Fear of Clowns

FOX News takes a Bush mischaracterization in the debate and presents it as if Kerry said it:

From "Bush, Kerry Spar on Iraq War",

Kerry has said that if elected, he would pull American troops out of Iraq within six months although later he said he would not impose such a fast deadline.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134151,00.html

From "Debate Fact Check",

Bush also mischaracterized Kerry's position on withdrawing troops from Iraq: "My opponent at one time said, 'Well, get me elected, I'll have them out of there in six months.' " In fact, Kerry said he would hope to begin a withdrawal in six months, not complete it. His aim would be to finish the withdrawal in four years if conditions allow.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134160,00.html

// posted by Erik @ 9/30/2004 11:28:00 PM
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One news item today:

House rejects heterosexual superiority amendment

// posted by Erik @ 9/30/2004 09:59:00 PM
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I watched the debate at a bar, appropriately, The Chatterbox Pub. The first thing I noticed was that Kerry was wearing a red tie and Bush a blue.

I had expected both candidates to do better, but hadn't expect Bush to totally bomb. I'll take it though. If what the pundits say is true: it what the debates look like, not what they sound like - Kerry all but has the election wrapped up on national security.

Kerry's confidently used his hands and body to immediately convey his message, Bush hesitated and looked like someone waking up in a strange hotel rummaging around for his keys (or teleprompter) on a strange podium. He blinked. He gazed gown. He asked meekly asked the moderator for a chance to rebut then gave a watery rebuttal. At one point, it appeared that he had written down part of his answer and read it as if he was trying to simulate a teleprompter.

A teleprompter couldn't have saved Bush anyway - the only thing that could have was a horrible Kerry performance. Kerry both effectively showed that Bush has been an ineffective leader and communicated his ideas sufficiently - although I think he could have done even better. Compared to Bush's worn out talking points about attacking when he sees a threat and staying on the offensive, Kerry's case was brilliant and wide ranging. This was a debate about three things,

• Bush's past performance on national security
• Bush's future performance on national security
• Wether Kerry's future performance would be better than Bush's

Bush seemed to be playing a different ball game by concentrating on the oh so funny funny GOP concocted Kerry "flip-flops" on Iraq.

A second staple of Bush's answers was along the lines of, "I'm commander in chief, I have things under control". Saying he had things under control worked against him being that one of Kerry's themes was that Bush just wanted to give us "more of the same" and was living in a fantasy world - by leaning on his position of authority to prop himself up, Bush was actually reinforcing Kerry's message.

I was somewhat surprised that the name "Cuba" was not mentioned. Cuba is our neighbor and it's on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism - I would think it deserved at least one question.

Both candidates said a Democratic Iraq was good for Israel. That's not the message the Arab world needs to hear - one of the things many think is that we invaded Iraq to protect Israel. Even if true, that's not a good message to send. I think both candidates may have inflamed anti-American and anti-Israel passions by pandering to the Zionist vote. (added after watching debate a second time: I think Kerry misspoke when he said "It's important to Israel" - he didn't mention Iraqis and think he meant "Iraq" rather than "Israel" - still it belies the fact that he's worrying about the Zionist vote)

Kerry could have done better on the "What will you to differently in Iraq" question. He should have started the answer with 1,2,3,4,5 just as it's laid out on his website. Instead he started talking and after criticizing Bush and later got around to explaining two or three of the changes he would make.

There are too many parts of the parallel press conferences ("debate") I want to at least briefly comment on later, but will leave this post with two:

"Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden." - George W. Bush

"I have no intention of wilting. I've never wilted in my life. And I've never wavered in my life. I know exactly what we need to do in Iraq, and my position has been consistent: Saddam Hussein is a threat. He needed to be disarmed. We needed to go to the U.N. The president needed the authority to use force in order to be able to get him to do something, because he never did it without the threat of force. But we didn't need to rush to war without a plan to win the peace." - John F. Kerry

// posted by Erik @ 9/30/2004 09:20:00 PM
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In a previous post, I wrote of how Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell decided to begin enforcing an old law requiring voter registration forms be printed on paper the thickness of postcard stock. In his directive to election supervisors, he wrote on September 9,

The form prescribed by the Secretary of State must be printed on white, uncoated paper of not less than 80 lb. text weight. Any Ohio form not printed on this minimum paperweight is considered to be an application for a registration form. Your board should mail the appropriate form to the person listed on the application.

Yesterday, Blackwell reversed this directive by issuing a "clarification" that they should not be just "considered to be an application for a registration form", but that election workers should indeed register the voter, then send them a proper registration card,

The voter registration form prescribed by the Secretary of State must be printed on white, uncoated paper of not less than 80 lb. text weight. However, any otherwise valid Ohio forms received by your Board of Elections not on 80lb. text should be processed and the newly registered voter should be sent and asked to return the legally prescribed form to be kept by your Board as a permanent record.

I wonder how many Ohio voters will end up being disenfranchised by the instructions Blackwell had election workers try to follow for three weeks.

// posted by Erik @ 9/30/2004 02:00:00 PM
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A recent issue (October) of the Atlantic has two must-read articles on Bush's war on terror.

The first is Peter Bergen's "The Long Hunt for Osama", also found here.

Bergen made two trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan while writing the article - It's the story of what has been known about bin Laden since 9/11. It's a good reminder of what has happened over the last several years - an example,

When I returned to Jalalabad, I spoke with Commander Muhammad Musa, who said he had led 600 Afghan soldiers on the Tora Bora front lines; with grudging admiration he recalled the tenacity with which some of al-Qaeda's fighters resisted to the end. "They fought very hard with us. When we captured them, they committed suicide with grenades. I saw three of them do that myself. The very hardest fighters were the Chechens." Musa praised the U.S. Air Force but was dismissive of American forces on the ground. "They were not involved in the fighting," he said. "There were six American soldiers with us, U.S. Special Forces. They coordinated the air strikes. My personal view is if they had blocked the way out to Pakistan, al-Qaeda would not have had a way to escape. The Americans were my guests here, but they didn't know about fighting."

And therein lies the crux of the problem. With only a small number of American "boots on the ground," the U.S. military chose to rely on the services of local Afghan proxies of uncertain loyalty and competence--a blunder that allowed many members of al-Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden himself, to slip away. The blunder meant that, as a senior U.S. military official told me, "we don't know for sure when bin Laden disappeared."

The second article is James Fallows' "Bush's Lost Year", also found here. Through extensive interviews with named and unnamed sources directly involved, it reveals this administrations' decision to shift the focus away from al Qaeda in Afghanistan towards Hussein in Iraq,

James Dobbins, who was the Bush Administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and its first representative in liberated Kabul, told me that three decisions in the early months "really shaped" the outcome in Afghanistan. "One was that U.S. forces were not going to do peacekeeping of any sort, under any circumstances. They would remain available to hunt down Osama bin Laden and find renegade Taliban, but they were not going to have any role in providing security for the country at large. The second was that we would oppose anybody else's playing this role outside Kabul. And this was at a time when there was a good deal of interest from other countries in doing so." A significant reason for refusing help, according to Dobbins, was that accepting it would inevitably have tied up more American resources in Afghanistan, especially for airlifting donated supplies to foreign-led peacekeeping stations in the hinterland. The third decision was that U.S. forces would not engage in any counter-narcotics activities. One effect these policies had was to prolong the disorder in Afghanistan and increase the odds against a stable government. The absence of American or international peacekeepers guaranteed that the writ of the new Karzai government would extend, at best, to Kabul itself.

...The Administration later placed great emphasis on making Iraq a showcase of Islamic progress: a society that, once freed from tyranny, would demonstrate steady advancement toward civil order, economic improvement, and, ultimately, democracy. Although Afghanistan is a far wilder, poorer country, it might have provided a better showcase, and sooner. There was no controversy about America's involvement; the rest of the world was ready to provide aid; if it wasn't going to become rich, it could become demonstrably less poor. The amount of money and manpower sufficient to transform Afghanistan would have been a tiny fraction of what America decided to commit in Iraq. But the opportunity was missed, and Afghanistan began a descent to its pre-Taliban warlord state.

// posted by Erik @ 9/30/2004 12:31:00 PM
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1. Members of the UN did not fail to enforce UNSCR 1441 by not attacking Iraq

   Here is the UNSC press release which implicitly states the vote on 1441 was not a vote to authorize force.

