Friday, November 05, 2004
From Aberration to Era (?)
We’re still recovering, from the notion that Michael Moore didn’t make the difference, that the non-empathic frat boy was seen as a “leader”, that all the policy failures didn’t matter, that dishonesty was ignored. I’ve long said that most appalling for me was that the lies were so ‘out there’, so documented, and yet a majority didn’t care. What does that say about the country’s mental health? Anyway…
The consensus- which too often is a summary of Right-leaning media- is that it was a comprehensive victory for Bush, that ‘Bush received more votes than anyone in U.S. history (guess who’s received the second most- Kerry!- the population and the percentage were higher), the U.S. is ”moving steadily and solidly to the right.” Yet, Kerry won 49%. Bush won New Mexico, Iowa, Nevada(!) and Ohio by narrow margins. It’s no time to fold the tent. Paul Krugman, about to begin a long vacation, urges “Democrats” to show backbone:
Democrats shouldn't cave in to Mr. Bush when he tries to appoint highly partisan judges - even when the effort to block a bad appointment fails, it will show supporters that the party stands for something. They should gear up for a bid to retake the Senate or at least make a major dent in the Republican lead. They should keep the pressure on Mr. Bush when he makes terrible policy decisions, which he will.
It's all right to take a few weeks to think it over. (Heads up to readers: I'll be starting a long-planned break next week, to work on a economics textbook. I'll be back in January.) But Democrats mustn't give up the fight. What's at stake isn't just the fate of their party, but the fate of America as we know it. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05krugman.html?hp
Bush Press conference note: ”Now that I've got the will of the people at my back, I'm going to start enforcing the one-question rule.”
Foreign Reaction: They’re struggling. The not-exactly left-wing Daily Mirror observed “How can 59,054,087 be so dumb!”
2nd Term: Moderation or Radical Right Keeping in mind that the economy http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26581-2004Nov4?language=printer , Iraq and more are in sorry shape, bad news will be out there. The question is whether opposition will scream enough for the sluggish Media to note it, and whether the Faithful will care, or whether “faith” will be enough.
Those that still can’t quite believe that the Bush regime has governed from the Right are again assuming that they will moderate themselves in the second term. Juan Williams, the rarely acute NPR commentator, epitomized this hopefulness in his commentaries. Pepe Escobar, much more conflict-oriented, smells radical right and “blowback.”
The United States may have gone to the polls as a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation. Today it's still a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation, but now with a clear mandate for the state really to rock the geopolitical boat. The "most important election of a lifetime" has sent a clear message to the whole world: the face of America in the next four years - barring a Richard Nixon-style impeachment - will be of unilateralism, the "war on terror" possibly progressively escalating into a clash of civilizations. And pay attention to the "axis of evil" hit list - the official and the bootleg. Bush II will attack what it defines as "state terrorism" - Iran, Syria - instead of the global jihadi network. It will continue to rely on Pakistan to "decapitate" the odd "high-value al-Qaeda". It won't engage in diplomacy to address the political causes of terrorism. It won't engage in a cultural and ideological effort to try to counteract the global jihad - especially now that Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri have changed the rules of the asymmetrical game from a religious clash to a political struggle against imperialism. Total concentration of right-wing power - legitimized by the popular vote: this is the new neo-conservative dream turned reality. So the road ahead is to flatten the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah in Iraq, bomb Iran because of its supposed nuclear aspirations, depose President Hafez Assad in Syria, crush the Palestinian resistance, and remodel the Middle East by "precision strike" democracy. There will be serious blowback. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FK04Aa02.html
But, they sound serious about social security.
President Bush said on Thursday he planned to start work immediately on reforming America's ailing Social Security retirement system and predicted a long slog ahead.
"We will start on Social Security now. We will start bringing together those in Congress who agree with my assessment that we need to work together," he said in his first news conference after the bitterly contested presidential election.
Bush said reforming Social Security would be a priority during his second term and he predicted it would be very tough and costly.http://reuters.myway.com/article/20041104/2004-11-04T171703Z_01_N041922_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-BUSH-SOCIAL-SECURITY-DC.html
And this bears watching:
"As it stands today [Democrats] can block [a nominee]," said C. Boyden Gray, former legal counsel to President George H.W. Bush. But I also believe that the president and majority leader may well decide to change the rules given the elections ... The president has a very strong political support, potential support, for asking for and getting this change." http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137648,00.html
Winning an election means you can change the senate rules?…like changing the rules re filibustering? …as in no longer needing 60 votes to halt such when opposing radical right judges?
And will we finally learn more about what was delayed by the election-
the CIA report Porter Goss successfully hid, the one that "names names”; the Valerie Plame indictments; the Senate Intelligence Committee's second report, the one about ‘political responsibility’ for prewar intelligence failures… Or, is our secret government…
David Cole has a smart essay on ‘Uncle Sam’ is Watching You’
So the first problem with the administration's claim that there have been no abuses under the Patriot Act is that it is simply false. There have been plenty of abuses.
The second problem is more insidious. Many of the Patriot Act's most controversial provisions involve investigative powers that are by definition secret, making it literally impossible for abuses to be uncovered. For example, the act expanded the authority to conduct wiretaps and searches under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without having to show probable cause of criminal activity. We know from a government report that the number of FISA searches has dramatically increased since the Patriot Act was passed, and for the first time now exceeds the number of conventional wiretaps authorized in criminal cases. Yet that's all we know, because everything else about FISA searches and wiretaps is secret. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17568
Exit Polls
How off were they? The general tenor of the discussion has been to merely shrug off or ponder their inaccuracies, either ‘Well so much for the trustworthiness of exit polls.’ or,
In some cases, the report said, survey takers could not get close enough to the polls to collect adequate samples of voters opinion. They were often stopped by legal barriers devised to keep people electioneering - not necessarily bona fide poll canvassers - away from voters.
The report also theorized that the poll results more frequently overstated support for Mr. Kerry than for President Bush because the Democratic nominee's supporters were more open to pollsters. Whatever the case, according to the report, the surveys had the biggest partisan skew since at least 1988, the earliest election the report tracked. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/politics/campaign/05poll.html?pagewanted=print&position
But, it seemed like the ‘problem’ was principally in Ohio and Florida. In fact, Kerry was found by exit polls to have a narrow lead with both women and men as well as with independents. What does this mean? Some remain suspicious that the expected multi-pronged efforts to cheat in this election did happen, but that the size of the Bush win meant those efforts probably weren’t consequential. Others are prone to cite Greg Palast’s report that the theft/fraud was substantial, that Kerry was the probable winner.
