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-- Proverbs 11:25
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Saturday, October 30, 2004

"A little gift"

Osama Bin Laden. For the Bush Administration, he's the gift that keeps on giving. Kinda makes you wonder why he's so generous to Georgie boy, doesn't it?

Sieg Heil

Chris Suellentrop, Slate.com:

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.—"I want you to stand, raise your right hands," and recite "the Bush Pledge," said Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: "I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States."

I know the Bush-Cheney campaign occasionally requires the people who attend its events to sign loyalty oaths, but this was the first time I have ever seen an audience actually stand and utter one. Maybe they've replaced the written oath with a verbal one.


James R. Harris, Co. K., 407th Regiment, 102nd Infantry Division, European Theatre, 1942-1945:

Every time I met Harmel he was quite friendly. After a few visits I finally decided to ask the question we all wanted to ask. "Heinze, I would like to ask you a personal question if I may." He agreed and so I asked "You must have known when we were fighting around Linnich that the war was lost. Why did you continue to fight?" His reply was that "Yes, I knew the war was lost, but you must realize the situation I was in. I believed Germany was fighting for a just cause, and believed Hitler was a good leader. I joined the SS and as an officer I made a pledge to fight for my country and its leader, Hitler, until the very end, even with my life if necessary. As the war progressed I began to realize that Germany could not win, and also began to believe that even Hitler could be wrong. However, I am a man of my word and I had taken the oath to fight and I could only do my best as a member of the Waffen-SS." The Waffen-SS pledge is "Loyalty Is My Honor.

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."


(via Billmon)

Republican Election Theft Watch for October 30, 2004

The Lake County (Ohio) Board of Elections is sending letters that ANYONE who registered to vote through the NAACP, ACT, John Kerry for President, or Capri Cafaro for Congress* is ineligible to vote in this election.

Just for the record, voter registration forms are available for download from the internet. If I wanted to set up a table in front of my local A&P to register voters using these forms, as long as I delivered them to the Superintendent of Elections, they are valid registrations. Lake County is singling out GOTV efforts for only those organizations and entities most likely to register Democrats.

Again, I ask: If the Republicans are so proud of their record, and so certain of their hold on power, why are they so afraid of people going to the polls to vote?

Cheney and the 400,000 tons

Dick Cheney is whining that John Kerry isn't mentioning the "400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that our troops have captured."

As Jesse Taylor notes:

It took about 3/4 of a pound to commit the Lockerbie attack. The total explosive power of what was stolen is enough to commit 4000 Oklahoma City-size bombings. The death toll would be measured in the tens of thousands, possibly the hundred of thousands - more in a crowded city like, say, New York.

But it doesn't matter, because it's only .00095% of the total. Let's look at Russia's nuclear arsenal - a nuclear attack inside a crowded city would likely also result in tens-hundreds of thousands dead. Suppose that a terrorist got one weapon. Just one. Russia has around 10,000 nuclear weapons. A single weapon would be merely .0001 of their entire arsenal - nearly ten times less, percentagewise.

And therefore, friends, absolutely nothing to worry about. Hell, we might as well just give al-Qaeda a nuke, and stop fucking worrying about it altogether.


Using Cheney's logic, we should just file September 11, 2001 away under "shit happens." After all, how many planes land perfectly safely every day? Hell, how many planes landed safely on September 11, 2001? Let's look at those instead!

This Administration never ceases to astound me with their ability to spout utter horseshit.

Shorter OBL

(via DemfromCT at Kos):

I'm still here. You haven't caught me. And you went after the wrong guy. I just thought I'd remind you.


George W. Bush, press conference, March 13, 2002:

So I don't know where he [Osama Bin Laden] is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him...I truly am not that concerned about him.


Just something to think about before you all go to the polls on Tuesday.

And something for David Brooks to think about when he's not jerking off while thinking of the Great Codpiece.
Friday, October 29, 2004

.Bush using WTC dead to shill for his election

Raw Story shows us a new flyer that the increasingly desperate Bush campaign is mailing in hotly-contested Pennsylvania, this one making liberal use of horrific images of the burning World Trade Center. You remember the World Trade Center, right? Those two buildings in Commie Homosexual Liberal Jewish New York City that were hit by terrorists, thereby fooling people into thinking that Bush was a leader?

