Sucking democracy dry. Last week's Village Voice commissioned a powerful image for their lead story last week, created by Alex Ross. I couldn't think of a scarier Hallowe'en image if I tried all night:
![Bush, sucking democracy dry](http://www.gumbopages.com/looka/images/vv_sucking-democracy-dry.jpg")
Nine extremely important reasons to vote for John Kerry. Via Bob Harris, who says, "Make no mistake: we are likely about to decide the balance of the Supreme Court for a generation."
 Salon reports that, despite most media accounts, Rehnquist may be gravely ill:It's not just Roe v. Wade. Justices like Scalia and Thomas, the two Bush has described as his favorites, don't even believe in our right of privacy in our own homes, in our own bedrooms. A majority consisting of their ilk would set this country back fifty or more years in terms of progress in rights in civil liberties. The negative effects of George Bush's potential appointments to the Court could last two generations or more. He must not be returned to the presidency.
Quotes of the day. Via Billmon, the face of American (would-be) fascism.
Lisa Dupler, a 33-year-old from Columbus, held up a rainbow-striped John Kerry sign outside the Nationwide Arena on Friday, as Republicans streamed out after being rallied by George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A thickset woman with very short, dark hair, Dupler was silent and barely flinched as people passing her hissed "faggot" into her ear. An old lady looked at her and said, "You people are sick!" A kid who looked to be about 10 or 11 affected a limp wrist and mincing voice and said, "Oh, I'm gay." Rather than restraining him, his squat mother guffawed and then turned to Dupler and sneered, "Why don't you go marry your girlfriend?" Encouraged, her son yelled, "We don't want faggots in the White House!" [ Link to today's entries ]
"This American Life" on voter suppression and fraud, almost entirely by Republicans. The report by Jack Hitt was posted early, and is 14 minutes, 53 seconds long. Listen to it.
Bush, Ashcroft seek limits to suits over voter fraud. This is their idea of American democracy -- allow rampant Republican-led voter fraud and suppression, then attempt to limit it in legally unprecedented moves. Bastards.
Bush administration lawyers argued in three closely contested states last week that only the Justice Department, and not voters themselves, may sue to enforce the voting rights set out in the Help America Vote Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 election.And does anyone but GOP heel-clickers think that Ashcroft will bring a single voter fraud related lawsuit directed at what his party has been doing?
Ohio says no to GOP voter suppression efforts. Kos put it best when he said, "Republicans seek to decrease voter turnout, Democrats seek to increase it." The thoroughly vile actions of the Republicans to decrease voter turnout and challenge voters in Ohio is beginning to backfire on them, and I hope this rejection of their anti-American practices builds up speed and momentum until we see some of them in jail.
When Catherine Herold received mail from the Ohio Republican Party earlier this year, she refused it.Jesus Christ. Despite the worst efforts of these bastards, the voters will rule, and the votes will be counted. Get out there and vote on Tuesday, as if your freedom depended on it (because it does).
"The Bush Pledge", for feck's sake? Josh Marshall reports:
Chris Suellentrop [in Slate]has a half bizarre/half chilling report from the campaign trail in Florida last night. It's about what seems to be a new feature of the Bush rallies: the pledge of allegiance to President Bush.I know I'm dooming myself by invoking Godwin's Law, but I swear to God the first thing I thought of when I read this was German troops on the eve of World War II, reciting en masse their loyalty oath to You Know Who (not Voldemort). UPDATE: Whew ... it wasn't just me who made that connection. So did Billmon, back again from blogging retirement; here's what he said:
All officers of the SS were required to take the loyalty oath. Raising their right hand and their left hand placed on their officers sword, the oath went as follows: "I swear to thee, Adolph Hitler as Fuhrer and chancellor of the German Reich, my Loyalty and Bravery. I vow to thee and the superiors whom those shall appoint, obedience until death, so help me God."John Kerry for President.
LA Weekly: John Kerry and John Edwards for President and Vice-President. Endorsements don't get any more essential and plain-spoken than this:
With the possible exception of Jefferson Davis, and for some of the same reasons, George W. Bush is the most dangerous president our continent has known. Like Davis, Bush has amassed a stunningly divisive, parochial and belligerent record. In an era demanding international coordination simply to ensure a decent defense against terrorists, Bush is a militaristic xenophobe (and a careless one at that, as our troops in Iraq discover on a daily basis). At a time when corporations are abandoning the wage-and-benefit practices that once made American workers the envy of the world, Bush wants government to abandon its own responsibility to our citizens, leaving Americans to their own inadequate devices to pay for health care, college, retirement and other such incidentals. Just as a mental exercise, try imagining a worse president than this cosseted brat. It ain't easy. Speaking of You Know Who ... (Not ... er, Rudolf Hilter.) This t-shirt 
has been a huge hit with just about everyone I know, and most of them
have wanted one for themselves as well. Buy your own
here! Bumper stickers, too. (And check out the comic strip
"Goats" while you're at it.)Actually, the first time I wore it to work I got some very strange looks, either from people who didn't know who Voldemort is, or from people who looked at me and thought, "He's a Republican?!" (Hee hee.)
