?"

Here's the story. A recent acquaintance of mine is somewhat of a bigshot for a marine electronics supply company. This particular company sells boating electronic equipment to a fairly high end clientele - we're not talking 18 foot SunRay boats here. Their primary niche is a customer base who own 25 to 75 foot pleasure boats - what you would generally refer to as "yachts" if you saw them docked at a local marina.

As we were wrapping up our conversation (after being interrupted several times by phone sales and inquiries), he closed with this:

"Business has never been better. I keep hearing all of this stuff about a bad economy, well, I'm not seeing it here. Yesterday, I was talking with one of our suppliers, and even this deep into July, they're having a hard time keeping up with demand. So, where's the disconnect? I can't see where things are that bad."

Obviously, a hard core Republican. Unfortunately, I wasn't in a position to set him straight at that particular time.

But I hope you get my drift. One thing we've clearly seen over the past several years (and I'll go as far as to indict the conservative Democratic Party administration that preceded the current business-friendly neoclowns) is that the rich have most certainly gotten richer. So, someone catering to that clientele clearly isn't going to see ongoing problems with the economy. They're not selling to the guy that's working two jobs just to pay the rent.

Like anything in life, your perspective is skewed by the lenses with which you view your immediate surroundings. When your station in life is working trade booths at sold-out boat shows, of course you're not going to see the soft underbelly of the country, which is getting softer by the day.

You can google the stats yourself; I don't have the time today to get into a long discussion on the widening gap between the "haves" and the "have nots". It's disheartening to note that the company my acquaintance works for pays the folks that push the product out the door to their high end customers $9 or $10 per hour.

And they're grateful for that.

The Roots of Cognitive Dissonance - Part II (7/22/04)

In the first half of this piece, I described a conversation with an acquaintance of mine at a marine electronics shop, and his personal view that there are no problems with the U.S. economy. As I pointed out, it all depends on the lense through which you view the world.

Kate Storm (rightly) commented that "Cognitive dissonance happens when one's perception of the world around one collides with another reality, when attitude and belief begin to get tweaked by the handwriting on the wall." And I fully concur. The question then becomes, how do we facilitate a national case of cognitive dissonance at the high end of the economic spectrum?

Let me offer the following as an example: at the same time that I was writing Part I yesterday, I was also crewing the set up and staffing of "hot dog day" at a local inner city food bank (I'm a helluva multi-tasker). It's a fun event that's held once per year, and has kind of a carnival atmosphere - games, waterslides, dunk tanks, hoop contests, local celebrities, and of course, food. The kids that you seen in the picture to the right (part of a crowd of about 500 that attended) are not wastrels who just wandered in off the street from the inner city neighborhood that surrounds the food bank. Each one is a client of a social service agency served by the food bank (food pantries, churches, shelters, etc.) - a child who, if not for the services of the food bank, wouldn't be eating very well or very regularly.

Demand for services at food banks throughout the country is booming, yet operational funding is hard to come by (more about this in a future post). But you know what? Donated food is not hard to come by, both from food outlets (stores and food processing plants) and private donations. It's even perplexing to the president of the food bank where the picture above was taken. She recently noted that she's never seen anything like the conditions that exist today - a crappy economic situation at the low end; bountiful food donations from the high end.

So, does the opportunity for cognitive dissonance lay somewhere between the children who attended hot dog day and the sale of a $25,000 fish-finding sonar unit?

Perhaps if my boating acquaintance spent a Saturday morning passing out food at a local food pantry, and ran into one of his $10 per hour employees, he could be persuaded that the economy isn't as good as his own business would indicate. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for him to rub elbows with the unwashed lower caste.

I'm pretty sure that food pantry operating hours would conflict with teeoff times at the club on Saturday morning.

No Re-blogging Here...

I'm not averse to misappropriating other great blogging (with proper attribution, of course...), but I'm a wee pressed for time this morning, so I'll just point you to Tristero, who is doing some damn fine blogging today on breaking events.

Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!

Boggles the mind...

Our own personal Terminator, Kaiser Schwarzenegger, leader of the land of Kuleeforneeya, has disappointed worshipful volk in his hometown of Graz, Austria. They will not, I repeat, not be building the 80-foot statue of "him" after all. They're also considering re-re-naming the stadium bearing his name. His offense? (Humming Jeopardy music ...)

