So they want polls ...

Froggy asked, in comments on the Mejias post below, what the polls say about the race. Heh ... found this Constituent Dynamics poll (.pdf MoE 2.9 - 3.1%) showing how tight the race really is. In a district once considered 'solid Republican', we have results from just before Tuesday's debate:

King 47%

Mejias 45%

I'd say it's a race.

Learn about the candidate and volunteer - Dave for America

Contribute - Dave's ActBlue page.

Vote for Dave Mejias. Do you live in NY-03?

Where there's smoke ...

There's usually fire. Seen at CorrenteWire:

...

I guess it's time to take bets. Anyone care to wager upon the final number of kiddie stalkers in the Republican party?

...

It seems Foley wasn't the only one. Gotta love them 'family values'.

November.

Dave

A dispatch from Mejias headquarters via email:

MINEOLA - In a press conference today, Nassau County Legislator Dave Mejias, Democratic candidate for Congress in New York's 3rd Congressional District, proudly stood along side members of The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) and local elected officials to accept an endorsement from NJDC's Political Action Committee. Founded in 1990, The National Jewish Democratic Council is the national voice of Jewish Democrats, and the newly formed Long Island chapter is the only local representation of any national Jewish political organization.

...

Dave Mejias has turned this longshot race into a real battle. He's giving Peter King the fight of his political life and it's time for Long Islanders and those from out of state to step up. Peter King is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, too sensitive a post for a delusional nutbag to hold. Support Dave in his fight to put King out to pasture.

Learn about the candidate and volunteer - Dave for America

Contribute - Dave's ActBlue page.

Vote for Dave Mejias. Do you live in NY-03?

And don't forget ...

Even when the news is shitty, there's always Cute Overload.

More "new" spin ...

I touched on this last night, citing Arianna's post. They've been spinning wildly for the last few days, the Chimp going so far as to make a reference to Tet, though for the last few years any similarity drawn between Iraq and Vietnam has been verboten. Cdr. Huber thinks it's because their planned October Surprise went into the dumper quickly.

...

I can't help but conclude that the increased deaths and frustration prior to the elections weren't expected. I suspect that the much-ballyhooed offensives in Ramadi and Baghdad were calculated to provide major successes in Iraq prior to the midterm elections, and now that they haven't, the likes of Caldwell are helping to reverse the spin in a way that will keep the ball in the GOP's court.

...

Personally, I think they have something else up their sleeves (Diebold notwithstanding) aside from some wishful thinking in Iraq. I'm sure somebody in the White House has enough grasp of reality to realize the situation in Iraq can nevermore be manipulated according to a political calendar.

I'm trying to pursuade the Mrs. not to go into the office until after Election Day if she can help it. I have this gut feeling these guys have too much to lose to pin their hopes on such a fluid situation in Iraq. Desperate men do deperate things when they know the end is near.

The United States Secret Service ...

Is in sorry shape. Was a time a lunatic like this wouldn't get within a half-mile of the President of the United States.

Quote of the Day

42 is supporting the troops by supporting their families:

...

So all you clueless boneheads with your yellow ribbons and empty "I support the troops!" bullshit slogans, well you can just stick all that into your butts. For those whose actions speak louder than words, kick some money to the Fisher House. That's supporting the troops and their families.

...

The "new" spin ...

Gord's girl looks at the way the Chimp is spinning the recent carnage in Iraq:

Here's the latest talking point from the Bush administration, explaining the surge in violence that has October on track to be the third deadliest month of the Iraq war: it's a campaign strategy. That's right, Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other -- and American soldiers -- in growing numbers because they are out to affect the '06 Elections.

...

So, regardless of how ineptly, corruptly, criminally, they have run the nation over the past 6 years, you should vote for them because the terrorists are trying to manipulate you. If you vote Dem, the terrorists win and the Baby Jesus will cry.

...

There you have it: Sunnis and Shiites are not killing each other over centuries-old religious conflicts; they're killing each other because they disagree about who should be Speaker of the House, Denny Hastert or Nancy Pelosi.

...

"Last throes", "turning a corner", "dead-enders", and now the "New Tet". Even the Jesus freaks ain't that gullible.

Voter warning linked to GOP campaign

The other day, I posted about a letter sent to Hispanic voters in Orange County CA, warning them that they they could go to jail just for voting. Well, the law is closin' in.

