The Montana Republican Party, which has a more tenuous relationship with the truth than just about any organization on the planet, sent out a delicious little lie through their GOP E-Brief today:
Democrats Endorse Nelson for Supreme Court
The Montana Democrat Party has broken campaign conventions (and some would say state law) by endorsing activist judge Jim Nelson for the Supreme Court. In an unprecedented move Democrat candidate for Governor, Brian Schweitzer, endorsed Nelson in Hamilton yesterday and a group of Democrat legislators today issued a press release outlining their support. Never before have we seen such blatant partisan influence on a nonpartisan race. The Democrats must be especially worried about losing their liberal ally on the court, after Cindy Younkin defeated him by over 10,000 votes in the primary. This should shed some light on who conservatives should support in this important race.
Now, it should be clear that the Party itself hasn't broken convention or state law, because it was merely Democratic candidates and office holders who endorsed Nelson. The Party itself has stayed neutral. Meanwhile, the GOP is using its official mouthpiece here to advance Younkin. But even more specious is this argument given what happened in February of this year. No long online, but kept in my files, is a news story from the Great Falls Tribune with the headline "Justice Nelson blasts Younkin fundraiser" with the following paragraphs:
Supreme Court Justice James Nelson Wednesday criticized an upcoming fund-raiser for his opponent, Republican state Rep. Cindy Younkin, saying it shows she's making the nonpartisan race a partisan affair.
[...]
The invitation has no printed reference to Republicans, but advertises that several prominent Republicans who will be at the gathering, including Secretary of State Bob Brown, who's running for governor; Brown's running mate, state Rep. Dave Lewis of Helena; Todd O'Hair, a Republican candidate for secretary of state this year, and John Fuller, a Republican candidate for state superintendent of public instruction.
So only the Dems do things like this, huh?
Besides, it appears that before Schweitzer publicly announced his choice, another party's nominee for Lt. Gov. did the same.
[Republican Lt. Gov. Candidate Dave] Lewis sensibly points out that one way to help get a Taxpayer Bill of Rights approved by the Supreme Court is to elect better justices. He supports Cindy Younkin over incumbent Jim Nelson and Judge Ed McLean over State Solicitor Brian Morris).
Regardless, anyone who has been receiving the weekly statement of made-up ramblings from the Party of Pachyderms knows that two years ago they gave space in their E-Brief to Rob Natelson to hold court and explain why people should vote for Bob Eddleman over Bill Leaphart.
So if this is breaking convention, it's only in that Democrats have typically left the court alone while allowing Republicans to run roughshod over the rules of the game.
Update
Ooops, nearly missed one more: In a Gazette article that covers the Montana Republican Convention titled "Ohs contrasts candidates." Younkin addressed the crowd:
She said Nelson has a $50,000 lead in campaign funds and she would like to close the gap.
Younkin thanked the Republicans for all of their support.
Sam Rosenfeld in TAPPED highlights how David Brooks jumped onto the Bush Machine Bandwagon declaring that Kerry will "say or do anything to get elected."
That, of course, is a major distinction between Mr. Kerry and the President, who will say anything to get elected.
Back in early '01, before "everything changed"*, a friend of mine got kicked out of one of Bush's tax cut barnstorming speeches (you know, taxpayer financed) because he had the audacity to hold up a sign calling for clean water after Bush proposed his change to arsenic standards.
It just said "CLEAN H2O."
Doing it at campaign events is disappointing, but the man did it with taxpayer money.
I made it out of the office at 8:30 last night and went straight to bed. I woke up at 6:30, am now back at the office and already have 8 emails. Who knew so much happened between dusk and dawn?
Ah, well, we're there. We're basically at two weeks to go. Things will get interesting now and the work will ramp up. In Montana, campaign finance reports come out today, so expect some news from those filings.
Otherwise, if you're not plugged into volunteer, you should be. If you're in a swing state, go find ACT or LCV. If you're in Montana and want to know how you can help win the Governor's race, Jim Nelson's race, both chambers of the legislature, or the I-147 campaign, please drop me an email (it's just my name [matt] @ this domain [notgeniuses.com]). Many if not all of the activities we have only require a couple hours, are super easy, and result in free food.
Volunteering really is a piece of cake and I know people all over this state who need volunteers, so anywhere from the Flathead to Miles City, high-line to Dillon, please let me know.
