Mah Birfday

Well, it's tomorrow, but the Mrs. is taking me out for dinner tonight here. The fact of how this relates to the blog is that there definitely won't be any more posting from me tonight (gotta make myself pretty), and little if any tomorrow (I'll probably be hung over). Y'all better behave while I'm gone. If you give a shit, I'll be 42.

Osama is in the house

Karl Rove on Sean Hannity's show. From NewsMax:

"And you've also got to have a couple of surprises - and we've got a couple of surprises that we intend to spring."

I've said it before and I'll say it again. They're gonna pull Osama out of an undisclosed location, where he's been playing cards with Cheney, and parade him in front of the cameras. Either that or there'll be a 'terrorist' incident here on election day.

Thanks to Kevin Hayden at The American Street for the link.

I Like It

I just heard about this site by James Wolcott, and this is the first post I saw:

The allusion in "Tweet Smell of Success" to "Reichian" refers not to Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, but Wilhelm Reich, renegade psychotherapist and founder of the Orgone Institute, who in his 1948 book Listlen, Little Man! addressed the reader:

"You let the powerful demand power 'for the little man.' But you yourself are silent. You provide powerful men with more power or choose weak, malignant men to represent you. And you discover too late you are always the dupe."

Not a bad description of Bush's "base."

And this line in the second:

But that was before John Kerry grape-stomped Bush into a sullen mash.

A lovely mental picture, no?

That blog deserves a closer look. See ya.

Your Vote Counts

There are people who don't bother to vote because they think that their one measly vote won't count. I can tell you from personal experience that this is not so.

A few years ago, we had a local election and one of the measures was a $1M school bond issue. I never vote "yes" on any bond issue except Veterans' funding, just on principle, as I am against public indebtedness.

My wife and I both got home from work very tired that day and decided to shine it on. Neither one of us had ever missed an election since we were old enough to vote.

The measure passed by ONE vote. If we had voted, it would have lost by ONE vote. That's with about three thousand voters in the district. I don't know how many actually showed up, but WE could have made the difference. I'll take that back: we DID make the difference, by not showing up to do our civic duty.

I'll never miss another one.

The Two Faces of Bush

Here. Flip-flopper extrordinaire.

Vote, dammit

Courtesy of Steve Goddard's History Wire:

Don't Take Your Vote For Granted

In a presidential year in which only about half those eligible to vote will in fact do so, it's well to keep in mind that for many eligible voters -- among them women, African-Americans, Asians, Native Americans and the poor -- the path to the voting booth was strewn with obstacles that they first had to surmount.

University of Houston History Prof. Steven Mintz examines the history of voting rights in this election season on [here]:

"The story of how voting rights became virtually universal is not a story of unbroken progress. Rather, it is, as historian Alexander Keyssar has persuasively argued, a story of struggle. There have been periods in which voting rights have contracted and periods in which they have expanded. The United States was the first nation to expand the vote to virtually all white men, but it has also undergone periods in which voting rights were restricted, and it was one of the last Western nations to guarantee the vote to all citizens."

Update

For those who give a shit, I updated our non-political blog, which is now called The Fixer & Gordon. Truths about the auto and motorcycle repair business and other shit that blows our skirts up.

Remember this

From Matt Yglesias:

. . . I don't have a great deal to say, either, except this: Right now would be a bad time to become overconfident. Bush could easily recover some of his poise for the next two debates, though the issue terrain should be more favorable to Kerry. Expectations are so heavily leaning toward John Edwards that the slightest failings could generate positive coverage for Cheney. Must crucially, people need to avoid the mistake made after the Democratic Convention of sitting on our laurels. Kerry needs to stay on the offensive.

Spineless

From Media Matters:

In the buildup to the first presidential debate, some CNN commentators called the event "a decisive moment"; a "key opportunity" for Senator John Kerry; "the most important night of John Kerry's presidential campaign"; a chance for the candidates to win "the very big prize" of undecided voters; or "a pivotal moment." After the debate, these same CNN commentators said Kerry performed well -- but then downplayed the significance of the debates.

[. . .]

And this from Josh Marshall:

I will spare you any pretense of mock surprise that Fox News is ridiculously biased against the Kerry campaign. But it's one thing to know it and another to get such a blazing and undeniable example of it as a story with fabricated Kerry-bashing quotes put together by the Fox News reporter covering the Kerry campaign.

[. . .]

And Tom Tomorrow:

[. . .]

. . . The gulf between what I observe when watching Bush and what the media report has just grown too wide . . .

