Friday night open thread

Who would Jesus jail without counsel? Read the rest of this post...

Now the Dems are blaming Hollywood

Yes, now Hollywood is to blame for our election loss.

After all, we all know that it was Hollywood that was really behind the Swift Boat vets, it was Hollywood who made Kerry vote "for it before he voted against it," it was Hollywood who established the "global test," it was Hollywood who made Kerry vote for the war, against funding the war, but then say he'd have invaded Iraq anyway, etc.

Bad Hollywood.

PS I understand Hollywood made Al Gore a shitty candidate too. Read the rest of this post...

AP picks up election fraud story

UPDATED: I accidentally had the URL for the scary Christian story. It's changed now.

Ok, so it's even scarier than I thought. Even the punch cards fucked up. Read this. Read the rest of this post...

Over our dead body

From Reuters:

Christian conservative leaders say their top priority in President Bush's second term is the appointment of conservative judges to the Supreme Court and throughout the judicial system.

"We have high hopes of changing the judiciary. Every judicial appointment that President Bush makes will make the courts less radical and more in tune with the voters who turned out in Tuesday's election," said Gary Bauer, a prominent Christian conservative leader and president of American Values, a conservative pressure group.

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I'm no longer convinced Bush won

I'm serious. There are news reports coming in from all over the country about voting machine errors, BIG voting machine errors, and in at least two races, a state House race in NC and a referendum in FL, once the vote-tally problem was caught, it changed the result of the race!

I don't normally buy into this tin-foil-hat/black-helicopter stuff, but there are enough real news stories out that this is getting serious. And here's the rub: Since many areas of each state, and many states in the country, uses the same machines, it's not unreasonable to assume that they ALL suffered the same software glitches, but that local election officials simply don't know yet. How's that for scary?

Some folks at DailyKos, BradBlog, Democrats.com and others are tracking all of this. It's a lot of stuff, frankly because there's lots of evidence. I've got to tell you, after reading all of this, I have zero confidence that any of these machines were correct. Who the fuck knows who won? Isn't it great - we've reached the point where we no longer trust our election results in America. Who says our best days are behind us?

Some examples:

- In Broward County, Florida, 97,434 ballots were affected by a glitch that basically erased votes (I believe the erasure was finally caught and reversed, but what if this happened in machines elsewhere and wasn't caught?).

- "A computer error with a voting machine cartridge gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct. Franklin County's unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry's 260 votes in Precinct 1B. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct." - Ohio.com

- In NC, 11,238 more presidential electronic votes were recorded than were actually cast.

- 4530 early votes were lost - LOST - in North Carolina: "Local officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes. Expecting the greater capacity, the county used only one unit during the early voting period. 'If we had known, we would have had the units to handle the votes,' said Sue Verdon, secretary of the county election board. Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost." - Yahoo News

- "New information indicates that hackers may be targeting the central computers counting our votes tomorrow. All county elections officials who use modems to transfer votes from polling places to the central vote-counting server should disconnect the modems now.... It appears that such an attack may already have taken place, in a primary election 6 weeks ago in King County, Washington -- a large jurisdiction with over one million registered voters. Documents, including internal audit logs for the central vote-counting computer, along with modem "trouble slips" consistent with hacker activity, show that the system may have been hacked on Sept. 14, 2004. Three hours is now missing from the vote-counting computer's "audit log," an automatically generated record, similar to the black box in an airplane, which registers certain kinds of events." - BlackBoxVoting.org

Find out more here, and here, and here, and here. Read the rest of this post...

Military... umm... intelligence

Please don't tell me that the Air Force paid $25,000 for something called a "teleportation physics report" in August. And please don't tell me that the report calls for an additional $7.5 million to research something called "psychic teleportation."

Perhaps our readers could suggest better uses for this money? Anyone?
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Diane Feinstein blames Negroes for 1968 election loss

Just hit the wires:

WASHINGTON, DC - California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein, facing a firestorm of criticism for her comments at a recent news conference blaming gay Americans for Tuesday's election debacle, today insisted her words were taken out of context.

She meant to blame African-Americans as well.

