...or Why A Draft Is Inevitable

It's because you can only feed soldiers into a meatgrinder so long before you run low and need more.

Following up on yesterday's post about the soldiers who were refusing to go on what they refer to as a "suicide mission", Salon has more:

The e-mail arrived Tuesday evening. But Kathy Harris didn't see the urgent plea from her son, Spc. Aaron Gordon, 20, until she arrived at work Wednesday morning. By then, Gordon and 16 other members of his Army Reserve platoon were corralled in a tent in Tallil, Iraq, under armed guard, for refusing to drive a fuel supply convoy in what another of the detained soldiers would later describe as a "death sentence."

"At that point [when her son e-mailed] they hadn't been arrested yet. He was asking my advice about what could happen if they refused an order," Harris told me on Friday by telephone from Mississippi. "He said they had been ordered to take a contaminated load of fuel into a high-danger area. He said that they had already taken this load to one location, and it had been refused, and that they had, in his exact words, a '75 percent chance of being hit' on this new mission. He asked what the potential reprimands were if he disobeyed his commanding officer and, if it came to that point, what would happen to him if he had to get physical."

Harris quickly phoned a friend who is a judge advocate general (JAG) officer and e-mailed her son back. "I told him if he struck an officer he faced potential three years imprisonment and a dishonorable discharge. I said, 'Do not do that.' I told him to talk to his first sergeant and see if he could help. But I doubt he ever got my reply."

Indeed, by the time Kathy Harris replied to her son's e-mail, several other military families had received desperate phone calls from their loved ones in Iraq. There had been some sort of mutiny, it was clear. The details were sketchy, but it appeared that the platoon had refused to deliver a load of fuel to Taji, Iraq, because the soldiers believed their lives were at serious and unnecessary risk. According to the family members' accounts, they were detained at gunpoint by soldiers for more than a day.

But the military denies that the reservists were detained at all. Lt. Col. Dave Rodgers, a spokesman for the 81st Regional Support Readiness Command of the U.S. Army Reserves in Birmingham, Ala., said in an interview Friday that while an investigation into the matter is ongoing, "No soldier has been arrested, charged, confined or detained as a result of this incident."

That would be news to many family members, who say their loved ones told them that they'd been confined in a tent at gunpoint and refused permission to use the bathroom without armed escort.

Get the damn day pass and read the rest. THIS is what a president who did everything he could NOT to have to put himself at risk is doing to America's young people.

THE TUCKER CARLSON STORY

Starring Peter Saarsgard as the journalistic so-called Boy Wonder whom Jon Stewart called a dick on Crossfire

Is there no limit to the wonderfulness of Jon Stewart? His bitchslapping of that creep Tucker Carlson today on Crossfire was priceless.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART")

STEWART: Meanwhile, the president's challenger was also in New York, also facing some difficult questions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How to you stay in shape?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you eat something?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have a routine? Do you...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: It's like Nerf CROSSFIRE.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(APPLAUSE)

BEGALA: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE.

As both of our loyal viewers, of course, know, our show is about all left vs. white, black vs. white, paper vs. plastic, Red Sox against the Yankees. That's why every day, we have two guests with their own unique perspective on the news. But today, CROSSFIRE is very difficult. We have just one guest.

He's either the funniest smart guy on TV or the smartest funnyman. We'll find out which in a minute. But he's certainly an Emmy Award winner, the host of Comedy Central's "Daily Show" and the co-author of the new mega best-seller "America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction," at your bookstores everywhere.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the CROSSFIRE Jon Stewart.

STEWART: Thank you.

CARLSON: Thank you for joining us.

STEWART: Thank you very much. That was very kind of you to say.

Can I say something very quickly? Why do we have to fight?

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: The two of you? Can't we just -- say something nice about John Kerry right now.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: I like John. I care about John Kerry.

STEWART: And something about President Bush.

BEGALA: He'll be unemployed soon?

(LAUGHTER)

BEGALA: I failed the test. I'm sorry.

CARLSON: See, I made the effort anyway.

BEGALA: No, actually, I knew Bush in Texas a little bit. And the truth is, he's actually a great guy. He's not a very good president. But he's actually a very good person. I don't think you should have to hate to oppose somebody, but it makes it easier.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: Why do you argue, the two of you?

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: I hate to see it.

CARLSON: We enjoy it.

STEWART: Let me ask you a question.

CARLSON: Well, let me ask you a question first.

STEWART: All right.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: Is John Kerry -- is John Kerry really the best? I mean, John Kerry has...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: Is he the best? I thought Lincoln was good.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: Is he the best the Democrats can do?

STEWART: Is he the best the Democrats can do?

CARLSON: Yes, this year of the whole field.

STEWART: I had always thought, in a democracy -- and, again, I don't know -- I've only lived in this country -- that there's a process. They call them primaries.

CARLSON: Right.

STEWART: And they don't always go with the best, but they go with whoever won. So is he the best? According to the process.

CARLSON: Right. But of the nine guys running, who do you think was best. Do you think he was the best, the most impressive?

STEWART: The most impressive?

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: I thought Al Sharpton was very impressive.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: I enjoyed his way of speaking.

I think, oftentimes, the person that knows they can't win is allowed to speak the most freely, because, otherwise, shows with titles, such as CROSSFIRE.

BEGALA: CROSSFIRE.

STEWART: Or "HARDBALL" or "I'm Going to Kick Your Ass" or...

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: Will jump on it.

In many ways, it's funny. And I made a special effort to come on the show today, because I have privately, amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being bad.

(LAUGHTER)

BEGALA: We have noticed.

STEWART: And I wanted to -- I felt that that wasn't fair and I should come here and tell you that I don't -- it's not so much that it's bad, as it's hurting America.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: But in its defense...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: So I wanted to come here today and say...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: Here's just what I wanted to tell you guys.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: Stop.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.

BEGALA: OK. Now

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: And come work for us, because we, as the people...

CARLSON: How do you pay?

STEWART: The people -- not well.

(LAUGHTER)

BEGALA: Better than CNN, I'm sure.

STEWART: But you can sleep at night.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations. And we're left out there to mow our lawns.

BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we're too rough on them when they make mistakes.

STEWART: No, no, no, you're not too rough on them. You're part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: Wait, Jon, let me tell you something valuable that I think we do that I'd like to see you...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: Something valuable?

CARLSON: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: I would like to hear it.

CARLSON: And I'll tell you.

When politicians come on...

STEWART: Yes.

CARLSON: It's nice to get them to try and answer the question. And in order to do that, we try and ask them pointed questions. I want to contrast our questions with some questions you asked John Kerry recently.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: ... up on the screen.

STEWART: If you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you're more than welcome to.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: No, no, no, here's the point.

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: If that's your goal.

CARLSON: It's not.

STEWART: I wouldn't aim for us. I'd aim for "Seinfeld." That's a very good show.

CARLSON: Kerry won't come on this show. He will come on your show.

STEWART: Right.

CARLSON: Let me suggest why he wants to come on your show.

STEWART: Well, we have civilized discourse.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: Well, here's an example of the civilized discourse.

Here are three of the questions you asked John Kerry.

STEWART: Yes.

CARLSON: You have a chance to interview the Democratic nominee. You asked him questions such as -- quote -- "How are you holding up? Is it hard not to take the attacks personally?"

STEWART: Yes.

CARLSON: "Have you ever flip-flopped?" et cetera, et cetera.

STEWART: Yes.

CARLSON: Didn't you feel like -- you got the chance to interview the guy. Why not ask him a real question, instead of just suck up to him?

STEWART: Yes. "How are you holding up?" is a real suck-up. And I actually giving him a hot stone massage as we were doing it.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: It sounded that way. It did.

STEWART: You know, it's interesting to hear you talk about my responsibility.

CARLSON: I felt the sparks between you.

STEWART: I didn't realize that -- and maybe this explains quite a bit.

CARLSON: No, the opportunity to...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: ... is that the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: So what I would suggest is, when you talk about you're holding politicians' feet to fire, I think that's disingenuous. I think you're...

CARLSON: "How are you holding up?" I mean, come on.

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: No, no, no. But my role isn't, I don't think...

CARLSON: But you can ask him a real question, don't you think, instead of saying...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: I don't think I have to. By the way, I also asked him, "Were you in Cambodia?" But I didn't really care.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: Because I don't care, because I think it's stupid.

CARLSON: I can tell.