Ding! Ding! Ding! Time's up. His offense? Supporting George W. Bush.

It seems Maria is not the only one cutting Ahnuld off. Mother Uni-verse is no longer amused.

The brief article

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Percy Bysshe Shelley

And thanks for playing. ;-)

Matt Lauer

7AM Today Show lead: "And, with the explosives story in Iraq, is the Kerry campaign using fear like they accuse the Bush Administration of?"

No Matt, they're playing the "incompetency card". There's a difference.

Five

Taking Time to Honor the Fallen

In some comments to a thread below one of our readers, a certain "sen. bob," mentioned as the most egregious Bush blunder a name, that of Pfc. Anthony D. D'Agostino, who died in the line of duty on November 2, 2003 in Iraq.

It is all too easy for us bloggers on the web to write about Bush blunders and dishonesty. It is all too easy for us to gather our disgust and outrage and spew it forth here. We must, I think, stand above the Bush Administration in every way possible, and that means stopping once in a while to honor the men and women who have served admirably in a truly rotten war. No, as another commentator said, Bush has not attended a funeral of any of the servicemen and women he has sent into harm's way. He bars us from seeing the coffins as they come back to Dover. Let it be known that we at Allspinzone do not forget.

You can view the short obituaries of our fallen troops at www.militarycity.com

Army Pfc. Anthony D. D’Agostino

20, of Waterbury, Conn.; assigned to the 16th Signal Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas; killed Nov. 2 in an attack on a CH-47 Chinook helicopter near Fallujah, Iraq.

In letters and e-mails from Iraq, Pfc. Anthony D'Agostino asked his family for Kool-Aid to flavor his water, pictures of his cousins, crossword puzzles and books to help him learn Spanish. "He was always looking for ways to better himself," said his aunt, Beth Santos. "He wanted to make good use of his time over there." D'Agostino was among 16 soldiers who died in the Nov. 2 downing of an Army helicopter carrying troops from Iraq on leave. Stationed at Fort Hood, he would have turned 21 on Nov. 6. Born at Fort Gordon, Ga., while his father was in the military, D'Agostino graduated from high school in Waterbury, Conn., with a specialty in electricity. D'Agostino joined the military after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, looking for an education, career and a place to belong, Santos said. He hoped to go to the U.S. Military Academy. When he wrote letters or e-mails to home from Iraq, he talked about the hot weather and how uncomfortable the situation was, Santos said. He was proud to be serving in Iraq, family members said. But his family was nervous. "You never stop worrying," said his aunt, Beth Santos.

Thanks for the reminder of our duty, sen. bob. Of course, I had to stumble on another and disgusting story while searching for that photo of Pfc. D'Agostino's funeral in a google search. It's another story about how Marshall L. Edgerton died.

You see, a General was decorating his office, and he needed a new carpet. The furniture truck came into the compound and. . . here's the words of a witness:

We understand water trucks and gasoline trucks. We need that stuff, even though there are still plenty of ways they could detonate one of those too. Let me tell you what was being delivered though, and what Marshall Edgerton died for. A general is decorating his office here. It's a nice office, a luxury office you might say. And it needed a carpet to go with all the new furniture. Now while the grunts and we [deleted] can get along with field tables and folding chairs, of course the general has to trick out his office like he's a Roman caesar or something. So these furniture trucks come onto our compound when we already know that a lot of people out there want to kill us. This truck was loaded with carpet.

Marshall came to Iraq to die for a general's carpet. Marshall's family will grieve so a general could have carpet. What we really need here are big trucks that can haul away all the bullshit. And a few to get our asses back to an airport.

God bless Marshall L. Edgerton, too.

WSJ Gone Round the Bend?

As of a couple days ago, WSJ was actually criticizing President Bush! I said CRITICIZING PRESIDENT BUSH!

No, I am not kidding, folks. And it's all about this guy here, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.