[. . .]

Update: 12:45:

Media Matters factchecks Republican operative . . . er, NBC reporter Lisa Myers:

In an October 1 segment on NBC's Today show devoted to fact-checking assertions by both candidates at the September 30 presidential debate, NBC News senior investigative correspondent Lisa Myers distorted Senator John Kerry's statements to cast them as misleading.

[. . .]

My tinfoil hat

Here's a good one as I watch MSNBC. Do you think the Bush administration arranged for Mt. St. Helens to erupt to suck the oxygen away from Kerry's debate win? Could happen, couldn't it?

Yet another

I wasn't gonna add any more on the debates because Gordon said all there needs to be, but I saw this over at TBogg:

I don't want anyone to tell me that George Bush should be president because he's a regular guy who is just like their neighbor. I don't want my neighbor to be president (actually I don't even want him to be my neighbor.) I want someone capable of speaking for more than two and a half minutes on anything. Anything at all.

Remember this: he actually spent the week studying up for this. Imagine that.

Personally, I did think Bush was smarter than he looked last night, but I guess Rove usually does have his arm up President Moron's ass, making his lips move.

Vanishing Alaska

Excellent and disturbing article on global warming in this week's Time magazine.

The fate of one stubborn little village normally wouldn't make much of a splash. But Shishmaref and other Alaskan settlements are attracting national attention because scientists see them as gloomy harbingers. "Shishmaref is the canary in the coal mine — an indicator of what's to come elsewhere," says Gunter Weller, director of the University of Alaska's Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research.

It must be said that if Shishmaref sinks beneath the waves, it won't be much of a loss to global tourism. The village is so remote that no road connects it to the outside world. The occasional barge unloads fuel after the ice breaks up, and when the weather is good, battered bush planes ferry in DVDs and cartons of Cheetos from the Sam's Club in Fairbanks. Visually, this village is nothing like the romantic images of Eskimos in igloos from old National Geographic magazines. Weathered clapboard houses, surrounded by rusty engine parts, sit helter-skelter along muddy paths. Indoor plumbing is rare, and drinking water collects in plastic buckets under rain gutters. Empty Coke cans and cigarette packets litter the streets. In the ramshackle town hall, a sign reads, CITY OF SHISHMAREF BINGO WILL NOT BE ACCEPTING ANY MORE PERSONAL CHECKS. Another warns against siphoning gasoline from the village fire truck.

Sounds like my kind of place. Around here, they keep the fire truck locked up.

Still, like many of Alaska's native villages, Shishmaref clings to its subsistence culture. The town supports 10 dog teams, and a local musher, Herbie Nayokpuk, is known statewide as the Shishmaref Cannonball for his top-place finishes in the Iditarod race. Walrus-tusk carving is taught in school, along with the Inupiaq language. And if the town itself is ugly, it is balanced by the desolate beauty of the slate-colored sea, the ducks flying in formation over the lagoon and the musk ox roaming in emerald meadows dotted with wild cotton. Some two-thirds of the local diet still derives from hunting and fishing. In the diamond light of late summer, whole families forage for salmonberries, which the elders eat mixed with grated caribou fat. ("Eskimo ice cream," they call it.) The kids prefer it with Cool Whip.

"This is our grocery store," says Tony Weyiouanna, pulling shimmering white fish from his gill net.

The prospect of relocating whole Eskimo villages — global warming's first American refugees — is gathering political support. Last January, Shishmaref citizens voted to move to a site called Tin Creek, 12 miles away, across a lagoon. And last June, Alaska's powerful Senator, Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, convened federal, state and local officials for a two-day hearing in Anchorage to hear impassioned pleas from village leaders who want help repairing their infrastructure or relocating. Among the most eloquent was Eningowuk, 54, a mother of six who heads the Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Coalition. "Shishmaref is where it is because of what the ocean, rivers, streams and the land provide to us," she testified. "We are hunters, and we are gatherers. We have been here for countless generations. We value our way of life. It provides for our very existence."

Whatever the solution, the Inupiaq are looking for it to be paid for by the folks who sent them global warming in the first place. And who would that be? "The Nalauqmiu — white people," says Eningowuk with a rueful smile.

Sounds about right. The only hunting and gathering likely to produce global warming is hunting for profits and gathering dollars in mass quantities.

Please read the whole article.