"Our party's decline can be traced to our 1968 loss to Richard Nixon," Feinstein said. Speaking of black activists who then sought the right to inter-racial marriage, Feinstein added, "I think they did energize a very conservative vote."

Feinstein said that coming only four years after blacks won the privilege to drink from our fountains and swim in our pools, the sudden push for equal marriage rights invited an inevitable confrontation.

"I think giving Negro men the right to marry our women was too much, too fast, too soon, and people weren't ready for it," Feinstein said. She was quick to add: "I'm not casting a value judgment on miscegenation. I'm just saying I do believe that's what happened."

In an effort to quell the growing controversy over her comments, Feinstein added that inter-racial marriage was of course not the sole cause of the Democrats' defeat in '68.

"Martin Luther King's assassination was very unhelpful," Feinstein said. "I'm not saying it was his fault, but the chaos it caused really set the party back."

Joining in the criticism of Feinstein today was Al From, chairman of the conservative-leaning Democratic Leadership Council.

"Diane Feinstein owes gay and black Democrats an apology for her divisive and insensitive remarks," From said. "Blacks and gays aren't responsible for our party's woes. Women are."

[For anyone who's really clueless, this is a joke. :-)]

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Friday afternoon open thread

Whatever. TGIF. Read the rest of this post...

Even Czar Putin Needs To Breathe -- Signs Kyoto Accord

Yep, Russia and Czar Putin (its the same thing) have signed off on the Kyoto Accord, putting it over the top for ratification. It needed 55 industrialized nations to go into effect. The U.S. and Australia rejected it. But after years of delay, Russia signed on in exchange for the EU backing its entry into the World Trade Organization.

Amusingly (or sadly), Putin finally decided to go ahead despite warnings from his economic adviser, who said Kyoto would stymie growth of the economy. His reason? The country's financial meltdown is so severe that right now it's 30% below the benchmark for tough measures anyway -- in other words, Russia has slid backwards so much its in no danger of triggering the more serious steps called to combat global warming.
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Leaving the US? Where is there to go?

I personally had my eyes set on Amsterdam as the place to go, but then these two articles got me thinking -- this is a global war on secularism and anti-fundamentalism. First there was this story that Andrew Sullivan has been pointing out. From AP:

Dutch police have arrested eight suspected Muslim radicals as part of the investigation into the killing of an outspoken filmmaker, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The suspects were detained in the 24 hours after Theo van Gogh was killed as he bicycled down an Amsterdam street, according to the spokeswoman for the prosecution, Dop Kruimel. Six of the detainees are Moroccan, one is Algerian and the other has dual Spanish-Moroccan nationality, she said.

The suspected killer -- a 26-year-old Muslim with dual Moroccan-Dutch citizenship -- was arrested Tuesday after a shootout with police. He has not been identified.

Van Gogh, 47, a great grandnephew of the painter Vincent van Gogh, had received death threats after his recent film sharply criticized how women are treated under Islam. He was repeatedly shot and stabbed. "Don't do it. Don't do it. Have mercy. Have mercy!" the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper quoted Van Gogh as begging his killer.

Freedom of speech does not always mean that you still won't get killed by some nutjob.

And then there was this from the Chicago Tribune:

Surveying the world beyond the cloistered walls of its Roman enclave, the Vatican sees much to worry about: Terrorism, war, AIDS and poverty are ravaging the lives of many of its constituents around the globe.

But of all the ills afflicting the modern world, none is causing deeper concern than the rising tide of what Vatican officials call "militant secularism" washing over Europe.

Wow, militant secularism. How about militant freedom?

I'm afraid that we're all going to be fighting the Culture Wars for the remainder of our lifetimes. I have no doubt that we'll be winning this war, it's just that there will be casualties along the way. We'll win some, they'll win some. In the end however, what is RIGHT and what is TRUE will win. It just might take a generation to win this war. And if I have to fight this war no matter where I go, I'd rather fight it in a country I know and love, speaking in the language I'm most articulate, and surrounded by the love and affection of my family and friends. Read the rest of this post...

Think Bush Is Pissed At New Jersey?

