Everything You Know Is Wrong

I caught the OBL Tape brouhaha while carving pumpkins with my kids. By the time I got them to bed, the story had been blogged to death (and Joe Trippi was all over the nooze channels, being asked for his "blog/internet expertise"), the punditry split down party lines about the significance of the tape... ho hum.

My biggest surprise watching the nooze shows was the homoerotic glee with which Tweety greeted Ah-nuld's appearance at Bush's rally in Ohio. Tweety was all twitterpated at the Gropinator's magnifence (indeed, I think "magnficence" was an adjective Tweety used to describe the California Governor) and it was embarassingly obvious that Matthews was dealing with some uncomfortable swelling. Not that there's anything wrong with that - except maybe during the last few days of the election because, hey, it shows a lack of objectivity.

Within the punditry and the blogosphere, everyone seemed concerned with how this affects the candidates. My concern is how this tape strengthens the resolve of Islamist terrorists. If I was some hate-filled jihadist waiting for a motive to spill American blood, OBL's tape might be what I was looking for as an indication that the fight was on. One consistent reaction I've heard and read regarding this tape is how healthy OBL looked and that's mostly because no one was really sure if OBL was even alive. So here's a tape of OBL that's obviously contemporary and although OBL isn't looking like he's just gotten back from a couple of weeks at Club Med, neither is he hooked up to a dialysis machine. To an Islamist, the OBL tape has to mean "hope is alive."

The Sunday gabfests will flog the story of the OBL tape reductio ad absurdum and then we'll have football. Monday, the day before the election, the OBL tape will be last week's story.

So what will be next week's story? Well, right after the 20 million newly registered voters going out to vote and Republican attempts to suppress those votes, the main story will be "President-elect Kerry" on the lips of a punditry that will be collectively eating crow.

Some pre-Halloween celebrations I need to do with the kids; it's a crappy, windy, COLD day here but the merchants on Manitou Avenue are handing out candy this afternoon and I'd be a shitty dad if I was here blogging instead of out trick-or-treating.

Then some pumpkin carving... don't count on pics of our masterpieces here ----> click the link near the top for my "Single Dad Blog" if you absolutely need to see pictures of badly carved pumpkins.

Then I have some last-minute GOTV work to do for Kerry and Salazar.

Today's big stories? Al Qaqaa, of course (I'm ROTFLMMFAO) and the FBI investigating Halliburton contracts at the Pentagon. Again, click links ("Big Dog Blogs") ----> where everything I'd tell ya' is written, just not in the way I'd say it.

Enjoy your Friday day and I'll be back on tonight.

This Is Your Republican Party

Just got this on DKos, a flyer being distributed around Milwaukee's African-American neighborhoods.

Everytime I hear a Republican whine about how Kerry supporters level charges of racism at the GOP, I'm reminded of Florida and about 1000 other things like this. Everytime I hear a Republican whine about how polarized this country has become, some nitwit with a photocopier prints out something like this.

It's pathetic really, how Republicans howl and scream about the politics of the gutter, all the while reaching up to grab us by the ankles....

Just watched John Zogby tell Jon Stewart - EMPHATICALLY - that Kerry is going to win.

His rationale was that Bush's numbers just aren't strong enough and undecideds break against the incumbent.

Sweet. Yes, we knew all that but sweet nonetheless to hear Zogby say it outright.

A few weeks back, the October 26th issue of Rolling Stone featured a piece by Matt Taibbi titled "Bush Like Me: Ten weeks undercover in the grass roots of the Republican Party" and at the time I didn't think anything about it. However, when I saw this over at DKos about image manipulation in Bush's newest campaign ad titled "Whatever It Takes", part of Taibbi's piece came back to me:

In my first month on the campaign, I did not meet many people who came into the office with the serious intention of working hard for the president. I did, however, meet a great many very lonely people who came in because they knew the Bush offices were the one place where they could share certain deeply held ideas without being ridiculed.

Part of my job, I soon came to understand, was to be supportive when people like portly Tampa sheriff's deputy Ben Mills came in to share their very serious utopian ideas -- like the benefits of having a society guarded by a clone army. "We'd save a hell of a lot on benefits and medical expenses," he said. " 'Cause you know if they got wounded..."

"You could just shoot them," I said.

"Exactly -- pow! Just shoot 'em dead, right in the ground."

He went on.

"We'd just have a big breeding farm in Colorado," he said. "Course, it'd be a security problem if they got out, you know, if you had rogue clones running around. You'd have to have a special security force to maintain 'em."

"That's where folks like us would come in," I said.

"Exactly," he said.

Folks like us. I was getting the hang of it.

Living in Colorado as I do, I can tell you that we already have far too many Republican clones in residence.

I'm watching Bill Schneider ("Senior Political Analyst") on CNN being the living, breathing embarassment he's paid to be, talking about "Star Power" on the campaign trail. Of course he's raising serious wood over Herr Gropinator stumping for Bush (and could care less about Springsteen on the stump for Kerry), his rationale being "People just aren't interested in politics but when they see a movie star up there, a sports hero..."*

Sports Hero? Since when was posing with oiled skin a sport (much less "heroic")?

Since when was Bill Schneider qualified to be "Senior Political Analyst"? Oh, because of his association with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank?

Since when was it determined that "America trusts CNN"? Since they became the secondary mouthpiece for the right?

Surfing over to Media Matters, I saw that the always odious Ann Coulter said, "[A]n act of terrorism was committed against me." This in reference to the pie-throwing incident during an October 21 appearance at the University of Arizona.

I tried to check the transcript for Hannity & Colmes (where she said it), wanting to see in the context of the comment; was she just kidding? No way of telling, cheese-dick Fox News doesn't offer entire transcripts (probably to cut down on the lip movement of their viewers).

I've often wondered if Ann Coulter was really some kind of Andy Kaufman-esque comic and that one day she'll appear on Tweety Matthews show in a leopard-skin bikini with a bottle of baby oil and challenge him to a wrestling match. She's obviously no intellectual (nor does she play one on TV) and her multiply recursive role of self-parody drops well short of irony. At least Andy Kaufman was funny.

It's not that I'm some new-age nitwit indulging in some kind of silly "creative visualization" (although, hmmmm, couldn't hurt, huh?) but I see a definitive Kerry victory in 6 days and I stand by Friday's prediction (except I'm adjusting it to Kerry 52% Bush 44% Nader 2% with the remainder given to the multitude of marginal candidates). Only a fool is banking on the polls this election (thus, the reliance by the nooze channels on irrational numbers), polling being much less accurate than in 2000. An eight-point spread might seem a little optmistic (Hunter S. Thompson is only giving Kerry five points but I think that's him being a safe gambler) and I have to admit I'd cut it back to six on anything less than a "gentleman's bet" but my gut is telling me eight. LIkewise, my gut tells me that it won't be November 3 (here in Colorado) by the time the media calls the election for Kerry.

If you think it's just some lame-brained liberal saying this, guess again. James Wolcott caught the trolls over at Faux News hammering out the talking points for spreading the blame over a Bush defeat, namely "liberal bias" in the media. Not just once (according to Wolcott*) but three times today, a trifecta that's just too delicious to disregard as "cautionary rumination". There are too many variables that aren't getting picked up by the polls or the gaseous blobs at CNN. Apparently, a few of the pundits at Faux News are astute enough to see that Bush has extended his streak of fucking up to its natural conclusion.

"Liberal media bias" is an easy and disingenuous scapegoat, its currency spent long ago with the Pop Rocks/soda pop/exploding stomach myth. Of course it will be the tune that the right will play ad nauseum from November 3rd onward and will continue to incoherently mumble even after everyone's told the right to shut its collective whiny mouth. Having kicked that horse's corpse to pieces, the right will start looking for another cadaver to abuse. It won't have to go farther than the nearest mirror.

The right's success in the past quarter century has been its ability to put aside philosophical differences for the sake of assimilating power under the blanket of the Republican Party. Such strange bedfellows had remarkable success during the past quarter century (even if most of the orgasms were faked) but a relationship founded on fundamental dishonesty is bound to fail. On November 3rd, the bickering will begin as blame moves from the "liberal media" straw man to who isn't getting it up in the Republican Party.

A few weeks ago, I took issue with Bruce Bartlett's comment in Ron Suskind's incredible NYT Sunday Magazine article, "if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party..." Obviously, I think the "civil war" will occur after a Bush defeat. Yes, "a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion," certainly, but it will be as much as about blame as it will be about control for the soul of the GOP. When the question "What went wrong?" gets asked on November 3rd, "the liberal media" will be a footnote compared to the gothic saga that will follow.

My own prediction is that this election will reverberate beyond the Bush campaign. The millions of newly registered voters that are going to push Kerry several points past Bush are also going to (by and large) vote against incumbent Republicans. The sting of defeat will be far reaching. Not only will November 3rd mark the end of over 20 years of Republican momentum but will most likely lead to the kind of self-doubt and internal schism that has paralyzed the left for so many years.