I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.
Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.
So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.
Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]
Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm sorry to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and new. http://www.tompaine.com/print/kerry_won_.php
But, Palast is a lone wolf; he thoroughly analyzed- and screamed about- Florida 4 years ago, and has less company/support this time.
Values: It’s The word of the post-mortems, that the Dems don’t speak to American values, especially gay marriage and abortion. Clever Rove strategy of forcing a vote in Congress on “partial birth” abortion and to put gay marriage on the ballots so as to mobilize the faithful. But, to say Bush-Cheney were the ticket of “values”, that they “value life”? Please. Let’s keep in mind the judeo-christian notion of judging a society by how well it takes care of those in need, the “moral values” of (un)just war, caring for the earth, providing adequate housing, of truthfulness.
As to the latter, Kerry could have, of course, done a better job by tackling the dishonesty, the lies which resulted in so many deaths. His not attacking- even the surrogates held off using the ‘L word’ until the last week- led to exit polls that found "Voters who cited honesty as the most important quality in a candidate broke 2 to 1 in Mr. Bush's favor..."
Thomas Frank:
The culture wars, in other words, are a way of framing the ever-powerful subject of social class. They are a way for Republicans to speak on behalf of the forgotten man without causing any problems for their core big-business constituency.
Against this militant, aggrieved, full-throated philosophy the Democrats chose to go with ... what? Their usual soft centrism, creating space for this constituency and that, taking care to antagonize no one, declining even to criticize the president, really, at their convention. And despite huge get-out-the-vote efforts and an enormous treasury, Democrats lost the battle of voter motivation before it started.
Worse: While conservatives were sharpening their sense of class victimization, Democrats had all but abandoned the field. For some time, the centrist Democratic establishment in Washington has been enamored of the notion that, since the industrial age is ending, the party must forget about blue-collar workers and their issues and embrace the "professional" class. During the 2004 campaign these new, business-friendly Democrats received high-profile assistance from idealistic tycoons and openly embraced trendy management theory. They imagined themselves the "metro" party of cool billionaires engaged in some kind of cosmic combat with the square billionaires of the "retro" Republican Party. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05frank.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: The bombing goes on, (3) British soldiers killed,…and whatever else, but we know much less because the public is tired and in denial and most of the reporters have left. The attack on Fallujah seems imminent. The BBC filmed military chaplains telling marines that they are ‘agents of God's wrath’ and the Times headlines that the “G.I.’s Itch to Prove Their Mettle in Fallujah.” http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/international/middleeast/05training.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3983443.stm
Further ‘Proof’ re Those Weapons
In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad, Iraqi looters loaded powerful explosives into pickup trucks and drove the material off the Al Qaqaa ammunition site, according to a group of U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen who said they witnessed the looting.
The soldiers said about a dozen U.S. troops guarding the sprawling facility could not prevent the theft of the explosives because they were outnumbered by looters. Soldiers from one unit -- the 317th Support Center based in Wiesbaden, Germany -- said they had asked commanders in Baghdad for help to secure the site but received no reply.
The witnesses' accounts of the looting are the first provided by U.S. soldiers, and support claims that the American military failed to safeguard the powerful munitions. Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the interim Iraqi government reported that approximately 380 tons of high- grade explosives had been taken from Al Qaqaa after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003. The explosives are powerful enough to detonate a nuclear weapon. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/11/04/MNG9Q9LLI41.DTL
The New Daschle: Harry Reid
Me thinks he has some problematic positions, particularly on abortion. http://www.issues2000.org/social/Harry_Reid_Principles_+_Values.htm
-R
We’re still recovering, from the notion that Michael Moore didn’t make the difference, that the non-empathic frat boy was seen as a “leader”, that all the policy failures didn’t matter, that dishonesty was ignored. I’ve long said that most appalling for me was that the lies were so ‘out there’, so documented, and yet a majority didn’t care. What does that say about the country’s mental health? Anyway…
The consensus- which too often is a summary of Right-leaning media- is that it was a comprehensive victory for Bush, that ‘Bush received more votes than anyone in U.S. history (guess who’s received the second most- Kerry!- the population and the percentage were higher), the U.S. is ”moving steadily and solidly to the right.” Yet, Kerry won 49%. Bush won New Mexico, Iowa, Nevada(!) and Ohio by narrow margins. It’s no time to fold the tent. Paul Krugman, about to begin a long vacation, urges “Democrats” to show backbone:
Democrats shouldn't cave in to Mr. Bush when he tries to appoint highly partisan judges - even when the effort to block a bad appointment fails, it will show supporters that the party stands for something. They should gear up for a bid to retake the Senate or at least make a major dent in the Republican lead. They should keep the pressure on Mr. Bush when he makes terrible policy decisions, which he will.
It's all right to take a few weeks to think it over. (Heads up to readers: I'll be starting a long-planned break next week, to work on a economics textbook. I'll be back in January.) But Democrats mustn't give up the fight. What's at stake isn't just the fate of their party, but the fate of America as we know it. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05krugman.html?hp
Bush Press conference note: ”Now that I've got the will of the people at my back, I'm going to start enforcing the one-question rule.”
Foreign Reaction: They’re struggling. The not-exactly left-wing Daily Mirror observed “How can 59,054,087 be so dumb!”
2nd Term: Moderation or Radical Right Keeping in mind that the economy http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26581-2004Nov4?language=printer , Iraq and more are in sorry shape, bad news will be out there. The question is whether opposition will scream enough for the sluggish Media to note it, and whether the Faithful will care, or whether “faith” will be enough.
Those that still can’t quite believe that the Bush regime has governed from the Right are again assuming that they will moderate themselves in the second term. Juan Williams, the rarely acute NPR commentator, epitomized this hopefulness in his commentaries. Pepe Escobar, much more conflict-oriented, smells radical right and “blowback.”