Man, you do NOT want to be one of those states that Bush thought he could win but lost. Just ask New Jersey.

Okay, okay, Bush didn't really tell that National Guard jet to buzz a school and strafe it with bullets. But that is pretty bizarre. Someone tell Pennsylvania to watch its back.
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Fight Over Textbooks -- Gotta Denounce Gays

Here we go -- when you pass anti-gay laws, it fires up anti-gay violence and provides lots of ammo in the culture wars. In Texas, they're fighting over the wording of a middle school textbook on health. (As you know, Texas and California are such big markets, they basically determine the types of textbooks sold all over the country.)

What are they fighting about? The definition of marriage and references to gays. Since it's in the Austin-Statesman newspaper, I'll quote a lot for those who don't want to register online.


"A State Board of Education member stalled a vote to approve middle school health textbooks Thursday by saying the books should condemn homosexuality and make clear that marriage exists only between men and women," reports the Austin-Statesman.

"Board member Terri Leo, R-Spring, called for about 30 changes to teachers' and students' editions of proposed health books in grades six through eight.

"The board skipped a preliminary vote on the books after a representative for the books' publisher, Holt Rinehart and Winston, said the company would consider Leo's changes and report back before today's final vote....

"Leo said that three of the 10 middle school books up for approval would not conform to a state law banning the recognition of same-sex unions as marriages. She said they endorse same-sex marriage by referring to the heads of families as couples or adults instead of husbands and wives or fathers and mothers.

"One passage in a teachers' edition says that "surveys indicate that 3 to 10 percent of the population is gay. No one knows for sure why some people are straight, some are bisexual and others are gay."

"Leo wanted to replace those sentences with: "Opinions vary on why homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals as a group are more prone to self-destructive behaviors like depression, illegal drug use and suicide."

"Gail Lowe, R-Lampasas, asked that the books not stress the effectiveness of condoms in fighting sexually transmitted diseases."

Wow. Talk about fighting for every inch of ground. They don't want even the teacher's edition -- a book STUDENTS NEVER SEE -- to mention gays exist without condemning them. They don't want a health textbook to reflect the scientific facts about condoms. Yep, it's house-to-house fighting if the rebels (apparently us) want to survive.
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Tax Fairness Act - quit sponging off of blue state money

I love this blog over on Atrios about tax fairness (that currently won't link because of Blogger is failing miserably, yet again) about the current blue state handouts to numerous free-loading red states. I would love to see a Democrat have the balls to make this an issue, even if it was crushed by the Republicans. I complained about those spongers after the hurricane season hit the red states and they all lined up with their open hands looking for Uncle Sam (i.e. MY MONEY) to bail their sorry asses out. These are states that love to complain about giving money to the federal government yet they are first in line to take state welfare handouts. Let god and red states bail them out with their money, not mine.
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Corporate America loving the Bush win

Yesterday it was Detroit doing backflips because they would not be forced to offer fuel efficient cars and now it's Big Pharmaceuticals and Big Insurance that is dancing with glee. Who's your daddy America? Looks like big business owns the country now. It sure as hell isn't owned by the people.
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Bill Maher On The Election

Tonight is the season finale of "Real Time With Bill Maher" on HBO at 11 p.m. It's one of the sharpest shows around, kind of like a Sunday morning news show with attitude and a lot more cursing. And Maher grills his guests with the kind of pointed questions that Ted Koppel used to specialize in.

Here's Maher's take on what the Dems should do:

"The Democrats need to do what the Republicans did this time. Energize their base. I really don’t think there are more Jesus-loving crazy people in this country than sane people. I just think that those people vote more. When it comes time to getting out the vote with your base, they’re more energized because they’re hearing the message they really want to hear. Whereas the Democrat is trying to have it both ways. He’s trying to get his people and he’s also trying to get enough of those kind of people. And those kind of people are never going to come over. They’re always going to vote for the Bush." -- Bill Maher

Maher's guests tonight will include Noam Chomsky (whom I assume didn't vote for Bush) and conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan who will undoubtedly say that now the election is over we need to "support" our President. Which means what exactly, look the other way when he behaves incompetently or lies? How does one support a President with a reverse-Midas touch? Especially when his screwups mean young men and women are dying every day? I agree philosophically but just don't know how it would work realistically -- do you let Bush nominate any Supreme Court justice? Do you let him keep spending us into a fiscal crisis? Do you not keep asking questions about ammo dumps in Iraq and how many there are and how many are being guarded as of this moment?
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Will Bush Reward Those God-fearin' Rurals? Hell No!