SANTA ANA, Calif. - State investigators have linked a Republican campaign to letters sent to thousands of Orange County Hispanics warning them they could go to jail or be deported if they vote next month, a spokesman for the attorney general said.

"We have identified where we believe the mailing list was obtained," said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

He declined to identify the specific campaign, citing the ongoing investigation. The Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register both reported Thursday that the investigation appeared to be focused on the campaign of Tan D. Nguyen, a Republican who immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam as a child and is now challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (news, bio, voting record). Nguyen's Web site says he opposes illegal immigration.

Good. I hope they lock the sonofabitch up.

There are a lot of Vietnamese in Orange County. So many, in fact, that one of the freeway exit signs reads "Little Saigon". It appears that this particular Mr. Nguyen has successfully assimilated into the Repuglican way of doing things.

Ms. Sanchez is a favorite of mine for beating out long-serving Rethug Robert "B-1 Bob" Dornan several years ago. One of his lines was "Every lesbian spearchucker is hoping I get defeated." The guy was a real throwback, and red on the head like the dick on a dog to boot, and damn near as smart.

Like the Mafia, Only Dumber

William Rivers Pitt on the Repuglican criminal enterprise:

Josh Marshall, who runs the excellent blog Talking Points Memo, recently posted a reader's take on "The 5 Stages of Republican Scandal." As follows:

1. "I have not been informed of any investigation or that I am a target."

2. "I am cooperating fully, but this whole thing is a political ploy by the Democrats."

3. "I'm SHOCKED by the mistakes made by my subordinates."

4. "I'm deeply sorry for letting down my friends and family. I now recognize that I am an alcoholic. I will be entering rehab immediately, so I have no time for questions."

5. "Can I serve my time at Eglin Federal Penitentiary (aka Club Fed)?"

We have seen a fair amount of this already, and will soon see a lot more of it. The news media is all abuzz about Republican scandals, from Foley to Abramoff, but simply hearing about it from the television does not do the situation justice, if you'll pardon the bad pun. You have to see it all in one place to understand the depths to which the GOP has sunk.

Bear in mind, as you peruse the following roll call, that these guys are getting busted for this stuff while their party has absolute control over the House, the Senate, the White House and the Justice Department. Huffington Post columnist Stephen Elliot pegged it recently when he wrote, "The fact is if you control the Senate, the White House, and the courts, and you're still getting busted for bribery, stalking children, and money laundering, then something is really sick at the Republican core."

Indeed. Thus, without further ado and in no particular order .

Looong list follows. Heh.

Here's the best part: George W. Bush has officially declared that this is now National Character Counts Week. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.

At the end of it, you have to think of this crew as being like the Mafia, only a lot dumber. Think about it. The Mafia's criminal enterprises operate under heavy scrutiny from local, state and federal officials, all of whom have subpoena power, not to mention the ability to tap phones and kick down doors.

The Republican criminal enterprise that is currently unraveling in all directions, on the other hand, operated virtually free from restraint or scrutiny. They own the government, from the Oval Office to the FBI to the Capitol Dome, and yet somehow they are managing to get busted left and right.

And, of course, the really serious criminal behavior - lying about weapons of mass destruction to initiate a war of conquest that has enriched White House allies while killing untold tens of thousands of people, including almost three thousand American soldiers, for starters - continues to operate with impunity.

For now. Rumor has it there is an election in November. Depending on how it shakes out, things might get really interesting after the New Year. These people above got nailed even though their allies are running the show. If that should change, several dozen varieties of Hell are likely to break loose.

That'd be the good kind of Hell, of course, the kind we deserve to eternally damn the Republicans.

"Your words are lies, Sir."

Keith Olbermann takes Bush to task over the Military Commission Act. Video and transcript. Today's 'must read'.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies that imperil us all.

"One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks," you told us yesterday, "said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America."

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush, they would be "the beginning of the end of America."

And did it even occur to you once, sir - somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations of the horrors of 9/11 - that with only a little further shift in this world we now know - just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots died -- did it ever occur to you once that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future president and a "competent tribunal" of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of "unlawful enemy combatant" for - and convene a Military Commission to try - not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

I'll be proud to serve with Mr. Olbermann at Gitmo.

American wimps

I had something to say about this yesterday as I was driving to work but forgot in the interim*. It was a little drizzly, about 65 degrees, and I got up behind a school bus. I almost fell over when it stopped in front of a house. I saw a kid (teenager) hop out of a Lexus at the end of the driveway and take two steps to get on the bus. Before the bus pulled away, the mom put the car in gear, drove the hundred feet to the house, got out and went inside.