Jim Moore and others have a new blog and project highlighting the genocide in Sudan. Jim made a point in comments here about how this really is an issue where the UN's lack of leadership speaks volumes about that organization.
Can the destruction of a whole people abroad unite our country?
Anyways, go read and support their work and the work of the organizations actually doing things in Darfur.
Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth
-Umberto Eco, The Name of The Rose
That's not the way the world works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
-A Senior Administration Official quoted by Ron Suskind
Mission Accomplished
-A banner that the Bush White House placed and denied credit for.
The Republican candidate knows how long the flier was in his opponent's office, yet the first time anyone could produce it was after it was pulled from an outside garbage can?
Now, I'll be the first to say that random supporters do a lot of random and occasionally funny and occasionally offensive stuff in the course of campaigns. Anyone who has worked an election has had at least a moment where they end up yelling, "They did what!?!?!?" and getting ready to laugh until tears start flowing or cry cause they can't believe someone would be so stupid.
But it seems like that really is the worst case scenario here for the Democrats - a random supporter dropped off a stack of fliers they found humorous, campaign found them and tossed them, Repub stooge tried to use it against them. Now the Republicans activated a noise machine and are demanding an apology. Hmmm.
But the reason this strikes me as unlikely is that while I don't think any campaign operatives would be above using the type of humor outlined in the ad in a private conversation, I can't imagine the typical left-wing supporter putting together something like this.
The Bush-Hitler comparisons seem to be their strong point when it comes to making arguents that leave rational people's mouths dropping.
Rather, this collage job smacks of Rove. The flier is used to undermine Dems' credibility on their desire to take care of the people who need it most in society. It was discovered in the campaigns' garbage by someone who came to the office specifically looking for a flier that the campaign had promptly placed in the garbage.
Now, none of this means that the Republican candidate owes the Democrat an apology, unless he should apologize for only listening to his own staff and supporters who apparently have concocted this lie for him so that he can "lie on the square."*
*Lying on the square is like kidding on the square. Rather than making a joke but being serious, lying on the square occurs when someone passes along a lie because they have been convinced that it is the truth.
Would small red states join effort to disband electoral college?
Posted by Matt Singer
Reading on a few sites about polling numbers indicating Bush winning the popular vote and Kerry winning the battleground states, I've been wondering about the impact that would have.
What happens if it's a clear electoral victory for one candidate and a clear popular vote victory for the other. We were sort of close to that in 2000, but basically what we had was a tie in each.
But if Bush loses, but wins his states by 30 point margins and loses a number of battleground states by 1 or 2 percentage points, we'd have an interesting situation.
Would small Republican states start offering up proposals to disband the electoral college?
Needless to say, I think the likelihood of such a scenario is slim, but according to the polls, it's what would happen today.
Ezra Klein notes an impressive Kristof piece on Darfur, Jon Stewart's utter butchering of Crossfire on their own show, and a Bill Schneider analysis on CNN as example of some media folks getting their acts together.
The only problem is the Schneider analysis fits exactly into Jon Stewart's critique. It's a pretty classic case of 'gotcha' journalism. It's spinning. And so while it highlights an important issue - flu shots - that could be used to highlight some real problems, no one walks away with a better understanding of what is actually happening with the flu shots and the comparisons to Bush's critique of Kerry's plan, while fair, fail to delve into any serious analysis of the plan.
It's the same old flip-flop, liberal, liar, gotcha journalism we have come to expect.
Kristof's piece, on the other hand, does an impressive job of basically pointing out that Bush's Darfur policy has saved lives and he has done more than really any other world leader on the issue, but that he still hasn't done enough. Wow, I walked away more informed, and not just in a superficial sense.
On Crossfire this afternoon -- the hair on the back of my neck is still standing up. Amazing. Reminded me of the campaign -- when some of the most satisfying moments were when we could challenge the disingenuousness of the mainstream political-media machine.
On my first trip to Iowa I heard people speak of a profound fear and distrust of multi-national corporations. From New Hampshire to Texas I met Americans doubting the words of our leaders and our government in Washington. Every where I go people are asking fundamental questions: Who can we trust? Is the media reporting the truth? What is happening to our country? [...]