Well, in the waning days of the campaign, Rove & Co. are dancing on the grave of the dead, showing us these images, including the one of the second plane about to hit, to imply that only George W. Bush can keep us safe from terrorists (never mind what a great job they did keeping us safe the first time, barely a month after a Presidential Daily Briefing SCREAMED that Bin Laden was determined to attack, but of course Osama Bin Laden was CLINTON's obsession, so therefore it meant nothing).

I wonder how Beverly Eckert, whose husband, Sean Rooney, was on the 98th floor of the tower depicted in the Bush ad, feels about this. Eckert stayed on the phone with her trapped husband until smoke overcame him. Or how Kristen Breitweiser feels about it. Breitweiser and her husband Ron, an employee of Fiduciary Trust, had both been Bush voters in 2000. Breitweiser was told by her husband, "Sweets, I'm fine. I don't want you to worry," right before the second plane hit a dozen floors below where he was sitting. Or how any of the other reality-based survivors of the attacks feel about their loved ones being used as shills for a president who was asleep at the switch when the attacks were being planned, continued a photo-op after the attacks had begun, ran away like a scared rat after his photo-op, who abandoned the retaliatory war everyone, including me, supported so that he could resolve his psychosexual issues about Daddy and Saddam Hussein, and who is now blaming the troops he commands for his own ineptitude.

Bush Administration Declares Earth Center of Universe; 50 State Manhunt for Galileo Underway
Next week they sacrifice a goat.

PARK SERVICE STICKS WITH BIBLICAL EXPLANATION FOR GRAND CANYON
Promised Legal Review on Creationist Book Is Shelved

Washington, DC — The Bush Administration has decided that it will stand by its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, according to internal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Despite telling members of Congress and the public that the legality and appropriateness of the National Park Service offering a creationist book for sale at Grand Canyon museums and bookstores was “under review at the national level by several offices,” no such review took place, according to materials obtained by PEER under the Freedom of Information Act. Instead, the real agency position was expressed by NPS spokesperson Elaine Sevy as quoted in the Baptist Press News:


Here's a new one

You've got to wonder how long Ed Gillespie has to practice keeping a straight face in front of a mirror in order to come up with crap like this (emphasis mine):

Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie said he was "disconcerted" by claims that supporters of Democratic challenger John Kerry are clogging early voting locations and attempting to dissuade backers of President Bush from voting.

"Some folks have been intimidated to the point where they turned away from the lines," Gillespie alleged.


Is your head exploding yet? The caging lists, the Republican thugs preparing to challenge every black voter they can find, none of that constitutes voter suppression. Democrats showing up at the polls to exercise their right to vote, now that's suppression of the Republican vote.

Maybe in the la-la land that the Bush campaign and their supporters live in. Those of us who are reality-based are under the impression that voting is one's civic duty.

Republican Election Theft Watch for 10/29/2004

Why is the Bush campaign so afraid of the people who employ it? Why, if their record is so great, don't they want people to vote? That's the bottom line, folks: The Bush Administration doesn't think you have the right to vote unless you agree with them. This is not American democracy, this is fascism, as defined in the Merriam Webster New Collegiate Dictionary:

a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control


This just in:

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.

Veteran voting-rights lawyers expressed surprise at the government's action, saying that closing the courthouse door to aspiring voters would reverse decades of precedent.

Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, individuals have gone to federal court to enforce their right to vote, often with the support of groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters and the state parties. And until now, the Justice Department and the Supreme Court had taken the view that individual voters could sue to enforce federal election law.

But in legal briefs filed in connection with cases in Ohio, Michigan and Florida, the administration's lawyers said the new law gives Attorney General John Ashcroft the exclusive power to bring lawsuits to enforce its provisions. These include a requirement that states provide ``uniform and non-discriminatory'' voting systems. They also must give provisional ballots to those who say they have registered but whose names do not appear on the rolls.


A government that does not wish its citizens to vote is not fit to govern. Support Bush if you must, delude yourself that it's necessary because of September 11, 2001 if you dare, but don't call yourself a defender of democracy. Call yourself instead an embracer of fascism, because that is what you are.

The American election process is starting to look more like that of my beloved vacation spot, Jamaica, every day. Election-related violence in Jamaica in 1980 is largely responsible for the island's reputation for unrest that alas, continues to this day. Looking at Jamaica's election problems is instructive, because this is where we are heading.

