"Mr. Bush has simply ignored this subject"

That was ABC News tonight on the White House's response to today's shocking news that 760,000 pounds of explosives were stolen in Iraq under our very eyes - one pound of which was enough to take Pan Am 103 down over Lockerbie, Scotland. "Mr. Bush has simply ignored this subject."

I can't even believe this. The White House is simply going to ignore the subject. Like nothing happened.

Oh, and get this. The campaign spokesman outright lied about this on CNN this afternoon. She said the explosives were proof of why we needed to invade Iraq. But wait a minute. According to ABC, the UN inspectors had already locked that facility down BEFORE we declared war. This wasn't some rogue facility that no one knew about and Saddam was hiding. It was a facility that THE UN INSPECTORS HAD ALREADY FOUND AND TAKEN CONTROL OF. So how the hell was this a justification for going to war because the inspections weren't working, when in fact, they worked perfectly? The Bush campaign outright lied to CNN, and Judy Woodruff didn't say boo.

ABC also reported tonight that the explosives were in "the largest explosives facility in Iraq." Kind of an obvious place to - what? - put some troops to watch over everything? Put someone, a janitor maybe? Nope. Not a person. Read the rest of this post...

Evening open thread

Have at it. Read the rest of this post...

Kerry is ahead 49 to 48 in ABC daily tracking poll

This matters because, as we don't know which poll to trust, you can still get a good sense of momentum either up or down for a candidate by how they do day to day in each individual poll. This is Kerry's best showing in the ABC daily poll since it started on October 1.

Here are the details of the ABC poll. Read the rest of this post...

Mafia is big GOP donor

Surprise. Read the rest of this post...

Explosives lost in Iraq could kill 205 million people

So you can fully grasp what Bush let the terrorists get in Iraq.

1. 380 tons of explosives stolen in Iraq.
2. One US ton = 2,000 pounds
3. So, 380 tons of explosives x 2,000 pounds = 760,000 pounds
4. One pound of this explosive brought down the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
5. If one pound is enough for one Lockerbie, then 760,000 pounds is enough to blow 760,000 US commerical jets out of the sky.
6. 760,000 Lockerbies times 270 dead per Lockerbie = 205,200,000 dead
7. 205 million dead is 2/3 of the population of the United States.

Obviously, no one knows how many exactly would be killed in each attack - some attacks would kill more people (by blowing up over Paris) and others fewer (by not working at all). But the main point here is that we just gave them enough explosives to try 760,000 times. Think about that. Read the rest of this post...

Judy Fucking Woodruff

Good God. She's interviewing a Bush-Cheney spokeswoman on CNN right now about the 380 tons of missing explosives in Iraq and the Bushie responds, you know, this is all John Kerry's doing, he's jumping on the latest headlines to make politics, blah blah blah. So Judy follows up with a question: Well who was responsible for watching those weapons? Bushie responds: John Kerry flip flops. Judy then changes the topic.

Jesus Christ.

Oh, and my favorite sound-bite from the Bushies now - the fact that they LOST friggin' explosives in Iraq proves that Saddam HAD dangerous explosives and that's why we needed to go to war.

So, we needed to go to war in order to help give terrorists the very explosives we needed to go to war to stop them getting? Okay... Read the rest of this post...

Bush-Cheney '04 signs in 5th grade classroom in Wisconsin

I just got feedback from the teacher who discovered these signs. He's asking that we lay low and let him handle it locally, without stirring up too much trouble nationally right now. So out of respect to him, I'm taking the details down. Please don't contact the school district any further - I suspect they got the message.

Thanks guys, JOHN Read the rest of this post...

Oil hits new high: $55.57

Same issues, different day. Chinese consumption, near capacity drilling, sabotage in Iraq, complete failure in the US to talk about conservation, etc.
Read the rest of this post...

WTF?