You all remember the story in March by NBC where they reported that Bush was urged by his military leaders to take out Al-Zarqawi three times before the Iraq war started, but that he evidently hesitated for fear it would harm his chances at building a coalition. Likely he was afraid Poland would balk or something. Seriously, this was during the time he was trying by hook or by crook to get Turkey on board, through bribes, but failed at that, too. ("Failed." Do I hear a trend here?) Anyway, it may have taken six months, but the venerable conservative newspaper The Wall Street Journal has finally stumbled on the VERY SAME STORY! Why does it take so long for some conservative sources to figure things out? Could it be that they need to stop drinking the koolaid? Regardless, here's a little bit of their story:

Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, who was in the White House as the National Security Council's director for combatting terrorism at the time, said an NSC working group, led by the Defense Department, had been in charge of reviewing the plans to target the camp. She said the camp was "definitely a stronghold, and we knew that certain individuals were there including Zarqawi." Ms. Gordon-Hagerty said she wasn't part of the working group and never learned the reason why the camp wasn't hit. But she said that much later, when reports surfaced that Mr. Zarqawi was behind a series of bloody attacks in Iraq, she said "I remember my response," adding, "I said why didn't we get that ['son of a b-'] when we could."

Administration officials say the attack was set aside for a variety of reasons, including uncertain intelligence reports on Mr. Zarqawi's whereabouts and the difficulties of hitting him within a large complex.

"Because there was never any real-time, actionable intelligence that placed Zarqawi at Khurmal, action taken against the facility would have been ineffective," said Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the NSC. "It was more effective to deal with the facility as part of the broader strategy, and in fact, the facility was destroyed early in the war."

Another factor, though, was fear that a strike on the camp could stir up opposition while the administration was trying to build an international coalition to launch an invasion of Iraq. Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said in an interview that the reasons for not striking included "the president's decision to engage the international community on Iraq." Mr. Di Rita said the camp was of interest only because it was believed to be producing chemical weapons. He also cited several potential logistical problems in planning a strike, such as getting enough ground troops into the area, and the camp's large size.

Still, after the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, President Bush had said he relentlessly would pursue and attack fleeing al Qaeda fighters regardless of where they went to hide. Mr. Bush also had decided upon a policy of pre-emptive strikes, in which the U.S. wouldn't wait to be struck before hitting enemies who posed a threat. An attack on Mr. Zarqawi would have amounted to such a pre-emptive strike. The story of the debate over his camp shows how difficult the policy can be to carry out; Mr. Zarqawi's subsequent resurgence highlights that while pre-emptive strikes entail considerable risks, the risk of not making them can be significant too, a factor that may weigh in future decisions on when to attack terrorist leaders.

Dang, the WSJ sure employs good writers, and this is a TIGHT article. The bolding is mine for em-pha-sis.

That last bit of bold print says it all to my view. Bush set into his policy a stance that said he would make preemptive strikes on terrorists, and vowed to the American people that he would do so. But when it came to Al- Zarqawi, he hesitated as if his scrotum had been frozen. Could it be, and this is the Michael Moore in me speaking, but could it be that Bush though Al Zarqawi was an investor in the Carlyle Group?

No, what it really means is that Bush simply does not have the cojones to run a war on terror. Clinton would have taken Zarqawi out. And certainly Kerry would as well, because they wouldn't have to worry about building coalitions.

Bush is a miserable failure.

Blowout

All indications are starting to point to a blowout for the ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards. And I'm here to tell you right here, right now, that this is good for not just eight years of good government, but at least sixteen years if the chips fall right and John Squared does what I think they can do.

(Flashback - I'm a big John Edwards guy - more on this some other time...)

The first good indication I received on how desperate BushCo is at the moment -- they dragged out the Crypt Keeper today -- Zell Miller is stumping for Bush. It simply gets no more desperate. Zell has no pull - zip, zero, nada - on the national scene. On the 'inside politics' side of the tape, everyone knows what Zell is all about. We saw his Joe Goebbels imitation at the GOP convention. This move smelled pretty fetid to me.

The second sign from my political ouji board was simply listening to Bush's voice and inflection over the past few days. This is a guy who already knows he's following in poppy's footsteps. He's reading from Rove's script now. There's absolutely no passion in his inflection. For Bush, it's become, "if it's Wednesday, it must be Cleveland". I'll give the RNC credit, though - that they've been able to hold him together this long is either testament to the miracles of modern medicine, they're using a body double, or it's Weekend at Bernie's with Rove behind the body, waving the arms (if you didn't see the movie you probably have no idea what I'm talking about, so let it pass).