   John Negroponte - US ambassidor to the UN's - comments,

   The resolution contained, he said, no "hidden triggers" and no "automaticity" with the use of force ... If the Security Council failed to act decisively in the event of further Iraqi violation, the resolution did not constrain any Member State from acting to defend itself against the threat posed by that country, or to enforce relevant United Nations resolutions and protect world peace and security.

   Negroponte correctly noted that if forces were to be called upon to invade Iraq ("authorized"), it would be by a later Security council action. It would have included wording "calling on" member nations to provide troops and materiel, as do all resolutions calling for military action. "Facing serious consequences" is something Iraq would do, not an action UN members states were authorized to take.

   France and other Security Council members held the position, "We cannot accept an ultimatum as long as inspectors are reporting cooperation."

   Of course, Bush later made the determination that Iraq "wasn't cooperating" but "deceiving" and the only way to "disarm" Iraq was to remove Hussein form power.

   Our own Iraq Survey Group has now found Bush was wrong. Iraq wasn't moving stockpiles from location to location, they didn't have mobile or secret underground labs. It was Bush that was deceived - he used bad judgment.

2. Bush promised to call for a vote authorizing force, but didn't

   Trying to convince our allies that the deluded belief was real, Bush promised to call for a vote "no matter what" on a resolution which would have authorized force.

   Q Thank you, Mr. President. As you said, the Security Council faces a vote next week on a resolution implicitly authorizing an attack on Iraq. Will you call for a vote on that resolution, even if you aren't sure you have the vote?
   
   THE PRESIDENT: Well, first, I don't think - it basically says that he's in defiance of 1441. That's what the resolution says. And it's hard to believe anybody is saying he isn't in defiance of 1441, because 1441 said he must disarm. And, yes, we'll call for a vote.
   
   Q No matter what?
   
   THE PRESIDENT: No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council. And so, you bet. It's time for people to show their cards, to let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam.

   The US never called for a vote.

3. The purpose of invading Iraq was to disarm Hussein of (fictional) weapons

   In Bush's ultimatum, bizarrely issued to US television audiences instead of Hussein or a representative of Iraq, he told us he would deal with Saddam's fictional arsenal with force, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

   Two days later when the first strikes began, Bush explicitly described the purpose for the invasion he had at the time, "Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly - yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."

At best, the Commander in Chief panicked.

We need someone steady who can keep his head commanding our military.

Postscript: Here is the most reasonable response a right-winger has given the facts expressed above,

The UN is a fraud, and so is your arguemnent. Even if there weren't any WMD's, Liberlism is still a Mental Disorder. You bottomfeeders are blind to reality, even when it's in your face. Everybody in the world knows that Iraq moved the WMD to Syria. They also (or would have) stolen sectrets from Iran's Nuclear program too.

// posted by Erik @ 9/30/2004 12:03:00 PM
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Hoping to see some spontaneity resembling debate during the parallel press conferences tonight, I spent a while looking for questions others would like answered.

For Kerry to hit home runs on

• "After the 1998 bombings of American Embassies in East Africa, President Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes against Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan. Should we have responded more vigorously then, and to the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in 2000? Was there any additional military option before 9/11 that would have made sense?"
  
  Ruth Wedgwood

• "The former head of Saddam Hussein's nuclear centrifuge program, Mahdi Obeidi, says that Iraq's nuclear program 'could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein's fingers.' Now in the United States, Mr. Obeidi says that Mr. Hussein continued to back a long-range missile project and harbored 'the illusion in his mind that he had a nuclear program,' constrained only by economic sanctions.
  
  "But economic sanctions against Iraq would almost certainly have been lifted by the United Nations once arms inspections were completed. How then could we have guarded against Mr. Hussein's reckless intentions? If you were president, would you have judged regime change a bad policy, assuming that legal requirements were met?"
  
  Ruth Wedgwood

• "How might you explain the apparent abrupt change in policy of Libya; the unexpected removal of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb; and the about-face in Saudi Arabia - and what precise plans do you have to induce similar such positive changes in attitude in Iran, Lebanon and Syria?"
  
  Victor Davis Hanson

• "You voted for the resolution that authorized the President to use armed force as necessary in Iraq. But a few weeks later, you voted against the authorization of $85 billion in funds to support those troops. Wasn't this a classic 'flip-flop'?
  
  Peter B. Young, local columnist

• "You claim to have a better plan for winning the war in Iraq and the war on terror - that going after Saddam Hussein hurt U.S. attempts to track down Osama bin Laden. What would you do differently and why would it work?"
  
  Houston Chronicle

• "What changes do you propose to US foreign policy to stem the spread of the ideology of militant Islamist extremism?"
  
  Me

Questions for Bush to strike out on

• "You have proclaimed that 'freedom is on the march' around the globe, but freedom in Russia is in rapid retreat. During the 2000 campaign, you blasted President Vladimir Putin of Russia for 'killing children' in Chechnya. Mr. Putin has now been fighting terrorism for years and failing dismally. What lessons do you draw from Russia's experience when considering our own options for fighting terror?"
  
  Madeleine Albright

• "There are reports coming out of Iraq that your administration plans to conduct military crackdowns on insurgent areas after the election in the United States, to regain control before the Iraqi elections in January. Is that your plan, and do you think that attacking Iraqi cities, as we have done in Falluja and Najaf, is in the long-term interest of the United States?"
  
  Richard Clarke

• "Do you really believe that there are fewer terrorists plotting against America today than there were before you began the invasion of Iraq?"
  
  Arthur Schlesinger Jr

• "Your version of Christianity supports and blesses preventive war. What relation is this to the Christianity preached by the pope and by mainstream Protestants who oppose preventive war?"
  
  Arthur Schlesinger Jr

• "Ask George Bush why he wasted all his money in Iraq and why he lied about the weapons of mass destruction."
  
  Guy on the beach in Florida

• "How are you using US foreign policy to stem the spread of the ideology of militant Islamist extremism?"
  
  Me

The format of the debate ended up being extremely boring. The Commission suggested the candidates be seated at a table and be able to ask each other questions. The campaigns agreed to require limiting answers to one minute. Frederick Douglas opened the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates with a 5,378 word speech. The President's 2004 State of the Union Address was just shy of that at 5,206 words. One minute and lights like a game show. Bah.

I'd love it if either candidate went over and in response to the moderator reminded America that we were talking about the future of our nation, not their choice of whatever is behind Doors 1-3. But it was the campaigns that set out these restrictive rules for themselves. I suppose it's a free country in a way, and they can agree to dumb down the debates if they wish.

// posted by Erik @ 9/30/2004 11:03:00 AM
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George Will writes of what Kerry needs to do at Thurday's debate. He's right as far as America doesn't understand Kerry's plan for Iraq, but is curiously an incurious journalist in that he can't find out hiumself what Kerry's plan is. He's given speeches, issued press releases, and on his website in a easily digestible fashion, he lists at least a dozen things he will change or start to do in Iraq.

But Will is right - Kerry needs to make himself heard above the din of the Republican noise machine.

Meanwhile, under the current administration cars continue to blow up and the insurgency continues in Iraq. And 30% of our soldiers who have been called back from the Individual Ready Reserve to active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan have failed to show up on time. Maybe what they need is a secret weapon - perhaps a flaming human cannonball. That would scare the hell out of the insurgents.

As far as what the Republican's plan for fighting terror is, they suggest deporting undesirables to countries where they will be tortured. Actually, this idea is not new - it's already been field tested.

// posted by Erik @ 9/29/2004 09:59:00 PM
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I just got an email from the Bush campaign, touting a "Debate Briefing Book for John Kerry".

Most of the points assume voters have forgotten that three months after the Senate voted to delegated the decision to Bush wether to go to war with Iraq, Bush said,

You said we're headed to war in Iraq - I don't know why you say that. I hope we're not headed to war in Iraq. I'm the person who gets to decide, not you.

A point of note is that they're now comparing the Iraq resolution of 2002 to Congresses' January 12, 1991 voted to send US troops to the Gulf to take part in the conflict between Kuwait and Iraq, of which Kerry said,

This is not a vote about a message. It is a vote about war.