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: But my point is this. If your idea of confronting me is that I don't ask hard-hitting enough news questions, we're in bad shape, fellows. (LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: We're here to love you, not confront you.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: We're here to be nice.

STEWART: No, no, no, but what I'm saying is this. I'm not. I'm here to confront you, because we need help from the media and they're hurting us. And it's -- the idea is...

(APPLAUSE)

(CROSSTALK)

BEGALA: Let me get this straight. If the indictment is -- if the indictment is -- and I have seen you say this -- that...

STEWART: Yes.

BEGALA: And that CROSSFIRE reduces everything, as I said in the intro, to left, right, black, white.

STEWART: Yes.

BEGALA: Well, it's because, see, we're a debate show.

STEWART: No, no, no, no, that would be great.

BEGALA: It's like saying The Weather Channel reduces everything to a storm front.

STEWART: I would love to see a debate show.

BEGALA: We're 30 minutes in a 24-hour day where we have each side on, as best we can get them, and have them fight it out.

STEWART: No, no, no, no, that would be great. To do a debate would be great. But that's like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: Jon, Jon, Jon, I'm sorry. I think you're a good comedian. I think your lectures are boring.

STEWART: Yes.

CARLSON: Let me ask you a question on the news.

STEWART: Now, this is theater. It's obvious. How old are you?

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: Thirty-five. STEWART: And you wear a bow tie.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

CARLSON: Yes, I do. I do.

STEWART: So this is...

CARLSON: I know. I know. I know. You're a...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: So this is theater.

CARLSON: Now, let me just...

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: Now, come on.

STEWART: Now, listen, I'm not suggesting that you're not a smart guy, because those are not easy to tie.

CARLSON: They're difficult.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: But the thing is that this -- you're doing theater, when you should be doing debate, which would be great.

BEGALA: We do, do...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: It's not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. And I will tell you why I know it.

CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you're accusing us of partisan hackery?

STEWART: Absolutely.

CARLSON: You've got to be kidding me. He comes on and you...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: What is wrong with you?

(APPLAUSE) CARLSON: Well, I'm just saying, there's no reason for you -- when you have this marvelous opportunity not to be the guy's butt boy, to go ahead and be his butt boy. Come on. It's embarrassing.

STEWART: I was absolutely his butt boy. I was so far -- you would not believe what he ate two weeks ago.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.

CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.

STEWART: You need to go to one.

The thing that I want to say is, when you have people on for just knee-jerk, reactionary talk...

CARLSON: Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny.

STEWART: No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey.

(LAUGHTER)

BEGALA: Go ahead. Go ahead.

STEWART: I watch your show every day. And it kills me.

CARLSON: I can tell you love it.

STEWART: It's so -- oh, it's so painful to watch.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: You know, because we need what you do. This is such a great opportunity you have here to actually get politicians off of their marketing and strategy.

CARLSON: Is this really Jon Stewart? What is this, anyway?

STEWART: Yes, it's someone who watches your show and cannot take it anymore.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: I just can't.

CARLSON: What's it like to have dinner with you? It must be excruciating. Do you like lecture people like this or do you come over to their house and sit and lecture them; they're not doing the right thing, that they're missing their opportunities, evading their responsibilities? STEWART: If I think they are.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: I wouldn't want to eat with you, man. That's horrible.

STEWART: I know. And you won't. But the thing I want to get to...

BEGALA: We did promise naked pictures of the Supreme Court justices.

CARLSON: Yes, we did. Let's get to those.

(CROSSTALK)

BEGALA: They're in this book, which is a very funny book.

STEWART: Why can't we just talk -- please, I beg of you guys, please.

CARLSON: I think you watch too much CROSSFIRE.

We're going to take a quick break.

STEWART: No, no, no, please.

CARLSON: No, no, hold on. We've got commercials.

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: Please. Please stop.

CARLSON: Next, Jon Stewart in the "Rapid Fire."

STEWART: Please stop.

CARLSON: Hopefully, he'll be here, we hope, we think.

[snip]

CARLSON: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE.

We're talking to Jon Stewart, who was just lecturing us on our moral inferiority.

Jon, you're bumming us out. Tell us, what do you think about the Bill O'Reilly vibrator story?

STEWART: I'm sorry. I don't.

CARLSON: Oh, OK.

STEWART: What do you think?

BEGALA: Let me change the subject.

STEWART: Where's your moral outrage on this?

CARLSON: I don't have any.

STEWART: I know.

BEGALA: Which candidate do you suppose would provide you better material?

STEWART: I'm sorry?

BEGALA: Which candidate do you suppose would provide you better material if he won?

STEWART: Mr. T. I think he'd be the funniest. I don't...

(LAUGHTER)

BEGALA: Don't you have a stake in it that way, as not just a citizen, but as a professional comic?

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: Right, which I hold to be much more important than as a citizen.

BEGALA: Well, there you go.

(LAUGHTER)

BEGALA: But who would you provide you better material, do you suppose?

STEWART: I don't really know. That's kind of not how we look at it. We look at, the absurdity of the system provides us the most material. And that is best served by sort of the theater of it all, you know, which, by the way, thank you both, because it's been helpful.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: But, if Kerry gets elected, is it going to -- you have said you're voting for him. You obviously support him. It's clear. Will it be harder for you to mock his administration if he becomes president?

STEWART: No. Why would it be harder?

CARLSON: Because you support...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: The only way it would be harder is if his administration is less absurd than this one. So, in that case, if it's less absurd, then, yes, I think it would be harder.

But, I mean, it would be hard to top this group, quite frankly.

(LAUGHTER)

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

STEWART: In terms of absurdity and their world matching up to the one that -- you know, it was interesting. President Bush was saying, John Kerry's rhetoric doesn't match his record.

But I've heard President Bush describe his record. His record doesn't match his record.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: So I don't worry about it in that respect.

But let me ask you guys, again, a question, because we talked a little bit about, you're actually doing honest debate and all that. But, after the debates, where do you guys head to right afterwards?

CARLSON: The men's room.

STEWART: Right after that?

BEGALA: Home.

STEWART: Spin alley.

BEGALA: Home.

STEWART: No, spin alley.

BEGALA: What are you talking about? You mean at these debates?

STEWART: Yes. You go to spin alley, the place called spin alley. Now, don't you think that, for people watching at home, that's kind of a drag, that you're literally walking to a place called deception lane?

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: Like, it's spin alley. It's -- don't you see, that's the issue I'm trying to talk to you guys...

BEGALA: No, I actually believe -- I have a lot of friends who work for President Bush. I went to college with some of them.

CARLSON: Neither of us was ever in the spin room, actually.

(BELL RINGING)

BEGALA: No, I did -- I went to do the Larry King show.

They actually believe what they're saying. They want to persuade you. That's what they're trying to do by spinning. But I don't doubt for a minute these people who work for President Bush, who I disagree with on everything, they believe that stuff, Jon. This is not a lie or a deception at all. They believe in him, just like I believe in my guy.

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: I think they believe President Bush would do a better job.

And I believe the Kerry guys believe President Kerry would do a better job. But what I believe is, they're not making honest arguments. So what they're doing is, in their mind, the ends justify the means.

(CROSSTALK)

BEGALA: I don't think so at all.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: I do think you're more fun on your show. Just my opinion.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: OK, up next, Jon Stewart goes one on one with his fans...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: Now, you're getting into it. I like that.

STEWART: Yes.

CARLSON: OK. We'll be right back.

If you didn't get a chance to hear it, you can get it from today's Randi Rhodes archive at Air America Place. It ran at around 5:30 PM, so that's about 2-1/2 hours into the show.

UPDATE: Oh happy happy joy joy. Video at Contemporary Insanity. I recommend QuickTime.

Big John fights back:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Today the Kerry
campaign issued a letter to Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., in
regards to their plans to air an anti-Kerry documentary.

Text of the letter follows.
---

October 15, 2004
David D. Smith

President and CEO
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc.
10706 Beaver Dam Road
Hunt Valley, Maryland 21030
Re: "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal"

Dear Mr. Smith:

I am writing on behalf of Senator John Kerry and Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc. Press reports indicate that the stations operated by the Sinclair Broadcast Group plan to air a program entitled "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" later this month. See,
e.g., Howard Kurtz & Frank Ahrens, Family's TV Clout in Bush's Corner, THE WASHINGTON POST, Oct. 12, 2004, at A1; Elizabeth Jensen, Conservative TV Group to Air Anti-Kerry Film, LOS ANGELES TIMES, Oct. 9, 2004, at A1. This program constitutes an attack on Senator Kerry by supporters of President Bush. It was not produced by Sinclair, nor by any reputable journalistic organization. It is our understanding that Sinclair plans to air this program during hours when entertainment programming is normally provided on its stations.