Ah well ... as Irish singer, lyricist,
playwright and novelist Julian Gough
once said, "A day without a strange look is a day wasted." [ Link to today's entries ]
Our first review! Shameless ego-boo, I know ... I was wondering whether I should post this at all, thinking it perhaps too conceited and the ego-boo too shameless. Then Mary said, "Sweetheart, you have a weblog. Such a thing is ontologically prone to shameless ego-boo. Post this." Okay, posting away! (She is the co-author of our box set book, after all, and let's face it -- we wanna sell some records here.) Here's our first review (that I was able to find, at least) of Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens, written by Buddy Blue in yesterday's San Diego Union-Tribune:
[Y]ou know what the best part of this job is? I get an endless supply of free stuff, more than I can even deal with, stuff you have to pay for. The pleasure of casually dumping evil crapola as publicists beg for a line or two in this little column is only exceeded by the bliss to be gleaned from receiving freebies so wonderful, you can see the jealousy in the eyes of your friends as they feverishly, enviously rifle though your stash of promo goods. Right, Rolle? Gina? Bwahh-haw-haww, I say!Thank you, Buddy, for the lovely review. I think Buddy meant James Andrews rather than "James Armstrong." That's okay; he's certainly a musical and spiritual descendent of Louis, if not a literal one.
Twin Cities news crew may have videotaped Iraq explosives. Looks like we've finally got the proof.
A 5 Eyewitness News crew in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein was in the area where tons of explosives disappeared, and may have videotaped some of those weapons.UPDATE via Kos: "David Kay, [former] Iraq weapons inspector for the Bush Administration, just appeared on CNN and was asked by Aaron Brown to review the new video filmed on April 18, 2003, one month after the invasion and 8 days after US Troops first arrived at Al Qaqaa. He was asked about the video which shows the seal. He said that they are indeed IAEA seals and he's seen nothing else like them in IRAQ. He then went on to say that only the explosives in question would have been sealed because of their potency. He then said that other parts of the video show clearly that these were the types of explosives in question. He was asked if it was "Game, Set, Match". He replied yes, "Game, Set, Match". In a final blow to recent conservative spin he was asked if they were classified as WMD. He replied point blank, "Absolutely not." Josh Marshall has the best coverage of this story. Start at the link and keep reading. I think BushCo is out of spin for this one.
Osama bin Remembered-just-now. Ooh, a new Osama video. Boooooo, oooooooo, scary kids! Owwwoooooooooo! Think he's trying to affect the election, maybe, do ya?! Billmon says, "Right on time, too -- four days before the election. (The Madrid bombing was three days before.)"
If anyone had any doubts about which candidate al-Qaeda prefers in this election, I think you can put them to rest now. This tape -- coming hard on the heels of "Azzam the American" -- is obviously designed to have U.S. voters as obsessively worried about the terrorist threat as possible when they go into the voting booth next Tuesday. Osama, like Bush, understands the electoral value of zapping the deeper reptilian centers of the brain. Call it hypothalamus politics. Or, as one member of the media idiot chorus cheerfully told CNN a few days ago: "Fear works."I'm not worried, and don't you be either. This is the same unspecific threatening blather we've kept hearing from OBL for the last three years. If anything, it should remind the American people that Bush failed to catch bin Laden, and he's still out there making threats. Atrios: "Well, he's still out there. Nice job with the whole 'dead or alive' thing." Paul Begala: "Mr. Dyke, the president famously promised us, you and me, all the American people, that he would get Osama bin Laden -- and I'm quoting him here -- 'dead or alive.' Which did he get him, dead or alive?" (On CNN's "Crossfire", to Republican apparatchik Jim Dyke)
NASA photo analyst: Bush wore device during debate. Salon reports that Dr. Robert M. Nelson, a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, an international authority on image analysis, a professional physicist and photo analyst for over 30 years says, "I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate ... This is not about a bad suit. And there's no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt."
Protect your vote! The good folks at MoveOn.org offer a voters' rights guide to help you be aware and prepared in case anyone attempts to interfere with your right to vote on Tuesday. Read this, print it out, and print out their wallet-sized voter rights card. This is important.