Bush quoted by AP today:

"I calculated as best I could the cost of going to war. ... It is a very, very heavy decision for the commander in chief. You can't put a price tag on a person's life," Bush said. "If the commander in chief withdraws before the mission is completed, it's too great a price." Bush said it was "essential that we succeed in Iraq ... because if we do not succeed in Iraq .... the terrorists will rejoice."

Wait. So we won't ever withdraw from Iraq, no matter how fucked up, no matter how hopeless, no matter how many men and women die, on principle. And even better, the reason we need to win in Iraq is so that the terrorists won't rejoice? Huh? Read the rest of this post...

Any questions?

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Voting Machines -- How They Really Work

Another great online satire -- this one is a video of someone trying to use an electronic voting machine to vote for Kerry. Very funny.

My apologies if this was posted before; but I hadn't seen it. I suppose every election spawns books, but this one in particular is truly a watershed. The bloggers driving the news and tearing apart shoddy reporting (hello, CBS) and forcing stories to be covered by the major media. The satirical online videos that have both energized the bases and informed the undecideds -- a truly potent force since most voters see NO political ads (unless you're in one of 11 states). The videos that mock the few political ads we do hear about, like that wolves piece. Jon Stewart as a source of news. Happily, the left is clearly far more adept at satire and online campaigns than the right. Presidential elections will never be the same.
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If Rehnquist dies...

This is the updated version of John's Rehnquist story. Want to scare yourself for a moment? Think about this. Let's say that Rehnquist is at a minimum incapacitated, at worst, dies. This will leave a vacancy on the court with a clear 4-4 split. Now let's think about another 2000 style election challenge, where the Supreme Court will no doubt be needed to make a final call. Well, who's going to break the tie if Rehnquist isn't there? Moreover, what would the nation do in the event of a contested election with no Supreme Court able to break the deadlock? Think about that one over dinner tonight. Sleep well... Read the rest of this post...

The Hotline: Kerry ahead in electoral votes

From The Hotline (a big inside-the-beltway publication all the pundits, politicos, etc. read):

The latest Electoral Scoreboard from The Hotline shows the Massachusetts senator edging ahead in the race for electoral votes. In today's scoreboard, Kerry leads in 18 states with 243 electoral votes, and Bush is ahead in 28 states with 234 electoral votes. Friday's Electoral Scoreboard showed Bush leading the electoral vote tally by a 234 to 190 margin.

Kerry picked up his gains based on new surveys out of Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Five states -- Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, New Hampshire and Ohio -- remain disputed, leaving a combined 61 electoral votes unallotted.

Read the rest of this post...

BREAKING NEWS: Rehnquist has cancer

Needed a reason to vote? Now you have it. Thought all this talk of Bush appointing 3 Supreme Court justices next term was just that, talk? Now you have proof. The friggin' chief justice has cancer. How does Chief Justice Scalia, or Chief Justice Thomas, sound to you?

Vote. Read the rest of this post...

Kerry Blasts Bush Over Missing Explosives

Kerry is making hay with Bush's tragic, it-would-be-funny-if-it-wasn't-so-scary incompetence of letting a huge cache of explosives go missing in Iraq, even after they were warned repeatedly to make sure it was secure both before and after the invasion.

The LA Times quotes Kerry blasting Bush today:

""Now we know that our country and our troops are less safe because this president failed to do the basics," Kerry said, according to the LA Times. "This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, and one of the great blunders of this administration. And the incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk, and put this country at greater risk than we ought to be."

"He accused the administration of "blindness," "stubbornness" and "arrogance" on Iraq, saying its failure to "do the basics" in securing weapons showed Bush had failed the test of being commander in chief.Kerry also assailed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for having "cavalierly dismissed the danger of looting" when U.S. forces occupied Iraq. He was referring to Rumsfeld's comment about the post-invasion looting there that "stuff happens."

""Now we know the impact," Kerry said."

Go get 'em, tiger. Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

The freepers are having a hard time figuring out that a thread about Zogby's polls is not the same thing as a thread about the flu, so I thought I'd give them an open thread where they scan spout their shit and you can destroy them. Or whatever else you'd like to talk to about :-) Read the rest of this post...