At first blush, the distinction is clear, but it probably isn't to many Americans. Here's how well informed Americans are about the candidates, according to a recent Annenberg Election Survey (full results at the Annenberg Public Policy Center),

• Only 62 percent correctly identified Bush as the candidate wanting to make abortions more difficult to get
• Only 47 percent identified Bush as the candidate wanting some Social Security contributions to be invested in in the stock market
• Only 57 percent identified Kerry as the candidate wanting to make it easier for labor unions to organize
• Only 60 percent correctly identified Bush as the candidate wanting to make his tax cuts permanent

Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.

// posted by Erik @ 9/29/2004 03:01:00 PM
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MoveOn.org recently ran a full-page ad in the NY Times noting "Gallup's methodology has predicted lately that Republican turnout on Election Day is likely to exceed Democrats' by six to eight percentage points." This is true.

As I've noted before, many have the misconception that Gallup first decides how many Republicans and Democrats are going to show up and then figures out how they'd vote. The actual problem has been that the questions used to determine what a "likely voter" are biased towards people who will vote for Bush - they don't take into account the "anybody but Bush phenomenon".

MoveOn.org's ad doesn't stretch anything other than perhaps calling it a "long standing problem." Indeed, two days before the 2000 election CNN/USA Today/Gallup had Bush ahead of Gore by 5 points - they were 5.5 points off in the spread.

But two days ahead of the 1996 election, the same poll had Clinton 16 points ahead of Dole, Clinton ended up 8.5 points ahead of Dole on Election Day. So the "long standing problem" would go back no further than 2000.

Becoming curious if there was a long-standing bias of some type, I looked into pre-election Gallup polls back to 1996, which Gallup conveniently compiles in two pages. (Note: a common confusion is that the "Gallup" and "CNN/USA Total/Gallup" polls are the same poll - they are not. They use the same data, but different methodologies).

Suspecting that it might be a bias towards the incumbent. I graphed the inaccuracies over a background indicating who the incumbent party was as well as if an incumbent is running for re-election. Here is what it looks like:

Gallup has ...

• overestimated a Democrat's popular vote 7 times and underestimated it 10 times
• overestimated a Republican's popular vote 9 times and underestimated it 8 times
• underestimated Democratic candidates' popular votes a net total of 7.5 points
• overestimated Republican candidates' popular vote a net total of 1 point

So it appears that there is a bit of a long-term bias towards Republicans.

What about incumbency? Gallup has,

• overestimated an incumbent party's popular vote 7 times and underestimated it 10 times
• underestimated an incumbant Democrat's popular vote by a net total of 8.2 points
• overestimated an incumbant Republican's popular vote by a net total of 3.1

What about wars? During the Vietnam War, Korean War and WW II, Gallup has,

• overestimated the incumbent wartime party's popular vote a net total of 3.4 points

There might be some biases toward Republicans exhibited by Gallup's methodology, but they would be small. I continue to believe that no poll or methodology can accurately predict how "likely" it is that "anybody but Bush" voters turn out - other than the one on November 2.

// posted by Erik @ 9/29/2004 11:28:00 AM
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A first-hand report from a journalist patrolling in Baghdad with 1st Cavalry soldiers ran on the front page of today's Washington Post. A few Iraqi National Guard members were patrolling with them in a Nissan pickup truck,

Without warning, an orange fireball engulfed the area, followed by a deafening explosion and then gray smoke that blotted out the sun. When it cleared, the Nissan and the Iraqis inside it were riddled with marble-size ball bearings that had sprayed from a roadside bomb.

"They're dead! All of them are dead!" shouted an American soldier who had rushed to the vehicle.

The article details the gruesome attack - this month 100 such attacks have happened in Sadr City alone. An account of what the corpses of guardsmen looked like struck me differently than pictures from the invasion and war do - the narrative made me think about what it may have been like to have been there. I've been seeing pictures from the war long enough to be desensitized to most of the immediacy a photo brings. I wonder if I'd be more or less numb if I had a TV.

Stateside, since 9/11, we've accumulated a backlog of "hundreds of thousands of hours of wiretap recordings" from counterterrosism investigations, the aim of which in part is to prevent orange fireballs from engulfing areas, followed by deafening explosions, then gray smoke blotting out the sun. We still don't have enough translators. They're all in Iraq, trying to prevent orange fireballs from an insurgency George Bush's invasion and handling of the occupation made possible.

Also stateside, Rep. Diana DeGette is calling for an investigation into allegations that soldiers have been given a choice to re-enlist for service until 2007 or finish out their current enlistment in units in Iraq or Korea. There is no question that the invasion of Iraq has made us less safe on count of an insufficient number of soldiers and translators.

Another study is out showing employees' costs for health insurance are becoming dangerously expensive. The study by Families USA found that health insurance costs have risen 36 percent since 2000, three times the rate earnings have increased. I did a study of my own a month or two ago - I looked up how much my premium for my individual plan was in 1999 and compared it to what I pay now for the same plan - which now covers less. The result: an 80% increase. My study was prompted by shock to find that my copay for prescriptions increased 100% in a single month.

Oil prices continue to skyrocket as well, having increased 75% in the past year. Some have noted sharp increases in the price of oil have preceded the defeat of incumbent presidents: Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980, Bush in 1992.

An article in Salon describes a recent study of the stock market and incumbent presidents. The study found that since 1950, if stock markets are down in the April of an election year, the chances of the incumbent president being defeated are 5 out of six.

The study by Jeffrey A. Hirsch of the Stock Trader's Almanac written of in Salon did find something unquestionably significant. Since 1833, the stock market,

• averages a 7 percent return in election years
• averages a 10 percent return in the year before election years
• averages a 1.6 percent return in the first year of presidents' terms
• averages a 4 percent return in the second year of presidents' terms

I take little stock in applying these types of predictions and observations to an election where people are basing their vote on the idea that either George W. Bush is the Antichrist or John Kerry likes the wrong kind of cheese. Bush likes the wrong kind of cheeses too, but he also lies about it, so on balance, Kerry has the clear advantage on the Antichrist and right kind of cheese fronts.

Undaunted by reality, the Iowa GOP mailed out a brochure touting their candidate for a state Senate seat, Ron Longmuir. The brochure boasts of his voting record in the Iowa Senate on educational issues. Problem is that Longmuir has never served in the legislature.

To his credit, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell accepted his panel's recommendation that Ralph Nader not appear on the November 2 ballot due to many of the signatures on the petition for inclusion being forged. He's being consistent: If someone doesn't want to vote for Bush, their signature deserves scrutiny.

I've been intending to put together a map/list of states where Nader is on/off the ballot and/or there are heterosexual superiority ballot initiatives - which could turn out the vote for anti-gay bigots who will vote for the presidential candidate who thinks heterosexuals deserve more rights due to their intrinsic superiority. There is also at least one state which has a ballot measure which may help turning out the vote for Kerry - the citizens of Alabama will on November 2 vote wether to repeal portions of their Constitution requiring school segregation and a poll tax.

No updates to the 10 polls I'm tracking today, but bucking the trend, a new Pew Poll shows a significant gain for Bush to leading Kerry 48 percent to 40 percent, while a new Investors Business Daily/Christian Science Monitor poll shows Kerry leading Bush by one point, 46 to 45.

// posted by Erik @ 9/28/2004 09:59:00 PM
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I hadn't seen what the "liberals will ban Bibles" flyer from the RNC looks like - a reader sends a link to a scan of the mailer. There you go - if you want to keep your Bible, vote Republican.

// posted by Erik @ 9/28/2004 04:46:00 PM
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The Akron Beakon ran in August a report on a Bryan Williams, the director of the Summit County Board of Elections,"Elections chief fears scheme." It described how he felt voter registrations turned in by the AFL-CIO were tricking him into allowing the same person to vote twice. Some people have signatures look the same to him. I would hope a Director of Elections would have more confidence in elections staff to make good use of Social Security Numbers. Ye of little faith.

The same article also tells the woe story of Norma Williams, running around with her hair on fire because of a registration turned in by the Soros-funded ACT. The registration used a fictional address, nonexistent SSN, and a forged signature. Which leaves me wondering if she figured out who it was intended to register. Norma is reported as explaining, "It makes a lot of work for us to have to watch them very, very closely." In other words, she might miss noticing an invalid SNN or that a voter card is returned to her address unknown.

Reader Beth points to a Plain Dealer article from Saturday pointing out more voter registration difficulties in Ohio, involving "suspicious" registrations (See today's previous post "Ohio Secretary of state doesn't want too many people voting"). A issue looks frighteningly similar to part of the FL 2000 mess - it seems several registrations spell the same street name wrong - and use the same incorrect spelling.