The United States may have gone to the polls as a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation. Today it's still a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation, but now with a clear mandate for the state really to rock the geopolitical boat. The "most important election of a lifetime" has sent a clear message to the whole world: the face of America in the next four years - barring a Richard Nixon-style impeachment - will be of unilateralism, the "war on terror" possibly progressively escalating into a clash of civilizations. And pay attention to the "axis of evil" hit list - the official and the bootleg. Bush II will attack what it defines as "state terrorism" - Iran, Syria - instead of the global jihadi network. It will continue to rely on Pakistan to "decapitate" the odd "high-value al-Qaeda". It won't engage in diplomacy to address the political causes of terrorism. It won't engage in a cultural and ideological effort to try to counteract the global jihad - especially now that Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri have changed the rules of the asymmetrical game from a religious clash to a political struggle against imperialism. Total concentration of right-wing power - legitimized by the popular vote: this is the new neo-conservative dream turned reality. So the road ahead is to flatten the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah in Iraq, bomb Iran because of its supposed nuclear aspirations, depose President Hafez Assad in Syria, crush the Palestinian resistance, and remodel the Middle East by "precision strike" democracy. There will be serious blowback. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FK04Aa02.html
But, they sound serious about social security.
President Bush said on Thursday he planned to start work immediately on reforming America's ailing Social Security retirement system and predicted a long slog ahead.
"We will start on Social Security now. We will start bringing together those in Congress who agree with my assessment that we need to work together," he said in his first news conference after the bitterly contested presidential election.
Bush said reforming Social Security would be a priority during his second term and he predicted it would be very tough and costly.http://reuters.myway.com/article/20041104/2004-11-04T171703Z_01_N041922_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-BUSH-SOCIAL-SECURITY-DC.html
And this bears watching:
"As it stands today [Democrats] can block [a nominee]," said C. Boyden Gray, former legal counsel to President George H.W. Bush. But I also believe that the president and majority leader may well decide to change the rules given the elections ... The president has a very strong political support, potential support, for asking for and getting this change." http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137648,00.html
Winning an election means you can change the senate rules?…like changing the rules re filibustering? …as in no longer needing 60 votes to halt such when opposing radical right judges?
And will we finally learn more about what was delayed by the election-
the CIA report Porter Goss successfully hid, the one that "names names”; the Valerie Plame indictments; the Senate Intelligence Committee's second report, the one about ‘political responsibility’ for prewar intelligence failures… Or, is our secret government…
David Cole has a smart essay on ‘Uncle Sam’ is Watching You’
So the first problem with the administration's claim that there have been no abuses under the Patriot Act is that it is simply false. There have been plenty of abuses.
The second problem is more insidious. Many of the Patriot Act's most controversial provisions involve investigative powers that are by definition secret, making it literally impossible for abuses to be uncovered. For example, the act expanded the authority to conduct wiretaps and searches under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without having to show probable cause of criminal activity. We know from a government report that the number of FISA searches has dramatically increased since the Patriot Act was passed, and for the first time now exceeds the number of conventional wiretaps authorized in criminal cases. Yet that's all we know, because everything else about FISA searches and wiretaps is secret. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17568
Exit Polls
How off were they? The general tenor of the discussion has been to merely shrug off or ponder their inaccuracies, either ‘Well so much for the trustworthiness of exit polls.’ or,
In some cases, the report said, survey takers could not get close enough to the polls to collect adequate samples of voters opinion. They were often stopped by legal barriers devised to keep people electioneering - not necessarily bona fide poll canvassers - away from voters.
The report also theorized that the poll results more frequently overstated support for Mr. Kerry than for President Bush because the Democratic nominee's supporters were more open to pollsters. Whatever the case, according to the report, the surveys had the biggest partisan skew since at least 1988, the earliest election the report tracked. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/politics/campaign/05poll.html?pagewanted=print&position
But, it seemed like the ‘problem’ was principally in Ohio and Florida. In fact, Kerry was found by exit polls to have a narrow lead with both women and men as well as with independents. What does this mean? Some remain suspicious that the expected multi-pronged efforts to cheat in this election did happen, but that the size of the Bush win meant those efforts probably weren’t consequential. Others are prone to cite Greg Palast’s report that the theft/fraud was substantial, that Kerry was the probable winner.
I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.
Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.
So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.
Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]
Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm sorry to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and new. http://www.tompaine.com/print/kerry_won_.php
But, Palast is a lone wolf; he thoroughly analyzed- and screamed about- Florida 4 years ago, and has less company/support this time.
Values: It’s The word of the post-mortems, that the Dems don’t speak to American values, especially gay marriage and abortion. Clever Rove strategy of forcing a vote in Congress on “partial birth” abortion and to put gay marriage on the ballots so as to mobilize the faithful. But, to say Bush-Cheney were the ticket of “values”, that they “value life”? Please. Let’s keep in mind the judeo-christian notion of judging a society by how well it takes care of those in need, the “moral values” of (un)just war, caring for the earth, providing adequate housing, of truthfulness.
As to the latter, Kerry could have, of course, done a better job by tackling the dishonesty, the lies which resulted in so many deaths. His not attacking- even the surrogates held off using the ‘L word’ until the last week- led to exit polls that found "Voters who cited honesty as the most important quality in a candidate broke 2 to 1 in Mr. Bush's favor..."
Thomas Frank:
The culture wars, in other words, are a way of framing the ever-powerful subject of social class. They are a way for Republicans to speak on behalf of the forgotten man without causing any problems for their core big-business constituency.
Against this militant, aggrieved, full-throated philosophy the Democrats chose to go with ... what? Their usual soft centrism, creating space for this constituency and that, taking care to antagonize no one, declining even to criticize the president, really, at their convention. And despite huge get-out-the-vote efforts and an enormous treasury, Democrats lost the battle of voter motivation before it started.
Worse: While conservatives were sharpening their sense of class victimization, Democrats had all but abandoned the field. For some time, the centrist Democratic establishment in Washington has been enamored of the notion that, since the industrial age is ending, the party must forget about blue-collar workers and their issues and embrace the "professional" class. During the 2004 campaign these new, business-friendly Democrats received high-profile assistance from idealistic tycoons and openly embraced trendy management theory. They imagined themselves the "metro" party of cool billionaires engaged in some kind of cosmic combat with the square billionaires of the "retro" Republican Party. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05frank.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: The bombing goes on, (3) British soldiers killed,…and whatever else, but we know much less because the public is tired and in denial and most of the reporters have left. The attack on Fallujah seems imminent. The BBC filmed military chaplains telling marines that they are ‘agents of God's wrath’ and the Times headlines that the “G.I.’s Itch to Prove Their Mettle in Fallujah.” http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/international/middleeast/05training.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3983443.stm
Further ‘Proof’ re Those Weapons
In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad, Iraqi looters loaded powerful explosives into pickup trucks and drove the material off the Al Qaqaa ammunition site, according to a group of U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen who said they witnessed the looting.