The legality of Sinclair's attempt to broadcast this program has already been called into serious legal question. The Democratic National Committee recently filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission pointing out that Sinclair's airing of the program constitutes an illegal corporate-funded "electioneering communication." As the DNC correctly notes, the broadcast does not qualify for the exemption afforded to news stories under federal campaign finance law and thus would constitute an illegal corporate expenditure.

Under the Federal Communications Commission's decision in Nicholas Zapple, 23 F.C.C.2d 707 (1970), a broadcasting station that permits supporters of a candidate to use its facilities to advance that candidate's campaign must provide supporters of the opposing candidate "quasi-equal opportunities." Despite the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, the FCC has made clear that stations' Zapple obligations continue in effect. See RTNDA v. FCC, 184 F.3d 872, 884 n.10 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (recognizing that the Zapple Doctrine complements Section 315(a) of the Communications Act); The Handling of Public Issues Under the Fairness Doctrine and the Public Interest Standards, 48 F.C.C.2d 1, 31 (1974); 36 F.C.C.2d 40, 47-49 (1972).

Sinclair's planned airing of this documentary produced by opponents of Senator Kerry is precisely the kind of use of a broadcasting station to advance one campaign that the Zapple Doctrine was intended to address. The documentary is clearly intended to advance the campaign of President Bush by attacking Senator Kerry's record.

The program does not meet any of the requirements for the exemptions from the equal opportunities requirement. See Request for Declaratory Ruling that Independently Produced Bona Fide News Interview Programs Qualify for the Equal Opportunities Exemption, 7 F.C.C.R. 4,681 (1992). It is not regularly scheduled on Sinclair's stations and will not be shown when news programming is regularly aired. The content of the program will not be controlled by Sinclair or an independent journalistic organization. The program instead is intended to be an attack on Senator Kerry and thus is not the result of decisions made on the basis of newsworthiness rather than to advance or retard a particular candidate. Id. Thus, the program cannot qualify as either a bona fide news program or news interview.

It also cannot be viewed as an exempt documentary. As the FCC has made clear, "that exemption explicitly applies only if the appearance of the candidate is 'incidental to the presentation of the subject or subjects covered by the news documentary.'"
Request of A&E Television Networks for Declaratory Ruling, 15 F.C.C.R. 10,796 (2000). The subject of the proposed program is Senator Kerry's activities in connection with the Vietnam War and his appearance is, therefore, central, rather than incidental, to the program.

Section 315(a) of the Communications Act was intended to prevent the licensee of a broadcasting station using the public airwaves to use that facility to promote one candidate for public office over another. The FCC in Zapple recognized that Congress's intent could be frustrated by stations that aired programs featuring supporters of one candidate instead of the candidate himself or herself. See RTNDA, 184 F.3d at 884 n.10.

If Sinclair does air this program in which supporters of President Bush attack Senator Kerry, it must provide a similar opportunity for Senator Kerry's supporters. Please consider this a request that each Sinclair station that airs the documentary provide supporters of the Kerry-Edwards campaign with a similar amount of time on that station before the election at a time where an audience of similar size can be expected to be viewing the station. Please contact me or have a representative of each station do so in order to schedule an appearance by supporters of Senator Kerry.

Very truly yours,

/s/

Marc E. Elias
General Counsel,
Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc.


cc: Bobby Baker
Assistant Division Chief, Policy Division
Media Bureau
Federal Communications Commission
------

Paid for by Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc.

These are the people who WERE trained for what were supposed to be the jobs of the 21st century. These people are highly educated, most have at least a bachelor's degree. I guess they're supposed to study "hospitality management" and "nourishment retailing" at community college now.

Say goodbye to the American software programmer. Once the symbols of hope as the nation shifted from manufacturing to service jobs, programmers today are an endangered species. They face a challenge similar to that which shrank the ranks of steelworkers and autoworkers a quarter century ago: competition from foreigners.


Some experts think they'll become extinct within the next few years, forced into unemployment or new careers by a combination of offshoring of their work to India and other low-wage countries and the arrival of skilled immigrants taking their jobs.


Not everybody agrees programmers will disappear completely. But even the optimists believe that many basic programming jobs will go to foreign nations, leaving behind jobs for Americans to lead and manage software projects. The evidence is already mounting that many computer jobs are endangered, prompting concern about the future of the nation's high-tech industries.


Since the dotcom bust in 2000-2001, nearly a quarter of California technology workers have taken nontech jobs, according to a study of 1 million workers released last week by Sphere Institute, a San Francisco Bay Area public policy group. The jobs they took often paid less. Software workers were hit especially hard. Another 28% have dropped off California's job rolls altogether. They fled the state, became unemployed, or decided on self-employment.

The problem is not limited to California.

Although computer-related jobs in the United States increased by 27,000 between 2001 and 2003, about 180,000 new foreign H-1B workers in the computer area entered the nation, calculates John Miano, an expert with the Programmers Guild, a professional society. "This suggests any gain of jobs have been taken by H-1B workers," he says.

More...

...the big fool says to push on. [/Pete Seeger]

A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a "suicide mission" to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday.

The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq — north of Baghdad — because their vehicles were considered "deadlined" or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook.

Sgt. McCook, a deputy at the Hinds County Detention Center, and the 16 other members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, S.C., were read their rights and moved from the military barracks into tents, Patricia McCook said her husband told her during a panicked phone call about 5 a.m. Thursday.
The platoon could be charged with the willful disobeying of orders, punishable by dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay and up to five years confinement, said military law expert Mark Stevens, an associate professor of justice studies at Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, N.C.

via Tbogg:

Q What's your comment on the trade deficit?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, what's your question on the trade deficit?

Q Well, it's the second biggest in history, and it shows record imports from China. And it also indicates that the cost of oil is affecting --

MR. McCLELLAN: The way to create jobs here at home in America is to continue to open markets abroad for American products and producers. And as we do that, we need to make sure that there is a level playing field for American -- for Americans to compete on, because we can compete with anyone across the globe when the playing field is level. Also, you have oil prices that have gone up. Obviously, that has an impact. That's why the President has put forward a comprehensive plan, that's one of the very first things he did in office, to make America energy self-sufficient. We are dependent on foreign sources of energy right now. We need to reduce our dependency on foreign sources of energy. And the President's opponent has stood in the way of a comprehensive energy plan.

ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION!!

OK, so this isn't about politics. But I'm still glad that SOMEONE has had the courage to state the obvious: that the last thing we needed to make a fashion comeback is the poncho.

Fashion crimes, like many other crimes, begin innocently enough. A few influential designers send a quirky and impractical article of clothing down the runway; high-fashion magazines enthusiastically push it; a celebrity is photographed wearing it; lower-end lines begin mass-producing it; suddenly, women are buying it in shrieking colors and synthetic fabrics, and what started as a harmless act of whimsy has become a widespread aesthetic offense. So it has gone with the poncho—that rectangular piece of material resembling a small blanket, with a hole in the center for your head. The style, now at its apogee, appears both in mainstream stores like Ann Taylor, the Gap, J.C. Penney, and Macy's (which offers 43 options in a ponchos-only department) and in high fashion magazines like Vogue, in which New York socialite Plum Sykes sports a fringed, yellow, off-the-shoulder number, and Bazaar, where a $1,500 Chloe "horse blanket poncho" is deemed one of the season's "must-haves." Recently, during a 20-minute walk in Midtown Manhattan, I counted 18 ponchos—averaging nearly one per minute. Ponchos have become this season's Ugg boots: unsightly and overexposed.

I used to wear a poncho. I was fifteen, sort of overweight (though not as much as I remember being), and wearing a poncho all the time, combined with keeping my head downcast so that my either limp or frizzy hair, depending on the day, covered as much of my face as possible, allowed me to delude myself that I was invisible to the world.

My poncho was pretty cool as ponchos go; it was more Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly than Granny's Old Crocheting. But I wasn't Clint Eastwood, I was just another depressed adolescent, and it looked awful. And time has not been kind to ponchos either. Yes, we can rejoice that the era of hip-huggers exposing pierced bellies may be ending, but I'm not convinced that the poncho is an improvement.

What on earth would we do without Paul Krugman?

Cutting to the chase (but do read the whole thing):

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.