A good, cynical LA Times editorial shows how Bush got a lot of rural and exurban folk to vote for him cause he shares their Christian values -- like fighting the homos. But his real priorities are quite different: lower taxes for the rich and privatizing Social Security so average folk can sink or swim in their retirement depending on how savvy they are in playing the stock market.

"Meanwhile, what about opposing gay marriage, the one mandate Bush might legitimately claim? Earlier this year, Bush barely lifted a finger in support of a constitutional amendment banning it. (Compare this to the furious arm-twisting he performs to get moderates to back his tax cuts.) If he has a mandate to do anything, it's to bring up the amendment again. However, he's said nothing about doing so, and nobody expects him to," writes Jonathan Chait in the LA Times.

"No surprise there — it's hardly in the Republican Party's interest. If gay marriage is banned everywhere, what's going to bring all those heartland conservatives to the polls next time?"
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One More Chance To Vote

An online CNN poll asking if you're happy about the results of the election. If the real one had gone the way this one is going (56% saying they're unhappy), we'd all be a lot happier. Scroll down past the Specter story (where he says he'll stand tough against extremist nominees for the Supreme Court) and you'll find the poll towards the bottom.
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Our Election Ends -- The Attack On Fallujah Begins

What a coincidence that we've decided to move on Fallujah just after the election ends. The insurgents have been in control of that city and the longer we waited to attack, the longer they had to dig in and encourage others to join them simply by surviving.

The bombing has begun and hopefully we'll be able to subdue them quickly. (Happily, most citizens fled the city long ago. But it's gonna be bloody.) With elections only weeks away, does anyone think it was smart militarily to wait and wait like Bush did? He simply wanted to hold off until after the election so Americans wouldn't be hearing about bloody battles and (more) dead G.I.s.

But that unnecessary, militarily (and politically) foolish delay may very well mean that more of our soldiers die than was necessary. Here's praying it goes smoothly. Bush has plenty of fiascos on the domestic front to bite him in the ass -- here's hoping Iraq doesn't get any worse.
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Beginning of the end for UK troops in Iraq?

This predictable story did not take very long. Three Black Watch troops, the ones who Tony "bootlicker" Blair recently moved in to help out his old pal George, were killed today in Iraq. So far the Brits have been operating in a relatively peaceful part of Iraq and their casualties have been low but this latest move could open up the valve for UK casualties. With the earlier story about the Coalition of the Going unraveling, another day or two like this and we're going to see a lot of pressure in the UK to join that group as well.
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Coalition Unravels Even More

The coalition of the not-so-willing continues to fall apart, with Hungary the latest country to say, "You're on your own!" to the U.S. I suppose they were trying to be polite by not announcing this before the elections, but it would have been nice if they'd let the American people know BEFORE they voted that Hungary was voting with its feet on Iraq and getting the hell out. Out of 160,000 total coalition forces, 138,000 are U.S.

"Other nations that have recently announced withdrawals include: Poland, with 2,350 troops; Italy, 3,000; the Netherlands, 1,300; Ukraine, 1,450, Norway, 300; New Zealand, 61; and Thailand, 880," reports USA Today.

"Previously, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Philippines, the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan and El Salvador withdrew forces. New contributors to the force are South Korea and Tonga."

I'd take pleasure in knowing Bush has to deal with this instead of Kerry, but our young men and women are dying in Iraq and we desperately need MORE TROOPS. Bush insists the generals haven't asked for any, but they know they're not supposed to or their career is over so what a surprise that they don't. Meanwhile, any fool knows we need more troops to defend those ammo depots, pretend to defend the leaky borders and start attacking the insurgents.


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