The long national nightmare of the 2004 election is almost over, try to hang on

So I spent yesterday dressed up as a Republican poll watcher, telling all the black children that Halloween had been cancelled, and they would have all their toys taken away if they tried to trick-or-treat.

It used to be that when senators ran for president, the worry was that they lacked the executive experience that governors had. We no longer have to worry about that, because a presidential campaign is now the size of a Fortune 500 company, with a budget larger than Delaware’s and 10,000 lawyers.

Presidential campaigns are black holes, dragging lesser election fights, money, energy and real political discussion into themselves, while giving off neither light nor energy. I wouldn’t mind half so much if these campaigns functioned as national civics lessons, if they clarified our political philosophies and priorities, if this had been a national dialogue about the role of America in the world, the limits of our power abroad, the future of Social Security, how best to insure every American, etc etc. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened. We’ve spent less time debating the environment than we have whether Laura Bush is nicer than Teresa Heinz-Kerry (probably, but can you imagine someone you’re less likely to have an interesting conversation with?) So literally billions of dollars have been spent that could have gone to the Sierra Club, the ACLU or even Bush’s “faith-based” groups and done some actual good.

GeeDubya has talked endlessly of his “leadership” this year, and I can’t for the life of me figure what he means by the word. If you, like me, don’t understand why it is that people would follow this arrogant moron, well, Shrub doesn’t know how it happens either. You can see this in the shocked, petulant anger he displays when people question his honesty, his point of view, or his facts. They are, as the network exec told Howard Beale in “Network,” screwing with the primal forces of nature. Belief is what the world owes GeeDubya. He does not know how to talk to people who disagree with him, does not know how to persuade. Compare how uncomfortable he looked during the debates with how much he is clearly enjoying himself now, free to yell childish epithets at Kerry, in his absence of course, in front of carefully vetted crowds of the true believers. The man controlling the might and majesty of the most powerful empire the world has ever seen is spending his days declaring that John Kerry belongs in the “flip-flop hall of fame.” Bill Clinton brought more dignity to the office when he was being serviced by Monica Lewinsky; at least he was on the phone at the time, taking care of the nation’s business.

Fine, you’re evil and you’re also excellent dancers

From a WaPo story on a US compound outside besieged Fallujah:

“They’re not used to Marines,” said Cpl. Andrew Carlson, a Marine reservist from the 4th Civil Affairs Group, based in Washington, D.C. “The only thing they hear about us is that we’re evil.”

Running thin

The US military in Iraq keeps saying, and with a straight face, too, that the order to attack Fallujah will rest with Iyad “Not So Comical” Allawi. The American imperative to pretend that its hand-picked puppet exercises real authority is given priority over Allawi’s need for moral authority. Not that Allawi seems to recognize such a need. Indeed, he seems anxious to be known as the man who ordered the mass murder of his fellow Iraqis. His patience is running thin, he says. We have to restore stability in Iraq, he says. The lives of thousands of Fallujans now depend on Allawi’s emotional-control issues and the viscosity of his patience.

The chief demand is that Fallujah hand over Zarqawi and the foreign militants, because as we all know the resistance is the exclusive work of outside agitators. Even American military types are (anonymously) telling reporters that Zarqawi may very well no longer be in the city. My question is: if the city leaders did find, capture and hand over Zarqawi, would they get the $25 million reward?

Uttar Pradesh is struggling to reduce its population. Its solution: if you want a license for a shotgun, two people must be sterilized; for a handgun, five. So you get to combine the population-reducing effects of forced and/or fraudulent sterilizations with increased gun deaths. Genius. And Uttar Pradesh’s population policy is partially funded by the US.

Getting down...on their level

California voters: I’ve expanded my arguments against Prop. 62 and for Prop. 66, if you need more convincing. Link to all my proposition recommendations in upper-right column.