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*Wolcott also didn't see the babble on FNC as a concession - probably also a cautious gambler - but to his credit he's a fine writer with a quick mind and an iron constitution (obviously) if he's able to endure hours of Faux News without succumbing to some kind of catatonia.

I was saying this three weeks ago but I guess it takes TPM to get the point across (so to speak):

Now do you understand why the GOP is putting so much muscle into its nation-wide voter suppression campaign?

According to these polling results put out today by the Republican polling firm of Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates, if Kerry gets strong minority voter turnout he'll beat President Bush fairly decisively.

Thing is, this racist horseshit slid under the radar during the 2000 election until the day after and then the nitwit nooze media was so consumed with hanging chads that they missed the real story. However, the media is on it this time around (not for any noble principle but only because they're anticipating some kind of slap down) and I doubt the Repugs will get away with minority disenfranchisement on any kind of substantial scale. If they do, count on uncivil war.

(I've been working on a HUGE posting all afternoon but I couldn't let this one slide)

It started yesterday afternoon - went to post and Blogger took me to a dead link. When I hit the "back" button, all but the title of the post was eaten. Yeah, I know I need to back everything up by copy/paste into Word but... well, WTF?!?

Then, I was trying all morning to log into Blogger and couldn't get there... huh? Neither Mozilla nor Explorer could bring up the page (or anyone's blogs on Blogspot). I *JUST* got into Blogger so hopefully I can play catch-up.

Anyone else have these problems today?

Watching Judy Woodruff Skelator earlier today and I had to switch it to MSNBC before I tossed my keyboard through the TV screen. She was spinning the drop in consumer confidence as a positive for Bush and had thrice-removed-from-reality Commerce Secretary Don Evans on to co-sign her spin.

Besides, Skelator scares my kids. I tried to explain to them that CNN was getting into the Halloween spirit with a hideous, jabbering skull giving thumbs up to Bush but they weren't having it. As God is my witness, my two-year old son flies into a rage whenever Novak shows his grisly visage on Crossfire, screaming "Shut up! Shut up!" and punches the screen.

Come November 3rd (and a Kerry victory), CNN execs have got to be deeply involved in some serious soul-searching. Having thrown their lot in with a loser and badly miscalculated the direction of the electorate, I have to imagine there will be some huge pow-wow as CNN execs try to figure out how they got it so wrong. If there's an ounce of intelligence and strategic thinking at CNN, the first thing they'll do is shitcan the brain trust that thought it could draw Republican viewers away from Fox News.

The most notable pink slips would be for Wolf Blitzer and Skelator however I doubt they'll dump Wolf. Still, Wolf sets the editorial tone for CNN's early evening broadcasts and Skelator is just his overly-enthusiastic lackey, so it's his head that should roll. Skelator would be a sacrificial lamb (so to speak) and a dire warning to Wolf and anyone else at CNN who mistakenly feels that continued shilling for the Republican party reflects the zeitgeist of the country.

Caught an entry on DKos about what a joke MSNBC is - that's valid but the entry was referring to "Scarborough Country" which has comes with an expectation of a rightward slant. Skelator and Wolf are so-called "journalists" and supposedly present news without bias or spin. I've yet to see it.

Brutha' Don over at Blah3 gave me a heads up on the fact that Smirk/GFY campaign workers have been sending internal emails to GeorgeWBush.org apparently unaware that it's an anti-Bush satire site. Don picked this up from JuliusBlog who rightly observes that the Bush camp is freaking out.

Go here to see the emails and decide for yourself but from what I've read, these idiots are screaming for a half-dozen election commission indictments.

I caught this, interestingly enough in The Rocky Mountain News, a paper that recently endorsed Bush for President:

A number of lifelong Republicans gathered at Kerry-Edwards headquarters in Denver on Monday to endorse Democrats this year.

Members of the group said they had soured for various reasons on President Bush's policies and would not support his re-election.

Just another reason I believe Kerry is going to win and win big. You just don't hear about many democrats saying they'll support Bush (except for Zell Miller and no one really pays attention to him after his meltdown at the RNC). Try as CNN and MSNBC might to make the election look like a done-deal for Bush, they're not carrying any stories about how democrats are voting for Bush this year and the reason is, it just isn't happening. But I've heard all kinds of stories about how Republicans are dumping Bush, from all over the country... and in my own backyard.

Two stories: I was in a bar here in Colorado Springs and some guy stepped up next to me, pointed to my Kerry/Edwards button and said, "They get my vote this time and I'm a Republican."
"Right on," I replied, glad there wasn't going to be a shouting match or fistfight (this is, afterall, Colorado Springs).
"Bush has screwed the economy and Iraq's a mess. I voted for that idiot in 2000 and I wish I hadn't. He's lost my vote."
I was going to ask him if he'd volunteer to phone bank or something but I just let well enough alone.

Then, back around Labor Day, I was approached by an elderly gentleman from Arizona while I stood out in my front yard. He saw the Kerry signs and I guess felt he needed to talk to a kindred spirit. He told me that at his retirement community he was one of four democrats out of about 500 residents. But, he said, many of the republicans he'd talked to were not voting for Bush and many were voting for Kerry. According to him, many of the republicans he'd talked to at his retirement home felt that George Bush wasn't doing what was right for America.

You just don't hear these stories about democrats for Bush. I haven't heard anyone saying they'd voted for Gore in 2000 but now they're voting for Bush. I haven't heard it because those people don't exist. No one who voted for Gore in 2000 is going to vote for Bush. Plenty who voted for Bush in 2000 are voting for Kerry or at least are not going to vote for Bush.

Just another reason why Kerry is going to win next week.

It's been rough getting back on the horse since my self-imposed (albeit brief) exile from the blogosphere. I just wrote a brief piece about how big a story a stolen election must be and forgot mentioning this piece in Time magazine about Bunnatine (Bunny) Greenhouse blowing the whistle on Halliburton contracts in Iraq:

Greenhouse's objections, which had not been made public until now, will probably fuel criticism of the government's allegedly cozy relationship with Halliburton and could be greeted with calls for further investigation. Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) subsidiary has been mired in allegations of overcharging and mismanagement in Iraq, and the government in January replaced the noncompetitive oil-field contract that Greenhouse had objected to and made two competitively bid awards instead. (Halliburton won the larger contract, worth up to $1.2 billion, for repairing oil installations in southern Iraq, while Parsons Corp. got one for the north, worth up to $800 million.) Halliburton's Iraq business, which includes another government contract as well, has been under particular scrutiny because Vice President Dick Cheney was once its CEO. The Pentagon, concerned about potential controversy when it signed the original oil-work contract, gave Cheney's staff a heads-up beforehand.

I'm giving my kids the TV at the moment but I'll be interested to see if the worthless-ass media makes mention of this. This isn't exactly the story that a stolen election should be but it should be one of the top stories of 2004.

Just caught one the "protect your vote" commercials on CNBC, stars of NBC/MSNBC News telling voters to call 1-866-MYVOTE1 if they experience problems voting. I'm not here to slam the effort, by any stretch of the imagination (it's being done in conjuction with The Reform Institute and Common Cause) and in fact, I applaud the effort.

What I'm appalled by is the fact that fair voting is an issue at all. Furthermore, the fact that NBC is on board with this is tacit recognition that the election was stolen in Florida in 2000. "Let's not allow this to happen again," they're saying, which makes me wonder, isn't it a pretty big deal that it happened at all? In my mind, undermining democracy, the single principle that this country was founded upon ('liberty' and 'freedom' being sufficient conditions to the necessary condition of 'democracy'), is a bigger story than Pearl Harbor or 9/11 or a moon landing, it's a story on par with the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation.

I've said this before but I'll say it again because it bears repeating: the biggest story of this century should be how Bush and the Supreme Court sabotaged democracy. The second biggest story should be how the media dropped the ball on that story.

Giving credit where credit is due, Josh Marshall has all the good stuff...

My weekend news blackout ended with me turning on the news to find out 760,000 pounds of heavy duty Iraqi ordinance floating around out there because of a jack-off Bush administration. CNN has been putting this story at the top and almost saying "WTF?!?". I just hope a number of Americans are asking themselves the same thing.

Don't know if Smirk or GFY have addressed how these missing munitions have made us safer but according to a WaPo article today, Smirk is apparently ignoring it. DKos says McClellan's answer is that oil was important than safety:

Q But after Iraqi Freedom, there were those caches all around, wasn't the multinational force -- who was responsible for keeping track --
MR. McCLELLAN: At the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom there were a number of priorities. It was a priority to make sure that the oil fields were secure, so that there wasn't massive destruction of the oil fields, which we thought would occur. It was a priority to get the reconstruction office up and running. It was a priority to secure the various ministries, so that we could get those ministries working on their priorities, whether it was -
Q So it was the multinational force's responsibility --
MR. McCLELLAN: There were a number of -- well, the coalition forces, there were a number of priorities at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Nifty if you're a Halliburton exec but sucks to be a US soldier facing insurgents.

I need a break... so a couple days vacation for me to recharge. Taking off this afternoon and I'll be back Sunday night.