The soldiers said about a dozen U.S. troops guarding the sprawling facility could not prevent the theft of the explosives because they were outnumbered by looters. Soldiers from one unit -- the 317th Support Center based in Wiesbaden, Germany -- said they had asked commanders in Baghdad for help to secure the site but received no reply.
The witnesses' accounts of the looting are the first provided by U.S. soldiers, and support claims that the American military failed to safeguard the powerful munitions. Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the interim Iraqi government reported that approximately 380 tons of high- grade explosives had been taken from Al Qaqaa after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003. The explosives are powerful enough to detonate a nuclear weapon. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/11/04/MNG9Q9LLI41.DTL
The New Daschle: Harry Reid
Me thinks he has some problematic positions, particularly on abortion. http://www.issues2000.org/social/Harry_Reid_Principles_+_Values.htm
-R
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
[First]Post Mortem: Our (increasingly) Republican Nation
Basics: Republicans solidified their control. Bush bested his opponent by 3.5 million after losing by 500,000 in 2000. The Rove Machine registered and brought to the polls ample new folk to offset the Democratic/Move-on, etc. Effort. With their usual discipline they focused on few issues- a simple message conveyed by a simple man- and that brought people to the polls to vote their passion, which usually was god, abortion or gay marriage. Kerry was not a good candidate, crippled by his Iraq position, his failure to combat the swift boat lies- and other lies- or to explain the $87 billion vote.
But, Gore and Dukakis were similarly immobilized, and the charming, talented Clinton only won because he had a three-way race (Perot); he then took the party to the Right. In other words, the Democratic Party is the issue, not the individual candidates; it wasn’t the messenger- it’s the ‘message’. The Democratic Party silenced itself until the election cycle, legitimizing Bush and hampering the Media, which had no opposition to report. Simply assuming that Edwards, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama will solve their fundamental problems is…a problem.
How we think is very much determined by the frame put out by those in power. In this case, the Democratic party will try to define the problem as Kerry being too stiff, too late to define himself, etc., and they need to say they were competitive but need still more money, perhaps to be more corporate-friendly to compete with the Republicans.
That’s not much of an improvement over just blaming Nader, as per 2000.
The problem wasn’t money or Kerry. The principal problem was the Party: its disorganization (who WAS running that campaign), the competitiveness (Did Kerry fully trust the Clintonian help who had to have feared 8-16 years of Kerry/Edwards?). The lack of message was a problem- the failure to tackle the lies (Bush’s character problem), the disastrous war (not the planning, not the execution, but the invasion/diversion itself) which he only seemed to do in the final weeks. Kerry and the Democrats too often prefer civility to winning, competitiveness with each other to taking power.
* We are shaken that the (largely ignorant) masses chose to vote for a chronic liar whose lies have killed 1100+ American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis and caused such environmental and economic destruction, and much more, someone who is clearly an empty suit. That is very tough to swallow. Apparently,
· People do not care that Bush didn’t answer questions
· People do not care that Bush was “resolved” but a failure
· People wanted to hear optimism even if it was really denial
· People wanted, or could only digest, sound bites; no complexity wanted...ETC
Noting the cliché ‘don’t mourn, organize’, the “Left” has to indeed mourn, accept the harsh reality, bond with others, etc. AND THEN out-organize the Right- to build structures that can compete with their think tanks, their control of the media- their Noise Machine.
Other: Daschle, who was such a weak Senate leader. Typically, he kept the picture of his very public hug of Bush after 9/11on his web site’s front page for months. Maybe the Dems will appoint an effective spokesperson and fighter. It’s unlikely they’ll think about their corporate, yuppie base. (Nick Kristof in the Times addresses some of this at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/opinion/03kris.html?hp.
[The Republicans will have their own internal war, as old-line conservatives will confront the fundamentalists and neocons that have the power.]
Election Day Stories:
Bogus stories, shenanigans: Early Election day came the Republicans were spreading a rumor about alleged Philly machine fraud perpetrated by the Democrats, that votes for Kerry were recorded even before the polls opened; it was a phony, part of their noise that will leave impressions of fraud. It’s most effective, as any Democratic complaints are then only “balancing” what “obviously” happens by both sides. Most interesting was that the DA and the Deputy City Commissioner investigated it and pronounced it no problem in the mid-morning. Yet, right wing talk radio and FOX ranted about it all day, noting that they were saying it on Tuesday so that it wouldn’t sound like sour grapes when they say it again on Wednesday. Ah, the noise. The same allegation was repeated by the Republican campaign at 11:30PM!
There were reports such as that of a sheriff beating an independent photographer taking pix of the lines, of Muslim women being overly questioned and some long-time voters being removed from the List in Columbus, Ohio, but there were fewer such reports than anticipated. There are issues, irregularities, systematic disenfranchisement, but it’s hard to address them when you don’t control those state houses and if the popular vote was not close.
Meanwhile,
Rehnquist: He’s got anaplastic thyroid cancer; it is not amenable to treatment and 80% do not survive a year. So, he’s likely to be the first one to be replaced.
AND, … tho it’s hard to focus…
Russian Nukes:
A former Russian nuclear scientist has handed over to police eight containers of plutonium-238 he had stored at home for eight years.
The 400g (14oz) of plutonium-238 - a highly radioactive compound - came from a disused laboratory in Siberia.
Former employee Leonid Grigorov said he removed the containers for safekeeping after the lab was looted and stored them in a lead case, Russian media say.
He may face criminal proceedings, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency says. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3974851.stm
Bush's War on Iraq: More attacks on people and Oil, deaths, plans for attacks on Falluja. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1342463,00.html
-R
Basics: Republicans solidified their control. Bush bested his opponent by 3.5 million after losing by 500,000 in 2000. The Rove Machine registered and brought to the polls ample new folk to offset the Democratic/Move-on, etc. Effort. With their usual discipline they focused on few issues- a simple message conveyed by a simple man- and that brought people to the polls to vote their passion, which usually was god, abortion or gay marriage. Kerry was not a good candidate, crippled by his Iraq position, his failure to combat the swift boat lies- and other lies- or to explain the $87 billion vote.