In Kentucky, possibly senile Senator Jim Bunning’s supporters have been hinting in the least subtle way that his challenger, Daniel Mongiardo, is gay. In Kentucky it’s okay to smoke tobacco but not cock. Anyway, Mongiardo has responded so vehemently that it’s clear he considers gay the worst possible thing he could be called, so to hell with him. He’s actually claimed that the innuendo is a violation of the Commandment against murder, because it is character assassination. Mongiardo says he won’t “get down on their level,” which is a straight (ahem) line if I ever heard one.

In Florida, Bush says, “I strongly believe the people of Cuba should be freed from the tyrant.” Note the verb form: “be freed.” Freed by whom?
(Update: other news sources have this as “should be free from the tyrant”. I haven’t heard it myself.)

Finding WMDs Within Yourself

A winner in a New Statesman competition calling for blurbs in new self-help books:

Finding WMDs Within Yourself

Forget spontaneous human combustion - the revelation of this psychogenic fugue state could be devastating to you and those around you. Your finger is on the button.

This book contains comprehensive yet simple methodologies geared to change you and your family’s regime. It is not necessary to believe your own endocrine system has the capability to create WMDs, just have a willingness to accept that it could. From this, all else follows: drawing extensively from the author’s previous bestsellers, The 45-Minute Manager and Just the Tikrit!, the dossier is now complete. This seminal work examines chemical components of human nature and expresses existential viewpoints for readers wishing to experiment further with logical extrapolations of the premise that, as carbon-based life forms, with an accumulated wealth of health-threatening toxic elements sufficient to populate a GCSE-passing periodic table, we similarly own the potentiality for explosive change.

John Griffiths-Colby

Friendly militias redux

Back in August, I reported that Paul Wolfowitz “wants to build a ‘global anti-terrorist network of friendly militias,’ bypassing insufficiently pliable national militaries in favor of building up warlords and death squads and you’ve got to be fucking kidding.” He proposed this in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, but no American newspaper reported it, no American politician that I know of denounced it.

So it’s going ahead. The U.S. Special Operations Command has gotten a slush fund of $25 million in a provision snuck into the most recent Pentagon authorization bill, which was signed Friday. The LA Times seems to be the only newspaper that has noticed, and mostly presents it as only an operational thing--“enabling America’s elite soldiers to buy off tribal leaders or arm local militias while pursuing Al Qaeda operatives and confronting other threats.” The paper ignores Wolfowitz’s more grandiose plans for a global network, indeed it is evidently unaware of them, not mentioning him or “friendly militias” in the story.

Congress does seem to have built in some safeguards, although the lack of public discussion of this move doesn’t suggest they’ll be exercising much in the way of oversight. At best, millions in bribes will be put in the hands of unsavory thugs, such as the Afghan warlords who sold their opponents to the CIA to be spirited away to Guantanamo, and the next generation of Chalabis. At worst, the money will build up forces that will destabilize nations, commit atrocities, or otherwise come back to bite us in the ass, like the aid given to mujahaddin in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Another Manhattan

Tom Ridge held a press conference to announce that he wasn’t raising the alert color. Although he was wearing a red shirt at the time.

A letter to the NYT suggests combining Iraq’s parliamentary elections with a referendum on ending American occupation. Now, that would increase voter turnout!

On that tape, bin Laden said the US would have to do certain things to avoid “another Manhattan.” That’s a hell of a threat to Republicans, who don’t like the one we have now. Threaten them with another San Francisco, and they’ll really panic.

Insurgents in Fallujah claim to have added chemical weapons to mortar rounds and missiles. (I read that a few hours ago, I think on the BBC website, and didn’t copy a link because I figured it would be reported everywhere. It’s not.)

William Saletan on the Bush-Bin Laden codependent relationship:

“That’s the story of Bush. Clear intentions, lousy judgment, counterproductive results. I love his intentions as much as I hate Bin Laden’s, but the two men turn out to be well-matched. Bin Laden pisses people off and drives them into the arms of Bush. Bush pisses people off and drives them into the arms of Bin Laden. Bush keeps Bin Laden in business; Bin Laden keeps Bush in office.”

