Florida. AGAIN.

just when you thought the republicans in power in florida couldn't get any more evil, any more unamerican, the governor's own police force is going into minority neighborhoods and "investigating potential voter fraud."

investigating, my ass. they're scaring older black people out of voting. truly, they have no shame. Read Bob Herbert's piece in the Times. the bush administration (jeb, that is) is doing everything in its power -- and apparently, even more -- to keep african-americans from voting.

you just know that at this very moment there's a group of people somewhere in tallahassee huddled around a conference table, drinking bad coffee, trying to figure out what else they can do to keep black people from voting. I've never been a conspiracy theorist, but after the voter list "felon purge" debacle, I'm absolutely convinced there's an organized effort to subvert democracy in the most important electoral college state for Bush, and it has the tacit approval of the administration.

how can the citizens of Florida continue to allow this to happen?
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Bush TV Ads Getting Smarter

USA Today details two new ads unveiled by the Bush campaign that are effective and smart. The less damning one ties in to the Olympics by saying "this Olympics...there will be two more free nations." That highlights the one unquestionable good of those twin invasions -- the possible self-rule of Afghanistan and Iraq after suffering years of horrible dictatorships. Afghanistan features its first female athletes and the Iraqi socceer team is enjoying an unexpected string of victories.

The one targeted directly at Kerry scores a direct hit; Kerry's team has done a poor job of responding.

"It charges that when he was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the mid-1990s, Kerry missed most of the panel's open hearings...."

The weak response from Kerry's team was that this was based only on the 65 open meetings and didn't include attendance for the more than 329 closed hearings. But the committee's Republican chairman Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas immediately called on Kerry to let him release those attendance records as well. Kerry's people didn't offer attendance figures for the hearings that aren't public record, so we can only assume they aren't good either.

They need to come up with a better response -- how does his attendance compare to other members at the time or some such reasoning -- or Bush will wisely bring this up again and again.
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Why Racial Profiling Is Dumb

A new USA Today front page story says Al-Qaeda is using non-Arab spies in the U.S. to do surveillance work, etc. By the way, this info offered up by Tom Ridge seems to offer no useful purpose by being revealed at this time -- it's not a success story because Ridge says they haven't broken up a known surveillance cell, don't know how many people might be in the U.S., and says by gosh if they did know someone was an operative why they'd arrest 'em.

So why give out this info? One official said they STILL wanted to counteract the criticism of that Ridge terror alert/campaign plug for Bush. But does the info they reveal justify raising the terror alert? The official said the cells:

• "Have been in the USA off and on since the early 1990s, and some are still here.
• Are focused primarily on states on the coasts, though not exclusively. They include New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, Michigan and California.
• Operate under deep cover, sometimes hiding their Muslim faith by posing as Christians.
• Are isolated from each other and from al-Qaeda members who would carry out attacks."

That's all reason for serious concern but certainly no reason to take a short-term action like raising the terror alert, since none of this info involves an imminent attack or even the hint of one. So they continue to dribble out data to justify themselves but still fall short.

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two marriages, part two

Part 2 of the Boston Globe's series on marriage in Mass.

Definitely worth reading.
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More lies from the White House

Remember the big news out yesterday that 100,000 troops would be moved back to the US? How quickly the story changes. Today the number is 70,000 though to keep the other figure in our minds they include 100,000 family members. I would still like to hear more about where exactly those 70,000 troops are going because I'm not buying it.
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An Army wife says it all

BBC:

One army wife, Jessie Bigby, summed up her unease when she told me:

"There was an attack on America on 9/11. We knew who did it. We went after him.

"But then we lost our focus and went after Saddam Hussein who had nothing to do with it. And they tried to tell us that he did.

"And we know that he didn't. So now we can't trust the president any more."

That's your 30-second TV spot, right there. Read More......

Bush Says Earth Is Flat!

Well, no. But the man who thinks creationism is a valid scientific theory and that the jury is still out on evolution continues his assault on science. In the second in a series of articles about this, the Washington Post details dead-of-night regulatory changes that politicize oversight on scientific findings and thus endanger public safety. How? Bush made it easier for big business to fight regulatory changes that could cost them money by attacking valid scientific findings. The major example here? A pesticide that "castrates" frogs according to numerous independent studies (including one funded by the industry itself that they suppressed). Lengthy and filled with interesting detail, the article has this neat summary of Bush's attacks on good science:

"Environmental and consumer groups say the Data Quality Act fits into a larger Bush administration agenda. In the past six months, more than 4,000 scientists, including dozens of Nobel laureates and 11 winners of the National Medal of Science, have signed statements accusing the administration of politicizing science.

"The White House's heavy editing of a key global-warming report, its efforts to emphasize abstinence rather than condoms in the war against AIDS and its alleged stacking of scientific advisory committees have drawn particular ire. But many scientists and public advocates believe that far more is at stake with the Data Quality Act.