I have no doubt that Kerry has won this election (whether or not Bush will steal it is another matter). My prediction on November 3 is Kerry 52%/Bush 45%/Nader 3%. Here's a couple of links to explain why:

Most College Students Favor Kerry - Harvard Poll
"Harvard's Institute of Politics found that 52 percent of all students want the Massachusetts senator elected president, 39 percent support Bush, and 8 percent are undecided."

Top 35 Trends That Say Kerry Will Win:

1) Bush must lead by 4%
2) The 'Cell Phone Polling' Phenomenon
3) Zogby is the Most Accurate Pollster
4) Kerry Has Large Lead in Swing States
5) PA Goes to Kerry
6) Seniors Favor Kerry
7) Kerry Appeals to Independents in the Debates
8) Kerry Appeals to independents... Period
9) New Standard for GOTV
10) Democrats Won the Registration Wars
- Debate Effect
11) Kerry Erased Doubts About Himself
12) Bush Increased Doubts About Himself
- Now (Election 2004) vs. Then (Election 2000)
13) Ralph Nader: Nader is less of an issue this year
14) Howard Dean: The Dean Revolution
15) Michael Moore: The 'Moore Effect' and Fahrenheit 911
16) George Soros
17) The 527's
18) Newspaper endorsements
19) The New Progressive Media
20) Better Informed Public
21) Better Educated Florida Electorate
22) Log Cabin Republicans
23) Arab Americans: Arab Americans are abandoning Bush
24) Cuban Americans
- Coattail Indicators
25) Senate Races: NON-incumbent Democrats strong in conservative strongholds
26) Conservative Strongholds: Some conservative strongholds are in play
27) Vote Banking
- Common Wisdom
28) The 50% Rule: incumbent is experiencing approval ratings below 50%
29) Right Track, Wrong Track
30) Incumbent Rule: 'Undecideds' break at least 60-40% for the challenger
31) Reelect: Bush's Reelect numbers are terrible
- Fire in the Belly
32) Rocketing Gas and Energy Prices
33) The Bush Draft
34) Expatriates: Non-military expatriates are motivated to remove Bush
35) The left is fired up!

Go to the link to see the reasoning here but I continue to say that, although we have a lot of work to do the next 11 days (I'm phone banking, canvassing, and providing rides to voters on Election Day), the wind is at our backs.

Have a great weekend... I'll be back here Sunday night!

Because we all know that the Draft is coming back under a Bush second term, enjoy Enjoy The Draft Dot Com (in case you're one of those 'undecided' idiots).

Question: Am I the only one who looks on Ed Rogers as a confederate flag-waving cracker, a hymn-singing hypocrite for whom poetic justice is being dragged behind a pick-up truck in Texas?

A better sports fan (and better writer) than I, Hunter S. Thompson has an excellent essay in the newest issue of Rolling Stone:

That is fatal in a presidential election.

I look at elections with the cool and dispassionate gaze of a professional gambler, especially when I'm betting real money on the outcome. Contrary to most conventional wisdom, I see Kerry with five points as a recommended risk. Kerry will win this election, if it happens, by a bigger margin than Bush finally gouged out of Florida in 2000. That was about forty-six percent, plus five points for owning the U.S. Supreme Court -- which seemed to equal fifty-one percent. Nobody really believed that, but George W. Bush moved into the White House anyway.

It was the most brutal seizure of power since Hitler burned the German Reichstag in 1933 and declared himself the new Boss of Germany. Karl Rove is no stranger to Nazi strategy, if only because it worked, for a while, and it was sure as hell fun for Hitler. But not for long. He ran out of oil, the whole world hated him, and he liked to gobble pure crystal biphetamine and stay awake for eight or nine days in a row with his maps & his bombers & his dope-addled general staff.

They all loved the whiff. It is the perfect drug for War -- as long as you are winning -- and Hitler thought he was King of the Hill forever. He had created a new master race, and every one of them worshipped him. The new Hitler youth loved to march and sing songs in unison and dance naked at night for the generals. They were fanatics.

That was sixty-six years ago, far back in ancient history, and things are not much different today. We still love War.

George Bush certainly does. In four short years he has turned our country from a prosperous nation at peace into a desperately indebted nation at war. But so what? He is the President of the United States, and you're not. Love it or leave it.

Man, I love HST...

...Their unprecedented come-back knocked Theresa Heinz-Kerry's mis-statement out of the punditry's playpen.

After the game, I briefly watched MSNBC's ("We're almost Fox!") little "After Hours" nitwit-a-thon. Ron Reagan and Ron Silver were co-hosts; guests listed on the transcripts include Debra DeShong, Mindy Tucker Fletcher, Mark Simone, Mort Zuckerman... my-oh-my, MSNBC conveniently neglects to add five-foot-seven-maggot Lawrence Kudlow to the list, probably because they think we can handle 3 - 1 Republican-to-Democrat disparity over 4 - 1.

Well, at least I didn't have to look at the demonic face of Ben Ginsberg but with Kudlow on the panel I guess there's some kind of safety concern; if two huge mutant worms are in the same place, they naturally fight for dominance. MSNBC, wanting to maintain the appearance of "After Hours" as having some kind of credentials as a news show, felt it prudent not to air the blood-sport of Kudlow and Ginsberg fighting over the right to inseminate members of the "After Hours" panel.

I turned this travesty off after about 5 minutes because I had just watched grab-ass punditry discuss Theresa's gaffe on Tweety Matthews' little show:

ROSEN: But it had nothing to do with being a mother not being important. She legitimately forgot that she didn‘t have a job. And as soon as she found out, she apologized.
MATTHEWS: But why did she say it?
ROSEN: Karen Hughes‘ response came after the apology.
MATTHEWS: OK. Excuse me. Why did she take the shot at the first lady?
ROSEN: What she said was that she thinks her view of the world is broader and she has a broader set of interests. That‘s not a...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I‘m more sophisticated than this little woman.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: It‘s getting worse. You know what they say in politics. When you‘re in a hole, stop digging.

Confirming for us that he's little more than a mindless loudmouth, Tweety badgered Rosen even though the issue was closed with "She legitimately forgot" and "as soon as she found out, she apologized".

OK, I'm stepping into minor Daily Howler territory here - VERY minor. Not exactly a Yankee-hater (my indifference with sports is comprehensive), my only reason for pulling for the Red Sox was because they were underdogs. If their win took a non-issue out of the paws of our punditry, so much the better.

We're getting an ad running here in Colorado Springs (home of Focus on the Family and scads of other Fundie nuts), "The Story of Ashley". Basically, Ashley's mom was killed in the WTC attacks and, according to a relative narrating the ad, Ashley became "emotionally withdrawn". I assume that her compassionate conservative family wrote poor Ashley off at this point since the commercial implies that Ashley was lost until this year. But then she was filled with the Holy Spirit or something because now she's gabbing it up on a Bush campaign commercial. It's not clear exactly what happened but the implication is silly.

According to the ad, this year Ashley's family decided to take her to go see George Bush in Ohio. Now, the way the Bush campaign has vetted attendees at its rallies it's obvious Ashley wasn't going there to accuse Bush of dropping the ball on pre-9/11 intelligence or talk about how pissed off she was that Bush hadn't caught Osama bin Laden. Just like everyone else at a Bush rally, she was there to wave a sign, hoot like a hillbilly and boo everytime Kerry's name was mentioned. How Ashley was able to approach Bush without getting body-blocked by Secret Service agents isn't explained in the ad but the narrarator/relative states that Ashley was able to go up to Bush and say, "I lost my mom in 9/11". Bush responds, oh-so-compassionately, "I know that's hard."

Here's where the ad gets maudlin - and absurd. The ad gives us a shot of Bush hugging the girl, looking serious (as serious he can look without scowling) and the narrator claims, "Our president took Ashley in his arms and just embraced her. And it was at that moment that we saw Ashley's eyes fill up with tears."

Ashley cries. Then Ashley speaks (in the ad): "He's the most powerful man in the world and all he wants to do is make sure I'm safe, that I'm OK."

She's cured! Our Preznit is just like Jeebus, he lays his hands on the girl and she's cured! Gawdamighty, have mercy, hal-lay-lew-yah, he's got the power of healing in his hands!

I know this commercial is supposed to show Bush's "human side" (as if his DUI's and AWOL reports couldn't do that) but I would be willing to bet the house that 9 out of 10 holy-rollers will look at this as Dubya having some kind of direct connection to God. I mean, they're already sure he's got the Red Phone routed into heaven but now they have an honest-to-God miracle to prove it. Contact the Pope! We gotta a saint in the making! Ashley was sick and now she's well!

And now I'm sick....

At the end of Skelator's little show, interviewing a Kerry campaign worker in Iowa, parrots aline from a Bush speech earlier: "President Bush says Senator Kerry is a liberal. How do you respond to that?"

HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO THAT?

The campaign worker went into a list of things that Kerry stands for but avoided the question. It just makes me wonder when "liberal" will actually be back in style. In a few weeks, I think.

Christ, I just heard it repeated on Wolf Blitzer. I mean, I expect infantile behavior from Bush, name-calling is really all he has (since his record BLOWS) but it's pathetic when our media sneers "liberal" with a snicker.