They're doing it again. In Nevada, a Republican contractor has allegedly ripped up thousands of Democratic registration forms. In Florida, Jeb Bush has purged tens of thousands of legitimate voters -- mostly black, mostly Democratic -- from the rolls because their names are similar to a felon's.(Greg Palast, Harper's Magazine, October 2004). In Ohio, the Republican Secretary of State has been so uncooperative that a federal judge said that he "apparently seeks to accomplish the same result in Ohio in 2004 that occurred in Florida in 2000."Learn this. Bring the materials with you. The future of our country is at stake.
[ Link to today's entries ]
Scientists estimate 100,000 Iraqi deaths. That's some "liberation" ... From the AP:
A survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months after the U.S. invasion than would be expected based on the death rate before the war.But hey, freedom's on the march! Submitted by Steve, who said, "Even if these numbers aren't exact, whatever the growing total is, it's unacceptable and tragic."
Quote of the day. Peace is our profession.
Mr. President, I didn't say we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million, killed. Tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.Giuliani blames our troops for al Qa Qaa looting. I'm agog with astonishment over this (Windows Media link).
The president was cautious, the president was prudent, the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?No, because their fucking orders were to rush to Baghdad to secure the oil ministry and look for nonexistent WMDs. Don't blame the troops for carrying out their superiors' incompetent orders. Giuliani finally returns to being the complete fuckhead he was up through September 10, 2001.
And the response, from future Kerry administration cabinet official Wesley Clark:
For President Bush to send Rudolph Giuliani out on television to say that the "actual responsibility" for the failure to secure explosives lies with the troops is insulting and cowardly.Way to court the military and military family vote, Shrubster.
Bush ghostwriter says Iraq attack planned two years before 9/11. We've been saying this all along, those of us in the reality-based community who paid attention to the plans of all the Bush cronies in the Project for a New American Century, but here's someone who's saying he heard it from the horse's mouth ... [boldface emphases mine]
Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.This entire article is a must-read.
Cost of war now stratospheric. It galls me to recall the post-debate attacks on John Kerry for saying that the war would cost $200 billion. Turns out the Republicans were right. Kerry was wrong. It's not going to cost $200 billion -- it's going to cost $225 billion. From The Daily Misleader:
Before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration told the American people that it could be fought on the cheap. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon." Budget Director Mitch Daniels said Iraq will be "an affordable endeavor", one "that will not require sustained aid" and cost "in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion." Defense Policy Board Member Richard Perle said, "Iraq is a very wealthy country... They can finance, largely finance, the reconstruction of their own country." They were all wrong.They've even failed to carry out their own obsessive, needless war in a successful manner. They ignored the realities of what it would cost in lives and dollars, and continue to ignore that reality, and their obsession with non-existent weapons of mass destruction caused them to over look hundreds of thousands of pounds of powerful "conventional" explosives that are now killing dozens and dozens of our troops every month. They keep saying they have no evidence that John Kerry could protect us better or run the war better than they could. For God's sake, a child could do it better than this. It'd be pretty goddamned difficult to do a worse job. Get rid of them. On November 2, vote John Kerry for president.
[ Link to today's entries ]
Quotes of the day. In response to today's remarks by the president:
Today George W. Bush made a very compelling and thoughtful argument for why he should not be reelected. In his own words, he told the American people that "...a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your Commander in Chief."In response to the president's comments on the missing explosives:
The President failed to adequately plan to secure the tons of explosives, munitions and weapons in Iraq and ignored the military commanders who told him he'd need more troops to both secure these explosives, take Baghdad and win the peace. Is this America? Two stories of intimidation of high school students, in the country George W. Bush calls America. Lemme tell ya ... it ain't America, unless I woke up this morning in a country where there's no freedom of speech. First, from The Progressive, via Right Hand Thief:
John Sachs is a high school senior in Johnston, Iowa, a northern suburb of Des Moines. Sachs got a ticket at school to go see Bush speak in nearby Clive one day in early October. It was billed as a question and answer session with the President.Next, yesterday in Wisconsin, via Kos [although as it turns out the claim of threats of expulsion is apparently untrue; see update below]:
[An email from Wisconsin:] A friend with a child in the Richland County, WI high school where George Bush appears today reports the following. Students were told they could not wear any pro-Kerry clothing or buttons or protest in any manner, at the risk of expulsion. After a parent inquired, an alternative activity will be provided, probably a movie being shown in an auditorium. (The school secretary reportedly said that students had the choice of just staying home if they didn't want to attend the Bush rally, but the principal subsequently offered an alternative.)Kos continues, "If Bush comes to a high school, how dare his campaign dictate what students can wear? "This is out of control.