Smile? More Like A Shit-Eatin' Grin

On the debate by E.J. Dionne in Working For Change:

On Friday morning, Democrats all over the United States emerged from their homes with a new spring in their steps. After the presidential debate the night before, many of them had a new experience: It was possible to be for John Kerry and not just against President Bush.

Personally, I've been for John Kerry since the day he announced his candidacy. Having said that, I'd have been for Yosemite Sam if I thought he could beat Bush.

The Bush forces will no doubt try to find some way to spin this debate into a Bush victory. I could be wrong but, honestly, I think that may be beyond the talents of even Karl Rove. That's why Democrats, finally, are smiling.

Senator Kerry did this country a solid by a) showing himself to be presidential, and b) showing Bush up for the un-prepared, arrogant, do-what-I-say-and-not-what-I-do-I'm-right-and-you're-not-and-facts-don't-matter miserable failure as President that he is.

I'm smilin' so hard my face hurts. The trick now is not to get cocky and complacent. The time you get in trouble is when you think you're safe, as all (older and still alive) motorcyclists know.

It's still an upward climb, but it may have flattened out a little.

More on DeLay

From today's Washington Post:

The House ethics committee admonished Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) last night for offering a political favor to a Michigan lawmaker in exchange for the member's vote on last year's hard-fought Medicare prescription drug bill.

After a six-month investigation,(my emphasis) the committee concluded that DeLay had told Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) he would endorse the congressional bid of Smith's son if the congressman gave GOP leaders a much-needed vote in a contentious pre-dawn roll call on Nov. 22.

They must have spent the six months kissing DeLay's ass and apologizing to him in advance.

The ethics panel, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, said it would take no further action in the case.

"My, my, what teensy little balls you have, grandma!"

"The better not to rock the boat, Little Red Riding Hood. Now be a good citizen and go play."

The Blogosphere

Been through the Liberal Blogosphere this morning, checking out the first takes of the debates last night. My opinion? Next to my man Gordon . . .

[. . .]

Kerry was poised, forthright and strong. He didn't sweat or sigh. He kicked Dubya's ass.

Bush was fumblin' an stumblin'. He sighed. As far as I'm concerned he fucked up by the numbers.

[. . .]

. . . the mighty Josh Marshall has the best one:

Now comes the hard part: winning the spin.

John Kerry made a good start of it tonight. But it is absolutely critical for his campaign and his supporters, formal and otherwise, to hit the ground running with a plan to use the grist from the debate to shape perceptions in the final weeks of the campaign.

As I said earlier, I think Kerry did himself the most good tonight simply by belying the Bush campaign's portrayal of him as weak-willed flip-flopper.

[. . .]

There was an air of prickliness and entitlement about the president that Kerry's surrogates should play up too. If you notice, one of the president's major attacks on Kerry through the debate was his claim that Kerry's criticism of the president's own war policy made him unfit to be president.

That's extraordinary -- certainly a set of rules that would put Kerry in something of a bind if he followed them, no?

And that's the best he could come up with: say I've made a mistake in Iraq and you're letting down the troops.

Notice the structure of the president's thinking: The point isn't whether he's made mistakes or screwed things up. But saying he has is bad.

Again, denial. Refusal to see what's happening. Lost. Adrift.

Transcript

Debate transcript via Pandagon is here.

Good Job, John

The first "debate" is just over and here's my impression:

Kerry was poised, forthright and strong. He didn't sweat or sigh. He kicked Dubya's ass.

Bush was fumblin' an stumblin'. He sighed. As far as I'm concerned he fucked up by the numbers.

I'm certainly no expert, and I'm just the teeniest bit biased.

Update, 10:20pm OWT*

I've been watching the post-game show on MSNBC. Right after the debate, it was nearly unanimous that Kerry had "won". Within an hour, however, the spin had started as the Bush people found their footing again. I'm surprised that it took them that long: Kerry must have indeed done well.

Whaddya wanna bet that, by Monday at the latest, a good percentage of the media will reverse the outcome and declare Bush the "winner"?

We will see.

*Out West Time

What Do Women Want? Oh, No....

Margaret Carlson now has a weekly editorial in the LATimes. This one is disturbing.

Freud, on his deathbed, asked, "What do women want?" The improbable answer, it now seems, may be George W. Bush.

Now, if they wanted BUSH on his deathbed, that'd be a good choice.

Remember Bush 41, taunted for rightly resisting calls to charge into Baghdad and ridiculed as a lap dog, a wimp and every woman's first husband. To me the first Bush was every woman's second husband, the one you chose after you had all the false bravado you could stand from Bush 43

Once again, all the good shit is between the quotes. Read. Enjoy.