Jamaica is plagued by "garrison" communities, which are completely controlled by one political party or the other. Anyone who seeks to oppose the dominant party in these communities is in danger of suffering serious damage to their possessions or person. Is it so different here? I'm not the only one who's afraid to put a Kerry bumpersticker on my car or lawn sign in front of my house for fear of reprisals from the more rabid Republicans in my Republican-dominated town. The election "challengers" being recruited by the Republican National Committee are no different from the Jamaican posses which began in the late 1960s and 1970s as urban gangs recruited and armed by politicians to organize local constituencies, distribute political favors, enforce party loyalty and turn out votes.

People wonder why there's talk of bringing in international observers on November 2nd. The answer is easy: It's because our election process, which has been completely corrupted by a Republican party willing to resort to anything, including the kind of mass disenfranchisement not seen since the Jim Crow era, to stay in power, resembles that of a developing nation more than that of the world's only superpower.

UPDATE: More thuggishness in Ohio (via Atrios):

When Catherine Herold received mail from the Ohio Republican Party earlier this year, she refused it.

The longtime Barberton Democrat wanted no part of the mailing and figured that by refusing it, the GOP would have to pay the return postage.

What she didn't count on was the returned mail being used to challenge the validity of her voter registration.

Herold,who is assistant to the senior vice president and provost at the University of Akron,was one of 976 Summit County voters whose registrations were challenged last week by local Republicans on behalf of the state party.

She went to the Board of Elections on Thursday morning to defend her right to vote and found herself among an angry mob -- people who had to take time off work to defend their right to vote.

[snip]

``Why'd you do it?'' one challenged voter shouted out at Calhoun. ``Who the hell are you?'' the man asked.

``What the hell do you care?'' replied Calhoun, an attorney.


Let's stop tiptoeing around and call these people what they are: Despicable, un-American thugs. Brownshirts. Fascists.

Friday Cat Blogging



Calico Jenny on the job, keeping us safe from Ashcroft's goons.

Killing Two Birds With One Stone
Just in case you had any doubts that the Bush Administration is in full Jim Crow mode (see also: this flyer being distributed in black neighborhoods in Milwaukee), we now have news that the IRS has been sicced on the NAACP on the grounds that a speech critical of Captain Codpiece that the organization's chairman, Julian Bond, gave last summer, may have "violated a federal law that prohibits tax-exempt charitable organizations from engaging in most forms of political activity."

Um, excuse me, but wasn't it the Bush/Cheney campaign that asked conservative Christian churches to give them their lists of members? Wouldn't THAT sort of activity violate the same law? Last time I looked, churches were tax-exempt organizations too.

It's pretty clear that BushCo intimidation tactics are going beyond individual black people or neighborhoods, and zeroing in on black organizations. Presumably, any liberal nonprofit group is in the IRS' sights now.

Look for more of this in a second Bush term. See you in the gulag.
Thursday, October 28, 2004

Busted!
"Red the Dog" at Kos, has the Best. Diary. Ever:

We have 24/7 satellite surveillance on the most sensitive WMD sites in Iraq, a virtual Pentagon Security Camera. WE SEE EVERYTHING. WE RECORD EVERYTHING. Al Qaqaa was THE BIGGEST MUNITIONS site with the most sensitive materiel in Iraq. The reason for the dissembling on behalf of the White House on this, the reason Bush took over 36 hours to respond is... the Bush Administration is BUSTED. I believe the NYTimes article tomorrow with Iraqi chemist eyewitnesses who were employed at Al Qaqaa describing the looting of Al Qaqaa is correct. The Pentagon possesses photographs (and I suspect video footage) showing that the site was looted after the invasion, after our troops had been there twice and abandoned the site for lack of adequate security forces. There is an internal struggle within the Pentagon, of epic proportions and the truth is leaking out. The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld faction literally are fumbling to cover this up now, and Kerry knows it. Give it another day or two and it's going to break wide open.


Go read it. It's got photos and transcripts from Colin Powell's testimony before the U.N. prior to the Iraq invasion.


Evangelical Christians who get it
They're not all Bush-worshipping kool-aid drinkers. Some Evangelicals actually remember what Jesus was about (emphases mine):

Some, such as Wendy Skroch, a 51-year-old mother of three who prays regularly at the evangelical Elmbrook Church in this heavily Republican Milwaukee suburb, blame Bush for failing to fix a "broken" healthcare system and for "selling off the environment to the highest bidder."

Others are like Joe Urcavich, pastor of the nondenominational evangelical Green Bay Community Church, where more than 2,000 people worship each Sunday. He is undecided, troubled by the bloodshed in the Middle East.