Let's see ...

#1 The schoolbus stops in front of your house.

#2 You could stay in your house until the bus comes and walk the hundred feet to the street from your front door.

#3 You choose to sit in a running car that drove you the hundred feet from your front door.

#4 Your mother, I presume or at least an adult female, is a willing participant in this behavior.

Are you fucking kidding me?

*The Penguin, blogging at Pauly's, reminded me of it. I'm going to work.

You know you're desperate ...

Or stupid, when you have Mike Tyson on the campaign trail with you.

In other words ...

If I find offensive the 'God is my Copilot' or 'My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter' signs or the stupid fish plastered on a customer's back bumper (let alone the 'W'-'04 sticker that's still there), if I don't like the huge cross or rosary beads hanging from the rearview mirror, or the St. Christopher medal bolted to the dashboard, I don't have to work on their car? Yeah, right, that would happen. Get over yourselves.

Does anybody believe ...

The release of this info isn't politically motivated?

This'll cheer ya up...

C&L Late Nite Music Club with the Soggy Bottom Boys.

Something for everybody. Thank you, Nicole.

Payback Time

Matt Taibbi in an article about the future of bi-partisanship according to Charlie Rangel:

"Seriously, one of the reasons you're not seeing Democrats getting indicted in corruption scandals is that we've been out of the loop," says Rangel, laughing but not joking.

What no one in Congress knows -- and a lot of staffers I spoke to worried aloud about this -- is if Democrats will be any different in that respect than the Republicans if they win this November. The corruption issue is only part of it. More than anything, a lot of Democratic staffers are worried that ten years or so of having the light shut out on them by the majority, being frozen out of conference committees, having cops called to rouse them out of the library and being denied the chance to offer even the most harmless amendments -- that all of this will lead to a long, ugly period of payback time.

[...] The young Democrat sitting next to Rangel who looks at a Republican like a Crip lining up a Blood might be the future of politics generally.

Think about it; if there's ever been anything sadder than John McCain "taking a stand" against Bush on the torture bill a few weeks back, have you seen it? I sure haven't. McCain bent over faster than a college student on his first night in Attica. But I wouldn't expect anything better out of the Democrats -- at least not until they show they can act like men, and not like the hired clowns of their party's financial backers. Until that happens, we can expect more of the same: vicious partisan bitching while the cameras are on, obscene handouts behind closed doors.

"You can either govern or you can get even," says Rangel. "But you can't do both. I hope we make the right choice."

Note to Charlie: Get even. 'Payback' is a sucking chest wound. Anything short of that is JUSTICE with this Repuglican bunch, and the nation deserves it, wants it, won't settle for anything less. The Repugs deserve whatever they get. They need to learn that poor choices have bad consequences. Like jail, and worse, powerlessness. It wouldn't hurt the Dems to learn that object lesson, either.

It's not a 'choice'. It's your duty. Do it well.

Then govern.

Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

P.M. Carpenter

This is is not a commentary. It is an obituary.

The United States, age 230, passed away yesterday following a short bout of internal complications.

Well, "passed away" isn't quite the term for it. It was murdered - cynically cut down in what should have been its prime; assassinated by fear, slayed by ignorance, silenced by contempt, butchered by congressional cowardice and whacked by a venomous president. Rasputin himself died at the hands of fewer conspirators.

The killing field was, of course, Washington, D.C., and the murder weapon was the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - Enabling Act of 1933, anyone? -- which authorized not a war on terror, but a war of terror - the rape of this erstwhile nation of laws, not men, and directed straight at the forehead of any who oppose the new American regime; directed at those who one man, and one man only, deems properly subject to indefinite incarceration, torture, and extermination.

The Act's wording of "unlawful enemy combatants" defies any definition other than: Whomever the president says is an unlawful enemy combatant. We'll just have to pray that over the next two years George doesn't go back on the bottle and start reading disagreeable newspapers and blogs.

Does writing this qualify me as a U.E.C.? Or any of its publishers? Does this open, expressed outrage at the gang of treasonous criminals at the helm of this mess of a reordered government complicate their lives enough or please our foes enough to land me under the prohibition against aiding foreign enemies and comforting them with material support?