But, Gore and Dukakis were similarly immobilized, and the charming, talented Clinton only won because he had a three-way race (Perot); he then took the party to the Right. In other words, the Democratic Party is the issue, not the individual candidates; it wasn’t the messenger- it’s the ‘message’. The Democratic Party silenced itself until the election cycle, legitimizing Bush and hampering the Media, which had no opposition to report. Simply assuming that Edwards, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama will solve their fundamental problems is…a problem.
How we think is very much determined by the frame put out by those in power. In this case, the Democratic party will try to define the problem as Kerry being too stiff, too late to define himself, etc., and they need to say they were competitive but need still more money, perhaps to be more corporate-friendly to compete with the Republicans.
That’s not much of an improvement over just blaming Nader, as per 2000.
The problem wasn’t money or Kerry. The principal problem was the Party: its disorganization (who WAS running that campaign), the competitiveness (Did Kerry fully trust the Clintonian help who had to have feared 8-16 years of Kerry/Edwards?). The lack of message was a problem- the failure to tackle the lies (Bush’s character problem), the disastrous war (not the planning, not the execution, but the invasion/diversion itself) which he only seemed to do in the final weeks. Kerry and the Democrats too often prefer civility to winning, competitiveness with each other to taking power.
* We are shaken that the (largely ignorant) masses chose to vote for a chronic liar whose lies have killed 1100+ American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis and caused such environmental and economic destruction, and much more, someone who is clearly an empty suit. That is very tough to swallow. Apparently,
· People do not care that Bush didn’t answer questions
· People do not care that Bush was “resolved” but a failure
· People wanted to hear optimism even if it was really denial
· People wanted, or could only digest, sound bites; no complexity wanted...ETC
Noting the cliché ‘don’t mourn, organize’, the “Left” has to indeed mourn, accept the harsh reality, bond with others, etc. AND THEN out-organize the Right- to build structures that can compete with their think tanks, their control of the media- their Noise Machine.
Other: Daschle, who was such a weak Senate leader. Typically, he kept the picture of his very public hug of Bush after 9/11on his web site’s front page for months. Maybe the Dems will appoint an effective spokesperson and fighter. It’s unlikely they’ll think about their corporate, yuppie base. (Nick Kristof in the Times addresses some of this at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/opinion/03kris.html?hp.
[The Republicans will have their own internal war, as old-line conservatives will confront the fundamentalists and neocons that have the power.]
Election Day Stories:
Bogus stories, shenanigans: Early Election day came the Republicans were spreading a rumor about alleged Philly machine fraud perpetrated by the Democrats, that votes for Kerry were recorded even before the polls opened; it was a phony, part of their noise that will leave impressions of fraud. It’s most effective, as any Democratic complaints are then only “balancing” what “obviously” happens by both sides. Most interesting was that the DA and the Deputy City Commissioner investigated it and pronounced it no problem in the mid-morning. Yet, right wing talk radio and FOX ranted about it all day, noting that they were saying it on Tuesday so that it wouldn’t sound like sour grapes when they say it again on Wednesday. Ah, the noise. The same allegation was repeated by the Republican campaign at 11:30PM!
There were reports such as that of a sheriff beating an independent photographer taking pix of the lines, of Muslim women being overly questioned and some long-time voters being removed from the List in Columbus, Ohio, but there were fewer such reports than anticipated. There are issues, irregularities, systematic disenfranchisement, but it’s hard to address them when you don’t control those state houses and if the popular vote was not close.
Meanwhile,
Rehnquist: He’s got anaplastic thyroid cancer; it is not amenable to treatment and 80% do not survive a year. So, he’s likely to be the first one to be replaced.
AND, … tho it’s hard to focus…
Russian Nukes:
A former Russian nuclear scientist has handed over to police eight containers of plutonium-238 he had stored at home for eight years.
The 400g (14oz) of plutonium-238 - a highly radioactive compound - came from a disused laboratory in Siberia.
Former employee Leonid Grigorov said he removed the containers for safekeeping after the lab was looted and stored them in a lead case, Russian media say.
He may face criminal proceedings, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency says. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3974851.stm
Bush's War on Iraq: More attacks on people and Oil, deaths, plans for attacks on Falluja. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1342463,00.html
-R
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Final Day- a Good Day:
1) Two separate judicial rulings in Ohio that the Repubs couldn’t do their intimidation thing.
Two federal judges on Monday barred political parties' challengers from polling places throughout Ohio. State Republicans planned to appeal.
An order by U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott of Cincinnati found that the application of Ohio's statute allowing challengers at polling places was unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge John Adams of Akron said poll workers are the ones to determine if voters are eligible.
"In light of these extraordinary circumstances, and the contentious nature of the imminent election, the court cannot and must not turn a blind eye to the substantial likelihood that significant harm will result not only to voters, but also to the voting process itself, if appointed challengers are permitted at the polls," Adams said. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/10069015.htm
2) Zogby Speaks: After predicting a Kerry win last week, his final poll had a deadlock, but his auxiliary cell phone survey revealed had a 55-40 Kerry ‘split’.
3) Reports as to the early voters indicates high turnout and high motivation; that despite long lines, people are persevering, even if they must return the next day…and the next.
4) Republicans sound more downbeat. Talk show host Jay Severin was especially downcast after viewing the long lines of minority voters and again predicted a Bush loss. The exception: Neocon Bill Kristol who predicted that Bush would get 348 electoral votes.
Though: Suppression and other Cheating. The Repubs are trying their stalling techniques, where possible, and the touch screen machines have been problematic. One Florida caller to NPR noted that she had talked with “8 or 10” voters who had voted for Kerry, but (as it does) in the final stage, the machine announced that they had voted for Bush. Similarly, more phony letters, this time from the NAACP in South Carolina that “alerts” voters that they’d be arrested if they had unpaid parking tickets or were behind in child support.
So, more signs point to a Kerry win.
Secrecy. Kerry said next to nothing about this issue... and others An op. ed. (Dorothy Samuels) allows for something other than the 'election proper'.
… I hereby confess to feeling disappointed over Senator John Kerry's failure to home in hard on one of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years - namely the Bush administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy.
President Bush's antipathy to open government continues to garner only a trivial level of attention compared with the pressing matters that seem to be engaging the country at the moment, including, in no particular order, the Red Sox, Iraq, terrorism, taxes and the mysterious iPod-size bulge visible under the back of Mr. Bush's suit jacket at the first debate. But the implications for a second term are ominous.