"It's hard for me to say that Christians should be marching against abortion and carrying signs, and then turn around and giving a pep rally for the war in Iraq without even contemplating that hundreds and hundreds of people are being killed on a regular basis over there," Urcavich said.

"I'm very antiabortion, but the reality is the right to life encompasses a much broader field than just abortion," he added. "If I'm a proponent of life, I have to think about the consequences of not providing prescription drugs to seniors or sending young men off to war."

From the Chairman of the Department of Laughable Horseshit

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
...mere anarchy is loosed upon the world:

Liqaa Abdul-Razzaq, a popular Iraqi TV reporter, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Baghdad. She was assassinated while returning home from her offices of the local ‘Al-Sharqiya’ TV network, which she had worked for since last year after a long period with the State TV as news conductor during the regime of Saddam Hussein. Two months ago, her husband was killed in analogous and still unclear circumstances. Liqaa Abdul-Razzaq was mother of a 6-year-old boy and just a month ago gave birth to a girl. This assassination is however not the only episode of violence of today in Iraq: in the capital the day in fact began with yet another car-bomb, which exploded at the passage of a US marine convoy. An American soldier and an Iraqi bystander were killed and another 2 soldiers wounded in the explosion. In Buakuba, north-east of Baghdad, three Iraqis were killed and four injured in two separate attacks. In the first, armed men stopped a taxi and shot dead the two police officers and driver onboard, wounding another two. In the second attack, unidentified gunmen opened fire against an Iraqi national guard patrol, but without claiming victims. Local medical sources also report three people killed in Falluja, the rebel city west of Baghdad, for months target of US air strikes. A US incursion shortly before dawn struck a home in the neighbourhood of Joulan. The US claims that Falluja, aside from militants, is also the hideout of members of the terror group headed by the Jordan Al-Zarqawi.

Sorry, George, you can't shift the blame this time

ModFab has the links showing that Bush's attempts to deflect blame for the Al-Qaqaa mess to the Russians, to the Iraqis, to anything but his own policies, are increasingly flying in the face of the FACTS...at least as we in the reality-based community (as opposed to the la-la land that Bush's supporters increasingly have to live in) know them.

Col. Dave Perkins, then the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, was first at the scene with his troops, and he says it's highly improbable that the Iraqis could possibly have ferried that volume of explosives out of Al-Qaqaa, given the high level of military presence.

Atrios is also linking to a KSTP-TV exclusive, which reveals that KSTP's crew was embedded with the 101st Airborne on April 18, 2003:

During that trip, members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew bunker after bunker of material labelled explosives. Usually it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get in and see the material identified by the 101st as detonation cords.


The Bush Junta is having to increasingly rely on not just their own delusional state, but keeping the public at the same level of delusion, to keep this story from swamping them. This morning they sent out Saint Rudy to blame the troops (via Atrios). This is the Bush Administration strategy -- never admit mistakes, always blame someone else, even the guys you're sending out to die for you.

I have no beef with thoughtful conservatives and Republicans who just have a different idea of how to an America that's best for everyone. But at this point, it makes absolutely no sense to support George W. Bush for President. If you don't believe he's dangerous, the way people like me do, fine. But this President and the people around him have bungled the so-called War on Terror so badly that they've put not only us, but the rest of the world, at risk. You can stick your head in your ears and shout "La la la la la I Am Not Listening" all you want to; it doesn't change the FACT -- yes, FACT, the kind of things that happen in the Real World, that this administration is hopelessly inept and ought to be driven from office with all the due haste that the electoral process affords us.

E-voting = FUBAR

PC Advisor (emphases mine):

Of the 666 (!!!!!!) incidents reported in Florida, 33 have been linked to alleged voting machine malfunctions in Broward, Duval, Lee, Marion, Miami-Dade, Orange, Palm Beach, Sarasota and Volusia counties.

In Broward County, for example, some voters complained of electronic touch-screen systems that presented incomplete ballots.

Alia Faraj, spokeswoman for Florida Deputy Secretary of State Dave Mann, said contrary to news reports, there have been no problems during early voting related to any of the touch-screen electronic voting systems in Florida. The only problems that did occur, she said, involved laptop computers that were used to check voter registration rolls in some of the counties.

Those problems were fixed immediately by a simple reboot of the computers, said Faraj. "The touch-screen systems have been operating as planned," she said.