As Exhibit 3, I offer the results of internal polling from Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates (FMA), a GOP polling and strategic consulting firm based in Alexandria, Va. The results are quite enlightening, shocking, and energizing. Basically, FMA is saying that Bush is burnt toast. Unless BushCo can somehow supress every minority vote in America, they might as well be reserving the U-Hauls right now.

Lastly (and this is from several sources), CBS was supposed to release a Florida poll earlier this week. The poll showed a 6 to 8 point Kerry advantage. CBS told the polling organization to go back and do it again. (Sound familiar? "Clarke, go back and look again. See if Iraq is connected.") The second poll Florida poll came back with a 4 point Kerry lead. Now CBS is conflicted, and won't release the poll. I guess Rathergate really did rattle the cages at the Tiffany Network.

I want no one to get complacent - but this is looking really good. We have 5 days and a wakeup to sprint to the finish line. At lunchtime today, I was passing out flyers on the streets of Philly. I'll do the same tomorrow. Friday, I've got something really unique planned for a busy corner. And I've already offered my services to the DNC anywhere in the country from Saturday through Monday evening. Don't know if they'll take me up on it...if they don't...it's local phone banking (and the DNC's loss).

From here on out, it's all GOTV, folks. Do what you can. Fire off emails to everyone in your address book - and do it daily, if you feel so moved - tell 'em why you're so passionate about regime change. Call you local Kerry / Edwards headquarters, and offer to do some canvassing or phone banking this weekend. They'll appreciate the offer, believe me. Set up a card table outside of your local grocery story, and pass out stuff you downloaded and printed from the web. Talk to people at church on Sunday.

But for jeebus' sakes, don't do nothing (I know, I know, double negative for you pedants). This is within our grasp. We can sleep when we're dead. Don't wake up with any regrets on 11/03/04.

Newspapers falling Kerry's Way

Yes, even papers which backed Bush in 2000 are going Kerry's way, some of whom have backed Republicans for decades. The Washington Post leads off with the Orlando Sentinel, smack dab in the middle of the I-4 corridor so crucial to this election:

The Orlando Sentinel has backed every Republican seeking the White House since Richard M. Nixon in 1968. Not this time.

"This president has utterly failed to fulfill our expectations," the Florida paper said in supporting John F. Kerry, prompting some angry calls and a few dozen cancellations.

"A lot of people thought they could trust that the Sentinel would always go Republican, and when that didn't happen, they felt betrayed," said Jane Healy, the paper's editorial page editor.

The Sentinel is among 36 newspapers that endorsed President Bush four years ago and have flip-flopped, to coin a phrase, into Kerry's corner. These include the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Daily News and the Memphis Commercial Appeal, according to industry magazine Editor & Publisher. Bush has won over only six papers that backed Al Gore, including the Denver Post, which received 700 letters -- all of them protesting the move.

Leave off whether newspapers have any sway. Surely 700 protest letters to the Denver Post says something, though. I'm familiar with the Orlando Sentinel, and also with the Detroit News, which has NOT swung to Kerry, but has instead withheld its opinion this year, after recommending Republicans for dozens of years in a row. These are good newspapers as a general rule. Of particular note is how far the Sentinel goes to show it is not being partisan:

Our choice was not dictated by partisanship. Already this election season, the Sentinel has endorsed Republican Mel Martinez for the U.S. Senate and four U.S. House Republicans. In 2002, we backed Republican Gov. Jeb Bush for re-election, repeating our endorsement of four years earlier. Indeed, it has been 40 years since the Sentinel endorsed a Democrat -- Lyndon Johnson -- for president.

But we cannot forget what we wrote in endorsing Mr. Bush in 2000: "The nation needs a leader who can bring people together, who can stand firm on principle but knows the art of compromise." Four years later, Mr. Bush presides over a bitterly divided Congress and nation. The unity following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- the president's finest hour -- is a memory now. Mr. Bush's inflexibility has deepened the divide.