If you don't have time to read the book "Bush's Brain", and the movie isn't playing in your area, Joshua Green's article about Bush's Rasputin in the Atlantic gives a good picture of the man behind the throne.

Now, you can admire Rove's ruthlessness if that's your cup of tea, but anyone with a shred of decency ought to admit that this is beyond "tough politics":

Kennedy had spent years on the bench as a juvenile and family-court judge, during which time he had developed a strong interest in aiding abused children....At the time of the race he had just served a term as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. One of Rove's signature tactics is to attack an opponent on the very front that seems unassailable. Kennedy was no exception.

Some of Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. "We were trying to counter the positives from that ad," a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," the staffer went on...."What Rove does," says Joe Perkins, "is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin', tobacco-chewin', pickup-drivin' kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take."

And it's from TruthandHope.org. Read about it here, and watch the ad here. Then go giv them some turkee to run it.

...and say that I think Lynne Cheney may be a closeted lesbian herself, and that's why she's so SHOCKED....SHOCKED...AND APPALLED...that John Kerry would have the TEMERITY to claim that her daughter Mary is a lesbian, never mind that said daughter has been out of the closet for 10 years.

Why do I say this?

Here's why:

The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage -- no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved, curiously envious of them. She had never to this moment thought Eden a particularly attractive paradise, based as it was on naiveté, but she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her. How strong it made them. What comfort it gave.

and here:

The young woman was heavily powdered, but quite attractive, a curvesome creature, rounded at bosom and cheek. When she smiled, even her teeth seemed puffed and rounded, like tiny ivory pillows.

Let us go away together, away from the anger and imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl.

These are excerpts from Lynne Cheney's 1981 book "Sisters."

STRAIGHT WOMEN DO NOT WRITE STUFF LIKE THIS!! I've been known to pen some fiction every now and then, and when I write sex it's straight sex. I have a novel in mind that has a bi man as one of the protagonists, and I haven't a clue how I'm going to handle the "gay stuff." But don't think I'm generalizing based solely on my own experience. I know someone who wrote one of the hottest damn straight sex scenes I've ever read -- and then came out of the closet herself.

"Write what you know", we're always told. And if you can't write what you know, write what you wish you knew -- especially when you're talking about eroticism. Write what you fantasize. I don't fantasize the way Lynne Cheney does. Maybe there are straight women who do, but I also think that gender and sexuality are probably a lot more fluid than people think, and there are varying degrees of gay, straight, and somewhere in between.

But when you do the math -- lesbian erotic fiction, being married to one of the most odious men on earth, being part of the moral tub-thumpers brigade, and protesting vociferously when someone mentions something about your daughter that you and the rest of the world already know; add in a soupcon of hating in others what you hate in yourself, and there's only one answer I can come up with.

Not that there's anything wrong with that....unless you advocate policies that would make people like your daughter -- and perhaps even yourself -- second class citizens...unless they choose to live a lie the way Lynne Cheney may be.

George would tan her hide.

Awash in red ink, the federal government has torn up its credit card to keep the national debt under the legal $7.384 trillion ceiling.

Treasury Secretary John Snow made the announcement in a letter to Congressional leaders, warning that he had stopped borrowing funds and would run out of time and gimmicks by mid-November. At that point, he wrote, "all of our previously used prudent and legal actions to avoid breaching the statutory debt limit will be exhausted."

Snow also asked Congress to raise the raise the debt limit.

This is the equivalent of charging all your existing cards to pay off the limit, then getting more cards AND requesting an increase in your credit limit.

Bush is still calling John Kerry a "tax and spend" liberal, but I'll take one of those any day over a "borrow and squander" republican.

Like Maricopa County, Arizona:

The first debate was viewed as a Kerry victory because Americans saw how polished Kerry was and because Bush displayed a look of shock at some of the bold contradictions that emanated from the Massachusetts Senator. But, in terms of the over all impact on the election, Kerry lost that debate by insisting America could not be trusted to decide when we can deploy our military to defend ourselves. We must be held in check by foreign powers via the "Global Test" of the Kerry Doctrine. I believe Kerry sealed his fate in that moment.

In the second debate, with the town-hall format, Bush shined. Americans know George Bush is not a smooth talking slick politician, but he has the appeal of a leader with two feet on the ground. He comes across as one of us because he is one of us. Whether the topic was national security or the economy, Bush was at one with the town-hall participants. Kerry looked down upon them as "commoners" who could not dream of living in a household with combined incomes of $200,000 or more.

The final debate, in Tempe, was decisive for Bush. Kerry was more of the same: smart, steady and articulate, but aloof. Bush enjoyed himself speaking passionately about the impact tax cuts have on real families, the importance of education to improving the lives of Americans who are struggling in the ever changing economy. Most inviting, was his response to the question about religion. Bush appeared as though the pressures of the campaign were lifted for that moment when he was able to tell us of how much God helps him in his everyday life. He was not debating when he told us that he prays for his family and for the country and that he prayed before ordering America to war.

America got to contrast that with John Kerry taking the opportunity to tell 45 million viewers that Dick Cheney has a lesbian daughter. Bush wins the debates 3-0.

I wonder what that kool-aid tastes like.

Not "speculum", Mr. O'Reilly, speculation.

From a posting at the Kerry/Edwards blog, via Kos:

"anyway, I am new tonight... as you may not have seen me before in here.. just a FYI that I am deaf here and can read lips okay..
at the end of debate where Kerry and Bush shook hands.. Bush was asking Kerry, Can I talk to you later tonight? Kerry said sure then Bush said where would you be? I missed what Kerry said.

I wondered what Bush wanted to talk to Kerry about??

... not good. Not. Good. At all.
I watched them talk after, and it seemed like Kerry was surprised... something was off. I was wondering what was said...

When the president asks to talk to you, you don't not meet with him...

Whatever Bush says, whatever it sounds like, I wouldn't trust it worth a damn.

But Kerry's a senator... he knows the game."

So I wonder what Bush wanted to talk to Kerry about? Speculation among the Kossacks runs the gamut from Bush planning to depart the ticket due to health reasons (the sagging jaw, the spittle, the drinking, the dry mouth, the falling, the obvious cognitive impairment, the refusal to have a physical till after the election) and being replaced with a more palatable option, like Giuliani or McCain; to the Dems having hard evidence of something nah-sty from Bush's past and cutting a deal.

The same post links to a post on Friends of Liberty that a FEMA Disaster "simulation" is set for Election Day (sort of the way a terrorism drill was set for 9/11?), so it's also possible that Bush, seeing that Kerry now has at least an even chance of winning, wanted to alert him to the potential shit that's about to go down. Of course this flies in the face of the "rigged election" theory, so at this point the feedback interference coming into my tinfoil hat is deafening.

Or it could have just been "See you on election night." Though knowing Bush, he'd have added "sucka!" to the end of it.

via BoingBoing via The Talent Show:

October 12, 2004
"Imminent" Terrorist Attack?

I have a friend with a job that makes certain Police Department memos things he needs to take note of. This is the one he got this morning. I've known this person for a very long time and I'm vouching for it's authenticity:

Subject: FW: Terrorist Attack on US Soil is Imminent Importance: High
LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE

At the meeting of the Southern District of the Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council (ATAC) that was held yesterday in Houston, US Attorney Michael Shelby informed the group that a terrorist attack of 09/11/01 proportions was going to be carried out on US soil within the next 6 weeks.

Mr. Shelby stated that on 09/13/04, US Attorney General John Ashcroft had a conference call with all 93 US Attorneys, an event which is extremely rare. The US Attorneys were informed that without a doubt an attack was going to be perpetrated in the US within the next 6 weeks, prior to the elections. Mr. Shelby urgently requested that all law enforcement be aware of any situation that may be out of the ordinary and report the activity immediately. Mr. Shelby also requested that we get the word out to patrol officers and detectives to talk to their informants and report anything odd or remotely suspicious. Mr. Shelby ended this warning by saying that unless we get a bit of "luck" and the attack can be detected and prevented, that another attack of 9/11 scale will be carried out.

Please disseminate to all of your law enforcement contacts ASAP.

New Mexico Investigative Support Center

Direct Line: 505-541-7000
Fax: 505-541-7006

John E. Vinson, Director

More...

Interesting how this is from the West Coast -- the better to shut down the election before, say, California's polls close? Let's not forget about Rummy saying that an election with 4/5 of the country voting was just fine.

Bill O'Reilly. 'nuff said.