[Note from me: But what was "planned"???]

Will Doherty, executive director of the San Francisco-based Verified Voting Foundation, said despite Florida's assertion that the malfunctions of the laptops handling voter registrations were minor, his organisation is aware of dozens of voters who were turned away from the polls "because of that minor system crash". Doherty also said there have been multiple reports related to touch-screen calibration problems. Some voters have reported that when they touched the screen next to their candidate's name the screen highlighted the opposing candidate, according to Doherty.

In President George W Bush's home state of Texas, some Travis County and Austin County voters complained of touch-screen voting systems that marked a vote for Bush even though they voted Democratic across the board. In Houston, only five voting machines out of approximately 20 were operating, causing long lines and forcing some voters to leave polling places without voting.

"If [these] problems come up on 2 November, and they most certainly will, voters can expect to stand in long lines or not vote," said John Gideon, cofounder of Votersunite.org. "The fact that elections officials are again beta-testing our voting system in a live election is incomprehensible."


And that's really the bottom line, folks. Either the voting machine companies have released utter crap product for the most important purpose in a democracy, or else there's some serious, deliberate manipulation of voting machine software to produce a preordained result.

Right now you already have documented episodes of voter intimidation in early voting, combined with long waits, inadequately trained poll staff, voters complaining that their vote went for a candidate other than the one for whom they voted.

This is acceptable in the country that positions itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy for the world?

They may think it's a movement....and that's what it is

"And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacree Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar." --Arlo Guthrie


And if fifty bloggers, I said fifty bloggers, every Friday, post photos of their pets, they may think it's a movement...and that's what it is.

Watch for "Home Improvement Blogging", coming soon to this space.




Thursday Eclipse Blogging

Alas, not here. But Americablog has some great photos.

Bush's one-finger victory salute

Salon has it, back from when Dim Son was governor of Texas, after he supposedly found Jesus and became a different man.

The clip shows him smoothing his hair for the camera, complaining about an off-camera aide believed to be Hughes. "She's still tellin' me what to do," he says, before he flashes his middle finger. As worried aides murmur about whether the camera's running, Bush dismisses his gesture as a "one-fingered victory salute."


Now I frankly don't give a rat's ass who gives the finger to whom; God knows I've given the same salute myself more then once. But then, I'm not the President, I don't have delusions of being God's anointed anything, and I don't pretend to be holier than everyone else.

It really IS the end of days...


Either that or a good omen....
Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Voting early

This just in from our Durham, NC correspondent: Early voting turnout is huge, with long lines. Voting is on paper ballot.

Kos hits the big time

I don't know whether to envy his success or thank God for my paltry 80 visitors a day.

Last time I looked, Kos was just a blog, albeit a far more influential one than this one. Who knew?

Methinks Tom DeLay has too much malathion in his blood from his days as a bug exterminator.


Yeah. What Pierce said.
Then, there's this:

I remember how vivid the sounds were as the troopers rushed toward us -- the clunk of the troopers' heavy boots, the whoops of rebel yells from the white onlookers, the clip-clop of horses hooves hitting the hard asphalt of the highway, the voice of a woman shouting, `Get 'em! Get the n*****s!'


That's John Lewis's account of how things began on Bloody Sunday in Selma in 1965. I quote it here to remind all those sleek, oh-so-clever dicks in the Republican vote-suppression business on which side of history they're presently lining up. I also quote it as a caution to the many people who will be covering what could be a volatile aftermath of an extremely close election.


Link...

Bush's Brownshirts, or American Fascist
Des Moines Register (via Kos):

One of the latest incidents came when John Sachs, 18, a Johnston High School senior and Democrat, went to see Bush in Clive last week. Sachs got a ticket to the event from school and wanted to ask the president about whether there would be a draft, about the war in Iraq, Social Security and Medicare.

But when he got there, a campaign staffer pulled him aside and made him remove his button that said, "Bush-Cheney '04: Leave No Billionaire Behind." The staffer quizzed him about whether he was a Bush supporter, asked him why he was there and what questions he would be asking the president.

"Then he came back and said, 'If you protest, it won't be me taking you out. It will be a sniper,' " Sachs said. "He said it in such a serious tone it scared the crap out of me."

Sachs stayed at the event, but he was escorted to a section of the 7 Flags Events Center where he was surrounded by Secret Service and told he couldn't ask questions. "I was just in a state of fear," he said. "I was looking at the ceiling and I didn't know what to expect, I was so scared."