Four years ago, we expressed confidence that Mr. Bush would replace the Clinton-Gore approach of frequent military intervention for one of selective involvement "using strict tests to evaluate U.S. national interests." To the president's credit, the war in Afghanistan met those tests. But today, U.S. forces also are fighting and dying in a war of choice in Iraq -- one that was launched to disarm a dictator who did not have weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea have worsened.

It's also noteworthy that the Sentinel strikes at Bush's lack of ability at uniting and concensus-building. It's a thinking man's endorsement and doesn't dwell on failure of policy, but more on the failure of style that leads to the failure of policies.

Though the News does not endorse Kerry, its withholding of an endorsement for Bush is far more damning in its language than the Sentinel is:

With the nation and the world firmly behind his operation in Afghanistan, he turned his sights too quickly to Iraq and Saddam Hussein, his family's old nemesis.

Acting on intelligence that was faulty and too eagerly interpreted by the administration to match its agenda, Bush moved against Iraq without the support of key allies.

We backed the invasion of Iraq, accepting the Bush assertion that Saddam's weapons programs presented a gathering threat to the United States. While America, the world and the Iraqi people are better off with Saddam gone, we now believe that Iraq was a fight that might have waited, or been avoided altogether.

Regardless, a president who takes the nation to war has an obligation to win that war as quickly, efficiently and painlessly as possible.

Bush has not done that. The management of the conflict in Iraq is abysmal. The United States went into Iraq without enough international support and brought too few of our own troops to complete the job.

In shorting the generals, in allowing political concerns to trump military strategy, in assuming too much cooperation from the Iraqi people, Bush allowed Iraq to become a hotbed of terrorism, the very condition he struck to prevent. The messy result has allowed our enemies to portray the United States as a villain, and use our role as a rallying cry for terrorists elsewhere.

There were too many poor calls, including disbanding the Iraqi army, leaving the borders undefended and trusting shady Iraqi nationals, all of which combined to turn what could have been a stunning liberation into a still uncertain, nation-building morass. Iraq has stretched America's military capabilities, strained friendships and will hamstring future strikes against rogue regimes.

Such bad management cannot be forgiven in a wartime president.

Will anyone pay attention to these papers? I certainly can't say, but if the Orlando Sentinel and the Detroit News have abandoned Bush, he must have preformed as badly as we on ASZ have been saying for months.

Catch Up - Some Headlines from Today

Either these guys are scared, broke, or incompetent.

I'm guessing a bit of all three.

Bush website blocked outside US:

Surfers outside the US have been unable to visit the official re-election site of President George W Bush.
The blocking of browsers sited outside the US began in the early hours of Monday morning.

Since then people outside the US trying to browse the site get a message saying they are not authorised to view it.

The blocking does not appear to be due to an attack by vandals or malicious hackers, but as a result of a policy decision by the Bush camp.

And you think Americans have a hard time getting anything out of Bush...

From Sludge:

ABCNEWS HOLDS TERROR WARNING TAPE

**Exclusive**

In the last week before the election, ABCNEWS is holding on a videotaped message from a purported al Qaeda terrorist warning of a new attack on America, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The terrorist claims on tape the next attack will dwarf 9/11. "The streets will run with blood," and "America will mourn in silence" because they will be unable to count the number of the dead. Further claims: America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Al Qaeda...

No word if the cloaked "terrorist" in the tape was wearing a wire and telling Rove to STFU.

The attempted GOP theft of the election continues apace:

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. Postal Service investigators on Wednesday were trying to find thousands of absentee ballots that should have been delivered to voters in one of Florida's most populous counties, officials said.

The issue evoked memories of the polling problems that bedeviled the Florida election in 2000 and which the state has been trying to address before next Tuesday's presidential election, which is again expected to be a very tight race.


Broward deputy supervisor of elections Gisela Salas said 60,000 absentee ballots, accounting for just over 5 percent of the electorate in the county north of Miami, were sent out between Oct. 7 and Oct. 8 to voters who would not be in town on election day.

Now, can we really blame loss of this election on "bad postal service"? I mean, come on. 60,000 absentee ballots?? You know as well as I do that they're in the trunk of someone's car. And the car has a "W04" sticker on it.

I can't wait until the trials start under a Kerry Administration...

Six

Weird

Having a heck of a time with Blogger today - I'm actually inputting this from the BlogThis! desktop interface. That's working but Blogger isn't.