Lest we forget

In the days before the 2000 election, Zogby, the pollster a lot of us like, showed Bush's lead INCREASING over Gore. The thing is, Gore won the popular vote. So the BIG MO - momentum - may or may not have been with Bush last time, but it was irrelevant, the polls convinced us Gore had lost and he hadn't.

Just another lesson in making sure you give a skeptical eye to the polls.

Here's what Zogby showed at this time in 2000 - Bush going up, Gore going down, and Bush getting further ahead. Oops.

Read the rest of this post...

GOP candidate in Hawaii supports executing gays

Yes, and they've even got it on video. The man is running for a Hawaii state race, but still, he's yet another GOP bigot-for-God who isn't drummed out of the race for being a fucking mutant. Put in the context of the other GOP candidates saying gays shouldn't be teachers, and the children of gays will be forced into incest, and the GOP doing mailers about how homo marriage is coming to a town near you, it's a disturbing pattern. The GOP is not the party it used to be. Vote these assholes out next week. Read the rest of this post...

Complete chaos

Now it looks as though the execution of 51 Iraqis yesterday was the result of infiltration in the ranks of the Iraqi military. (It looks as though the US isn't the only country to have moles operating in the military.) So now we have tons of bomb making material missing according to the IAEA, infiltration in the military, bombs going off all over the country, and another execution of a politician. All I see is chaos in Iraq and Bush still thinks everything is just fine.
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Bush Administration Infighting Rears Head

Usually, the scandals and infighting of an administration come out after they've left office. You'd expect that to be even more the case for the Bushies -- he demands unswerving loyalty and hates any interoffice sniping getting into the press.

But story after major, detailed story is spilling out of the New York Time, the Washington Post and all the other major players with a lot of juicy dirt. Here's the first of a massive two-part look at those ridiculous military tribunals set up for the terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay. It's fascinating, but political junkies will especially enjoy the score-settling.

"The plan was considered so sensitive that senior White House officials kept its final details hidden from the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, officials said. It was so urgent, some of those involved said, that they hardly thought of consulting Congress.

"White House officials said their use of extraordinary powers would allow the Pentagon to collect crucial intelligence and mete out swift, unmerciful justice. "We think it guarantees that we'll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve," said Vice President Dick Cheney, who was a driving force behind the policy.

"But three years later, not a single terrorist has been prosecuted. Of the roughly 560 men being held at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, only 4 have been formally charged. Preliminary hearings for those suspects brought such a barrage of procedural challenges and public criticism that verdicts could still be months away. And since a Supreme Court decision in June that gave the detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal court, the Pentagon has stepped up efforts to send home hundreds of men whom it once branded as dangerous terrorists."

Here's part two, another massive but engrossing article that nails down that the worst of the worst held in extraordinary circumstances at Guantanamo are mostly low-level nothings. Plus, more infighting!

"Although White House lawyers said they rushed to devise a new judicial structure that could handle serious Qaeda terrorists, many of the detainees sent to Guantánamo turned out to be low-level militants, Taliban fighters and men simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Pentagon's efforts to gather intelligence from more valuable prisoners were also deeply flawed, military intelligence officers said, complicating the prosecution of some detainees and nearly paralyzing efforts to release others.

"Interviews with dozens of officials show that the myriad problems ignited an often fierce behind-the-scenes struggle that set the Pentagon and its allies in the White House against adversaries at the National Security Council, the State Department and Justice Department. The friction among officials like Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice; and Mr. Ashcroft sheds new light on the internal dynamics of an administration that has shown a remarkably united public front."
Read the rest of this post...

Halliburton Scandal Back In Spotlight

The top civilian contractor for the Army Corp of Engineers is calling for an investigation of Halliburton and why it was given contracts that skirted and avoided the rules in place to ensure fairness. She certainly has good timing -- putting Dick Cheney's old company back in the Enron-scandal type spotlight some two weeks before the election.
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