This is what we have to look forward to in a second Bush Administration. Suddenly the Bush/Hitler comparisons aren't sounding so crazy anymore.

Republican Election Theft Watch for 10/27/04
Greg Palast was on Morning Sedition today talking about the Florida "caging list", and said that a number of names on the list were of servicemen who weren't at the address listed BECAUSE THEY'RE STATIONED IN IRAQ!!

Farhad Manjoo in Salon's War Room seems to accept the Republicans' explanation that the list is only a compilation of bad addresses returned from a direct-marketing mail. Given the Republicans' history in Florida, I'm not sure that's wise.

Meanwhile, in Ohio, Jesse Taylor of Pandagon reports in his capacity with, of all things, the Jerry Springer campaign, how the Dayton Daily News explains the power that the Republican thugs -- I mean pollwatchers -- will have over determining whether Ohioans can vote:

What will happen if my right to vote is challenged?

The challenger will have to state why your right to vote is being challenged. The four reasons they can challenge are that they believe you are either not 18 or older, not a U.S. citizen, not a Ohio resident for the past 30 days or not a resident of the county and precinct in which you are trying to vote.

One of the poll workers and you will move no less than 10 feet from the challenger.

You will be asked to take this oath: "Do you swear or affirm that you will fully and truly answer all of the following questions put to you, touching your place of residence and your qualifications as an elector at this election?"

You will be asked a series of questions about one of the four areas in which you are being challenged.

If you refuse to answer fully all questions or are unable to answer them fully, or your answers indicate you are too young, not a resident or a citizen, you will not be able to vote.

If you answer the questions to the satisfaction of the poll worker, you will be given a ballot and will be allowed to vote.

What if you want to appeal? The decisions of the poll workers are final.
What if the challenger appears to be attempting to cause delays or intimidate voters? The chief poll worker, the presiding judge, can expel them from the polling place.


What this means is that some moron who wants to try to keep you from voting, and doesn't even know you, can challenge your legitimacy, based on....nothing. Well, probably the color of your skin or your name, but he needs no evidence at all. How many people have time to run this kind of gauntlet to vote before going to work, or picking up the kids?

UPDATE: According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, enough New Jerseyans have been abducted by the Cult of the Codpiece that at least for the moment, NJ is now in play again. This is truly frustrating, because Kerry seems to have EXACTLY ZERO organization in this state. The good news is probably that Bush doesn't have much more than that, but for those of us who want to volunteer, and find that despite our state now being a battleground state, no one -- not Kerry's campaign, not ACT, not Moveon.org -- has a presence here, is just appalling.

MyDD has a scoop that the latest New York Times/CBS poll has been spiked because it shows Kerry up by four points, so they're assuming it must be wrong.

The Bushistas must be worried, though, because that bastion of truth (sic) Matt Drudge, is hyperventilating with his own "scoop" (sic) that ABC News is in possession of a new Al Qaeda tape that claims the next attack will dwarf 9/11. Drudge claims that ABC denies that it's holding the tape so as not to influence the election. Which of course means, if the story is true, that ABC is holding the tape so as not to influence the election. But if the Bush campaign is true to form, this kind of "YOU'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!" scare talk means that they're scared shitless.

Josh Marshall sums it up nicely:

I half expect that by tomorrow we'll be watching a grainy video of Ken Mehlman, decked out in a phony beard a la Woody Allen in Bananas, bellowing that he and his boss OBL are about to take over America with one mammoth terror attack and institute compulsory gay marriage before forcibly converting everyone to Islam.
Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Well, here's where some of the explosives went

Large Blast Hits Baghdad


BAGHDAD, Iraq - A huge explosion rocked central Baghdad late Tuesday.

There was no immediate explanation for the blast, and the U.S. military had no immediate comment.

Earlier Tuesday, a low rumble from multiple explosions sounded across the capital. At least six blasts were heard in the distance.



Jim Crow is alive and well in Florida

One thing you've got to say about Jeb Bush: his family loyalty knows no bounds, and if at first he doesn't succeed in purging likely Democratic (read: black) voters, he tries, tries again.

The absolutely indispensable Greg Palast:

A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.

Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".

It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."

Ion Sancho, a Democrat, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot.

They may then only vote "provisionally" after signing an affidavit attesting to their legal voting status.

Mass challenges have never occurred in Florida. Indeed, says Mr Sancho, not one challenge has been made to a