And we in politics have not given our people a reason to vote or a reason to participate. We have slavishly spewed sound bites, copying each other while saying little. We raise millions of dollars and each year make lofty promises, while every year the struggles of ordinary Americans increase and fewer Americans vote.
Our politicians, many of them good people, have been paralyzed by their fear of losing office. Our leaders have developed a vocabulary which has become meaningless to the American people.
PAULA ZAHN: Final question for you, sir. Your candidate, governor dean, has made several references to -- about president bush having alleged advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks from the saudis. Should someone who wants to be president be trading on rumors?
JOE TRIPPI: That's not what the governor said at all. In fact, you're trading on rumors when you keep saying that.
PAULA ZAHN: I haven't said it yet. I'm just repeating --
JOE TRIPPI: Yeah, you're repeating the rumor. Yeah, what happened was the governor said that when the president and the administration mislead people and the war, the American people start asking questions, there's these rumors out there, and we need to talk about them to shut them down because he didn't believe it. And he said that on the air in the interview.
PAULA ZAHN: But there was another interview on npr that has gotten a lot of attention. He basically said, you know, whether this can be proven or not, he suggested that the president had had advance knowledge of what might have fallen on 9/11.
JOE TRIPPI: No. The governor said he didn't believe that, and it was part of the problem. We have this right now with black box voting. You'll find across the country that there are people all over this nation who believe these paperless computer voting machines are a way that the bush administration will steal the election. Okay, what's not important here is whether that's a rumor or not. What's important here is that we shut that down, that we prove to people that there's no way that anybody -- that these paperless machines are going to rob people of their vote. Repeating that is not repeating that you believe it. I don't necessarily believe that those machines do that or not. But if we're going to have a democracy, we have to say so and air it out.
PAULA ZAHN: Let me just repeat exactly what came off the transcript of the npr radio show, and this is governor dean's remark, "the most interesting theory that i have heard so far, he responded, "is that he was warned ahead of time by the saudis."
JOE TRIPPI: And then can you keep reading, please?
PAULA ZAHN: Well, could go on for the next five minutes from the interview. And you're saying he didn't say that, I got it right here.
JOE TRIPPI: No, no, no, I said if you keep reading, he'll say he didn't believe that.
PAULA ZAHN: There is a point at which, but you were denying what he suggested.
JOE TRIPPI: You're forgetting that part, paula.
PAULA ZAHN: I'm not forgetting it. I just wanted to clarify that he had, in fact, repeated something and he did say later on...
JOE TRIPPI: Keep reading the interview, and we'll get to the part where he says he did not believe it.
PAULA ZAHN: No, I am not denying that, but i wanted to challenge your point...
JOE TRIPPI: That's not how you started the interview.
PAULA ZAHN: I think our audience has a pretty good sense now of what was said and what wasn't said. Joe trippi, thank you for your time.
And the campaign's writers, who worked day and night under a blaring TV tuned to cable news, had the blog as an outlet for demanding accountability in media -- see these posts on Tim Russert and Dateline's Lisa Myers.
I think history will remember this election cycle is the one where whatever this movement is -- populism? just plain honesty? -- reached critical mass in our political process.
But at the same time, Jon Stewart's comments stand out because they are so rare. This movement to -- to what? the closest approximation might be Vaclav Havel's call to "live in truth" -- has by no means succeeded.
So maybe it's the other way around -- that the stale-yet-surreal, Soviet-style system of lies is collapsing in on itself.
The United States on Friday ordered a freeze on assets of the militant group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq.
Well, you know, they let him slip into Northern Iraq, which we controlled through our No Fly Zone. And they let him slip through our fingers a couple other times.
So, and I'm saying this to you, Orson Scott Card. This election is not a question of whether John Kerry understands the import of this war, because the fact of the matter is that George W. Bush has made it pretty clear that he does not understand this war.
This election is a question of basic competence. Dude can't even cut off the money to people chopping our heads off.
Is that so god damn difficult?
No, it's not, if you're anyone but the Bush Administration.
Kerry v. Bush - competence deserves a chance.
Update
Keep an eye peeled on this story's entry on Memeorandum to see what responses we'll find from the 101st Keyboarders Brigade.
I think there are a fair number of Montanans who read this, so I thought it'd be good to give y'all a heads up that you can vote today or Monday or any day between now and the day before Election Day.
I'm not talking about voting absentee either. You can just go into your County Courthouse and vote. It's pretty simple.