Beyond undermining the constitutional system of checks and balances, undue secrecy is a proven formula for faulty White House decision-making and debilitating scandal. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/opinion/01mon4.html
Fraud and the NY Times. Media Matters criticizes
An article in the November 1 edition of The New York Times passed along Republican accusations of voter fraud without making any apparent effort to verify them, even though journalists at other newspapers have raised serious doubts about the accusations…
The New York Times' Zernike and Yardley also uncritically passed along claims by an unnamed "official of the state Republican party" in Pennsylvania that 10,000 of 130,000 letters sent "congratulating newly registered voters" were returned. No proof was offered that 10,000 letters were actually returned; in fact, when reporters for the Philadelphia Inquirer asked for a list, Republicans provided only six names, as an October 31 article noted. http://www.mediamatters.com/
China Blasts Bush. Now? Does this help Bush? Nah; no one’s listening.
China has accused the administration of United States President George W Bush of having "opened a Pandora's box, intensifying various intermingled conflicts such as ethnic and religious ones''. The accusation has raised questions why Beijing is doing it a day before the US election. http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Front_Page/FK02Aa02.html
Charles Pierce on Character. I give him the last word on the pre-election period.
Once, in Iowa, Kerry dropped in on a group of Vietnam veterans. Some of them liked him. Some of them didn't, largely because of the whole VVAW thing. (And, trust me, this was my first beat at the Boston Phoenix, and I discovered that the politics within the various Vietnam veteran's groups were desperate and bloody.) Kerry dismissed the staff, locked the door, blew off the rest of the schedule, and sat there and talked and argued with these guys until they were all exhausted. He wanted to talk to the people who disliked him more than he wanted to talk to anyone else. He gave them the respect of open debate.
Imagine the incumbent doing that. Imagine him sitting down in a room where half the people truly loathe him and everything he stands for, him and his ticket-only rallies, and his coddling staff, and his use of the Secret Service as cheap sidewalk bouncers. Imagine him hearing them out, debating them, giving them the respect of his knowledgeable disagreement. It is inconceivable. One can more easily imagine C-Plus Augustus's flapping his arms and flying to the top of the Washington Monument. Imagine that "character" is even at issue between these two men.
Somebody who was there in Iowa told me that story, and told me I couldn't use it, but that's too damn bad today. I am voting for John Kerry because it is a time for serious people who are strong enough in their heart to listen to anger and slander and calumny and to respond to it, not with the tinny bombast of an unearned office, and not with the cheesy legerdemain of concocted eminence, but with the strength to stay long enough to try to redeem it. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
As to the post-election, in his first days, Kerry can’t be a sweetheart. He must challenge, investigate, prosecute. People to his Left must hold him to account… and PUSH him.
Paul Krugman gets it; His advice: (Texas Observer interview)
Do not be magnanimous in victory. I hope the people around him understand that this is not politics as we know it. It’s not, “OK, well, we won an election. After the election we’ll get together and work in a bipartisan way to help the country.” They didn’t work in a bipartisan way when the United States was attacked. They immediately saw it as a way to achieve political dominance. Kerry has got to understand that he has a window of opportunity to expose what’s going on and to rock these people back to the point where we can try to reclaim the normal workings of democracy. Unless there’s a true miracle and the Democrats take the House—which is extremely unlikely—it’s going to be very bitter political civil war from Day One. The House leadership will try to undermine Kerry. I’m sure they’ll try to impeach him almost immediately. On anything. We can go on and on about Tom DeLay, but the point is Tom DeLay is not an aberrant thing. He’s not an accident. The whole thrust of where we’ve been going for a couple of decades in this country has been towards putting someone like Tom DeLay in a position of great power. So, my column to Kerry, my open letter to him if he wins, will be: Do not be magnanimous. You need to expose and dismantle this machine. http://texasobserver.org/showForPrint.asp?IssueDate=10%2F22%2F2004&IssueFolder=zur%5F041022&ArticleFileName=041022%5Ff2%2Ehtm&Title=Right+on+the+Edge
-R
1) Two separate judicial rulings in Ohio that the Repubs couldn’t do their intimidation thing.
Two federal judges on Monday barred political parties' challengers from polling places throughout Ohio. State Republicans planned to appeal.
An order by U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott of Cincinnati found that the application of Ohio's statute allowing challengers at polling places was unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge John Adams of Akron said poll workers are the ones to determine if voters are eligible.
"In light of these extraordinary circumstances, and the contentious nature of the imminent election, the court cannot and must not turn a blind eye to the substantial likelihood that significant harm will result not only to voters, but also to the voting process itself, if appointed challengers are permitted at the polls," Adams said. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/10069015.htm
2) Zogby Speaks: After predicting a Kerry win last week, his final poll had a deadlock, but his auxiliary cell phone survey revealed had a 55-40 Kerry ‘split’.
3) Reports as to the early voters indicates high turnout and high motivation; that despite long lines, people are persevering, even if they must return the next day…and the next.
4) Republicans sound more downbeat. Talk show host Jay Severin was especially downcast after viewing the long lines of minority voters and again predicted a Bush loss. The exception: Neocon Bill Kristol who predicted that Bush would get 348 electoral votes.
Though: Suppression and other Cheating. The Repubs are trying their stalling techniques, where possible, and the touch screen machines have been problematic. One Florida caller to NPR noted that she had talked with “8 or 10” voters who had voted for Kerry, but (as it does) in the final stage, the machine announced that they had voted for Bush. Similarly, more phony letters, this time from the NAACP in South Carolina that “alerts” voters that they’d be arrested if they had unpaid parking tickets or were behind in child support.
So, more signs point to a Kerry win.
Secrecy. Kerry said next to nothing about this issue... and others An op. ed. (Dorothy Samuels) allows for something other than the 'election proper'.
… I hereby confess to feeling disappointed over Senator John Kerry's failure to home in hard on one of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years - namely the Bush administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy.
President Bush's antipathy to open government continues to garner only a trivial level of attention compared with the pressing matters that seem to be engaging the country at the moment, including, in no particular order, the Red Sox, Iraq, terrorism, taxes and the mysterious iPod-size bulge visible under the back of Mr. Bush's suit jacket at the first debate. But the implications for a second term are ominous.