The article doesn't mention if OH, like FL, requires that the voter themselves fill out the form - rather it makes an insidious implication that the registrations are bogus. But also in this article, Bryan Williams seems a little more humble, saying, "We are not certified handwriting experts, but we believe that these were common looking signatures," and that it's difficult for him to tell if the forms had been turned in by a group or individual.

It's impossible to tell if these articles sensationalize conversations with election officials, if they really are freaking out, or a combination. But we know a few people have suspicions that some forms have been turned in my people dull enough to think it didn't matter if they put an incorrect address or Social Security number, and/or immeticulous enough to catch the errors or fraud in the registrations they were voucing for.

Great, make sure everyone is registered once. Congratulations to the elections staff for being on the ball and catching numbskulls acting stupidly if that's the case. Congratulations for being more diligent than the Florida elections staff who drooled that they had let 46,000 nitwits register to vote in both FL and NY.

Another claim staked out in the Plain Dealer article comes from Republican Lake County Prosecutor, Charles Coulson (seriously - that is his name), "We've seen voter fraud before, but never on this level." Coulson eagerly hopes that Lake County Republican Sheriff Daniel Dunlop's investigation into whether a someone who registered is now alive or dead is, in fact, dead.

Both Sheriff Dunlop and Prosecutor Coulson are up for reelection November 2 - running unopposed.

And it damn well better stay that way. (Kidding).

But lets be serious - these days, every purchase we make is analyzed compared and scrutinized, and our junk mail is tailored to someone exactly like our spending habits reveal. If someone is behind on a few bills in in Maine, they might be turned down for a department store charge card in New Mexico. Computers can instantly catch duplications or inconsistencies in voter registrations. These types of shenanigans are if anything, fun to watch.

// posted by Erik @ 9/28/2004 12:08:00 AM
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The New York Times writes of pre-war intelligence estimates saying much the same thing as the July estimate warning of the possibility of civil war - for which Bush has been recently criticized for not taking seriously enough. The Times claims, "The contents of the two assessments had not been previously disclosed." - does nobody at the Times remember James Fallow's essay in the Atlantic, "Blind Into Baghdad"? (A must-read article from the Jan/Feb 2004 Atlantic).

The NY Times article presents the warnings as risks that were known instead of what they were: anticipation of situations that may have been prevented if taken seriously. Nonetheless, the content bears a read and a but of repeating here - from the Times,

One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or American-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein's government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare, the officials said. The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said.

I don't think this will impact the debate significantly unless the actual documents are leaked, as encouraged by Daniel Ellsberg, the source of the "Pentagon Papers". Hearing and seeing are different things. These documents allegedly predicted many preventable things - among them, the widespread looting and formation of the insurgency if the Iraqi army was disbanded and left with idle hands.

Jordan's King Abdullah has voiced skepticism that elections can be carried out in Iraq as scheduled. Being that Abdullah is one if the US's best allies in Bush's "war on terror" comes as a blow. Abdullah's general support is put in perspective by realizing that about three quarters of Jordanians oppose the US war on terrorism and significantly more opposed the US led invasion of Iraq.

Operating on a $100K budget, another new 527, Scientists and Engineers for Change will be giving lectures in swing states in an attempt to raise awareness of the Bush administration's hostility towards science. The group included 10 Nobel Prize winners and "The Father of the Internet", Vincent Cerf.

The 527's efforts may resonate more with the audience of Comedy Central's John Stewart than those who tune in to FOX comedian Bill O'Reilly - the network refuted O'Reiley's recent taunt that Stewart's audience consists of "stoned slackers" by pointing to a survey that found the Daily Show's audience to be better informed, more educated, and more sucessful wage earners than those who watched cable news alone.

Writing in the Washington Post, Dana Milibank offers us erie similarities between Allawi and Bush's recent fantasies about what it's like in Iraq. "Emerging finally from dark ages of violence/Iraq will never return to the dark ages of tyranny", "I have seen some of the images that are being shown here on television. They are disturbing./The American people have seen horrible scenes on our TV screens - " etc.

Others have drawn parallels between Bush's fanciful pronouncements about Iraq and Iraq's former Minister of Information, "Baghdad Bob". Following are a few of Baghdad Bob's statements, boxed in red in honor of our Minister of Misinformation,

"The American press is all about lies! All they tell is lies, lies and more lies!"

"They are becoming hysterical. This is the result of frustration."

"They think that by killing civilians and trying to distort the feelings of the people they will win."

"Our estimates are that none of them will come out alive unless they surrender to us quickly."

From the It Depends on How You Look at It Department, The Washington Post reports on their new poll showing a 3 point Kerry gain to within 6 points of Bush under the headline "Poll Shows Bush With Solid Lead", while USA Today presents their new results - showing Bush 8 points ahead - as "Bush's lead gets smaller in poll

Both new plot points have been added to my graph of trends in 10 polls, always accessible through the polls link on this page's side bar.

If the trend of the last three weeks continues at the same rate, most polls will be back in Kerry territory in two weeks. That's not a prediction, but an observation - events and perceptions obviously may reverse or accelerate the trend. The significant things are, a) the wild fluctuation between and disparity among pollsters' numbers is abating and the polls are beginning to agree with each other within the margins of error - as they did before the DNC convention, and b) the trend is clearly towards Kerry.

// posted by Erik @ 9/27/2004 09:59:00 PM
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Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has decided to start enforcing an old law requiring voter registration forms to be printed on 80-pound paper. 80-pound paper is postcard stock. The law dates from a time where the cards were physically kept on file for decades, but it is still on the books (today, the registration is entered into a computer).

The Cleveland Plain Dealer printed a voter registration form (on newsprint) - and Blackwell has given the Cuyahoga board special permission to accept those, but other counties are apparently - get this - mailing the person who tried to register on too light paper. Yes, instead of entering the information into a computer, they're using the information to mail the the attempted register, informing them their registration was unacceptable.

Federal law requires all states accept the National Mail Voter Registration form which is to be downloaded and printed out on a computer printer. Nasty feds messin' with Blackwell's low voter turnout project.

Voters in Ohio have been registering like crazy, most of them in heavily Democratic precincts. Those that "got it wrong" the first time have until October 4 to get it right.

Oh yeah. Blackwell is a Republican.

(Via Thistime's diary at Daily Kos.)

// posted by Erik @ 9/27/2004 11:09:00 AM
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For about a week, I've been intending to make a post on environmental issues in relation to our nation's upcoming presidential choice. Environmental issues have taken a back seat to terrorism, wars, tax cuts, torture and murder at the hands of US troops, service medals, missing service records, Laci Peterson, Kobi Bryant, and how to eat a philly cheese steak. Even though the threat of global warming is far more dangerous than the threat of terrorism.

This administration entered into office with an admittedly genius strategy: say they thought it was important to exploit the miniscule amount of oil under the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - a controversial topic that even in the minds of some environmentalists could be done responsibly. The media only devotes a certain amount of time and space to environmental issues, so this White House's uncontroversial anti-environmental policies went mostly unnoticed until America became more worried about anthrax rain than acid rain. At that point, the coast was clear for polluting.

I had thought that is would have a complaining tone - but in this past week, more and more environmental issues have started to get the spotlight in places more visible than activist's websites and personal blogs.

From the lead editorial in today's Washington Post,

Certainly there is no doubt about President Bush's belief in the need to reduce environmental regulation in order to ease the constraints on industries most affected by it. Although the administration has made few dramatic changes, it has rewritten an extraordinary number of rules, for example, to allow older utilities to upgrade their facilities without adding pollution control equipment; to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide emissions, the most important source of "greenhouse gases"; to loosen the regulation of mercury emissions; to limit the amount of land that can be formally declared "wilderness"; to make logging easier in old-growth forests. The president himself has flip-flopped, as his campaign would put it, on the question of the urgency of climate change, first expressing interest in the issue, then walking away from it, then delaying discussion by proposing "further studies."

The official line of the Bush administration has been that environmental regulation of the past has been extreme and we need to be more moderate. Their environmental regulatory philosophy was encapsulated by their Director of Regulatory Affairs, John D. Graham,

There are two major perils associated with an extreme approach to precaution. One is that technological innovation will be stifled, and we all recognize that innovation has played a major role in economic progress throughout the world. A second peril, more subtle, is that public health and the environment would be harmed as the energies of regulators and the regulated community would be diverted from known or plausible hazards to speculative and ill-founded ones. For these reasons, please do not be surprised if the US government continues to take a precautionary approach to calls for adoption of a universal precautionary principle in regulatory policy.