HoDee shills for Yahoo! local -- and riffs on his own image. Damn. I hope he doesn't disappear. We need him.

Excerpts, Debate Edition:

the president is a fucking retard. I love America and all that, but the president is a fucking retard. Quit pretending.

If Bush went up there wearing his pants backwards and spent the whole time talking about his Yu-Gi-Oh cards, the media could still probaly pass it off as an impressive showing by a strong, decisive leader. He was just showing that he was down with the people. When his dad was president he was so out of touch he hadn't apparently been inside a grocery store in 35 years. This Bush though, this guy is with it, he collects Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Just like the hard working, God fearing, homeland securing NASCAR dads and security moms and juggling uncles and commemorative coin neighbors and all the other embarassingly obvious fictional demographics he represents.

COME ON, media. You've been sleeping on the job for years. WHEN exactly did you get so god damned interested in integrity and standards? Why did I not hear about this? Was I out of town? You motherfuckers don't HAVE integrity and you know it. When Wolf Blitzer is in the CNN men's room taking a piss next to fucking treacherous Robert Novak, then he goes to wash his hands, I bet he makes a point of NOT looking in the mirror. I'm sorry to bust your bubble, media, but you don't HAVE integrity. You left your integrity in your other pants and it went through the wash and when it came out it was in such bad shape you just tossed it.

You know what I also love, this business with the focus groups of "undecided voters." In other words, idiots. Or at best, lifelong republicans still struggling with whether to vote for Kerry or write in Superman. I mean seriously, how could you actually live in this country and not yet be sure who you're gonna vote for?

I mean there's a pretty clear difference here. We're not talking a decision between Coke and Pepsi. We're talking Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader. We're talking The Rolling Stones or Milli Vanilli. Who's it gonna be, man?

Read on, dude...

Its founders no doubt inspired by the Swift Boat Veterans for Lies and Slander, and determined not to allow administration and wingnut spin to be the only story, Operation Truth is designed to get the truth about Bush's Iraq and Afghanistan wars out there -- as only those who have fought them can.

These guys are determined not to get caught 30 years down the line by a bunch of embittered liars and they're taking a pre-emptive strike by telling their stories, in their own words, now.

I know there's a lot of organizations out there right now that need cash, but I hope you'll join me in finding some spare turkee to giv these guys. Support our troops. Listen to them

A little late getting in, but let's see what's going on.

9:26: Activist judges rant. He's really obsessed with marriage being defined by courts. After all, only presidential elections should be defined by courts.

9:28: Kerry: "We are all God's children." Mentions Cheney's daughter. The wingnuts will crucify him for this. Points out that rights are codified in the Constitution.

9:29: The Catholic issue. Schieffer is lobbing softballs at Bush and hard questions at Kerry. I wish he'd say that the Catholic Church should have its tax exemption revoked. Kerry has to find a way to hammer home that it's not the role of a president in a democracy to impose his religious beliefs on everyone.

9:31: Bush talks about reducing the number of abortions. No, Bush wants to ELIMINATE ALL abortions. EVERYONE wants to reduce the number of abortions. Bush wants to do it by punishing the evil unchaste sirens who tempt men's baser instincts. Kerry wants to do it by having more and better access to information about contraception and to contraception itself.

9:33: Bush does the Beavis laugh.

9:34: Bush blames the entire cost of health care on litigation. Never mind the profits being raked in by Big Pharma and HMOs. Bush says it's also because they don't use technology. He must be talking about the internets. Or that intarweb thingie (TM Mary Ann Johanson). No one wants to address the 800-lb. gorilla in the room...which is that health care can't be done on a for-profit model. The ONLY solution is going to be single-payer.

9:36: FINALLY...Kerry talks about insurance company profits.

9:37: Bush seems to think that Kerry should have run the entire Senate for 20 years. He forgets that Kerry is just one of 100 Senators. But the fact that Bush isn't a babbling idiot tonight and he's not behaving like a crack addict means that the pundits will declare him "Churchillian."

9:39: Bush is drinking a lot of water. Looks like he got hold of Ramon before the debate again.

9:41: Bush says that increasing Medicaid is a disincentive for employers to provide health care. They already have a disincentive -- it's called 10%+ cost increases every year. Outsourcing is even more about health care costs, which companies can't control, than it is about salaries, which they can.

9:42: Yeah! Kerry hits Bush with the zinger that he's cut veterans benefits. He emphasizes that he's not proposing a government program. Why the hell not?

9:45: Boom! Kerry states the truth: that today's workers pay for today's retirees and that investing Social Security in private accounts would be a disaster. Kerry's hitting his stride, and Bush is looking down and smirking. Schieffer invokes Greenspan. Good Lord, he's editorializing: "Does this mean that you're going to leave this for our children to pay for?" Kerry's people should have protested vociferously at this FOG (Friend of George) doing the debate. Good. Kerry invokes the tax cuts for the rich as being the reason for the shortfall.

9:48: Kerry reminds everyone that Bush has presided over the biggest loss of jobs in 72 years.

9:50: Bush touts 1.9 million new jobs, which still leaves him about a million in the hole. And the new jobs pay significantly less, most are part-time and don't provide health insurance. I hope Kerry gets on this one fast.

9:52: Oh, good Lord. Bush just touted the $5.15 minimum wage as being a beacon of hope for immigrant workers. Wait a minute....Bush just said we shouldn't have amnesty. Lies again.

USA Today, 8/27/2004:

GOP delegates divided over party's immigration position
By Sergio Bustos, Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON — The question of what to do about millions of illegal immigrants is causing a rift among Republicans only days before their party's convention begins in New York.
Party conservatives are angry that the GOP's influential platform committee, which decides the party's principles and priorities, is endorsing President Bush's plan to create a nationwide temporary foreign worker program. That program, which the president outlined in January, would legalize the country's 8 million to 10 million illegal immigrants.

Conservatives view the proposal as an amnesty program that essentially rewards illegal immigrants for breaking the law. They have pledged to fight against it at the convention.

9:54: Bush says borders are more protected today...."He just doesn't understand how the borders work." Borders work? What a condescending asshole.

9:56: Schieffer asks Kerry if it's time to raise the minimum wage Bush touted as being so generous a few minutes ago. Bush says that instead of raising wages, we make sure the education system works. How, George? By teaching creationism? Earlier he talked about science education. This is the most anti-science administration in history!

10:00: The Roe v. Wade question. Bush says he won't have a litmus test. Let's hold him to that. Kerry notes that Bush didn't answer the question. Says that he won't appoint judges who take away rights.


10:01: Bush invokes "liberal Senator from Massachusetts."

10:02: Bush looks like he's going to cross over the split screen.

10:03: The draft. Kerry sounds like he knows what he's talking about here. He notes, correctly, that the National Guard should be used for homeland security domestically. Notes that when we share the burdens and use diplomacy, we don't have to go it alone. I wish he'd point out that under Bush's plan, we'll NEED a draft.

10:03: Bush LIES about working with allies, insists on the "I won't ask permission" meme. This is, of course bullshit, but it works. He's put Kerry on the defensive, which is NOT where Kerry wants to be. Come on, Big John, call him what he is: A LIAR.

10:08: WTF? Bush said that Democrats wanted to repeal the assault weapons ban.

10:12: Bush is blinking like mad. "Cocaine may cause seizures (convulsions), a stroke, or movements that you cannot control. These may include head jerking, constant chewing, and frequent eye blinking. If you have fast, jerky movements, and are unable to sit still, this may be called "crack dancing"."

10:14: Bush says "Today more minorities than ever before own a home." Yes, and many of them are in hock over their heads and are at risk of losing everything.

10:15: The Jesus Christ on a Damn Bicycle question. "How does your faith inform your decision-making? Jeez, can these questions to Bush get any softer? OK, now he said that it's OK to not worship anyone. I'm gonna hold him to that. "Prayer and religion sustain me...I receive calmness in the storms." Or help him come down from the coke... "I love the fact that people pray for me and my family...." Narcissism...it's all about George, isn't it?

Evangelical code: "Unleash the armies of compassion." Now is this a fucked-up statement or what? Armies imply war, right? What are we doing. shoving compassion down people's throats? How do you do that? By forcing them to accept Jeebus?

10:18: Polarization. Schieffer asks Kerry if he'll set a priority on bringing us back together. Listen, asshole, it's not the Democrats' fault that we're as divided as we are. This Republican party is not just about winning, it's about pounding the opposition into the ground. I linked to Orcinus the other day for an essay on this very topic. Kerry points the finger right back at Bush. Not strongly enough, but he does it.