I just don't know where to start... Sinclair getting its ass kicked? Republican dirty tricksters getting theirs? Polls?

On top of all of this, with nearly the entire blogosphere speculating just what the "October Surprise" might be... well, whatever Rove and Bu$hCo might pull it just seems the wind has gone out of those sails. Whatever those nitwits pull, it's not going to be a "surprise" and not even our good-puppy media will ignore that everyone was expecting something - so why bother?

I'm not going to allow my skepticism to spoil all the good news today. I'm gaming the time-stamp so I can use this to lead in on all of today's good news...

In TPM, Josh Marshall has some interesting news about "Sinclair Cracking Under the Pressure":

Friday, October 22, 2004 at 8:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. central time) certain television stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. will air a special one-hour news program, entitled "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media." In order to minimize the interruption of normally scheduled programming in those markets where Sinclair owns and/or programs more than one television station, the news special will be broadcast on only one of those stations.
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Contrary to numerous inaccurate political and press accounts, the Sinclair stations will not be airing the documentary "Stolen Honor" in its entirety. At no time did Sinclair ever publicly announce that it intended to do so. In fact, since the controversy began, Sinclair's website has prominently displayed the following statement: "The program has not been videotaped and the exact format of this unscripted event has not been finalized. Characterizations regarding the content are premature and are based on ill-informed sources."

Since these "ill-informed" sources are Sinclair executives themselves, it's not difficult to understand why Sinclair stock was off 3.54% today. As Atrios points out, "...$100,000,000 in shareholder value wiped away since October 9."

In the meantime, Media Matters has underwritten

(T)he costs of a shareholder action, demanding that Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc., provide equal time to those "with views opposed to the allegations" in the anti-Kerry film Stolen Honor, which Sinclair plans to air between October 21-24, in prime time, on all 62 of its stations reaching up to 25 percent of U.S. TV households.

At 10 a.m. today, a letter from Glickenhaus & Co., a Wall Street firm with clients who hold stock in Sinclair, was delivered to the CEO of Sinclair, David D. Smith, and the company's board of directors, demanding that they immediately "provide those with views opposed to the allegations in the film an equal opportunity to respond." If an answer to Glickenhaus' demand is not received by close of business today, Tuesday October 19, additional remedies, including an injunction in a court of law prior to the first scheduled airing of Stolen Honor October 21, may be sought.

The BOD and executives at Sinclair might want to double-check how well their golden parachutes have been packed.

If the cops in Newark don't have the stones to cite sign stealers, it appears the universe comes back with a vengeance. Up in North Denver some idiot and his wife get theirs:

A Lakewood Republican stealing campaign signs late one night got nabbed when he ran across a low- hanging driveway chain, fell face first onto a pilfered sign and the concrete and knocked himself unconscious.

Randal Wagner, 50, was loaded into an ambulance, treated at Lutheran Medical Center for abrasions and facial cuts and issued a summons.

50 years old? Damn, he's old enough to be someone's grandfather and he's running around like a 12-year old off his ritalin, making his puerile version of a "political statement".

Turns out it wasn't his first bone-headed failure to steal Democrat's signs:

Klammer said that late last Wednesday, shortly after the last presidential debate had ended, his wife heard a noise outside.

Klammer said when he walked outside with his cell phone, he saw a pickup parked at the curb and someone using a box-cutter to try to take the "Dave Thomas" sign he had bolted to his fence, clearly on his property.

Thomas is the Democratic candidate in the 7th District. Klammer said an earlier Thomas sign had been vandalized.

Klammer said he and the stranger tussled over the sign. As Klammer relayed the plate number on the pickup to police, he said the man hopped into the passenger side and the pickup fled west on West 32nd Avenue past Simms Street.

Police said the pickup was registered to Jan and Randal Wagner, but they were not home.

Later that night, the officer heard Jan Wagner's name on the police radio and investigated. It turns out that other officers had discovered a man, identified as Randal Wagner, down in front of an office building at West 42nd and Kipling streets.

Police said Randal Wagner had been stealing a campaign sign that promotes the Jefferson County school district's tax and bond election when he fell and hurt himself.

Police said Jan Wagner was parked across the street and had about two dozen campaign signs in the pickup. They include signs for U.S. Senate candidate Ken Salazar and district attorney candidate Mary Malatesta.

"How'd ya' get those scrapes and cuts, Grampa?"

"Why, by exercising my God-given rights as an American citizen - stealing signs out of people's yards and falling on my face!"

For all of you who think another four years of Bunnypants will be just peachy, primarilly because he wants to make his tax cuts permanent, you may want to read this article in the LA Times Magazine that spells out how well the top 1% have done while the rest of us have been eating shit:

If ordinary workers' annual pay had risen at the same rate as CEO pay since 1990, a report by the Institute for Policy Studies points out, they would be making $75,338 today—instead of the $26,899 they are taking home. Adjusted for inflation, that's only marginally more than what they made in 1980.

...According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 1997 the richest 1% of American families—those who had an annual income of at least $677,900 in '97—saw their incomes more than double. But for families in the middle, income grew by only 10%. For the lowest 20%, it actually fell. That helps explain why the number of Americans living below the poverty line swelled by more than 1 million last year.

You may well answer with the hard-and-fast standard conservative rationale, they deserve that bigger chunk because of ability, i.e. they're so fandamntastic at what they do, they deserve to make the big bucks, the results of their toil justify their obscenely fat paychecks.

Wrong, wrong, wrong:

A study released this year by Rutgers University analyzed more than 1,500 U.S. companies over a 10-year period. It found no correlation between higher executive remuneration and bigger gains for shareholders.

Worse, many companies have seen their earnings and stock prices fall while their executives' pay keeps rising. Occidental Petroleum suffered a 14% decrease in net income in 2002, but CEO Ray Irani's bonus increased to give him a total take-home of more than $24.3 million, twice what he'd hauled in the year before. SBC Communications Inc.'s profit fell 25% last year, and its stock price dipped as well, but Chairman Ed Whitacre still got a fat raise that boosted his take-home pay to $24.8 million. And then there's Michael Eisner, whom Forbes magazine recently declared one of the worst bosses in America in terms of financial performance. Over the last six years, Eisner averaged $121 million in annual compensation, while shareholders were stuck with an average annualized return of minus 5% for the same period.

Basically, the author says, CEO's haven't prospered because they've done well by the stockholders or the health of their companies but because of an "old-boy's club" network, increasingly deferential tax/economic/legal policies, and the continued specious argument that if they do well, we all do well.

Ezra over at Pandagon (where I learned about this article) comments that "This country, I think, would be well served by a bit of class warfare." Hell, it's pretty clear to me that class warfare has been waged fiercly against us by these shitbags for at least 20 years.

Andrea over at Shameless Agitator asked me to help out (which I did) by writing to The Newark Advocate about local cops giving a free ride to vandals destroying Kerry signs. The gist of what she said (the entire story is in the comments for my post here) is:

Today when I arrived at the Kerry office, I learned that police actually caught two teenagers in the act of stealing Kerry signs. The police filed a report but no arrests were made.

I don't think that anything is going to come of this. I don't think the thieves will be charged with anything. The local government is full of Republicans.

Shouldn't every person be held accountable for their actions? Should Republicans get away with doing whatever they want with no fear of punishment? Are Republicans above the law?

They shouldn't be above the law but as we move closer to election day we see more and more how Republicans are not only above the law - and the constitution - but also how they'll use the law to destroy democracy.

Let the good people of Newark know their cops need to apply the law to all parties.

I found this on the Rocky Mountain Progressive Network's site (via Atrios) and it's astonishing that the guy in charge of monitoring Colorado's 'Help America Vote Act' compliance is racist swine. You can read the entire article here but I wanted to touch on some of the most egregious allegations (which, according to the author, result from a LexisNexis search from a "legal journal called Texas Lawyer, 1994").

Shortly after Drew T. Durham joined the Texas attorney general's office in September 1991, he and another assistant AG, Ray Buvia, met for a beer after work.
Buvia says as they chatted, a young black lawyer, also new to the AG's office, walked past them.

Durham, says Buvia, asked, "How do you like our newest Sambo?"

Buvia's experience with Durham -- who in three years with AG Dan Morales' office has risen to criminal justice division chief and the lawyer in charge of the state's death-penalty litigation -- wasn't an isolated incident, according to five other lawyers who have worked with Durham inside and outside the agency. They say Durham, a former president of the Texas District & County Attorneys Association who came to Morales' office after 12 years as a county attorney in West Texas, has a history of racist and sexist comments.

Former Travis County Commissioner Jimmy Snell, a non-lawyer who worked for Durham in the AG's intergovernmental affairs division, said Durham routinely told "nigger jokes." Snell, who is black, said Durham has a widespread reputation in the agency for racist comments.

------

Buvia, who resigned from the AG's office March 31 and now has a solo private practice in Austin, said he also recalls Durham bragging on several occasions, saying, "I told Dan Morales to his face -- 'Where I come from Mexicans work for white men, not the other way around.'" Another former assistant said he has also heard Durham make this comment.