Patrick
adds, "Expulsion means you're tossed out of public school for the rest of
the year. For wearing a button supporting the Democratic nominee for President. UPDATE: Mary's got the skinny from Richland High School Principal John Cler, who said:
"Here's what happened. The Bush campaign called to ask if they could rent our gym. We are a rural town, with the only space large enough. We thought it would be a great opportunity for our kids to hear him, as I said to them 'whether you agree with him or not.' THe Bush people gave out tickets [I think maybe the tickets cost something and they gave some to the kids for free? In any event, in addition to the rental fee, they also got tickets for interested students.] including some for the students, and the Bush people made the rules about the kids not being allowed to wear Kerry gear, which is typcial for Bush events. We and they never ever mentioned the word expulsion. We told the kids that if the Bush campaign had a problem with them, they would remove them from the gym. It was a separate event from school. I wanted to do it in part so the kids could see the political process up close, and have a chance to see the President. They made their folks available to come to classrooms to talk to the kids, so for a small town, this is a great opportunity. We did NOT threaten explosion -- that would be illegal, and I wouldn't allow it anyway."This exonerates the principal from the charges that he threatened to expel dissenters, but he still failed his students by allowing a rally to take place on his campus while freedom of speech was being abridged. It also is yet another appalling move by the Bush campaign, who still won't tolerate any dissent against their Four Year Plan. What a terrible message to send to the kids, who learned in their civics classes that our Constitution enshrines their freedom of speech.
The rise of pseudo fascism. David Neiwert continues his remarkable series of arcicles at his website, Orcinus. There was a new article posted yesterday; the series will conclude next week. Start reading now.
The Rise of Pseudo FascismIt's not light reading, but it's essential reading, particularly if you really want to know how much your vote for Kerry will be worth next week.
A lifetime supply! Via Cursor: "A Knight Ridder news report on the weapon of choice for Iraq insurgents -- homemade bombs, or improvised explosive devices' -- quotes an Iraqi police official as saying that 'the terrorists took all the explosives they would ever need' when the coalition failed to guard ammunition depots."
The New Orleans election scene: "Sitting it out is not an option." Louisiana has been pretty solidly in the Bush camp as a whole, and is expected to go red next Tuesday. However, there's a big groundswell of support for Kerry in the Crescent City, and not only because the city's majority black population tend not to be Bush's demographic. In the aftermath of the New Orleans Times-Picayune's failure to endorse a candidate last Sunday, one reader responds in a letter to the editor:
Cowards!In case you didn't know, Metairie is a very conservative suburb of New Orleans, parts of which sent David Duke to the Louisiana legislature in 1989. I'd be surprised if Mrs. Higgins was alone in this. (You go, Kathy!) New Orleans weblog Right Hand Thief comments:
Da Paper is too disappointed in Bush to endorse him. (Read: the publisher told the T-P editors to choose Bush and they threw a big enough fit so that a non-endorsement was the compromise. A spouse of one of the opinion page editors informed me that the paper's owner/publisher decides all of the major endorsements -- not an uncommon practice. He's conservative and I'm sure he sees a substantial qualitative difference between Kerry and Dubya. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during that conference call...)Yeah you rite.
One more for Big John. The Orlando Sentinel was a big one. However, to what would have been astonishment if not for the realization that no one who lives in a reality-based world and truly understands the situation we're in could possibly vote for Bush, The Idaho Statesman, a staunchly conservative newspaper in America's most staunchly conservative state, endorses John Kerry.
And yet another: "Bush Relatives for Kerry". Yep, it's for real -- these folks' blood is blue-state blue.
"Bush Relatives for Kerry" grew out of a series of conversations that took place between a group of people that have two things in common: they are all related to George Walker Bush, and they are all voting for John Kerry. As the election approaches, we feel it is our responsibility to speak out about why we are voting for John Kerry, and to do our small part to help America heal from the sickness it has suffered since George Bush was appointed President in 2000. We invite you to read our stories, and please, don't vote for our cousin!I don't think y'all'll have to worry too much. (I'm feeling better every day.)
[ Link to today's entries ]
It's out! Buy one! Buy several! Makes great gifts! Today is the official release day for Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens: The Big Ol' Box of New Orleans -- five hours, thirteen minutes of music, 84 pages of writing and photos, the product of a lot of my sweat, passion, anguish, joy and lots and lots of late nights and long weekends for the last year-and-two-months. In case you missed it earlier, here's the track listing.
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