That is, pollution brings about economic progress and regulating polluters is sometimes detrimental to health. If that seems an unfair synopsis, check this:

• Before Graham was appointed to serve in the Bush White House, he testified to Congress that smog can be good because it protects people from ultraviolet radiation, "EPA did not perforce a risk-benefit analysis of the proposal - computing the health benefits of smog reduction to the health risks of greater ultraviolet radiation exposure that would result from diminished smog concentrations in the atmosphere."
• He also testified to a subcommittee of the EPA's Science Advisory Board that reducing dioxin pollution too much could be harmful, "... it's possible that measures to reduce current average body [dioxin] burdens further, could actually do more harm for public health than good."

Graham is the guy who says how and what environmental laws are enforced by the Bush administration. That's really all you need to know about Bush and the environment. (I imagine pro-lifers are overjoyed that the Bush doen't just protect unborn babies, but goes the extra mile by ensuring they are protected after birth by sufficient amounts of smog and dioxin.)

Of all the candidates in the Democratic primary, John Kerry had the highest lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters. That might be all you need to know about Kerry and the environment. If not, the Sierra Club has a few things to say about Kerry and environmental issues. The League of Conservation Voters' Environmental Victory Project has already knocked on half a million doors in five swing states and offers a comparision of Bush and Kerry on the environment.

It seems to me that if swing voters are unsure of their vote - wondering if they're being impatient for the tax cuts to work, confused about Iraq, befuddled about national security, perplexed about healthcare, not too concerned about the abortion issue either way - it may come down to latching on to an issue on which they see a clear distinction. The natural environment is quite rightly and easily linked to other issues: healthcare, national security and the long-term economy.

The Bush campaign knows they're vulnerable on this issue and has used the only weapon available to them: toxic sludge.

// posted by Erik @ 9/27/2004 12:01:00 AM
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Election officials in Denver are working Saturdays and hiring temporary workers to keep up with the deluge of new voter registrations.

A week ago, we appointed a Gen. Talib al-Lahibi to a senior position in the Iraqi National Guard. Thursday, we arrested him for alleged links to insurgents. Interesting how we are making appointments in the military of a "sovereign" nation.

Paul Beat, a former counter-terrorist specialist in the British army, says Iraq is the world's "most hostile environment,"

"Terrorists are operating in larger and larger groups and becoming more and more daring ... They're launching bigger, multiple attacks. Now they use one vehicle at the entrance (to compounds) to knock out guards and then drive a second bomb through to get inside ... The Sunni extremists have moved out of their traditional strongholds of Falluja and Ramadi and are operating all over west and central Iraq with increasing boldness ... The Mehdi militia are operating all over south Iraq and there's increasing evidence of them operating in the center and north of Iraq ... There are large areas of Baghdad which are no-go for the coalition, and a lot of parts of Basra which are now no-go too."

Colin Powell diverges from the administration's message by recognizing the situation in Iraq is deteriorating, "We have seen an increase in anti-Americanism in the Muslim world. We'll not deny this." I wonder if he can get his boss to acknowledge it. Powell voiced optimism about the Afghani election, but voiced a tempered optimism about Iraq by adding, "if we can defeat the insurgency."

Bush says he has no regrets over declaring victory 16 months ago, and Kerry responds with bravado, "I will never be a president who just says, 'Mission Accomplished.'"

// posted by Erik @ 9/26/2004 09:59:00 PM
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President Bush and Prime Minister Allawi's claims that Iraq is doing great is further debunked in a front page article in the Washington Post:

Reports covering seven days in a recent 10-day period depict a nation racked by all manner of insurgent violence, from complex ambushes involving 30 guerrillas north of Baghdad on Monday to children tossing molotov cocktails at a U.S. Army patrol in the capital's Sadr City slum on Wednesday. On maps included in the reports, red circles denoting attacks surround nearly every major city in central, western and northern Iraq, except for Kurdish-controlled areas in the far north. Cities in the Shiite Muslim-dominated south, including several that had undergone a period of relative calm in recent months, also have been hit with near-daily attacks.

In number and scope, the attacks compiled in the Kroll reports suggest a broad and intensifying campaign of insurgent violence that contrasts sharply with assessments by Bush administration officials and Iraq's interim prime minister that the instability is contained to small pockets of the country.

I admit I don't understand Bush's strategy going into the first debate with Kerry on Thursday, the puzzle pieces I'm trying to fit together in my mind are,

• Bush is claiming Iraq is making great progress towards peace
• Amid daily suicide car bombings, the insurgency in Iraq is increasing
• Bush says it's good for "terrorists" to create violence and havoc in Iraq, as it means they're not attacking us here
• Bush says a peaceful and democratic Iraq is the centerpiece of his strategy in his war on terror

If the object is to confuse everyone by promoting mutually contradicting thoughts, it might be succeeding.

An essay in the Washington Post on the upcoming debates is fertile soil for speculation on what we might see, although reading it unskeptically leaves the impression whoever "wins" the debates has the election wrapped up.

From the Department of Ironic Irony, US Vietnam vets are appealing to our Vietnam draft dodging President to discourage a monument to Vietnam draft dodgers from being built in Canada.

60 Minutes cancelled an "inappropriate" story on Iraq - "Inappropriate" because it would have been so close to the presidential election. Strange rational for not airing it being that it was slated for the same show they ran the original story on Bush's Guard service. It must have been really bad!

Something I found interesting in the internals of a CBS poll (PDF) is that despite the "Swift Boat Vets" efforts, more people considered Bush to be untruthful about his military service than Kerry,

TELLING TRUTH ABOUT THEIR MILITARY SERVICE? (Registered Voters)

Telling the entire truth
Kerry 29%
Bush 20%

Hiding something
Kerry 49%
Bush 51%

Lying
Kerry 13%
Bush 20%

Refering to Dick Cheney's incendiary comments that America is welcoming a terror attack by voting for Kerry, a new Kerry/Edwards campaign ad points out that the Republicans are"using the appalling and divisive strategy of playing politics with the war on terror, a strategy that undermines the efforts to combat terrorists in America and puts George Bush's own ambition ahead of the national good."

Tom Brokaw conducted a short but interesting interview with Pakistan's Perves Musharaf. He cites the problem of the Iraq invasion not being good for the "Muslim sentiment" about the US, that the US is fighting terror is too centered on "the immediate", and he doesn't know where bin Laden is. The most interesting part,

Brokaw: Do you think the American war against Iraq was a mistake?

Musharraf: Well, I wouldn't comment on that. But I will certainly say that it has complicated the issue.

Brokaw: In your part of the world.

Musharraf: In the Islamic world. In the Iraqi region. In the Middle East.

Brokaw: Made it worse for America?

Musharraf: Yes.

Iraq's "Vice President" Barham Saleh mused that wether all of Iraq should vote is "a bridge that we will have to cross when we come to it."

Editorials

Jessica Mathews, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace offers some sound ideas for facing the political realities in Iraq.

George Will writes a rather good essay about Iran, although he either is not aware or doesn't care that 13 year olds can get married in in NH, 14 year olds in New York, and with the consent of parents and a judge at any age in a number of states. Will writes,"Since 2002 - this is Iranian moderation - a court's permission has been required to marry younger than 13. Maybe he just holds Iran to a higher standard than the US. I find Will to write occasional brilliant commentary - he's able to sometimes hone down complex topics into the sense or nonsense of their cores, but at other times he's just a wack job. Both sides of him are reflected in this piece.

// posted by Erik @ 9/25/2004 09:59:00 PM
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The NY Times reports on new voter registration efforts in FL and OH,

Voters do not give a party affiliation when they register in Ohio, but The Times looked at the voting history of ZIP codes to gauge the political inclinations of the new voters.

In rock-ribbed Republican areas - 103 ZIP codes, many of them rural and suburban areas, that voted by two to one or better for George W. Bush in 2000 - 35,000 new voters have registered, a substantial increase over the 28,000 that registered in those areas in the first seven months of 2000. The Ohio Republican party said it was pleased with the results.