At war with these terrorists

Bush’s response to bin Laden’s tape: “I also want to say to the American people that we’re at war with these terrorists and I am confident that we will prevail.” What a weird sentence. I read it over and over, and it seems to have less meaning each time. Does he think we haven’t noticed the war? And, of course, he has he often expressed confidence about capturing bin Laden, although not recently for some reason.

Another response, from Republican pollster David Winston: “The response from the American people is going to be more along the line of ‘This guy is trying to inject himself in the process, and we don’t like it.’” Yeah, just like those English people who had the nerve to write letters to American voters. You just hate to see bin Laden tarnishing the favorable impression Americans previously had of him with a trick like that.

Here in California, the Republican challenger for Senate, Bill Jones, who is said to have won the primary based on name recognition--Bill Jones!--has run no ads, because he has no money. The LAT can’t figure out when the last time was that this happened, but does say that the first tv ads in a Senate race were in 1950.

Still in California, the LAT reports that the Scientologists are against a proposition to fund mental health programs. Imagine that!

I just received a mailer from a candidate for school board. It has an improperly placed comma. Tsk tsk.

Just looked at his website, which was mentioned in the mailer. He says school’s when he meant schools’. Tsk tsk tsk tsk.

The WaPo has an article about the Tom Coburn/Brad Carson Senate contest in Oklahoma, without mentioning the 3rd candidate in the race, Sheila Bilyeu, who’s getting 6% in the polls, possibly because she’s the only one running to the left of Neanderthal, presumably at the direction of the radio device implanted in her head by the military in the 1970s, which she has sued the federal government many times to have removed.

We will whack them

In Iraq, U.S. Brig-Gen Denis Hajlik says of Fallujah, “We are gearing up for a major operation. If we do so, it will be decisive and we will whack them.” Whack them? Should our generals really be doing Tony Soprano impressions?

And should Kerry be doing impressions of Shrub in his cowboy mode? “I regret that when President Bush had the opportunity to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora he outsourced the job to Afghan warlords.” Did he mean to say kill or capture, or maybe “bring to justice”? No, because he also said, “There’s no such thing as a negotiation with terrorists. Terrorists are going to be hunted down and killed.”

The US is threatening “a variety of measures” against Ukraine when it steals Sunday’s elections. There are irregularities, and you know how the Bushies hate irregularities in elections. They even, and I’m quoting the Guardian here, “sent a series of emissaries, including George Bush Sr and Henry Kissinger, to Kiev to call for fair elections.” Ask any Chilean about Henry Kissinger’s commitment to fair elections.

Sometimes you’re just thirsty:

Portage, Wisconsin: A woman has been arrested for digging up her dead boyfriend’s ashes from a cemetery more than ten years ago and drinking the beer that was buried with him. Karen Stolzmann, 44, has been charged with concealing stolen property. The urn was found at her home. (AP)

Good David Corn article on unanswered questions about Bush personally and about Bush policies.

Robert Fisk writes about Arafat (the article will appear here in a day or two):

“He is a wearying man, not just in his repeated death but in life as well, a man who married the Revolution - as his wife was to discover - rather than develop a coherent strategy for a people under occupation. And in the end, he became like so many other Arab leaders - and as the Israelis intended him to be - a little dictator, handing out dollars and euros to his ageing but loyal cronies, falsely promising democracy, clinging to power in his shambles of an office in Ramallah. Had he done what he was supposed to do - had he governed "Palestine" (the quotation marks are daily more important) with ruthlessness and crushed all opposition and accepted all Israel’s demands - he would be able now to visit Jerusalem, even Washington.”

Osama and the middle finger of righteousness

Bin Laden shows up again and, say, which finger is he holding up, anyway?




October Surprise indeed, and the only question we all ask is how it will affect the US election. “You’re so vain, you prob’ly think this jihad’s about you.” Well, Kerry supporters will think it shows Bush’s failure to accomplish the first necessary response to 9/11--capture the guy responsible, and the Bush supporters will think that it shows there are still terrorists out there who only Bush can save us from. Bin Laden specifically said he wasn’t endorsing either candidate, just to make that clear.