10:21: Whopper of the Night: Bush: "My biggest disappointment in office is how partisan Washington is." Damn, that man can lie with impunity. Now he blames the 2000 election -- all those damn Democrats who wouldn't fall into line and worship him.

10:23: Bush admits he's pussy-whipped. He can't tell you how much he loves his wife and daughters because he doesn't. He can't, because he's a narcissist. To the extent that they revolve around him and his needs, he loves. Other than that, he has no use for them.

10:24: God, this culture hates women. So much fear about strong women coming from both these guys. This was a stupid fucking question.

10:28: Bush is mumbling something about a painting in his closing statement. Mentions how we've "come through an attack on our country and a stock market decline." However, his administration keeps telling us to keep being afraid, and the Dow closed at barely above 10,000, down 75 points today.

Overall: Probably a wash, slight advantage to Bush, only because he didn't utterly embarrass himself. I really wish Kerry had just slammed him tonight, though Schieffer made it very difficult with the kind of ridiculous questions he asked. I've rarely seen a debate with as little substance as this one.

I'm going to be following this issue carefully, but enough is going on that I don't want to just add to the previous thread.

Here, via Kos, is the text of an Associated Press story from KGW's web site (registration required, and Kos doesn't have a general user ID for this one):

Bradbury plans to investigate election complaint
10/13/2004

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI / Associated Press

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.

"I have never in my five years as secretary of state ever seen an allegation like the one that came up tonight -- ever," Bradbury said. "I mean, frankly, it just totally offends me that someone would take someone else's registration and throw it out."

Bradbury said the law requires that groups registering voters submit forms no later than five days after they were filled out. He added that canvassers can't turn away a voter because of his or her party affiliation.

Rory Smith, a spokeswoman for the Republican Party in Oregon, said the young man interviewed by KGW-TV was not in their rolls. "We do not condone this type of behavior," Smith told the Portland-based station.

In Nevada earlier Tuesday, KLAS-TV, a CBS affiliate, interviewed an employee of a private voter registration organization who said hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of Democratic registration forms had been destroyed.

Eric Russell, a former Voters Outreach of America employee, told the TV station he had personally witnessed his supervisor take out Democratic registration forms from the pile and shred them.

A spokesman for the Las Vegas bureau of the FBI said he did not know if an investigation had been initiated.

The Spanish web site Cronica (a service of Elmundo.es) is reporting that Osama Bin Laden is custody in China.

On reading the Google translation of the article into English, it sounds like the author is perhaps just a tad tinfoil-hattish, but this would be, after all, the October Surprise we've been expecting.

Google translation of the article into English (well, sort-of English):

Bin Laden is in China

IT AFFIRMS to Gordon Thomas to IT, journalist with contacts in the main services of espionage. The terrorist would have reached an agreement with China, that now negotiates the delivery with Bush. It is his great electoral trick

GORDON THOMAS

PACIFICADOR . Bin Laden would have promised to Beijing to end the war of guerrillas of the Chinese Muslims.

During the final straight line, to red the alive one, of the North American elections, Osama bin Laden could become the ace in the sleeve of president Bush. At the moment, Washington is negotiating an agreement of high secret with Beijing, the Chinese capital, to extract to Bin Laden of their sanctuary in the turbulent Muslim provinces Chinese, to the northwest of the country of the Great Wall.

More than five million people, many of them fanatical followers of Osama, live in which one of the most volatile Earth regions is considered. Thousands of them work for the Mafias that are dedicated to the human traffic or of drugs towards the West. The past summer, Bin Laden closed a treatment with the regime of Beijing by which asylum was promised to him in exchange for that this one guaranteed the cease of the war of guerrillas undertaken by the Chinese Muslims against the People's Republic of China.

In the course of the years, tens of thousands of troops of the Army of Popular Liberation have been sent to the region to try to squash the insurgents.

From the arrival of the Saudi Osama Bin Laden, the region has been relatively calm and to the Muslims who live there still it allows them to deal with human beings and drugs.

But now Bin Laden could be catched in its refuge if it prospers an extraordinary agreement between Beijing and Washington so that Chinese it gives to the U.S.A. to the looked for terrorist of the world more.

The capture of Osama Bin Laden virtually would guarantee the re-election of George Bush Jr, would confirm to the million indecisos voters in the U.S.A. of which the war against the terrorism was just after Bin Laden authorized the attacks of the 11 of September against New York and Washington.

"a new Bush administration would present/display to Beijing like its great new ally in the war against the terrorism. China would enjoy more in Washington estatus of favored nation in all its possible facets. Contracts valued in thousands of million dollars would be approved by the fast route. The file of violations of the Human rights in China would be ignored ", confirmed the last week a civil employee of high level of the Pentagon. It added that only a handful of "members of very high rank" of the Bush Administration knew the plan "to take to Bin Laden in exchange for a special relation with China". Almost with total certainty, among them would be the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

Acceding to speak in exchange for the anonymity, the civil employee provided details of the plan to capture Osama bin Laden like an average one to maintain to Bush in the White House. It explained that it is not the first time that a American administration has resorted to similar maneuvers during an electoral period.

Towards the end of the presidency of Jimmy Carter a secret agreement between then the future president of the U.S.A., Ronald was closed Reagan, and Iran by means of which the kidnapped American diplomats in Tehran, Iranian capital, would be released the same day that Reagan acceded to the White House.

According to Ari Ben-Menashe, old adviser of national security of the Israeli Government of Yitzhak Shamir, "enormous sums of money paid ayatolás Iranian". Ben-Menashe affirms that he himself was a key piece in the negotiation that later would be known like the Surprise of October of Reagan.

THERESA, IN THE TRACK

Theresa, the wife of the senator and democratic candidate John Kerry, has let glimpse that another Surprise of October could be inminente.Hace two weeks, surprised the political advisers of its husband when declaring in public: "it would not surprise to me if, before the elections, president Bush captures Osama". Since then, Mrs. Kerry has refused to comment her declaración.Pero explosive between the intelligence community as much persist the rumors that she as their husband was noticed that any commentary more on an agreement than includes the capture of Bin Laden could jeopardize the national security of the U.S.A..

And the analyst of Washington To the Santoli, the adviser of national security of the republican by California Dana Rohrabacher and publisher of the respected Chinese bulletin Monitor, affirmed that a Surprise of October "would not surprise to me in minimum".

[snip]

Sources of the White House have refused to comment this question in public. "If the negotiations fail, it is not the best moment so that the president is in evidence when seeing itself publicly implied in the negotiation", he affirmed a source.

One thinks that the possibility in an agreement arose at the beginning of this year after Donald Rumsfeld entrevistara with outstanding members of the Chinese government during a visit to the Far East. Later, George Tenet, at that time director of the company, ordered a study of viability for the operation of capture of Bin Laden. Tenet was informed into which the only possibility was counting on the Chinese support.

"To what extent it can reach this collaboration in the weeks that reduce until the American electoral appointment will depend largely on the confidence that Bush inspires to the Chinese at the time of maintaining its promises with them", it affirmed the civil employee of the Pentagon.

The Gordon writer Thomas is expert in services of espionage and author of books on the company and the Mosad

(cf: Rusty Warren, via Randi Rhodes)

Who better to explain what women have at stake in this election than Mark Morford?

There was Oprah, doing what she does so freakishly well, cheerleading and extolling and impressing upon, getting women up and getting them angry and demanding that they exercise their hard-won right to vote and demanding that they quit dissing their feminist ancestors, the ones who worked so damn hard for suffrage and for freedom of choice and for the right to tell powerful sexist Republican men where they can shove their repressive sexist antichoice bigotry.

This was her fabulous, much-needed message: Take your rights for granted at your peril, ladies. Move, or else. Choose how you want the laws to treat and respect you and your body -- or someone else, someone who hasn't touched a vagina for 30 years and who thinks sex is only tolerable in the dark, fully clothed and with a respectable prostitute, will choose for you.

Sound like a cliché? Same ol' quasi-feminist rally message? Not exactly. Not this time. Just imagine this:

Imagine Bush filches another election in November. Nations mourn, black clouds gather, children cry, colons spasm, the remaining shreds of the American experiment wither and die.

And within a very short time, as many as 30 U.S. states have recriminalized abortion and made repressing women and hating sex fun again, as young American females everywhere who thought their right to choose was pretty much incontrovertible and indisputable and unfailing and who therefore didn't bother to vote in '00 or '04 suddenly go, oh holy freaking hell.