What a tool - and I'm only taking a couple of examples from the article. The Colorado media flipped out over a couple of poor people using bogus voter registrations to make a few bucks but I haven't heard a single thing about this asshole who is supposed to make sure we don't have any disenfranchised voters. If I was a black or hispanic voter in Colorado, I'd be outraged. Hell, as white voter who's sick to death of people of color getting their voting rights crapped on by Republican Brownshirts, I am outraged.

I sent a copy of this to the Colorado Springs Independent and hopefully, they'll break the story.

In my fantasy of an America where our media actually does its job, the AHAB (Actually Has a Brain) News Network announces on November 3rd:

"Since polls have become increasingly inaccurate at reflecting how Americans really feel and since we believe that polls exert undue influence on determing how Americans will decide elections, AHAB News Network will no longer carry poll results as a part of our news reporting."

In that land of Cupcake Trees and Gumdrop Dreams, a news network actually takes responsibility for its mistakes. No basis in reality, I know.

I took a trip back into the past to look at how accurate our polls were in 2000.

On October 27, 2000 we find CNN reporting:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush holds a 49-to-43 percent edge over Democratic rival Al Gore in the latest CNN/Time poll, conducted Wednesday and Thursday.

The poll of 2,060 adult Americans, including 1,076 likely voters, has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points and is thus in essential agreement with a CNN/USA Today/Gallup tracking poll also released Friday. That poll gives Bush a 52 percent-39 percent edge over Gore. More important, both polls show the same snapshot of the current state of the presidential campaign: a solid advantage for Bush.


ABC News and The Washington Post both have daily tracking polls today putting the race at 48 percent for Bush and 45 percent for Gore. The latest Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby tracking poll has the contest at 45 percent for Gore and 43 percent for Bush.

Considering that Gore actually won the popular vote (and that the result was essentially 49% for Gore, 48% for Bush), it seems the polls were way off on this. Considering there are even more extraneous variables in this election (huge numbers of newly registered voters, young voters not contacted by the polls), I wonder why the nooze networks even bother.

We know why they do... and part of it is they're too lazy to investigate and report real news.

How sweet... with Preznit Tinymind behind in the polls, behind in newspaper endorsements and made to look like a Taliban warlord in Ron Suskind's article in yesterday's NYT Sunday Magazine article, the cable nooze channels have decided to lend a helping hand by giving his speech in New Jersy airtime.

If Bush wins November 3, it will be due in no small part to the unflagging and uncritical support that CNN and MSNBC has given our preznit. I hope everyone remembers, no matter what the outcome of this election is, that CNN and MSNBC set their agenda for another four years of a Bush presidency and didn't let go.

READ THIS, MOTHERFUCKER

Ron Suskind's article in the NYT Magazine - I posted my first impression on my Boondoggle blog but this thing just keeps getting BIGGER (Daily Kos turned me onto this and has over 400 comments, which has to be some kind of record) and I sure as shit our lame-ass electronic media picks this up.

RE: Clogging get-out-the-vote phone banks investigation in New Hampshire that I wrote about yesterday:

Reich Minister Asscrack plays hide-the-sausage with the investigation:

The U.S. Justice Department will ask a judge as soon as today to stay depositions that Democrats had scheduled yesterday and today in their civil lawsuit against the GOP in connection with the scheme launched in the 2002 New Hampshire election.

"These depositions, if they took place at this particular time, would interfere with our criminal investigation," said Bryan Sierra, a spokesman for the justice department.

Decrying last minute "interference" by federal officials, Democrats in court filings yesterday identified the alleged co-conspirator as Jim Tobin, director of the 2004 New England regional Bush-Cheney campaign.

Free speech? Fair voting? Prosecuting GOP operatives? Not in Bush's Amurka...

There's nothing more nauseating than a whiny Republican pussy except maybe a FAT whiny Repbulican pussy and RNC Chair Ed Gillespie makes me puke. Having ignored libel and lies from Swift Boat Vets for "Truth" (and not even having the stones to condemn them after SBVT claims were proven false), Gillespie howls like my 2-year old after I've taken a permanent marker out his hands, whiny and pissy that Rock the Vote has DARED to bring up the issue of a military draft. Ed got all legal on them (despite the RNC's feigned aversion to Trial Lawyers) and insisted that Rock the Vote "cease and desist" suggestions of a draft. Boo Fucking Hoo.

For their part, Rock the Vote bitch-slapped Ed's fat ass out of his Plus-sized suit (Daily Kos has the slap) but that's hardly a story; Ed's a pussy and him getting an ass-kicking is pretty much how his pathetic life is lived. As Josh Marshall at TPM points out:

This move, if you think about it, is extraordinary. In a political campaign there are very few forms of political speech -- judged by content -- that should ever be subject to legal proceedings. But to threaten legal action to squelch discussion of a subject that is obviously a very newsworthy and relevant issue -- and one the country could face in the next four years -- is simply astonishing.

And yet, no editorial condemnations. Hardly a mention of it. These are now, apparently, the rules of the road -- expected and calling for no particular commenton.

That's even more astonishing.

Indeed. As I pointed out in my last post, the GOP is not interested in inconvenient details such as the right to vote because such details only lead them to lose. They don't want everyone to vote, just their people to vote. The GOP has become so insular and so out of touch, they've come to believe, to their core, that referendum only applies when decided by Republicans. Anything else, to them, is "fringe", "out of the mainstream" - liberal.

The same goes for free discourse; unless speech states their beliefs or supports their candidate, they're willing to go as far as bring the law to bear on dissenters (even if it violates consitutional rights). As far as Ed is concerned, because Bush said there would not be a draft (and he quotes Bush in the final debate), that's that, end of discussion.

But as I pointed out in my Boondoggle blog, Bush has lied to the country countless times and there's no reason to suddenly forgive his previous lies and satisfy ourselves that he's telling the truth on this one. I mean, this is a guy who couldn't get "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" right and I have to believe he couldn't get it right because he doesn't know what it means. Bush firmly believes that if it comes out of his mouth, that's the way it is, no matter how far removed from reality his statements might be. Anyone who questions him is suspect (or shitcanned) and not on board with his peculiar view of the world.

To quote Bunnypants, "Fool me once... shame on... shame on you... If fooled, you can't get fooled again." Take him at his word in the last debate if you want but I won't get fooled again. And apparently, neither will Rock the Vote.

First of all, I need to qualify this by saying that I don't believe all Republicans are anti-democratic. Indeed, I think at least 70% of Americans who call themselves Republican are good people, principled, and would be appalled if they pulled their heads out of the sand and acknowledged what the other 30% were doing. With that said...

Republicans know they can't win (in the aggragate) by playing fair. They have to cheat, lie, and resort to dirty tricks. Those dirty tricks, amounting to everything from clogging get-out-the-vote phone banks to using voter registration operatives to destroy Democratic registrations are blatant attempts by Republicans to sabotage the very system that Republicans claim Bush has instituted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Considering that Republicans claimed the patriotic high-road over the past 3 years it begs the question of just how patriotic is it to undermine the very principles our country was founded upon?

As long as I can remember, Republicans have opposed initiatives to make voting easier, more comprehensive and more democratic. Problem is, ever since this little experiment called "democracy" started, the ruling classes realized that "the little guy" was given a voice in how things would be run and that just would not do. From restricting the vote to land-owning white men to giving every citizen a vote, they've considered this experiment a failure. The single mother with children to support, feed, and care for may find it difficult to get out on Election Day and vote. Likewise, the low-wage worker who can't afford a car and unable to take time off from his job to get to the polls might not vote. These types of voters aren't exactly the base of the party of Big Business.

It's not just dirty tricks that the Republicans have drawn upon to suppress the vote. In several states, Republicans have abused their power to prevent citizens from voting. In Wisconsin, the Republican commissioner in charge of printing ballots has determined he will restrict printed ballots in Milwaukee, despite projected record voter turnout, fewer ballots than 2000 or 2002 in polling places serving urban, mainly Democratic voters. Ohio's secretary of state, also a Republican, tried to invalidate hundreds of thousands of new, mostly Democratic registrations. Salon has an excellent article on how Florida is gearing up to perpetrate an even bigger fiasco than the 2000 election.

I was reading Eric Alterman in Slate and he's echoing my bud Scott's prediction that this election is going to make Florida 2000 look like a 12-year old's first shoplifting excursion. Bush won't go down without having his thugs rip off and taint every vote they can. As Alterman says:

If Bush somehow wins, it will require an even bigger steal than four years ago. Nobody who voted for Gore is voting for Bush. The Democrats have registered millions of new voters who don’t show up in the polls. Idiots who share Ralph Nader’s belief that there is not a “dime’s worth of difference” between the two candidates are far fewer than last time around. And lots more people have cell phones and can’t be reached by pollsters. I’m not saying Bush can’t win; I’m just saying I don’t think he can win honestly.