He says that Bush is “still misleading you and hiding the real reason [for 9/11] from you” and then cites a reason for it I’ve never heard before. For a fairly blunt piece of symbolic communication, his message wasn’t really all that clear. Evidently, it was a response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, specifically the bombing of tower blocks in Beirut. So his idea was that America should “taste what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women.” With yesterday’s Lancet report of 100,000 dead in Iraq, we can now say that bin Laden is actually less effective in his tactics than George Bush.

The “they hate us for our freedom” thing seems to have pissed him off. He responds, “we are a free people ... and we want to regain the freedom of our nation. ... If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn’t attack Sweden, for example. It is known that those who hate freedom do not have dignified souls, like those of the 19 blessed ones.” Dignified souls?

This part is cute: “We had no difficulty in dealing with the Bush administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half by the sons of kings. He adopted despotism and the crushing of freedoms from Arab rulers and called it the Patriot Act, under the guise of combating terrorism.”

He even zings Bush for the “My Pet Goat” thing, although he thinks the kid was talking about her own goat (“It appeared to him that a little girl’s talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers”), which means 1) he really knows nothing about America, much less Florida, where there are not that many goatherds, 2) he hasn’t seen “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Maybe the butting thing sounded better in Arabic.

That battle of perceptions

I’ve mentioned before the Bushies’ obsession with visual images in the Iraq War, from the staged toppling of Saddam’s statue to the flight deck, as if they’re constantly auditioning for a postage stamp.

This is especially the case for Secretary of War Rummy, who didn’t consider torture in Abu Ghraib an issue until the photos came out; before then it was “one-dimensional.” He was also much more angry about the release of the photographs than about what was in the photographs. At least one tactical decision, the assault on Fallujah in April, was entirely a response to images, those of the four dead contractors.

This week, Rummy gave a speech in which he said that terrorists are trying to scare off Americans with televised images of carnage. “They’re convinced that if they can win that battle of perceptions, managing the media and affecting people’s thinking, that we will lose our will and toss in the towel. Well, they’re wrong.”

The “war on terror” is not the only thing the Bushies are trying to sell as if it were toothpaste: they’re also trying to sell terror itself. The Blue Lemur has a scan of an RNC mailer with Kerry’s photo juxtaposed with images of the Twin Towers burning.

Precise

I have no idea how accurate the study is which says that 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq, but I do know what to make of the Pentagon spokesman who told the WaPo that this war has been “prosecuted in the most precise fashion of any conflict in the history of modern warfare”. Precise warfare is retail warfare. Swords are precise. Dropping huge quantities of high explosives out of airplanes onto cities, not so much.

Speaking of swords, a worker at a steel car-parts factory in Detroit made himself a sword over the course of several days and then killed a fellow worker with it. Good workplace rule of thumb: when someone suddenly starts making a sword, it’s not good.

Yesterday I mentioned a white Zimbabwean MP (one of three) who hit the justice minister, in parliament. He has been sentenced by that parliament to one year of hard labor. A bill of attainder, you don’t see those much anymore.

Putin is in Ukraine just days before its presidential elections, trying to boost the chances of Viktor Yanukovych. They even brought up the date of a military parade celebrating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Kiev from the Germans. I don’t get this mixing of symbols of national independence and national subservience. I also don’t get why some of the members of the military were dressed up as Snoopy pretending to be a World War I flying ace.



Speaking of Halloween, I’ve had this picture for a couple of weeks without thinking of anything especially funny to say about it. What I like about it is that when picking out a pumpkin, which are customarily carved into faces, he instinctively went not for a round pumpkin, but for one with a long “face” like his own.



(Update: Bob Goodsell finds the rich pumpkinny humor that I couldn’t.)

Or are they clones?

Team Chimpy is caught doctoring a photo in an ad, duplicating groups of soldiers.



It immediately counter-charges that in this picture Kerry stood next to only one flag. What sort of American stands next to only one flag?

Al-Qaqaa Cock-Up

Not to compare Bush with Hitler or anything (I generally find him more Mussolini-esque), but Bush’s political career might also die in a bunker. This one, at Al Qaqaa.