But in heavily Democratic areas - 60 ZIP codes mostly in the core of big cities like Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus and Youngstown that voted two to one or better against Mr. Bush - new registrations have more than tripled over 2000, to 63,000 from 17,000.

In Florida, where The Times was able to analyze data from 60 of the state's 67 counties, new registrations this year also are running far ahead of the 2000 pace, with Republican areas trailing Democratic ones. In the 150 ZIP codes that voted most heavily for Mr. Bush, 96,000 new voters have registered this year, up from 86,000 in 2000, an increase of about 12 percent.

But in the heaviest of Democratic areas, 110 ZIP codes that gave two-thirds or more of their votes to Al Gore, new registrations have increased to 125,000 from 77,000, a jump of more than 60 percent.

Condensed, that is:

• In Ohio, since 2000,
  • Voter registration has increased 25% in the heaviest Republican zip codes
  • Voter registration has increased 270% in the heaviest Democratic zip codes
• In 60 of 67 of Florida's counties, since 2000,
  • Voter registration has increased 12% in the heaviest Republican zip codes
  • Voter registration has increased 60% in the heaviest Democratic zip codes

Although the article is mainly about voter registration efforts, I was disappointed a numbers for new voter registration by party affiliation was not given for Florida - a state that does register voters as members of a party. But the news from Ohio was really good. At the Democratic Convention, Ohio's nomination was called first, which was taken to mean by many that Kerry intends to win Ohio.

The NY Times has a nifty interactive graphic showing information about all national races as well as campaign money.

// posted by Erik @ 9/25/2004 05:59:00 PM
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Being a Flash developer myself, I decided to try my hand at a synopsis of W's term in a little over 2 two minutes. Click to watch the movie:

// posted by Erik @ 9/25/2004 05:31:00 AM
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New charges in the prisoner torture and murder scandal continue to pile up. Yesterday, three more Navy Seals were charged. The Army will soon court-martial poster girl Lynndie England. In my opinion, that most American media refer to torture and murder as "abuse" when done at the hands of Americans is almost as shameful as the events they refer to. I've been meaning to compare the events of the last few years to bin Laden's famous 1998 fatwa for a while ... it's creepy - in a way it seems like OBL and the Pentagon Hawks are on the same side.

That Kerry and Bush are trying to be different sides of the same coin is overt. The advantage is a reversal from the period of the Bushite's claims that Kerry shot himself - but not while in Cambodia: charges that Bush has his "eye off the ball" make it into the news earlier in the day and closer to the front page than Bush's responses that Kerry is not able to "lead this country".

As I like to note in every other post these days, events seem to be confirming my confidence that Kerry has been intentionally tiring the Swashbushler by constantly staying just outside his misura larga, waiting for the opportune moment to advance his contratempo. He turned the melee of the primaries to his advantage and ... OK, OK, I'll stop and just note that despite the candidates' Skull and Bones brotherhood, Kerry seems much more the type to have an interest in Rapier and Cloak than Bush. Bush could probably smear Kerry at Wack-a-Mole though.

Not surprisingly, House Republicans likely derailed implementing the 9/11 Commission's recommendations this session by bludgeoning the bill with secret spending and beefcake border control measures. Not that that's all bad - I don't think having a Director of Intelligence (read: bloating government more) is our rosetta stone.

The first two paragraphs of of an article outlining errors made which account for the miniscule participation of Iraqis in policing themselves are worth reproducing here:

The police outpost here is supposed to house 90 armed members of Iraq's National Guard. Their job is to keep watch over a stretch of six-lane highway, deterring insurgents from laying roadside bombs and trying to blow up a bridge over the nearby Tharthar Canal.

But when the U.S. Marine commander responsible for the area visited the outpost this month, he found six bedraggled guardsmen on duty. None of them was patrolling. The Iraqi officer in charge was missing. And their weapons had been locked up by the Marines after a guardsman detonated a grenade inside the compound.

I see the root of the problem as more fundamental, however. A handful of neoconservative dispensationationalists figured at least a few pages in God's book described how after they extricated themselves from the smother of flowers tossed by children, they could let out a long fruit basket flavored burp and figure out how to provide sufficient laundering services for Iraqi Guard and police uniforms. The Iraqis would want to look distinguished while serving up the dead-enders who would be humming that Emerson, Lake and Palmer song about Jerusalem after a few meals eaten out of the toilet and a couple naked pyramid drills.

Speaking of Jerusalem, the photos accompanying this post are illustrative of the progress of the construction of the so-called Israeli security fence being built in Palestine. I believe it's long past time to abandon that euphemism for something more descriptive. I might have a post on the wall soon, but it might not be longer than, Duh, Israel can do whatever the see necessary to protect themselves, but there's a sharp distinction between Israel's right to build whatever they see fit in Israel and building a wall in Palestine.

A new Time poll is out, showing Kerry halving to 6 Bush's lead in the last two weeks. It's added to my chart of the 10 polls I'm tracking.

Other News

• David Kay and Hans Blix are wondering with what the heck we're planning on charging the Iraqi scientists still being held. After all, we've concluded Iraq had and was producing no proscribed chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

• Playing follow the leader instead of calling foul, the Kerry/Edwards campaign and DNC will run joint ads as the Bush/Cheney and RNC are.

• A wing-nut couple in Missouri prays for the miracle of Bush finding WMD in Iraq. ("Lynn is convinced there are weapons of mass destruction. He is sure they will be found and the decision to go after Saddam will be vindicated. 'I have to trust that George Bush is doing the right thing. He is a godly man,' said Wanda Lynn, Jeremy's mother, sitting in a rocker with an American flag comforter. 'We're all praying, and it's real hard.'") (comment: Maybe they had revisited Bush's gaffe in which he said we'd "bring the WMD" to Iraq so everybody could know the truth, and believe Bush is the Second Coming of the Christ. If Bush can make trickle-down economics work, simply by not mentioning it's name, he can walk over water and create huge uranium refineries in the wilderness.)

// posted by Erik @ 9/24/2004 09:59:00 PM
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This year, the Muslim holiday month of Ramadan begins October 16th. We recall the drastic increase in attacks during the Muslim holiday months of Ramadan, nicknamed "Bombadon" last year by troops in Iraq. The holiday is one in which Muslims are to lay down arms, but radical Islamists see it as the best time to blow themselves up and attack "infidels". It's not surprising that the Bush campaign and their supporters are trying to frame an increase in attacks in the future as signs of desperation to derail all the wonderful things going on in Iraq.

Yesterday, Bush clarified what he meant (transcript) when he claimed only "a handful of people" are willing to kill to disrupt US lead efforts in Iraq,

Look, what we're seeing on our TV screens are the acts of suicide bombers. They're the people who - that are affecting the daily - the nightly news. And they know its effect. I said that the enemy cannot defeat us militarily. What they can do is take acts of violence that try to discourage us, and try to discourage the Prime Minister and the people of Iraq. Look, I'm fully aware we're fighting former Baathists and Zarqawi network people. But, by far, the vast majority of people, John, and of 25 million people, want to live in freedom. My point is, is that a few people, relative to the whole, are trying to stop the march of freedom.

Is he saying he is only taking note of the people who make the nightly news after they attack or kill people? A Gallup poll of 3,500 Iraqis in April found that 39% could not at all justify the US led invasion of Iraq and 52% could at least sometimes justify insurgent attacks against US troops. Even if those findings are significantly off or have significantly changed since April, Bush is not facing the reality that many many Iraqis support the actions that "a handful" of people are taking.

Allawi followed up Bush's answer by claiming most of Iraq was safe,

Let me explain something, which is very important. I have noticed - and the media have been neglected and omitted several times - in the Western media - Iraq is made out of 18 provinces, 18, 1-8. Out of these 18 provinces, 14 to 15 are completely safe, there are no problems. And I can count them for you, starting from Basra moving into Iraq Kurdistan. There are three areas, three provinces where there are pockets of insurgents, pockets of terrorists who are acting there and are moving from there to inflict damage elsewhere in the country. So, really, if you care to look at Iraq properly, and go from Basra to Nasiriyah to Kut to Diyala to Najaf to Karbala to Diwaniya to Samaraa to Kirkuk to Sulaymaniyah to Dahuk to Arbil, there are no problems.