Open thread until I can get in.

More dirty, desperate tactics from the GOP

After reading a couple of articles today that briefly mentioned the possibility of "poll watchers" being present on Tuesday in battleground states to challenge the legitimacy of voters, I did a little more research and turned up this article from the NY Times and this article from Salon. Here's a quote from John Pappageorge, a Republican state representative in Troy, MI in the Salon article to fire you all up.

Pappageorge declared, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."

In the NY Times article, an interview of a top Republican official in Ohio reveals that the GOP has a program in place to register "poll watchers" (aka voter intimidators) in swing states who are intended to

challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.

Now, what criteria are going to be used by these euphemistically-termed "poll watchers" to weigh whether or not a person is eligible to cast ballots. I have a few ideas what these whining wolf-criers will be watching for, considering where the Republicans are focusing these efforts.

Republicans said they had enlisted 3,600 by the deadline, many in heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities.

To me, the most obvious two signals the poll watchers will be looking for in these areas are a) race and b) estimated level of income. Since minorities and poorer Americans, especially those in urban areas, tend to vote Democratic, this is an obvious strategy for the Republican Party. Its not enough for them to rationalize and sanction racial profiling in aiports by Homeland Security, and by various law enforcement agencies elsewhere, now they need it at the polls. Standing up for the foundational values of the United States, my foot. What happened to "all men are created equal" ?? Oh, thats right, its just inconvenient for your fascist tendencies, like the First Amendment. I'm digressing, but here is a quote from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy that relates:

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

Thats right, eat it, Ashcroft.

Anyhow, back to the poll watching... I have two large concerns about this.

• People are busy, and this poll watching nonsense could really slow down the process. Especially if it gets really serious and nearly everyone is being questioned at the polls.
• Threats and intimidation. Technically, anything occurring along these lines is illegal, but where is the line drawn?

With the Right's love affair with firearms, it really will not surprise me at all to hear about some of these poll watchers packing heat. That would definitely intimidate me. Probably not enough to scare me into not voting, but I'm sure it would do just that for others.

However worrisome this may be for some of us, that these challenges are being taken so seriously by the Republicans is a strong sign of how desperate they are. Sure, they have definitely used voter intimidation tactics in the past, but I doubt its been anywhere near this scale. They're scared, folks, and with good reason. We are strong, we have more numbers, and we have momentum. But don't let down, make your efforts of the next 6 days your strongest yet. The more Kerry wins by, the better.

I attended a lecture at my college last week that was given by a political science professor concerning predictions on the outcome of the election. Dr Michael LeRoy stated his prediction that if voter turnout is at 55% or higher, Kerry will win clearly. He gave solid points for this assertion, and I found it extremely interesting. If Republicans rely on the votes of approximately 28% (one-half of 55) of Americans to win this election, what does that say about the values of most American citizens? Well, that not enough vote, but, more importantly, it seems that liberals are a very sizable majority.

On a different note, I want to publicly thank Richard, Kate and SpinDentist for giving me the chance to do some blogging here. I love this site and the community around it; its my favorite political blog, and to be given the opportunity to write here was amazing and I'm incredibly grateful. Richard has "left the door open for me" to return here occasionally to do some more, and if Kate and SpinDentist are down with that, I trust I'll be back as often as I'm welcome! Thank you all for your great comments and discussions concerning the topics on which I posted. You're a great, kind, and fun group. I hope the perspective, views and concerns of a 21 year old liberal Christian have been interesting for most of you. And even with how little this means to most of you (I still have heard it from self-proclaimed agnostic members of the ASZ community), God bless.

(Forrest will still be hanging around; be sure to visit his blog, American Bodhisattva. - ed.)

Let's get ENERGIZED!

Like I need to tell the frequenters of the Allspinzone, but I'm getting back here after a long weekend in Cleveland, of all places, and a very long weekend it was. Yes, all my Republican relatives would vote for a specimen of some tropical disease if it were named Bush. But I had one fun fashion moment that's sure to please.

You see, I was walking down the aisle of Brown's Stadium Sunday in my new Eagles scarf, a stitched together hodgepodge of many Eagles shirts from the past, when a large black woman shouted at me and asked where I got the scarf.