"Justice" Dept. v. 1st Amendment (Again)

Editorial in the LATimes

There's a new front in the Justice Department's war on terror — a battle against press freedom.

Duh.

It is now up to a federal judge to remind the Justice Department that an independent press won't long survive if reporters lose their ability to protect the confidentiality of their sources.

Double Duh.

The press

From Kevin at Lean Left:

[. . .]

The press in this country is so ineffective, so wedded to the idea of "balance", and so cowed by the right wing that it simply cannot give the public an accurate and clear picture of the situation. The information is there if you hunt for it, but this kind of equivocation and faux objectivity muddles the waters and gives people willing to lie brazenly the advantage. If the Bush says 2 + 2 = 5, the Washington Post would then write a story containing the line "But some Democrats maintained that 2 + 2 is actually 4." That is not balance or objectivity. It is aiding and abetting a falsehood. Just as the article above does.

You know, it's ridiculous. It's not just the press, it's everybody in this country. Nobody has the nuts to call a spade a spade anymore. What is it, just guys like my partner Gordon and me, and the guys I work with, who'll tell someone they're a liar, or a fucking asshole. Nobody has the balls to call anyone on anything anymore. When someone spouts drivel to you about a subject they know nothing about, do you say, 'you're an idiot, shut up'? Parbly not. I've seen guys do nothing when some other asshole says something rude to their wives. You get in my wife's face while I'm standing there, I'm gonna put you on your ass. Where are the real guys? And I'm not just talking men. Everybody's gotta be so PC because they're afraid of getting sued.

That's the way our press is. President Moral Failure lies (no, not misleads, lies) and the press eats it up. Call a lie a lie, godammit. Hell, even if you want to call it misleading, show some fucking outrage at least. If they'd let me within shouting distance of Bush, I'd call him a lying sack of shit to his face. Ya think one member of the WH press corps would say, 'but Mr. President, you know that's not true' after he throws another falsehood out there? When I watch one of the cable news networks, I take it for what it is, a regurgitation of the Republican talking points. When I watch a press conference, I see a bunch of slackers asking questions. I see a big waste of my good air.

What happened to the business when the Paragon of Journaism, Cronkite's Heir Dan Rather, is too lazy to properly source out a story? If I did my job as half-assed as the press does theirs, Harry would have pushed my toolbox into the street and kicked me to the curb long ago, friend or no friend. If Harry would run his buisiness the way the press runs theirs, he wouldn't have a business.

The press is supposed to be part of the checks and balances built in to our democracy, the voice of the people. The Founding Fathers specifically indicated a free press, the eyes and ears of the people on the system. Instead, we have a government propaganda machine reminiscent of Josef Goebbels. The press has been cowed by the right wing, so much so that they are merely vassals. At least you can hand it to Fox, they might say fair and balanced, but they make it easy enough that any moron can figure out where they stand. They are straight up about that.

And I have another question. Are reporters actually that stupid? Are the people who decide what gets reported? I mean, I'm a mechanic, people expect me to be a high school dropout and a little rough around the edges. I expect reporters et al, with their high-priced degees, to find out what's really going on, not worry about whether one candidate is wearing a red tie, or the other one sweats profusely. I expect reporters to ask Bush, what exactly is his plan for Iraq. What are they afraid of? Aren't journalists supposed to sacrifice everything for the story? Aren't editors there to separate the wheat from the chaff, calling something bullshit when they smell it instead of presenting it a fact. Jesus H. Christ, Iraq is a mess and they're still giving Bush the benefit of the doubt over his rosy outlook on the war. Can just one of them say, 'President Bush lost his grip on reality today when he said things in Iraq are going swimmingly'?

No, because they've gotten fat and lazy and they're scared that Bush might take it all away from them. You think any of 'em have the balls to sacrifice a job and report honestly? And if they are actually as stupid as Wolf Blitzer and Paula Zahn seem, what the fuck are they there for in the first place? And if they are as partisan as Bill Schneider and Howie Kurtz seem, why do they still have their jobs? I mean if it's supposed to be entertainment, say so. If it's supposed to be objective reporting, then do your fucking jobs. I mean, if people went to a comedian to get their car fixed instead of to me, it would sink in real fast that I was doing something wrong. Guys, more people look to The Daily Show for their news instead of the news networks. Guess what? Time to get on the ball. You got a little over a month to cover the most important election since FDR the right way. Get on it, before people start getting their news from Jerry Lewis.