Of course he can't win honestly and we're already seeing how Rove & Company are wiping their ass with the Constitution in order to intimidate voters by making them believe that their vote just doesn't count. What's going on in Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Wisconsin, and elsewhere is nothing more or less than Republicans wielding a weapon of intimidation, "We can do this and get away with it, so fuck you!"

I firmly believe that if Kerry wins in November, some of the wind will be taken out of Republican sails. As Paul Krugman said in today's NYT column about vote suppresion,

The important point to realize is that these abuses aren't aberrations. They're the inevitable result of a Republican Party culture in which dirty tricks that distort the vote are rewarded, not punished. It's a culture that will persist until voters - whose will still does count, if expressed strongly enough - hold that party accountable.

I have said time and again that this election is the most important election of our generation, if not the most important election in this country's history and I don't think that is indulging hyperbole. Iraq, the Deficit, the Patriot Act, the Supreme Court, jobs, taxes, healthcare, gun control, education... so many issues are on the line but no more important than our system of democracy and how the 30% of the Republican Party are about to undermine that.

Since I don't have the ambition to "Live Blog" a debate (unlike Wonkette or Catch.com) I figured I'd live blog Jon Stewart on Crossfire.

2:36 - He's going after Begala and Carlson, says they're bad for the country. Accuses them of partisan hackery, intellectual dishonesty, and generally lacking spine.

2:37 - Carlson tries to fight back. Accuses Jon of kissing Kerry's ass. Jon responds that it's not his job to ask tough questions, he's paid to be funny.

2:39 - Jon's not letting up, says he refuses to be funny on Crossfire: "I'm not going to be your monkey." Carlson looks crestfallen, he was hoping Jon would entertain him. Fuck you, Tucker, Jon isn't going to bring any light into the dark hell that has replaced your soul.

2:41 - Jon accuses Crossfire of being "theatre" and both Paul and Tucker take umbrage. They're oblivious to the fact that their show, amongst the other talking head specatacles, are the reason our media sucks so bad and that the Daily Show is a satirical reaction to that. For whatever reason, Paul and Tucker just aren't smart enough to realize that news is supposed to mean "information" and not "opinion".

2:45 - Commercial break... wondering if Stewart will still be there when they return.

2:51 - 6 FUCKING MINUTES OF COMMERCIALS?!?! Can CNN be any shittier?!?

2:52 - Carlson asks if Stewart will be as hard on Kerry as he's been with Bush if Kerry wins. Stewart says it will be tougher only if a Kerry administration will be less absurd than the Bush administration has been. Carlson can't argue against that.

2:53 - Another commercial. Wolf Blitzer needs 50 minutes worth of commercials to make his little show almost watchable.

2:55 - Two questions from the audience, one which he doesn't answer (he was unaware of the "bulge"), answers that politicans won't give a "straight answer" (it has nothing to do with the Mary Cheney non-controversy) because "some shows don't hold politician's feet to the fire".

Good for Jon. The Crossfire boys thought he was going to perform for their Dog-and-Pony show and he not only refused, he went on and spoke his mind, called them the party hacks they are. Asked them if they'd come to work for his show, Carlson asks, "How does it pay?" and Stewart replies, "Not nearly as much as this show but you get to sleep at night." I'm not the only person in the universe thinking this.

--- UPDATE ---

I was (heh) the only blogger doing "Live Blogging" on this -- TA DAH!!! Not that it's some kind of accomplishment and just to spell out the irony of this, it was my own "Daily Show"-like take on blogging. Anyway, Digby was obviously watching the same show I saw.

--- UPDATE REDUX ---

This story is getting some play around the internet; Salon has their review up and I'm beginning to wonder if Stewart's "performance" on Crossfire wasn't one of the best television moments of the year:

From the moment Stewart sat down he made no secret of how repugnant he found the show. In fact, he said to Carlson and co-host Paul Begala that he had been so hard on the show he felt it was his duty to come on and say to their faces what he has said to friends and in interviews. What he said was that their show was "hurting America," and he was being only slightly hyperbolic. Stewart told them that when America needed journalists to be journalists they had instead chosen to present theater.

Carlson, trying to affect an air of dry amusement that a comedian would presume to lecture him, important pundit that he is, but looking as if his bow-tie were about to start spinning, could barely contain his outrage. In an absolutely mind-boggling moment, Carlson tried to counter Stewart's criticism by pointing out that during John Kerry's recent appearance on "The Daily Show," Stewart asked the candidate softball questions. "If you want to measure yourself against a comedy show," Stewart said, "be my guest."
------
I've heard people talk about "The Daily Show" as an oasis of sanity, a public service. I couldn't agree more. Stewart's appearance on "Crossfire" was another public service. He went on and acted as if the show's purpose really was to confront tough issues, instead of being the political equivalent of pro wrestling. Given a chance to say absolutely what he thought, Stewart took it. He accomplished what almost never happens on television anymore: He made the dots come alive.

It's time to hold the electronic media accountable for their venal obsession with non-issues and obviously picking the candidate that suits their petty agenda (i.e. "journalists" on CNN, MSNBC, et al stand to benefit from Bush tax cuts along with their corporate bosses, the media companies benefit from the spineless, unprincipled selling of our media to the highest bidder by a hack like Michael Powell) and Jon Stewart did us all a favor by not playing nice with the maggots.

It's not difficult to figure out why Left Blogosphere (myself included) is fit to be tied over Sinclair Broadcasting showing its crimson conservative baboon ass (SIGN THE PETITION to stop Sinclair!). Sinclair using so-called public airwaves to run what is essentially a dishonest, libelous political ad. That's big goddamn deal, yes, but below the radar is how the nooze channels are giving Bush (specifically, coverage of his speeches) more time; not just more time but prominence - at the top of the hour, Bush's speech ALWAYS comes first, Kerry's speech follows. ALWAYS.

OK, I'll admit that my perceptions may be leading me to say this - at least I thought so the other day while watching MSNBC. To test my hypothesis, I watched MSNBC and CNN yesterday and today and tallied coverage of Bush speeches vs. coverage of Kerry speeches and BOTH channels gave Bush a 3:2 edge on coverage. And yes, with one exception in two days, coverage of a Bush speech led, followed by the Kerry speech. If someone reading this wants to verify my findings, I'd appreciate it because I doubt my little blog says a whole lot. Having this verified on sites like Atrios, Media Matters, Daily Kos, etc., would give my hypothesis some creedence and might make it NEWS.

Any comments and verification would be appreciated. Don't make it a partisan effort, do it in the interest of TRUTH. Because, as liberals, the TRUTH is all we have.

I was probably one of maybe a dozen blogs, right and left, out of MILIIONS that didn't mention anything about Kerry's comment about Mary Cheney in the debate. I felt it was silly (and I still do) that Bushies and the media made something out of nothing. Two days after the debate, Barbie & Barbie (Lisa & Allison) on MSNBC are still tittering about it, MSNBC has a poll asking us if we thought the comment was appropriate. Less than three weeks from the most important election of our generation and the media can't help sticking its hand down its pants and rubbing at the notion Kerry talked about Cheney's lesbian daughter. They're knee-deep in their own drooling.

The real story here is that Kerry/Edwards swept the debates, 4 - 0, that Bush/Cheney failed to convince America the past 45 months justify giving them another shot at running the country. Instead of making the obsevation that, gosh, Bunnypants and Go Fuck Yourself pulled a goose-egg from the debates and maybe we should conclude something from that. Knowing how pathetic and sensationalistic our media is, the Bush camp picked up the Mary Cheney comment and ran it for 30 or 40 yards but well short of a touchdown. As today's LA Times observed, "The shrillness of the Bush camp's attacks on Kerry betrays an unbecoming desperation, and adds to the sense that the challenger came out the convincing winner."

"Real issues" aside (since we well know how the media avoids "real issues" as readilly as it does integrity and objectivity), the absurdity that Republicans are suddenly in high dudgeon over an "inappropriate" remark over a lesbian borders on insanity. The Rude Pundit weighs in on how these idiots compared gays to "winos" on "Fox & Friends" and Atrios has an email from Colorado's own hate-monger filled with the rhetoric we're accustomed to from gay-bashing republicans.

"Real issues" and the pot calling the kettle black - puh-leeze.

I hate these posts because I'm WHINING.

My little Freeway Blogging excursion led to a nasty cold and I've spent most of the day laying on the couch, barely awake or coherent. LOts of tea, lots of speedy sinus meds, zero motivation to get on here and weigh in on anything.

Click here to SIGN THE PETITION they only need a little over 40,000 names by tomorrow!!!

The usual bag-o-twits on MSNBC and Pat Buchanan (R-Blowhard) pontificates on Kerry's remarks regarding Mary Cheney, "Listening to Joe (Scarborough), Ben (Ginsberg), and what I saw, if I was John Kerry, I'd....". Don't really need to continue because if John Kerry begins taking campaign advice from three wingnut knuckledraggers, he's lost my vote.

Of the three debates, this was by far the least compelling; hell, it was a snooze. I'm giving Kerry the sweep based on the "smirk factor". No yelling, no angry leap at the moderator but Bush's lack of real substance or obvious inability to muster original thought made him look like the Arizona Cardinals to Kerry's Broncos. And the smirk... it's just too bad Kerry didn't walk over to him and slap it off his face.