Beyond undermining the constitutional system of checks and balances, undue secrecy is a proven formula for faulty White House decision-making and debilitating scandal. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/opinion/01mon4.html
Fraud and the NY Times. Media Matters criticizes
An article in the November 1 edition of The New York Times passed along Republican accusations of voter fraud without making any apparent effort to verify them, even though journalists at other newspapers have raised serious doubts about the accusations…
The New York Times' Zernike and Yardley also uncritically passed along claims by an unnamed "official of the state Republican party" in Pennsylvania that 10,000 of 130,000 letters sent "congratulating newly registered voters" were returned. No proof was offered that 10,000 letters were actually returned; in fact, when reporters for the Philadelphia Inquirer asked for a list, Republicans provided only six names, as an October 31 article noted. http://www.mediamatters.com/
China Blasts Bush. Now? Does this help Bush? Nah; no one’s listening.
China has accused the administration of United States President George W Bush of having "opened a Pandora's box, intensifying various intermingled conflicts such as ethnic and religious ones''. The accusation has raised questions why Beijing is doing it a day before the US election. http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Front_Page/FK02Aa02.html
Charles Pierce on Character. I give him the last word on the pre-election period.
Once, in Iowa, Kerry dropped in on a group of Vietnam veterans. Some of them liked him. Some of them didn't, largely because of the whole VVAW thing. (And, trust me, this was my first beat at the Boston Phoenix, and I discovered that the politics within the various Vietnam veteran's groups were desperate and bloody.) Kerry dismissed the staff, locked the door, blew off the rest of the schedule, and sat there and talked and argued with these guys until they were all exhausted. He wanted to talk to the people who disliked him more than he wanted to talk to anyone else. He gave them the respect of open debate.
Imagine the incumbent doing that. Imagine him sitting down in a room where half the people truly loathe him and everything he stands for, him and his ticket-only rallies, and his coddling staff, and his use of the Secret Service as cheap sidewalk bouncers. Imagine him hearing them out, debating them, giving them the respect of his knowledgeable disagreement. It is inconceivable. One can more easily imagine C-Plus Augustus's flapping his arms and flying to the top of the Washington Monument. Imagine that "character" is even at issue between these two men.
Somebody who was there in Iowa told me that story, and told me I couldn't use it, but that's too damn bad today. I am voting for John Kerry because it is a time for serious people who are strong enough in their heart to listen to anger and slander and calumny and to respond to it, not with the tinny bombast of an unearned office, and not with the cheesy legerdemain of concocted eminence, but with the strength to stay long enough to try to redeem it. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
As to the post-election, in his first days, Kerry can’t be a sweetheart. He must challenge, investigate, prosecute. People to his Left must hold him to account… and PUSH him.
Paul Krugman gets it; His advice: (Texas Observer interview)
Do not be magnanimous in victory. I hope the people around him understand that this is not politics as we know it. It’s not, “OK, well, we won an election. After the election we’ll get together and work in a bipartisan way to help the country.” They didn’t work in a bipartisan way when the United States was attacked. They immediately saw it as a way to achieve political dominance. Kerry has got to understand that he has a window of opportunity to expose what’s going on and to rock these people back to the point where we can try to reclaim the normal workings of democracy. Unless there’s a true miracle and the Democrats take the House—which is extremely unlikely—it’s going to be very bitter political civil war from Day One. The House leadership will try to undermine Kerry. I’m sure they’ll try to impeach him almost immediately. On anything. We can go on and on about Tom DeLay, but the point is Tom DeLay is not an aberrant thing. He’s not an accident. The whole thrust of where we’ve been going for a couple of decades in this country has been towards putting someone like Tom DeLay in a position of great power. So, my column to Kerry, my open letter to him if he wins, will be: Do not be magnanimous. You need to expose and dismantle this machine. http://texasobserver.org/showForPrint.asp?IssueDate=10%2F22%2F2004&IssueFolder=zur%5F041022&ArticleFileName=041022%5Ff2%2Ehtm&Title=Right+on+the+Edge
-R
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Democracy on the Ropes
Right-wingers are pushing the line that ‘If Bush wins, it’s because of the war on terror; if Kerry wins, it’s because of massive fraud by the Democrats. As we know, such a strategy works, as the media then talk about mutual “accusations” by the parties.
Polls generally show a dead heat. Additionally they show that Kerry has lost 7% of Gore voters, Bush has lost 11% of those who supported him in 2000. Then there’s the new registrants. Do note that at this point in 2000, Bush was ahead of Gore by 2 points in the Zogby tracking poll, by 4 points in the ABC/Washington Post tracking poll and by 9 points in the TIPP tracking poll. Now, all but the TIPP say it’s a dead heat. [Also, Zogby predicted a Kerry win Thursday night on The Daily Show.]
November Surprise: Osama showed up on his own and the affect is minor, but would tend to aid Bush. That’s why they let it play before they had carefully reviewed it for “coded messages to followers” as they usually do. "We want people to think 'terrorism' for the last four days," said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. "And anything that raises the issue in people's minds is good for us."
A senior GOP strategist added, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush."
He called it "a little gift," saying it helps the President but doesn't guarantee his reelection. http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/247753p-212149c.html
But, additionally rumors on Sunday have been of Tommy Thompson announcing the legalizing of “drug re-importation” from Canada. Of course, “details” will not be known till after Tuesday, so…
Then, there’s the cheating. [see previous blogs] And,
An Observer investigation in the United States has uncovered widespread allegations of electoral abuse, many of them going uninvestigated despite complaints of what would appear to be criminal attempts to manipulate voter lists.
The allegations, which come just two days before Americans go to the polls in one of the most tightly contested elections in a generation, threaten to plunge Tuesday's count into a legal minefield and overshadow even the elections of 2000.
The claims come as both Republicans and Democrats put in place up to 2,000 lawyers across the country to challenge attempts to manipulate the vote in swing states.
Although allegations of misconduct have been levelled at both parties recently, the majority of complaints that have been identified in The Observer' s investigation involved claims against local Republicans.
The claims, made by the BBC's Newsnight, follow alleged attempts by Republicans to illegally suppress the votes in key states. Republican spokesmen deny these allegations.
One of the more serious claims is that no action has been taken in a complex fraud, where more than 4,000 Florida students were allegedly conned into signing a form which could lead them to be doubly registered and void their votes. The Florida Law Enforcement Department has told the complainants that it is too busy to investigate.