Who knows? Could. Might. Maybe. That would be determined not by statute, not by rules of evidence, not by a jury, not by a judge, not even by the court of public opinion. That would, instead, be determined by one man, in secrecy -- an unsettling, intolerable peskiness to dictatorial tranquility to be whisked away under the cover of night.

And that is no hysterical exaggeration.

As I've heard it, part of the definition of an 'Unlawful Enemy Combatant' is one who has 'materially aided terrorists'. To me, that would be something like helping a terrorist make sure his Semtex corset is on nice and tight so it won't slip and embarrass him.

Who knows what it means to 'The Decider'? It appears as if it's entirely up to Bush.

Remember "you're either with us, or against us"? Who's "us"? Is it the United States of America, or the royal "us" of George W. Bush personally? I guess we'll find out. I'm definitely 'with' the United States, which is why I'm definitely 'against' Bush.

Are they gonna come get us anti-Bush bloggers and whisk us away for a lovely tropical vacation at Gitmo? Probably not, but the Chimp's nose is definitely under the tent. He could if he wanted to.

We have to trust his sanity and honesty. Let that one sink in for a minute. Sanity? Honesty? BUSH?

As for his 'sanity', we're dealing here with an incompetent petulant crybaby, a bully of a dry drunk with a mean streak and an overcompensated inferiority complex, who does not like criticism and likes to lash out at his critics, and who is fixin' to see his criminal agenda swirl closer and closer to the drain come election day. He is pretty famous for blaming others for his own mistakes, which he refuses to admit, convinced that his infallibility is absolute. Sane? Probably in the parallel universe he inhabits. In the reality-based dimension the rest of us live in, he's at best very seriously delusional.

As to his honesty, I won't waste much effort on that. He is one of the few people I've seen who turns the truth into a lie simply by speaking it. That's pretty rare, though. Most of the time, he just lies. 'Pathological' doesn't begin to cover it.

Bush has once again side-stepped the Constitution - belay that, he's fuckin' stomped it flat. That august document was designed specifically to protect us from devils in power by making this a nation of laws, not of men. With the help of his Congressional accomplices he has thrown another shovelful of dirt on the grave of Democracy and Liberty.

Our civil liberties and freedom are now even more firmly at the mercy of a cretin I wouldn't trust with the keys to my fifteen-year-old pickup if it was outta gas.

I worry less and less every day about the civil war in Iraq, and more and more about civil war here.

To close on a brighter note, Bush, Cheney et al have definitely 'materially aided terrorists' by enabling their recruiting program with their imperialistic power-and-oil driven criminal blunders. Perhaps, if the Military Commissions Act is still in effect in 2009, the next President will do the right thing and rendition them to the place of their soggy dreams, with orange clothes, no lawyers or other outside contacts, no charges, secret evidence that won't be shown, steel bars, and no appeal. And, oh yeah, 4000 calories a day! Let's pork 'em up good so the noose can do its work more easily.

In the meantime, R.I.P. America.

It's just like Manhattan ...

I've been doing a lot of catch-up at work, thanks to my vacation, so I've been a little sparse posting. Especially regarding the congressional race in NY-03. I missed the debate last night between Dave Mejias and Peter King, for example, but Crooks and Liars has some good video of Peter King showing himself to be the liar we all believe he is.

King: Conditions on the ground are different than what you see on television.- As we go through the city of Baghdad, it was like being in Manhattan. I'm talking about bumper to bumper traffic. Talking about shopping centers, talking about restaurants, talking about video stores, talking about guys - on the street corner, talking about major hotels. And so, at that moment, people must be amazingly resilient and you would never know that there was a war going on ... [my em]

Somebody I want in Congress. Maybe he's not a liar, but then he's just delusional*.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A roadside bomb killed a provincial police intelligence chief in southern Iraq early Wednesday, police said. The military reported nine U.S. troops killed in bombings and combat a day earlier, raising to 67 the number of U.S. troops killed in October...

Yeah, we see NYPD vehicles getting blown up every day, random shootings and torture, and don't forget those beheadings in front of Saks 5th Avenue and the IEDs in Times Square. Although watching the Mets snatch defeat from the jaws of victory could be considered torture.

Time to send Peter King for a long rest, to Bellevue where be belongs. Help us put Dave Mejais in his seat.

Learn about the candidate and volunteer - Dave for America

Contribute - Dave's ActBlue page.

Vote for Dave Mejias. Do you live in NY-03?

Update:

Peter King Watch has debate video.

*Link via Attaturk.

Repuglican IM

U r starting to creep me out...