The LA Times writes that few agree with Allawi's assessment as anxiety grips the nation amid a surge in attacks, concentrating on Allawi's comments to congress. You can go to news.google.com and read about any number of bombings and attacks in the provinces he calls "completely safe". One of the new hotspots, Baquba is the capitol of the Diyala provence. Is Basra safe? British troops clash with al-Sadr miltia in Basra, September 18, 2004. Blast Near U.S. Office in Basra Kills 1, September 12, 2004 (most reports say 2 were killed), Oil pipeline near Basra attacked. Samara? Fighting errupts in Samarra, September 22, 2004. Kirkuk? Suicide Car Bomb Kills 10 Near Kirkuk, September 18, 2004. Divorced from reality or lying his ass off? Dunno.

Bush also said the insurgency in Iraq could spread to the US if we stop attacking them in Iraq,

The path to our safety and to Iraq's future as a democratic nation lies in the resolute defense of freedom. If we stop fighting the terrorists in Iraq, they would be free to plot and plan attacks elsewhere, in America and other free nations.

It would be great if we could quell the violence in Iraq. But that's not what he's saying. Rather, Bush claims that if we stop attacking the people he says are trying to derail elections in Iraq, they'll get pissed and take the fight to America.

He needs to make up his mind - does he want the violence to continue in Iraq so it doesn't happen here, as he claims it would - or does he want to stop the violence in advanced of the Iraqi election slated for January?

// posted by Erik @ 9/24/2004 11:09:00 AM
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Hepatitis E is most often transmitted through water tainted by sewage - a common occurrence during war. Hepatitis is an ongoing problem in refugee camps in Chad, cases recently tripled in a month in Darur, Sudan, and now a recent outbreak in Mahmoudiyah and Baghdad, Iraq.

// posted by Erik @ 9/24/2004 08:04:00 AM
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From a wingnut's preliminary party platform, taken from a letter apparently sent to President Bush,

$10.00 a bbl. oil world wide

I would like to suggest that our country which has paid the highest cost along with the U.K. and the others who truly bore a cost in this liberation be compensated for it's expenses and losses by the free independent liberated country of Iraq. Not to their financial detriment but to our mutual benefit. This could be accomplished with the presentation of a bill of particulars and repayment in the form of an oil purchase discount.

To avoid any political charges of being in bed with big oil, I offer the services of my small business. We would serve as a bill through company purchasing from the Iraqi National Oil Company for the discounted price to be passed on entirely at the same price to all big oil company purchasers. They in turn must pass on the greatest part of those savings along to the American people.

The rest is only mildly amusing (THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIENCE HAS TO BEGIN WITH "IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER", use Indian tribes to patrol the borders, FULL tax deduction for religious education ...) , but if you want to load a couple MB of people jumping out of the WTC and bald eagles crying, here you go.

On a related note, Sinfonian transcribes a C-SPAN caller's reasons for voting for Bush (via atrios),

Good morning. I'm going to vote for President Bush because, after all, you know, God made us there, you know, in His image, free from any black color and all. The only church that Kerry can go to is where they say the Black Mass, and that is in the Merriam-Webster Pocket Book dictionary, where it says that that is the devil worshippers ... So, definitely, I would never vote for, you know, Senator Kerry.

And that isn't the only reason. Also, in the Bible, God said ... God ... that, uh, also, like (unintelligible) and faggots, that he says, anybody that lays down with another man and has sex with his own sex, and any woman that lays down with another woman and has sex should be put to death and their (unintelligible) upon them. It also says that about interracial marriages and everything. So that's the reason why I'm voting for my president, Bush.

There is more ...

// posted by Erik @ 9/23/2004 10:47:00 PM
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NATO says Iraq will get about 250 NATO instructors to train Iraqi security personnel. Meanwhile, New Zealand withdraws it's troops from Iraq. I have an idea. The US is a NATO member. Why don't we we offer about twenty-thousand troops for NATO to use in Iraq. Then Bush can point to a real increase in international involvement.

The GOP sent out campaign material to residents of Arkansas and West Virginia warning that liberals want to ban the Bible. I liked Josh Marshall's take on the mailing when the news first broke that the RNC may have been behind it,

I keep hearing from the direction of the Bush campaign that one of their big fears is that some Democratic 527 will put together an ad based on Kitty Kelley's Bush abortion claims and run it in West Virginia. Given the voters Bush-Cheney '04 is banking on in the state, they know that could be very damaging. When you see stuff like this, from the RNC no less, it's hard to see why they shouldn't.

No Bush abortion ad yet, but there is a new 527 ad pointing out the cozy relationship between Bush and the Saudi Royal Religious Dictatorship.

Bob Herbert writes a piercing essay in the NY Times asking how Bush could have opposed the war effort in Vietnam, as explained by Bush himself,

"My inclination was to support the government and the war until proven wrong, and that only came later, as I realized we could not explain the mission, had no exit strategy, and did not seem to be fighting to win."

... and still not see that his description of the Vietnam quagmire can describe his own war in Iraq.

The Washington Post presents a fascinating Flash movie of the connections between and among Bush's top fundraisers.

I added the results from new FOX and CBS polls to the graph of the electoral advantage in the presidential election. Neither poll shows a change, Bush remains 8 points ahead in CBS's poll of registered voters and 2 points ahead among FOX's registered voters.

Other News

• Despite Bush Flip-Flops, Kerry Gets Label

• Leading economic indicators fall for third straight month (Comment: Bush says we've turned the corner - in which direction are we driving?)

• America's largest and most profitable companies paid less in corporate income taxes in the last three years, even as they increased profits, according to a study released yesterday

• Bid to Save Tax Refunds for the Poor Is Blocked ("Congressional negotiators beat back efforts yesterday to expand and preserve tax refunds for poor families, even as they added $13 billion in corporate tax breaks to a package of middle-class tax cuts that could come to a vote in the Senate today.")

• Congressional Budget Office estimates Bush Budget Adds $1.3 Trillion to Deficits, Republicans say facing the reality presented by the non-partisan office is a blaatantly partisan attack.

• Iraqi scientist who kept nuclear secrets in garden cautions against proliferation ("In 'The Bomb in my Garden,' Obeidi details fallen Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's furious, and then abandoned, quest for a nuclear bomb.")

• Rumsfeld suggests having national elections in only part of Iraq may be good idea (comment: it will be hard enough to get an election to "stick" even if everybody is allowed to vote)

// posted by Erik @ 9/23/2004 09:59:00 PM
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Major media speaking plainly. From ABC News,

Peter Jennings: We were struck today by a very pointed attack by President Bush on John Kerry. First of all this is what Mr. Bush said,

Mr. Bush: We agree that the world is better off with Saddam Hussein sitting in a prison cell. And that stands in sharp contrast to the statement my opponent made yesterday when he said that, uh, "The world was better off with Saddam in power." I strongly disagree.

Peter Jennings: And this is what Mr. Kerry actually said,

Mr. Kerry: Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.

Watch the video for the full impact.

Here are 7 more lies Bush has told about what John Kerry said Monday.

// posted by Erik @ 9/23/2004 06:36:00 AM
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The American Research Group has published the results of a national poll which found Kerry leading Bush in electoral votes 270 (the minimum needed to win) to 253, with Wisconsin and West Virginia tied. The polls were taken at different times, but they include the first poll of Delaware, the only "bellwether" state other than Missouri with a popular vote coinciding with the national popular vote from 1960 onward (although it's agreement with Gore's winning of the popular vote in 2000 was just a curiosity as he lost the electoral vote). Kerry is up by 9 in Delaware according to the results of this poll.

The poll shows Bush up by 6 in the other long standing bellwether of Missouri, and up by 2 in Ohio, a bellwether since 1964.

As it's agreed that this election is extremely unusual, bellwether states are things that are just interesting to think about, and in my opinion all polls this election are mainly beneficial only to reveal trends and give an extremely wide estimation of what the actual vote will be. There's lots of states with heterosexual superiority ballot initiatives on them which may turn out more people that will check off Bush by default, lots of anger at Bush which will bring out "unlikely voters" to vote against Bush, and in the case of Alabama, there's a ballot initiative to remove the poll tax and repeal school segregation.

Besides, the polls have never been conclusively accurate within their margins of error. and things can shift rapidly, even up to Election day.

A few days ago started work on enumerating aspects of November 2 ballots which aren't taken into consideration in polls - senate and gubernatorial races, heterosexual superiority amendments - but got called away by Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll get that together soon.