As it turns out, embedded reporters may actually have recorded the Al Qaqaa Cock-Up in real-time. The KSTP footage here (Internet Explorer only). The troops are so relaxed, and they leave the door unlocked behind them, because the area was supposed to have been secured, within a perimeter controlled by the US military.

If Bush can ignore “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside United States,” then he’s certainly capable of ignoring this label.



Speaking of ignoring the bloody obvious, his campaign operatives who gave the kid this sign seem to have forgotten that the Amish are pacifists.

Tom Coburn: genetic predisposition to being a douchebag?

At today’s Oklahoma Senate debate, Tom Coburn (R) took a breather from worrying about lesbianism in girls’ high school bathrooms to say that privatization of Social Security would be good for black men, who are currently cheated by the program because they have “a genetic predisposition to have less of a life expectancy.” And Coburn is supposed to be a doctor, so he should know. OK, after I heard that Coburn had run an ad considered to be racist (which I still haven’t been able to see), I asked how many of those under-age girls he sterilized were non-white. Now I ask it again.

Genetic predisposition, sheesh. Reminds me of former LAPD Police Chief Daryl Gates, who once suggested that the reason black people kept dying when police applied choke holds to them (a practice later outlawed) was that their tracheas might be narrower than those of “normal people.”

Chinamasiswa

Vocabulary word of the day: after a fight in the Zimbabwean Parliament, in which a white opposition MP hit the justice minister, who said that his farm had been seized because his ancestors were murderers and thieves, the justice minister has been given the nickname “Chinamasiswa,” which means “he who took such a beating he messed his trousers”.

Texas judges being, well, Texas judges, one decided to hold a party to welcome back a fugitive murderer, with balloons and streamers and a cake with one candle representing his one year on the lam. “We’re so excited to see you, we’re throwing a party for you,” the judge told Billy Wayne Williams, before sentencing him to life for assaulting his girlfriend.

A blind woman has had partial sight restored after getting a transplant of retinal cells from an aborted fetus. Let the shit storm begin. Cells from an adult would work, but with a higher chance of rejection, requiring immuno-suppressant drugs, which fetal cells do not.

It’s fun, in a shame-inducing way, reading about American politics in British newspapers. Today Shrub called Kerry a Monday-morning quarterback, and the Indy had to explain the term to its readers.

Bush keeps saying that Kerry will say anything to get elected. GeeDubya, of course, can say very few things, and can correctly pronounce even fewer. Someone should teach him how to pronounce his new title: Chinamasiswa-elect.

Meanwhile, Cheney gets at the real issues of the campaign, questioning “how often [Kerry]’s been goose-hunting before.” Yes, America wants to know.

AP story: “An Australian court ruled Wednesday that a convicted heroin dealer can claim a $165 million tax deduction for money that was stolen during a drug deal.”

In the world’s largest democracy, India, one-quarter of the members of Parliament face criminal charges, including over half the members of the Rashtriya Janata Dal party, a member of the ruling coalition.

Charges gone wild

Bushies are denouncing Kerry for talking about the Al Qaqaa Cock-Up, with Andy Card criticizing him for harping on “an old story...yesterday’s news,” and Karl Rove criticizing him for harping on...news, period. “Kerry, by so rapidly embracing the story, is going to end up being tarnished by it. What would he do as president? Get up every morning and say, ‘I’m going to govern based on what I find in the newspapers?’” Heaven forfend.

Bush himself says, “For a political candidate to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief.” Oh lord, it’s just too easy; the man has no self-awareness at all. And Bush calls them “wild charges,” but won’t explain in what way they are wild, indeed won’t explain anything. So his counter-attack on Kerry’s attack also contains no facts, and the circle of life continues. His first words about the Al Qaqaa Cock-Up are an attack on Kerry for talking about the Al Qaqaa Cock-Up, because to do so is “denigrating the actions of our troops in the field.”

The Bush campaign site, georgewbush.com, has blocked access from outside the US (outside North America, anyway).