"From their perspective, the act is shifting the authority over the nation's science into the politicized environment of the OMB -- a change, they say, that will favor big business."
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No blacks performing at GOP Convention

I was just checking the GOP Convention Web site, and they list the top entertainers they have coming to the convention so far, and it's pretty much 9 white people with one token Latino thrown in for good measure (and a rather pitiful no-name crowd of white people at that).

Here's the list:
- Michael W. Smith (white)
- Daniel Rodriguez (Latino)
- Daize Shayne (white)
- The Gatlin Brothers (white, white, white)
- Elisabeth Hasselbeck (white)
- Ron Silver (white)
- Sara Evans (white)
- Dana Glover (white)

Now, to be fair, I'm sure they'll end up having lots of blacks and other minorities at the convention. (I understand Madison Square Garden is a bitch to keep clean.) Read More......

Radical Right: "We have the president"

An interesting couple of updates on the radical right and their attendance, or lack thereof, at the Republican convention.

Jerry Falwell tells AP that he has NOT been asked to give a prayer at the Republican convention, even though at least two parishioners at Falwell's church clearly recall being told last month that Falwell WOULD IN FACT deliver a prayer.

Of even greater interest, radical right leaders Pat Robertson and James Dobson say they feel snubbed and do not plan on attending the convention (too bad, would be great theatre).

Another interesting point is that a planned rally by the radical right at the GOP Convention has been canceled because of "security concerns." Yeah, they were concerned about securing the votes of normal Americans.

Of course, my favorite quote is from Roberta Coombs of the Christian Coalition who told the Washington Post: "We have the president."

Contrast this to the gay Republicans raising hay over the GOP platform and it's looking like the GOP Convention very well could be the Gay Old Party Convention. At the very least, the convention is already in danger of being enveloped by the gay and radical right controversies, which is great news. The GOP leaders have chosen to define their party by gay and radical right issue, so it's only appropriate that that's the spin they get. Read More......

Bush lies about his mother in stump speeches

If Al Gore had flip-flopped in his stories, he'd be branded a liar - and WAS. Bush can't even manage to tell a true story about his own mother. Pitiful. And the Washington Post throws this little fact in, almost unnoticed, at the very end of an otherwise glowing article about how great Bush is doing on the stump.

"In one telling of his riff about the majesty of the Oval Office, [President Bush] notes that it leaves any visitor speechless -- except for 'my mother, who walked in and continued to tell me what to do.'

That line was in Las Vegas. In Florida, however, he made the same point but said that the Oval Office is so powerful 'it's the kind of place where my mother walks in and feels so overwhelmed, she won't tell me what to do.'"

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And The Intimidation Continues...

Below is a story about the FBI targeting apparently law-abiding citizens who had the temerity to take part in political protests. Now comes this depressing column by Bob Herbert about voter intimidation in Florida. Apparently, state police officers have gone to the homes of elderly black voters (some of whom just happen to organize "get out the vote" drives in their Orlando community) to question them about allegations of voter fraud during the Orlando mayoral election in March. Dozens of people were questioned about a case that officials refused to provide details on, except to say it involved absentee ballots. (The very ballots people in Florida may want to use because of concerns about the new computerized systems.) Here's one amusing/disturbing exchange:

"I asked if all the people interrogated were black.

'Well, mainly it was a black neighborhood we were looking at - yes,' he said. He also said, 'Most of them were elderly.'

When I asked why, he said, 'That's just the people we selected out of a random sample to interview.'"

They randomly selected elderly black people? Right. Just like the Bushes randomly left Hispanic felons on eligible voter rolls while eliminating blacks.

According to a lawyer who represents the president of the Orlando League of Voters, this "investigation" is working.

"People who have voted by absentee ballot for years are refusing to allow campaign workers to come to their homes. And volunteers who have participated for years in assisting people, particularly the elderly or handicapped, are scared and don't want to risk a criminal investigation."

Why Florida voters aren't demonstrating in the streets over suspect computerized voting, fishy manipulation of voter rolls and now this is beyond me. Read More......

FBI Targets Political Protestors

Big Brother is watching. A major story in the New York Times says the F.B.I. has taken to aggressively going to people's homes and questioning them about their political activities in an attempt, the govt. claims, to target anarchists who might be planning violent protests. Sounds fine when they talk about investigating people the FBI claims were planning to blow up news vans in Boston.

But all of the people tracked down by the NYT seem positively bewildered that anything they have done (participating in peaceful, legal political protests) could possibly be worthy of investigation by the FBI. A couple of young guys were questioned before the Boston convention and decided not to participate in either that one or the upcoming Republican event. According to their lawyer,

"they got the message loud and clear that if you make plans to go to a protest, you could be subject to arrest or a visit from the F.B.I."

Targeting people for questioning by the FBI because they have taken part in legal, political protests is of course outrageous and unnerving. Violent ourbursts like at the WTO events or Weather Underground-type criminal acts need to be countered. But that doesn't mean carte blanche to intimidate and harrass anyone who shows up for a rally. The story lists a string of recent examples where the govt. overstepped its bounds in targeting Americans who were simply exercising their Constitutional rights and had no cause to be singled out.

The ones that need watching here are the FBI.
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