Bush sucked his worst with his "Jobs Plan" i.e. unemployed workers can just go to school and learn a new trade. Oh kayyyyyyyyyy, and who pays the rent while doing a two-to-four year bid seeking a degree in "Homeland Security"? Wait a minute, it's all coming clear to me: Bush won't give us a proper draft but a draft-by-desperation. Unemployed? Need money for school? We have a place for you in today's Army!

It's not like Kerry was all that strong but he was confident and he had substance, showed he can think on his feet. Like Yglesias said, the rounds Kerry took were the important rounds, the ones that matter to most Americans, especially those feeling the cold, dull pain of the past 45 months.

Jesus Rainbow Lizard in platform shoes, Hall & Oates are on... WTF?!? Well, since Ron Silver is not on the panel tonight, I suppose MSNBC had to meet its "has-been quota". I wish they'd shut up so Joe Scarborough can continue embarassing himself obsessing about lesbians.

A windy and cold Rush-hour for working Freeway Free Speech Day: Driving America to Think here in Colorado. Myself, Stephanie, and Lorenzo were out hanging shit for Colorado drivers to look upon and ponder. Marni, lead singer for Boondoggle hung some but didn't get me the pics. Anyway, it was a good way to get out and get our adrenaline pumping for the debate.

I wasn't out much so there's no way for me to tell if anyone else was hanging signs but I sure hope so. In this shitty little Republican town, enlightenment is at a premium.

Drive-By Blog At the Uintah Train Overpass

Wind, Not Republicans, Did a Number on Stephanie's "Bomb Texas, They Have Oil" Banner On the Pedestrian Bridge Over I-25

Me, Freeway Blogging at the Bijou/I-25 On-ramp

Watching Lisa BarbieDoll and... uh, the other Barbie Doll on MSNBC doing their bubbleheaded best to look stunning while attempting to maintain a modicum of journalistic legitimacy (heh), not holding my breath about the shitstorm-that-isn't-but-should-be regarding voter registration fraud and... oh, they mention it... or rather, they run a story on a voter registration scandle here in Colorado dealing with ACORN workers but nothing about Nevada, Oregon, Wisconsin, et cetera, doo dah.

As I said yesterday, MSNBC is invested in insulting our intelligence. Huge stories all over the country, all dealing with Republicans (and some implicating the Republican National Committee and they go with the ONE story not dealing with Republican operatives. Thanks MSNBC, for verifying my dismal appraisal of your integrity...

-- Sideline --

I did a search on ACORN (I know who they are, just wanted a little more background for this) and found this on the "United Business Media" website (obviously UBM isn't putting much money into web development) where they report,

The Employment Policies Institute has updated and re-released its report, "The Real ACORN: Anti-Employee, Anti-Union, Big Business"...

*Double take* - how is it possible to be "Anti-Employee" and "Anti-Union"? Or "Anti-Union" and "Anti-Big Business"? I'm no fan of ACORN (I object how they recruit students for shit wages) but I doubt their nihilists, which this nonsense implies.

Thus, we can assume that George Orwell is alive and well and writing editorial content for MSNBC as well as The Employment Policies Institute.

Took a walk over to Uggabugga, seems the Money Message boards on Yahoo are flagging Sinclair's (mis)fortunes:

Get out of this stock, fast

You've undoubtedly heard that they are forcing all their stations to air an anti-Kerry documentary just before the election. Well, I monitor the liberal blogs and sites and I gotta tell you there is a bloody fury brewing. Don't assume that liberals are pussies. At this point they are so freaking mad and energized that they'll do whatever it takes to bring this company down. Stay away. You don't want to see your capital incinerated because this family business wants to use the business to push a political agenda. Put your money somewhere else until the storm blows over. Hey, maybe this stock will be an excellent buy at $2 in a couple weeks.

Atrios has been posting graphs of this dog going to the pound...

The AP picks up the story of destroyed voter registration forms in Oregon (where, in the post I made last night, the same company involved high-tailed it to after fucking around in Nevada):

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and Attorney General Hardy Myers plan to investigate allegations that a paid canvasser might have destroyed voter registration forms.

"There have been allegations made that someone threw out some voter registration forms that had been submitted to them," Bradbury told The Associated Press late Tuesday. "This is a violation of the law and I will meet with the attorney general in the morning to talk about what we can do to pursue this, and to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Bradbury learned of the conduct from KGW-TV, which interviewed Mike Johnson, 20, a canvasser who said he was instructed to only accept Republican registration forms. He told the TV reporter that he "might" destroy forms turned in by Democrats.

What's really disturbing about this is that when you try and Google this story, there's NO NEWS. I don't know about you but I grew up learning that what made America great was the fact that our citizens made the decisions in this country (ultimately, please no "Federalist Fucking Republic" arguments here, I'm just making a generalization), that we weren't some backwater dictatorship under the thumb of some tin-pot meglomaniac with a bad moustache. The fact that criminals are crippling that promise of a free election should be big news; the fact that it's barely worth a mention is not just disturbing, it's an indictment of how profoundly sick our "news" media really is.

The more I search (and using my own resources, screw Google), the worse it gets; Bob Johnson at Daily Kos spells it out:

Searching for information on the voter registration fraud stories breaking tonight in Nevada and Oregon, I kept coming across the same name: Nathan Sproul of Sproul & Associates in Phoenix, Arizona.
Nathan Sproul is the former head of the Arizona Republican Party and of the Arizona Christian Coalition (ah, the irony... a Christian).

Sproul is connected with the Republican National Committee-funded voter registration organization, Voter Outreach, Inc., a group that used paid registrars to register voters in a number of states including Nevada, Oregon, Arizona and perhaps more, including Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maine and Missouri. (Others states pending, particularly swing states.) Sproul's organization also recruited registrars by fraudulently telling recruits that they would be working for America Votes, a legitimate nonpartisan GOTV operation!

As soon as "PBS Kids" goes off and I set my two little ones up with crayons and chocolate milk, I'm hitting the nooze channels to see if they're on it; I'm not holding my breath.

Light posting while I go put up a couple of signs out along I-25 for Freeway Free Speech Day - if you have some spare cardboard, some paint, maybe a bedsheet, I suggest you do so as well. Remind drivers how many lives per gallon their SUV gets, what cost it comes at, and who made this sick fucking equation a matter for this election.

Freeway Blogger gives you a nice how-to in case your creatively impaired (such as myself) and then you can email them a picture of your masterpiece.

Go freeway blog!!!

According to KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, some fly-by-night voter registration company funded by the Republican National Committee is tossing Democrat registrations and keeping Republican registrations (via Buzzflash):

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.
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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.
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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.

If this is the "October Surprise" Rove is talking about, he should know the surprise will be arrests and indictments by a Justice Department not screwed by John Ashcroft.

George at Old Fashioned Patriot (check the links at the right... so to speak) and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo who's been linked for awhile and has driven some traffic to me....

Tweety's little show is being beamed live from Tempe, AZ just as it was done last week from Washington University. And like last week, the ratio of Kerry signs to Bush signs is easily 20 - 1. And like last week, the MSNBC drones had to go out into the audience to find Bush supporters sober enough to talk on national television.

Despite the field of Kerry signs sparsely spotted by the infrequent Bush sign blemish here and there, Tweety and Co has the front line packed 50/50. We, the viewing public, need a little spice to go along with the blatant insult to our intelligence. I mean, for Christ's sake, everytime they go to commercial break the whole fucking crowd is chanting "Kerry, Kerry, Kerry...".

It all comes out in the wash. Ergo, the prime examples of collegiate Bush supporters look like the kind of student that Bush was when he was pissing away daddy's hardly-earned money at Yale. Maybe that's why they support him - they identify with a fellow academic underachiever. Lacking the intellect or vision to understand what's best for the country, they pull for the party animal. Dumbfuck frat boys for Bush; the fact that it doesn't speak VOLUMES to our worthless electronic media says plenty about how worthless that media really is.

With the blatant dishonesty that the Bush administration has indulged in for the last three-plus years (and especially the last three weeks) it's obvious that Bu$hCo has "stupidity appeal". Since, by definition, half the population has below average intelligence, Bush is working with a large base. How do you tell a Bush voter? You can smell peanuts on their breath.

Got this on Counterspin
Take the poll on Sinclair's Minneapolis affiliate site " Do you think Sinclair Broadcast Group should run the documentary?"

Also, I got some national advertisers to contact:

Kimberly-Clark
Johnson & Johnson
Unilever
SC Johnson
Colgate-Palmolive

Go to it...

The last half hour of Skelator's pathetic little show:

Matthew Dowd babbles about NOTHING; confronted with Bush's falling approval ratings and getting trounced on polls regarding domestic issues, Dowd replies with a kind of foot shuffling, as if he KNOWS Rove has planned in order to usurp democracy.