The advantage of voting this way in a year like this is that it frees you up to volunteer on Election Day (or work as an election judge). And, in a high turnout year like this, every voter who votes before Nov. 2nd is one fewer voter who has to vote on Election Day - think shorter line and smaller hassles for everyone else.
Oh, and with dozens of campaigns tracking absentee ballots, you'll get some interesting mail and you just might get pulled from GOTV lists.
In a head to head matchup, Schweitzer leads Brown 43-28, with 27% undecided.
Now, in the article reporting this, Jason Thielman, Bob Brown's campaign manager, sounds pretty incredulous.
But looking at the results from the national issue portion of the poll, it seems that the real problem here may be that Brown does not have very high name recognition. It appears that voters surveyed were given only a last name, no first name or party affiliation.
That puts the survey in doubt, but given that the national numbers for Bush/Kerry and Rehberg/Velasquez (our at large house race) match up with other numbers (or in the case of Rehberg/Velazquez actually break more Republican than typical), this doesn't look like a lean-Dem poll.
Of course, other doubts remain about methodology, since cell phones were not called, and only registered voters who said they were likely to vote were included in the results.
Apparently, we (by we I mean the entire left-wing conspiracy) have been working in collusion with the "MSM" to guarantee that not only will we win the election, but we will do it in a way that produces massive pain to our conservative enemies.
Then, I realized, mainstream media. Right, that institution we have proudly taken over.
How silly of me.
And then I realized I missed the other memo. Jesse let me in on it - you know the one where all of us Kerry supporters pretendto beundecided so that polls get all wacky and we drive our coworkers insane.
I mean, I guess I probably got excluded since I can't be polled on my cellphone and my two coworkers are both firmly in Camp Kerry, but still, guys, it hurts.
The party ID breakdown here is telling. ABC polled 8% more Republicans than Democrats. Meaning, Kerry won this by over a five point margin – weighing the party ID correctly.
The survey also credits Kerry with a 2-point bounce in his overall poll numbers (47% to 49%). Bush stayed unchanged at 46%. The survey was of 1,030 likely voters given both before and after tonight's debate.
Anyone else offended by Bob Schieffer citing Alan Greenspan's opinions on how to make social security solvent.
Unfortunately, the article I linked to is no longer available, but I still think the summary in this post offers most of what you need to know on the issue of how Greenspan is not to be trusted on this issue.
For anyone who wants a more thorough explanation, check out Paul Krugman's "Maestro of Chutzpah."
Tonight, John Kerry spoke truthfully to the American people. George W. Bush continued to imagine a different world.
Bush says he never took his eye off bin Laden. Simply not true, in 2002, he said he wasn't that concerned. Kerry wasn't speculating or exaggerating. He was quoting.
Bush says education will solve all of our economic problems. Even if NCLB worked, education won't free up capital by paying down the debt. It won't open new businesses. It won't make jobs appear in the United States. Bush realized that the American people no longer buy his claims that his tax cuts are helping the economy. He found a new line and, by God, he stuck to it. But in the war of the President's Words v. Reality, reality is still winning outside of W's Head.
Finally, President Bush doesn't have a plan to get more Americans insured. So instead he declares Kerry's plan to be a federal takeover. Kerry's plan preserves choice, while guaranteeing that more Americans have access to that health care system that Bush is so proud of.
Apparently the reporter who is going to announce it, Ron Suskind, is just another anti-Bush reporter and "foot on throat" is just 'Texan' for not letting someone dodge their record.
That's cool, George. But I believe 'male cheerleader' is also 'Texan' for Sally Bitch.
RawStory is having quite the day, between O'Reilly's sexual harassment/defamation lawsuit, Sinclair Broadcasting Group's plans to air anti-Kerry propaganda, the race discrimination lawsuit against Sinclair, Nader being kicked off the Ohio ballot for "significant and widespread fraud," a US House candidate accused of threatening his wife with shotguns, and massive Republican voter fraud.
Widespread Vote Suppression, Funded by the Republican Party
Posted by Matt Singer
The three top items over at Kos all have to do with Republican manipulation of voter registration, but the Voter Outreach of America story is, by far, the most relevant.
This story, which has been bubbling up all day, only seems to get larger and larger. What we have is a concerted effort by paid Republican lackeys to fraudulently register Democrats and then destroy their registration forms.