In Colorado too, Democrats are complaining about an attempt to remove up to 6,000 convicted felons from the electoral roll, at the behest of the state's Republican secretary of state, Donetta Davidson, despite a US federal law that prohibits eliminating a voter's rights within 90 days of an election to give time for the voter to protest. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1340190,00.html
So, all things considered, Kerry should win the popular vote by about 50% – 48.5% and take the electoral count by winning New Hampshire and Ohio or Florida, offsetting the possible loss of New Mexico and Wisconsin or Iowa.
It’s gotta happen… The progressing coup must be rolled back.
The Jersey Girls. 9/11 widows Kristen Breitweiser and Monica Gabrielle’s statement re the Bin Laden tape.
We cried when we saw the tape on Friday of Osama Bin Laden. He's tanned and healthy. He does not look desperate or scared. He does not look like a man on the run.Three years ago, President Bush promised us he would capture Osama Bin Laden--Dead or Alive. He didn't do that.The man that murdered our husbands, is back terrorizing our country again. The videotape of him has brought us back to 9/11. We feel threatened. We feel vulnerable. We are scared.Our question to President Bush is: Why didn't you catch him when you promised us you would? Why is this mass murderer--this madman-- still out there making videotapes and terrorizing our country three years after you promised our country that you would make us safe from him? President Bush, why cant you keep us safe from this madmen?
What’s Happening, Iraq: It’s Getting Worse…and worse
The truth is, neither [Bush nor Kerry] is fully reckoning with the reality of Iraq — which is that the insurgents, by most accounts, are winning. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former general who stays in touch with the Joint Chiefs, has acknowledged this privately to friends in recent weeks, Newsweek has learned. The insurgents have effectively created a reign of terror throughout the country, killing thousands, driving Iraqi elites and technocrats into exile and scaring foreigners out. "Things are getting really bad," a senior Iraqi official in interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government told Newsweek last week. "The initiative is in [the insurgents'] hands right now. This approach of being lenient and accommodating has really backfired. They see this as weakness." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6370525/site/newsweek/
-R
Right-wingers are pushing the line that ‘If Bush wins, it’s because of the war on terror; if Kerry wins, it’s because of massive fraud by the Democrats. As we know, such a strategy works, as the media then talk about mutual “accusations” by the parties.
Polls generally show a dead heat. Additionally they show that Kerry has lost 7% of Gore voters, Bush has lost 11% of those who supported him in 2000. Then there’s the new registrants. Do note that at this point in 2000, Bush was ahead of Gore by 2 points in the Zogby tracking poll, by 4 points in the ABC/Washington Post tracking poll and by 9 points in the TIPP tracking poll. Now, all but the TIPP say it’s a dead heat. [Also, Zogby predicted a Kerry win Thursday night on The Daily Show.]
November Surprise: Osama showed up on his own and the affect is minor, but would tend to aid Bush. That’s why they let it play before they had carefully reviewed it for “coded messages to followers” as they usually do. "We want people to think 'terrorism' for the last four days," said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. "And anything that raises the issue in people's minds is good for us."
A senior GOP strategist added, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush."
He called it "a little gift," saying it helps the President but doesn't guarantee his reelection. http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/247753p-212149c.html
But, additionally rumors on Sunday have been of Tommy Thompson announcing the legalizing of “drug re-importation” from Canada. Of course, “details” will not be known till after Tuesday, so…
Then, there’s the cheating. [see previous blogs] And,
An Observer investigation in the United States has uncovered widespread allegations of electoral abuse, many of them going uninvestigated despite complaints of what would appear to be criminal attempts to manipulate voter lists.
The allegations, which come just two days before Americans go to the polls in one of the most tightly contested elections in a generation, threaten to plunge Tuesday's count into a legal minefield and overshadow even the elections of 2000.
The claims come as both Republicans and Democrats put in place up to 2,000 lawyers across the country to challenge attempts to manipulate the vote in swing states.
Although allegations of misconduct have been levelled at both parties recently, the majority of complaints that have been identified in The Observer' s investigation involved claims against local Republicans.
The claims, made by the BBC's Newsnight, follow alleged attempts by Republicans to illegally suppress the votes in key states. Republican spokesmen deny these allegations.
One of the more serious claims is that no action has been taken in a complex fraud, where more than 4,000 Florida students were allegedly conned into signing a form which could lead them to be doubly registered and void their votes. The Florida Law Enforcement Department has told the complainants that it is too busy to investigate.
In Colorado too, Democrats are complaining about an attempt to remove up to 6,000 convicted felons from the electoral roll, at the behest of the state's Republican secretary of state, Donetta Davidson, despite a US federal law that prohibits eliminating a voter's rights within 90 days of an election to give time for the voter to protest. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1340190,00.html
So, all things considered, Kerry should win the popular vote by about 50% – 48.5% and take the electoral count by winning New Hampshire and Ohio or Florida, offsetting the possible loss of New Mexico and Wisconsin or Iowa.
It’s gotta happen… The progressing coup must be rolled back.
The Jersey Girls. 9/11 widows Kristen Breitweiser and Monica Gabrielle’s statement re the Bin Laden tape.
We cried when we saw the tape on Friday of Osama Bin Laden. He's tanned and healthy. He does not look desperate or scared. He does not look like a man on the run.Three years ago, President Bush promised us he would capture Osama Bin Laden--Dead or Alive. He didn't do that.The man that murdered our husbands, is back terrorizing our country again. The videotape of him has brought us back to 9/11. We feel threatened. We feel vulnerable. We are scared.Our question to President Bush is: Why didn't you catch him when you promised us you would? Why is this mass murderer--this madman-- still out there making videotapes and terrorizing our country three years after you promised our country that you would make us safe from him? President Bush, why cant you keep us safe from this madmen?
What’s Happening, Iraq: It’s Getting Worse…and worse
The truth is, neither [Bush nor Kerry] is fully reckoning with the reality of Iraq — which is that the insurgents, by most accounts, are winning. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former general who stays in touch with the Joint Chiefs, has acknowledged this privately to friends in recent weeks, Newsweek has learned. The insurgents have effectively created a reign of terror throughout the country, killing thousands, driving Iraqi elites and technocrats into exile and scaring foreigners out. "Things are getting really bad," a senior Iraqi official in interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government told Newsweek last week. "The initiative is in [the insurgents'] hands right now. This approach of being lenient and accommodating has really backfired. They see this as weakness." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6370525/site/newsweek/
-R