Hello, 1950s. Hello, coat-hanger surgery. Hello, millions of despondent daughters of uptight parents. Hello, dead or mutilated teenage girls who suffer botched procedures. Hello, a fresh national nightmare, revisited, regurgitated, reborn. And hello again to smug right-wing males who've wanted to put women back in their place for the past 50 years. Check that: 200 years. Check that: forever.

Just a silly nightmare? Utterly impossible? A ridiculous liberal daydream? Not even close, sweetheart.

It's all about the Supreme Court, of course. Fact is, our next president will almost surely get to appoint a number of new high-court justices to replace those who will likely retire after enduring Bush's toxic first term. They hung in there, these few -- especially stalwarts Sandra Day O'Connor and moderate, pro-choice John Paul Stevens -- hoping to disallow the nation's highest judiciary from becoming overly stacked with homophobic self-righteous right-wing neocon wingnuts (hi, Justice Scalia!) who would have us revert -- morally, sexually, spiritually, misogynistically -- to 1953. Check that: 1853. Check that: 1353.

[snip]

Here's the bottom line: 50 million eligible women didn't vote in 2000, and 22 million of them were single and nearly every one of them probably thought their vote doesn't matter and it isn't really worth it and who cares anyway because no matter who wins, everything's still pretty much run by rich powerful men anyway. Which is, you know, sort of true. But not quite.

Because as Oprah knows, there are powerful men who get it and who love women and who understand their issues and who have cool articulate daughters and opinionated self-defined multilingual firebrand wives (Hi, Teresa), and there are aww-shucks antichoice Texans with lifeless token wives who think your body is government property and you should just pipe down and keep your damn legs closed and go pray to an angry Republican God to forgive your plentiful vagina-induced sins.

Hey, it's your choice. But not for long.

...probably your own daughter.

Kos:

From an email:

Bush is coming to Medford, Oregon Thursday. John Edwards is here Wednesday morning.
Edwards' visit is already sold out. There are tickets available for Bush, even though his visit was planned in advance. This is in republican-leaning rural southern Oregon.

I tried to get tickets to both events. Edwards was sold out, but I could still get them for Bush, provided I:

- was a registered republican
- wrote an essay about why he should be president
- promise to support him

Write an essay? Now they're even outsourcing their speechwriting to unpaid labor.

Seymour Hersh:

HERSH: I got a call last week from a soldier -- it's different now, a lot of communication, 800 numbers. He's an American officer and he was in a unit halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. It's a place where we claim we've done great work at cleaning out the insurgency. He was a platoon commander. First lieutenant, ROTC guy.
It was a call about this. He had been bivouacing outside of town with his platoon. It was near, it was an agricultural area, and there was a granary around. And the guys that owned the granary, the Iraqis that owned the granary... It was an area that the insurgency had some control, but it was very quiet, it was not Fallujah. It was a town that was off the mainstream. Not much violence there. And his guys, the guys that owned the granary, had hired, my guess is from his language, I wasn't explicit -- we're talking not more than three dozen, thirty or so guards. Any kind of work people were dying to do. So Iraqis were guarding the granary. His troops were bivouaced, they were stationed there, they got to know everybody...

They were a couple weeks together, they knew each other. So orders came down from the generals in Baghdad, we want to clear the village, like in Samarra. And as he told the story, another platoon from his company came and executed all the guards, as his people were screaming, stop. And he said they just shot them one by one. He went nuts, and his soldiers went nuts. And he's hysterical. He's totally hysterical. And he went to the captain. He was a lieutenant, he went to the company captain. And the company captain said, "No, you don't understand. That's a kill. We got thirty-six insurgents."

You read those stories where the Americans, we take a city, we had a combat, a hundred and fifteen insurgents are killed. You read those stories. It's shades of Vietnam again, folks, body counts...

You know what I told him? I said, fella, I said: you've complained to the captain. He knows you think they committed murder. Your troops know their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Just shut up. Get through your tour and just shut up. You're going to get a bullet in the back. You don't need that. And that's where we are with this war.

(via Atrios)

A tech expert who designs transceivers for the U.S. military states definitively that the "bulge" seen under Bush's jacket during both debates is, in fact, a wire:

Now a technical expert who designs and makes such devices for the U.S. military and private industry tells Salon that he believes the bulge is indeed a transceiver designed to receive electronic signals and transmit them to a hidden earpiece lodged in Bush's ear canal.

"There's no question about it. It's a pretty obvious one -- larger than most because it probably has descrambling capability," said Alex Darbut, technical and business development vice president for Resistance Technology in Arden Hills, Minn. Darbut examined photographs of the president's back taken from the Fox News video feed at the first presidential debate in Coral Gables, Fla., as well as 2002 photos of the president driving and working in a T-shirt on his Crawford ranch, which were posted on the White House Web site.

Darbut speculates that the device the president wears is provided by the Secret Service, noting, "They're not going to have him driving around the countryside on his ranch without being in instant contact with him."

No one in the White House or Bush campaign, however, has offered such an explanation. In fact, the Bush camp has shed little light on the mysterious protuberance, turning aside questions with dismissive humor or rising tones of exasperation. The president is "a regular guy," White House chief of staff Andy Card told Salon's Tim Grieve before the second debate last week. "Maybe his suit had a little lump in it or something." Campaign spokeswoman Nicolle Devenish took the same line with the New York Times on Saturday: "It was most likely a rumpling of that portion of his suit jacket, or a wrinkle in the fabric." But Devenish, the Times dryly noted, "could not say why the 'rumpling' was rectangular."

Now, if in fact the wire is so that the Secret Service, or other governmental entities, can be in constant touch with him, I don't think anyone would object to that. But then why not just come clean? Because even if that's the device's purpose, Bush's speech cadences make pretty clear that someone is feeding him what to say.

Think about the first two debates. That was someone TELLING him what to say and he did that badly.

That "pre-senile dementia" theory is sounding more plausible every day.

The Republicans aren't even trying to hide their plan to disenfranchise the opposition anymore. KLAS-TV in Las Vegas is reporting:

Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.

(via Kos)

Here's some info on Voters Outreach:

1) "Professional qualifications". Note the issues on which they've collected signatures. These are nearly all Republican pet issues:

National Voter Outreach History
National Voter Outreach, Inc. (NVO) is a political consulting firm specializing in organizing signature drives to qualify issues and candidates for the ballot throughout the United States. NVO was formed in 1988 through the merger of two petition management firms: Arnold & Associates, and Alpha & Omega and Company. The result is a strong company able to provide a greater range of services to its clients. The chief officers have over 60 years in combined experience. NVO incorporated in the State of Nevada in May of 1992.

The principals have worked on over 300 separate, successful signature drives in Forty-two states and D.C., organizing the collection of more than thirty-six million signatures. This includes campaigns at all levels from small local issues, requiring a few hundred signatures, to state constitutional amendments requiring up to one million raw signatures.

NVO has conducted successful signature campaigns in the following states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, Wyoming and Washington D.C.

Principals of National Voter Outreach have been at the forefront of all the major direct democracy campaigns that have swept the country in the past 15 years including: Tax Limits, Term Limits, Environmental protection, School Choice, Class size, Gaming, Property Tax Reform, Tort Reform, Labor Issues, and Medical Reform.

2) "Company philosophy". This is pretty revealing as well, and LOADED with right-wing code:

We believe that the process of Direct Democracy offers one of the greatest safeguards to our Republican form of government. At the same time it helps to secure the values and freedoms upon which this country was founded.

Our system of representative government is in serious trouble. In recent years it has failed to provide basic services with reasonable cost and efficiency: Failed to secure us in our homes and on our streets. Failed to provide an environment conducive to economic prosperity: Failed to guarantee our individual liberties and the collective good.

We believe that one of the keys to regaining control of our destiny individually and collectively is to strengthen and expand direct democracy. Our goal is to provide more opportunities for the electorate to make decisions on important issues directly, through the initiative and referendum process.

The Lord fulfill all thy petitions. Psalm 20:5

CEO Rick Arnold also publishes Direct Democracy Journal (same URL as his signature collection business). This publication is touted by the Public Interest Institute, which "promotes the importance of a free-enterprise economic system and limited government in society based upon individual freedom and liberty."

Sounds pretty libertarian, doesn't it? That being the case, I wonder why they're selling their souls to George W. Bush? Unless part of the contract they signed with the GOP was to only collect registrations from Republicans....