In national poll news, the Bush and Kerry are approximately at the same place they were a month ago according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. I'm not keeping track of that poll on my chart, but have updated the chart of electoral advantage trend with the new data from the (partisan) Democracy Corps poll, which shows Bush and Kerry approximately where they were a week ago.

// posted by Erik @ 9/22/2004 11:55:00 PM
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The Washington Post reports on Bush and Kerry's preparations for the debates. Much more information is offered about Bush than Kerry. Kerry will prepare in Wisconsin - a swing state, Bush will prepare on his fake ranch in Crawford, TX. Bush has been preparing since July, concentrating on Kerry's website, record and past statements. More proof Bush doesn't know what the hell he's doing himself. Also interesting is the fact they're having NH Senator Judd Gregg play Kerry in the mock debates - same dude they had play Gore in 2000. Odd, as Kerry is an agile speaker; Gore is more targeted towards what he knows he wants to say, "stiff", some call it. Maybe the guy playing Kerry is an agile actor, which would beg the question, "Why are the Republicans running Bush instead of that guy?" After all Gregg is up for re-election this year, he might as well be running for President.

In a new ad, the Bush campaign continues to assert that Kerry frequently changes positions. A pen-pal who would vote for Stalin if he said he was pro-life mentioned to me that Kerry was a flip-flopper. It surprised me as I think she's quite bright, but when I pressed her for an example of something important that Kerry had actually changed positions on, the best she could come up with was that he owns an SUV despite pushing for higher CAFE standards. Which of course isn't a real issue because higher CAFE standards apply to SUVs as well as cars. The strategy of painting Kerry as a flip-flopper certainly makes people who would vote for Bush anyway like Kerry less, but it seems to me that Kerry should be able to turn the Bush campaign's mischaracterizations into a liability for Bush.

John McCain and Russ Feingold are busy trying to close the 527 loophole their campaign finance reform bill left open. Good for them. Bush is one step ahead of them by already claiming the existence of another loophole which they say is allowing them to spend GOP money on Bush election ads simply by inserting the words "our leaders in Congress". Strange how the same people who speak of flipping and flopping and black robed tyrants think of the law as a piece of clay available to mold to their liking.

The Senate confirmed Porter Goss as the new Director of the CIA. I haven't been following it closely, but it seems to me that they could have found someone more qualified than Goss, who has not been in the CIA since the Cold War. And has been a Republican in the House of Reps since. Kerry can fire him if he really isn't a good guy for the job, and if Bush wins in November, he's not going to care what the CIA say or wants to do anyway, so it's not overly concerning me.

I would like to thank my would-vote-for-Stalin pen pal Beth for pointing out that by posting links to news articles with little or no commentary is lazy. It is - I rather egotistically thought people would be overjoyed to see links to items I didn't have commentary on, rather than seeing nothing ... in other words, I opted for an easy post that's not worth a lot. I'll tack on those items at the end of the "news items "xx/xx/xxx" posts from now on.

Other news

• I ate at Rudolph's Bar-B-Que with my parents tonight. Our whole family loves baby back ribs. And bleu cheese dressing. Which rib place to go to is an infinitely more difficult decision than what to order when we get there. We do, however differ on choice of potato. My mom always goes for the baked potato with butter and sour cream, requested as if anything else is loony. My dad and I mix it up quite a bit - I'm not sure, but I seems to recall that before my dad started to have to pay extra attention to cholesterol, he was a baked-with-sour-cream-and-butter guy. My older brother who lives far away, when he's with us, tends to get baked or whatever the adventurous potato is. My nieces get fries. Haven't noticed what my sister-in-law gets, although I'm now keenly interested.

• (news from the overlooked Afghanistan insurgency) Frustrated US forces fail to win hearts and minds

• Dayton will boycott Iraqi premier's speech

  ("Dayton described the speech as 'a production' staged by the Bush administration and said that Allawi 'ought to be over there running his country.'") (comment: go, Mark! Please learn to speak to your constituents as if they're not distracting you and at least have some staff answer correspondence addressed to you. You'd totally rule, dude!)

• Cat Stevens deported due to alleged terrorist ties (comment: who derailed the Peace Train?)

• Iran Announces A New Round Of Nuclear Tests, Move Defies IAEA Call for Suspension

  

  I don't have a TV so may be somewhat visually ignorant, but the helmets in the article's photo of Gen. Nasser Mohammadifar and President Mohammad Khatami totally rule!

• Military moms speak out against Bush, war in Iraq

• Schwarzenegger's lawn for smoking tent led to office flooding (comment: I'm glad another state is learning a bit about what it felt like to have Jesse Ventura as a governor. PS: Although I disapproved of Ventura's showmanship, I applauded his libertarian sympathies. Similarly, I applaud The Terminator's social libertarianism, but the guy is a political wonk on the balance)

• Man riding mower on highway is accused of DUI, Man in wheelchair upset at measly $200 he lifted in bank robbery

// posted by Erik @ 9/22/2004 09:59:00 PM
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A Washington Post article describes how officials in the Iraqi interim government say they're mostly in control of what they and the occupation forces are doing in Iraq. It contains a lot of good information - especially if you keep in mind that claims that Iraq has a soverign government are a load of crap. The "Prime Minister" of Iraq, Dr. Iyad Allawi is a British neurologist appointed by the occupation forces.

Flashback: When asked what he meant by "soverign" when referring to soverign Native American lands, Bush explained (video),

Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. You're a - you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And, therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.

As I noted that Matt Yglasias noted, "but when he gets to speak mano a mano with average Americans, George W. Bush's rhetorical skills are unmatched. Like regular people he eschews details in favor of broad principles and compelling moral language."

// posted by Erik @ 9/22/2004 12:54:00 AM
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Reactions to Kerry's speech at NY University selected from a Washington Post article,

Mario Cuomo was glowing after John Kerry's Iraq speech Monday at New York University: "Great! Excellent! Masterful!" raved the former New York governor, who sat near the front. "He's never been clearer. He's turning this thing around."

And then, just as his handlers hustled him away, Cuomo turned to yell a few words of advice over his shoulder: "Now what he needs to do is be specific, hard, truthful, do more of the same."

Timothy Paulson, political director of the New Democratic Majority, rushed up to Kerry as he walked in to tape the Letterman show and gave him his hand. "You're on the right track now, man," he told Kerry. "And he gave me the eye, like 'Are you saying I wasn't before?'"
Afterward Prema Dordeodhar was "walking on air," she says, sounding as unambivalent as a Bush fan. "He was amazing, like a leader from the olden days. He projects such power, such strength.

"I feel like he could take over the whole world," she says. "Couldn't he?"

I mean, like, yeah. The greatest danger at this point seems to be coming from Kerry supporters who almost seem to be expressing that Kerry has in the past been something other than consistent and spot-on.

As many have said and I've said here, Kerry likely planned to save most of the fuel for towards the end. Maybe we're seeing the beginning of the full-throttle campaign. On Monday night's Letterman show, Kerry noted people say he's a strong finisher - as if he was surprised that that was the strategy people were seeing from him.

I had anticipated he wouldn't go full steam until during the debates. But after seeing it, it makes sense to go into the debates on the upswing: within 24 hours, Kerry hit The David Letterman Show and Live with Regis and Kelly; the campaign launched a new ad and Moms with a Mission; Kerry gave a major foreign policy speech at New York University and a press conference in Florida (the first in many weeks) and VP candidate Edwards made appearances on Lou Dobbs and in Ohio.

Kerry knows what he's doing. Five victorious campaigns in a row, not including primaries. Stuff like that.

// posted by Erik @ 9/22/2004 12:25:00 AM
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At least more like a broken record than someone who shifts his position as the GOP would like people to believe. If he's repetitive it's because Bush keeps doing the wrong things Kerry has warned him about.

The Republicans are trying to criticize Kerry for a speech in which he said we were safer for the capture of Hussein - a statement he's made many times and never wavered from. In that same speech, he also explained why this administration's actions in Iraq have made us less safe despite of Hussein's capture.

Moreover, Kerry also warned against some of the very missteps which on Monday he criticized Bush for making since. Namely,

• inadequately training Iraqi security forces,
• stretching our military thinner yet,
• failing to turn the capture of Hussein into an opportunity to forge a truly broad coalition, and
• failing to renounce unilateralism and ideologically preemptive war.

On top of all that, in his Monday speech he again adv