This act violates federal law, of course, but it also reeks of indecency to a degree that is unbelievable.
I saw Ken Mehlman on TV complaining about how state offices were being vandalized. The same thing happens all the time on both sides of the aisle. Earlier this year, both the Dems and the GOP in Bozeman had their offices vandalized. Intimidation of political parties is ridiculous. But active efforts to suppress the vote are unconscionable.
And it makes you wonder, why is the same party that lauded people voting multiple times in Afghanistan so opposed to Americans being able to cast a single vote?
This is becoming a recurring theme across America. Will Saletan wrote a month ago that the rhetoric of the Republican convention indicated that the Presidential election's most central issue was whether we would keep the Republic our founders gave us.
The strategy of those on the far right has long been to soil that which mainstream America holds dear. Academia is attacked. Liberalism is attacked. The media is attacked. Everything with a functioning braincell between reality and the story they're trying to sell had to be systemically discredited.
He was right. Academia, liberalism, and the media have all been sustaining fire for some time now. But it has now gone beyond that to attacking the participatory nature of our government. No longer is it good enough for politicians to be public servants, or to choose who they represent through gerrymandering. Now it is the role of the all-knowing Right to determine who gets to vote.
Perhaps it was not irony that it was this week that Derrida, foil to Lynne Cheney, died. For there is a specter haunting America these days. We are now faced with enemies of the academy who condemn moral relativism, but say opposition to slavery is a personal opinion. And we now face a political party that has rejected, wholesale, the very basis of our very democracy.
Jacques Derrida was an academic whose swirling critiques of the world's words often left the impression that nothing was sacred, when in fact he treasured "the unconditional, the undestructable." The modern Republican Party leaves the impression that it is last defender of that which is sacred is really weakening it all. For George W. Bush, there truly is nothing beyond the text.
As Noam Scheiber has been highlighting lately, domestic policy has not been that good for Senator Kerry lately. Not because Bush has a stronger domestic policy, but probably because of Matt Yglesias's thesis that the complete lack of a policy in many cases has allowed others to assume that Bush supports what they do.
What needs to happen tonight is for Kerry to reframe the issue on which President Bush leads most clearly domestically - tax cuts.
And the corporate tax cut that is on Bush's desk is the perfect way to do it.
President Bush is now facing his fourth opportunity, in as many years, to choose security over deficits, our children's future over corporations, and helping all of us or helping a few. And he is so out-of-touch with reality that he thinks most of us would rather get a $50 tax cut than get health insurance, a secure homeland, and a fiscally sound nation to leave to our children.
President Bush claims that under his plan, he can cut the deficit in half in four years. That kind of accounting would make his friend Ken Lay blush. His numbers are as fraudulent as his case for war in Iraq. And his plan to solve the problem is every bit as out of touch with reality as his plan to win the peace in Iraq.
It's time to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans - people like George W. Bush and John Kerry - to their 2000 levels, to the same levels they were at during this country's strongest decade of economic expansion, and to invest in our children's future, just as Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy did in ours - through better schools, through the interstate highway system, through the Apollo Project.
So, Mr. President, what is your decision - another $130 billion for your corporate friends or a stronger America for our children?
Update
Alexander Barnes Dryer has a new piece up on TNROnline dealing with this issue, as well as how to counter charges of liberalism.
Unfortunately, his response is pretty sad:
Tonight, Kerry could render the "liberal" attack impotent if he were to prepare a similar in-your-face reply to Bush on spending and deficits. Rather than try to prove that Bush isn't a compassionate conservative, Kerry could simply remind voters what Bush is: a free-spending, deficit-raising, big-government president. Or, according to the GOP definition, a liberal.
That's it. One of the things that really has to be highlighted here is the size of the government debt. And while deficit reference may do that (I think most voters don't know their stocks from their flows), I doubt it. The most effective soundbite I've heard is that Bush is a "Credit Card Republican." Or possibly reading off a litany of social programs and egregious tax cuts and their costs (in terms of debt) followed by the line, "This President's Administration is running amok like a college student with a freshly minted credit card. Frankly, Mr. President, this country is maxed out and can't handle any more of your free-spending ways."
I think the college student running amok line may be effective because it might also highlight that W. ain't that different from Jenna.