OK, not as cute a picture as the one of me as a kid. Anyway, I showed her the scarf, even the section of it with the Peanuts gang in Eagles helmets, and told her all about the woman in Manayunk who makes them, and she appreciated it. I also told her I'd get her more specific information before the game finished. Finally, before I turned away towards my seat I said, "A similar scarf would look good on you, Mrs. McNabb, and by the way, I love your TV work."

So, I had fun, but now I'm energized. On this weekend the election never really left my consciousness. Could it be partly because my flight preceded Bush's at Akron Canton Airport by only 40 minutes, and the State Troopers were out in force? Alas, it brought memories of my viewing my first President in 1969 when Dick "Don't call me Cheney" Nixon arrived at the same airport back when I was 12.

But this isn't about me. This is about how we keep our sense of outrage going right up until November 2nd and beyond. And this is a dare.

I'm betting nobody can do it. Nobody can recite just one. But try, would you?

Give me ONE Bush Administration Outrage, the one that is most egregious to you. Just one!

Give it down there in the comments.

Mine is that Bush wouldn't go after Zarqawi before the war, in effect aiding and abetting beheadings and the execution of dozens of Iraqi policemen this weekend. Yes, three times he was advised by his military advisors to go after Zarqawi, but Because it might have harmed Bush's lame attempts to build a coalition to invade Iraq, Bush wimped out.

If you want to look at a couple other outrages before making your choice, here are a couple extreme ones.

Post your favorite Bush evil HERE!

Mosh

Quite a bit of buzz has been floating around the 'internets' today about Marshall Mather's new video, "Mosh". Gotta tell you, even though I'm way out of the demographic that Eminem is trying to reach, his newest rap video is one powerful statement. You can be sure you'll never see it on the tube - if nothing else, it has about a 7 day shelf life - but take a look for yourself.

Here's a link to the Yahoo! Launchcast stream for Eminem; click on "Mosh".

After you've watched the vid, here's a link to the lyrics of the rap. A nasty case of spyware, etc. was reported with the lyrics site. I'll see if I can find the lyrics somewhere else - tomorrow!

I'd be interested in reading your reaction.

Incompetence of Biblical Proportions

So, who gets promoted for this whole cataclysmic Al-Qaqaa fuckup? Seems like everyone who's been associated with some aspect of George Bush's successful attempt at nation wrecking has either received a promotion or a wink and a nod.

I know this story's now over 24 hours old, but with each passing hour my outrage grows, because I know this whole episode of high explosives (and high drama) is probably just the teensey tiny tip of a huge iceberg. The GOP's got their talking points out there, and they've surely clamped down on the State and War Department leakers by now, but damn if there isn't enough documentation and people talking to hoist these sonsabitches by their petards once and for all.

It's axiomatic that no one will ever spend a minute of jail time as a result of this gross incompetence of biblical proportions - but perhaps we can at least insist that Chimp and his stepford wife pack their own boxes as they move out. Just make sure that security's guarding the White House silverware.

Al-Qaqaa Spokesman Says No Weapons Search:

When the troops from the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade arrived at the Al-Qaqaa base a day or so after Baghdad's fall on April 9, 2003, there were already looters throughout the facility, Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit, told The Associated Press.

The soldiers 'secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemical weapons were not present in their area,' Wellman wrote in an e-mail message. 'Bombs were found but not chemical weapons in that immediate area.

'Orders were not given from higher to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions, as they (high-explosive weapons) were everywhere in Iraq,' he wrote.

I'm not settling for after-life accountability for these bastards anymore. A good old fashioned witchhunt is definitely indicated. I want public floggings. I want each of these asshats (and all of their "media" enablers) to be so thoroughly taken down and discredited that they're ashamed to even walk out to the curb in the morning to pick up their newspaper.



Updates

9PM: Thanks to eagle eyed ASZ netizen Bean for catching the Al-Qaqaa timeline compiled by Jeanne @ Body and Soul earlier today.

9:40PM: Thanks to ASZ regular BradfordChild for the hookup with Salon.com - even as I was typing the words "tip of the iceberg", Salon posted a very revealing article that says the same thing. Certainly worth suffering through the ad to get the day pass.