Quote unquote, register voters

The CIA’s transfer of Iraqi prisoners to other countries was backed up by a legal opinion (which the NYT for some reason called a “US Ruling” in a headline) that they weren’t covered by the Geneva Conventions. The government won’t say how it decides who is or isn’t covered, just that government agencies--the CIA? Defense Dept?--are the ones making those decisions. We do know that non-Iraqis who entered Iraq after the invasion began aren’t considered covered.

Even if we grant for the sake of argument that such people aren’t covered, the US decided to act in Iraq on the basis of secret rules only it knew. If some prisoners are to be covered by one set of rules and others by another set, then there are really no rules. The rule of law--even the international laws which cover warfare--is based on transparency, with everyone knowing what rules apply to them. Without that transparency, there is no more moral legitimacy than the kidnappers of Margaret Hassan have.

Onion headline: “Republicans Urge Minorities To Get Out and Vote on Nov. 3.” Which would be funny except that black Floridians really are getting phone calls that do just that.

Other voter-suppression techniques are actually just voter-inconveniencing, voter-confusing, and voter-discouraging techniques. They’ll accomplish the same goal without leaving quite the same stink as road blocks, “felon” purges, etc. The Ohio R’s just dropped thousands of challenges to voters they had claimed might be fraudulent, citing computer error (they had said that mail sent to these registered voters had been returned). I suspect this was the plan all along, to raise the issue and then drop it in order to create uncertainty (in fact to create the same lack of transparency I just complained about in POW treatment) among voters over whether they were actually registered, to discourage them from potentially waiting on long lines on election day (R’s also plan to make them even longer by challenging voters) only to find that they weren’t allowed to vote. The Ohio D’s have already decided not to challenge a ruling that will hurt them, that provisional ballots only count if cast in the correct polling station (incorrectly decided, as I explain below), because if it dragged through the courts any longer, voters would be too confused on election day.

Oh, the quote I couldn’t find yesterday: Cuyahoga County Republican Chairman James P. Trakas said, “The organized left’s efforts to, quote unquote, register voters -- I call them ringers -- have created these problems”. Quote unquote, indeed.

Why the 6th Circuit and other court’s rulings on provisional ballots are wrong: the federal law that created provisional voting said that voters had to cast provisional ballots in the same controlling authority--or some such phrase--as they were registered. This meant counties or their equivalent, not voting precincts which aren’t “authorities” in any sense.

(Update: My cat just received an email from Team Chimpy chair Marc Racicot, asking for money for the recount fund. It says, “Those who oppose us have already used theft, vandalism and assault as weapons to win this election. Their next stop will be the courts.”)

Thin line

Pakistan, still working on finding that thin line between civilization and barbarism, will get tough on “honor killings” by applying the death penalty to it. Honor killers can still get away with it by paying compensation to the families of their victims.

George Bush, still working on finding that thin line between civilization and barbarism, was asked if Christians and Muslims worshipped the same god. He said yes, except for the bad Muslims like bin Laden and Zarqawi, who “pray to a false god. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be killing innocent lives like they have been.”

It’s Bush’s day to tell people they aren’t living up to ideals which Bush actually opposes. He said that Kerry’s foreign policy “position of weakness and inaction” went against “the great tradition of the Democratic Party.”

Dick Cheney said of the Al Qa Qaa Cock-Up that “It is not at all clear that those explosives were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived in the area of Baghdad.” This is known as turning lemons into lemonade, since the very reason it is not clear is that no troops were sent to secure the explosives.

Fallujah 1991

Here's what Ramsey Clark said in The Fire This Time: US War Crimes in the Gulf (1992):

“In mid-February [1991], missiles accounted for at least 200 reported civilian deaths and 500 more injured in the town of Falluja. ...These deaths were the result of two separate attacks, allegedly on bridges. ... However, witnesses disagree, calling the bomb placement intentional.” The bridge was 1 1/2 km. from the bridge. “The other attack destroyed a row of modern concrete five- and six-story apartment houses near another bridge, as well as several other houses nearby. As Middle East Watch described it, ‘All buildings for 400 meters on both sides of the street, houses and market, were flattened.’”