So go ahead, Republicans. Justify destroying all voter registrations by Democrats, but none by Republicans.

UPDATE: Bob Johnson at Kos has more information:

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

Would Jesus disenfranchise Democrats?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Adam Mordecai lists just how widespread Republican voter registration fraud and suppression efforts are.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: There are reports that the Oregon Secretary of State has held a press conference indicating that he has sworn affidavits from people stating that they were told to throw away Democratic voter registrations. More to come.

In other Republican voter fraud news, the Republican Secretary of State in Minnesota, Mary Kiffmeyer, is being accused of shorting voter registration cards as a means of suppressing new registrations.

And Buzzflash has a screencap of a Google search for "Voter Outreach of America" which found a job posting for "Door to door signups" in Nevada. Note that the ad is paid for by the RNC.

This is BIG, folks...because it's starting to look like an organized effort on the part of the RNC to disenfranchise new voters who state their intention to vote Democratic. So far it's in Nevada and Oregon, and it may be in Minnesota as well. The blogosphere is all over this story, but so far the mainstream press is mum. I don't know enough about RICO statutes to know if it applies here, but this can't be legal. Kos has the unhappy recap so far. It's spreading like a cancer -- Nevada, Oregon, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. And to make matters worse, the preposterously political Jefferson Airplane Volunteers album is starting to not sound so dated anymore.

AND YET ANOTHER UPDATE: They've been in Ohio too.

September 14, 2001:

A crowd of rescuers chanted "USA, USA" as President Bush thanked everyone working Friday at ground zero of the devastated World Trade Center that was hit by hijacked planes flown by terrorists.

As he stood on a pile of rubble in Manhattan, some people in the crowd shouted they couldn't hear him.

"I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon," Bush answered.

October 10, 2004:

Coalition commanders in Afghanistan have begun playing down the importance of Osama Bin Laden - in sharp contrast to the statements made earlier this year that he would be caught by the end of 2004.

"From the Afghan point of view we don't want to focus too much on Bin Laden," said Major-General John Cooper, deputy commander of the American-led coalition forces.

"He is not necessarily the major player. He will be caught one day but his whereabouts today won't have a huge effect."

Cooper, the most senior British officer in Afghanistan, admitted that after three years of searching the hills and valleys of Afghanistan, the coalition forces had no idea where their other main target, the Taliban leader Mullah Omar, is hiding. "We don't even know which country he's in," he said.

Cooper refused to reveal whether the coalition had any idea where Bin Laden was. "Saddam (Hussein) was caught as a result of circumstances and good intelligence and I'm sure one day the same will happen with Bin Laden," he said.

The attempt to shift attention away from Bin Laden may be a reflection of frustration at being unable to find him.

President George W Bush was so eager to capture the Al-Qaeda leader before next month's election that the strength of the US forces in Afghanistan was almost doubled to 19,000 men.

However, deteriorating security in Iraq has forced the Pentagon to move Taskforce 121, the commando team behind the capture of Saddam, away from Afghanistan. It has returned to Iraq to search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist believed to be responsible for the murder of Kenneth Bigley.

Psychological operations teams in Afghanistan have stopped distributing wanted posters for Omar and Bin Laden and have concentrated instead on encouraging people to register and vote in this weekend's presidential election.

Shorter version: Because Bush had to act out his Oedipal conflicts on the world stage by "finishing the job" in Iraq, we've been unable to bring Osama Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind and financier of the 9/11 attacks, to justice.

And of course, since Jeebus Bush is infallible, the only thing to do is to declare Osama Bin Laden to be retroactively "not a priority."

Tell that to Kristen Breitweiser and the nearly 3000 other survivors of 9/11 victims. See what THEY say about it.

...or, "Washington to New York: Go fuck yourself."

In the nationwide scramble for domestic security dollars, officials in Alaska are in a predicament that would be the envy of most other states. They must figure out how to spend $2 million in federal money.

The Department of Homeland Security rejected a proposal by Alaska to use the money to buy a jet, but indicated it would be "happy to entertain" further proposals for the $2 million. Officials are now obliging.

One of the nation's least populous states, Alaska is flush with domestic security grants, on a per-resident basis second only to Wyoming and about three times the amount allocated to New York over the past two years.

Money is so readily available that the Northwest Arctic Borough, a desolate area of 7,300 people that straddles the Arctic Circle, recently stocked up on $233,000 worth of emergency radio equipment, decontamination tents, headlamps, night vision goggles, bullhorns - even rubber boots.

Meanwhile, has the New York City Fire Department gotten updated radios yet? Nope. New York lost $6 million in anti-terrorism funding. Bush and Ridge have announced a $200 million cut in similar programs for next year, and a cut of 33 percent in the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program. In fact, New York State ranks 49th out of 50 in anti-terrorism funding. But we gotta protect Alaska and Wyoming, right? Actually, it's more about punishing New York for not voting for God's Own Anointed Reincarnation of Jeebus, George W. Bush.

Digby reports on the Freeper reaction to the death of Christopher Reeve.

When dissenters have their homes torched after Bush's election in November, these are the guys who'll be brandishing the torches.

A sampling:

Wouldn't rule out that Kerry might have spoke with Reeve before the last debate. Reeve might have had an idea the end was near for him and told Kerry to play up the emotional angle with stem cell research and Reeve's own paralyzed circumstance.

Wonder if Hell is handicapped accessible..

The willingness to sacrifice another life to save his own was not worthy of the Man of Steel.

I'm sorry, but I have no compassion for this man. He suffered a terrible injury through his own fault and, instead of accepting it, he lashes out in anger against Bush.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall when Kerry got the news of Reeve's death. Did he hang up and shout "YES!"? Did he dance a little jig? Did he excitedly phone McAuliffe with the news? Noone but Mama T knows...

Reeve? Is this the guy who, his picture-perfect Hollywood life having been tragically altered by an accident, spent the remainder of his life advocating the killing of unborn children so that he might walk again?

He was a 3rd-rate actor (Ever see him in any movie besides Superman? When playing a real human being, he was dreadful!). When injured living a life of luxury and leisure, he fought for vain, desperate hopes for what might keep him alive, even if it caused the deaths of millions. Contrary to mythology, he sunk into bitter, violent anger, pouring every ounce of derision he possibly could on Christianity and America. And then he simply died.

I'm sorry for Reeve's family...his wife has stood by him for several tragic years. However, to have liberals (Ron Reagan will probably be leading the charge) milk this is disgusting. And let's be honest...Christopher Reeve WAS doing something that was very dangerous when he broke his neck. A lot of us common folks are living with situations that just happened...beyond our control and not our fault. That's what life is about, and we don't have wealthy friends helping support an extravagant lifestyle.

I have a feeling that Kerry was tipped off about Reeve's condition prior to the 2nd debate, which is why he mentioned him along with Michael J. Fox. You can bet Kerry will again mention Reeve at the 3rd debate. It is this crude, blatant exploitation of the disabled and afflicted, which make the Dems so despicable. They provide false hope in order to win debating points and votes. The implication will be that GWB caused the death of Reeve.

You could make an argument that the first implemention of "Political Correctness" was the custom of speaking better about someone after their death than while they were living. But I won't try to make that argument here. I will say this: if it were demonstrated that Reeve, knowing the seriousness of his condition, actually made an explicit request that his possible death be used to help the Kerry campaign, all subsequent scorn would be deserved.

Oh, this is going to be disgusting. Bitter twst of fate that Reeve is mentioned by Kerry and then he dies. Or perhaps did Kerry know in advance Reeve was ill/on his deathbed?

Is there no level of filth to which these Dems won't sink?

The main gist of the dem line is: we need to keep legal the ability to take growing humans and detroy them through abortion so we can use their body parts to help other people like Chris Reeve (potentially) live better. The bloodlust is positively demonic.
I am just not happy hearing about this this AM.

Ahh... reminds me of the Paul Wellstone rally err memorial service. Always trying to work in a political advantage over a death, aren't they.

You think you're cynical? I am wondering if Clark Kent would possibly pull the plug on himself in a desperate attempt to "matyrize" the stem-cell issue and help Kerry?

Reeve seemed like a nice chap until he got involved with the pro-death wing of the democrat party. We can't always get what we want, but we often get what we deserve.

The fact is, Mr. Reeve spent his last days using his fame and access to champion the murder of unborn children.

Nice people, eh? This is Bush's base.