A little piece about vandalism against Kerry and Bush offices. Thanks, Skelator, where were you in July when this story started? Where was your hideous face all summer when Kerry supporters were kicked, beat, and hog-tied at Bush rallies?

And I see Larry "If I Had a Dick I'd Put It In You, Laura" King will be having a love-fest with Laura Bush tonight. I know what I won't be watching.

Crossfire time and one wonders what Tucker Carlson tells his children every night. Such lack of intellectual integrity is sad, really sad. You know Tucker really DOES support stem-cell research but the shill he is, he can't help but highlight his own essential dishonesty.

And there's NO FUCKING WAY I'm tuning into Fuck-my-face Wolf....

....so to speak. Besides, I abhor loud noises (guitars excepted).

As soon as I can get a list of national advertisers for Sinclair stations, I'm going to post it here so everyone can email/call to tell them that as long as they support the Sinclair Broadcasting group (and it's intention to air an anti-Kerry program), those companies will lose our business.

Since we're not in a local market for Sinclair, there's not a lot we can do about local advertisers (but in you have family/friends living in a Sinclair city you can clue them in about calling local advertisers and NICELY letting them know that they will be losing business unless they cut their ties with a Sinclair station); however, we can contact the Big Boys throwing their money into the Sinclair toilet and let them know that this thing is only going to get uglier. Media Matters also tells you how to contact Sinclair itself and urge them not to broadcast the anti-Kerry attack film "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" between now and the Nov. 2 presidential election.

If you think calls and pressure don't work, think again. Daily Kos is saying that advertisers are already pulling ads from stations and Josh Marshall is also reporting results from his readers. Atrios and others throughout Left Blogosphere are reporting a distinct downturn in Sincair's stock performance (as well as Sinclair's defense contracts and its vested interest in a Bush win in November, via Oliver Willis).

Too much is riding on this brothers and sisters, too much for us to sit back and let the brownshirts steal our country AGAIN.

CNN and MSNBC have been carrying excepts of the Codpiece's campaign speech (interestingly enough, no footage of a Kerry speech) reacting to the cover story in yesterday's New York Times Magazine in which Kerry said he "wants to get back to a time when terrorism is just a "nuisance." Bunnypants latched onto that like a terrier on a slipper. Fortunately, the Kerry camp has shot back, reminding us that Bush called the War on Terrorism "unwinnable".

None of the talking air-heads are taking note of the fact that in these clips Bush is again YELLING AND OUT OF CONTROL. Good God, give the poor man a drink, he's about to bust a vein in his head. Uh.... then again, let the vein burst.

Let em' play the clips, Christ, any sane American watching that fool screaming uncontrollably (ten times worse than Howard Dean and Dean only did it ONCE) and acting like Laura's withheld his ritalin, has got to think "Do I want this nutjob running my country?".

Then again, enough people didn't ask if they wanted a complete moron running their country back in 2000, at least not enough to seriously challenge thugs stealing an election.

Coming down to the wire and it's time for desperate people to indulge in name-calling. I know the Preznit twice said that the National Journal called Senator Kerry the most LIBERAL member of the senate during the last debate and at least two of his latest ads refer to Kerry as LIBERAL. OOOOOOoooooh, he's a LIBERAL, ohmygod, let's lynch him... LIBERAL bad, George Bush good.

With this appeal to the neanderthal mindset (and its collective faulty memory), I think it's time to remind Americans of all the terrible things that LIBERALS have done:

LIBERALS brought us Civil Rights in this country, ending legal segregation, legislating voting rights to millions of Americans who, because of their skin color, were frequently and institutionally denied their right to vote in parts of this country that were controlled by, um, non-LIBERALS.

LIBERALS exposed the sham of "separate but equal" and destroyed that sham so that American children, no matter their skin color, could attend any school they chose to attend.

LIBERALS brought us Social Security to give Americans a safety net after they've retired or become disabled and unable to work.

LIBERALS gave half of Americans (women) the right to vote and prevented states from legislating choices those Americans may make regarding their own bodies.

LIBERALS created Medicaid so that elderly and impoverished Americans could have health care.

LIBERALS prevented businesses from exploiting child labor.

LIBERALS pulled this country out of the Great Depression by making those Americans who were fortunate enough to not be crippled by the depression to pay their fair share and then using that tax revenue to put millions of Americans to work.

LIBERALS insured education for all children, created programs for poor children to get a leg up on that education (with pre-school programs, making sure they eat a good breakfast - Head Start) and gave poor children a place to go after school so that the working poor would not have to worry about those children.

LIBERALS created a minimum wage and mandatory overtime wages so that workers would not be exploited by unscrupulous employers.

LIBERALS made guaranteed government student loans and grants available to poor families so that they too could attend college.

This is just a brief list; I could go on all day about the mischief LIBERALS are guilty of perpetrating to make this country just and commensurate to the ideals it was founded upon. LIBERALS continue to fight to insure that our air and water is clean, that our National Parks are protected, that our food is not poisoned, that our drugs do what they say they do, to hold corporations accountable for financial misdealings and lost jobs, etc., etc.

Ask yourself if you support most of these things that LIBERALS have done and if you can say "yes", then you must call yourself a LIBERAL, the sort of person who George W. Bush holds in contempt. Likewise, if you refuse to call yourself a LIBERAL then you must ask yourself what it is you do support.

I've heard it said many times that most Americans are LIBERAL and I believe that. I'm confident that if the government ended the programs and progress listed above, most Americans would react quickly and with anger. Yet, non-LIBERALS have played a game of fear in order to taint the label of LIBERAL with misrepresentations so that they can push our country back to a time when LIBERAL was pejorative - the 19th century.

It's time to take LIBERAL back as a label that all proud, patriotic, progress-minded and right-thinking Americans are willing to wear. If fear is the emotion that non-LIBERALS play on, then maybe that's the emotion LIBERALS need to appeal to as a means of taking back the power of the word. So, if you enjoy the guarantees of Social Security, a fair wage, education for all Americans, freedom and equality for all Americans, if you like you air clean and breathable, if you like your water free from poison, if you are proud of the progress that America made in the last century... you are a LIBERAL and you must vote for a LIBERAL. Anything less is un-American.

The score is certainly two-zip and there's no reason to believe it will be anything but a sweep.

Since the Rude Pundit has done an excellent job of cornering the market on what Kerry needs to say in the debates, I'm not going to rip-off his gig. But I will say what Kerry needs to do including some general tactical moves our boy needs to break out.

First off, Kerry needs to take off his jacket and say, "SEE?!? I'm not wired for sound, George! Whatcha' got under your coat?!?" Preznit Codpiece won't take off his jacket, if there's a debate he needs to be managed on, it's the Domestic debate (even his handlers thought the first debate - the Foreign Policy debate - was to be his slam-dunk, his hit-the-ground-running). Oh, Bunnypants will manage to get Saddam in a few times (he HAS to, it's really his only card) but he'll need his man behind the curtain to pad his lies and he'll need to do that on shortwave.

Hammer on the poverty numbers, negative job numbers, almost 50 million Americans without healthcare, hammer it, hammer it, HAMMER IT. Ask Bush, "What the FUCK was going through that empty skull of yours when you were reading "My Pet Goat" for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES after you heard the country was under attack?!?" and let the country know that John Kerry refuses to look like a complete moron when airliners are slamming into buildings. Ask George how many successful prosecutions Asscrack has had with the Patriot Act.

Bring up how this administration not only allowed an attrocity like Abu Ghraib to happen but the fact that none of the people in charge have been held accountable, much less indicted. How many sentences handed down relative to the number of abused/murdered prisoners, hmmmmm? How noble does this country look in the eyes of the rest of the world as a result of that shit?

Don't just pay lip service to the environment (as happened last night) but talk about how corporations have been given the nod to dump more arsenic and mercury into the water, pump more sulfur dioxide and other shit into the air, talk about the fact that Exxon has not paid A PENNY to clean up Valdez Alaska, talk about how Bush has opened up virgin forests to roads.

Stay cool (good job, so far) but stand firm. Let that little deserter know you're an honest-to-god hero and he's a cokehead slacker, all you need to do is give him a look like, "You worthless little shitbag mama's boy, I'm gonna' walk right over there and knock that smirk back to Crawford." Just let the little maggot twist in his own shit.

The third debate is where Kerry cleans up the floor with a retard. Get ready for Rove to respond with a bomb on a black church.

-- Debate update --

Bush having a complete meltdown, yelling for two-thirds of the debate and looking like he'd head-butt Charles Gibson... Oliver Willis saw it too, and he provides the link to show what I was saying.

As I said in my post, I was following the debate on MSNBC and specifically Keith Olbermann's blow-by-blow that, directly after the debate, called the debate a "draw". I thought that was chickenshit because during the Olbermann had Kerry up 19 - 2 but then did some kind of wacky equivocation that brought it back to a "statistical dead heat" (15 - 12, an astounding turn around and, again, chickenshit). Today, Blah3 tells me that Olbermann calls it for Kerry and I see that, in fact, Olbermann adjusts the score to call Kerry the winner 16 - 6 over the "timber company" lie. Still chickenshit but LESS chickenshit.