Ok, admit it. How many of you, watching Jon Stewart interview Brian Williams on the Daily Show, wish it was Stewart who was going to replace Tom Brokaw?

Last I heard, the anchor position at CBS is still available.

Kerry Now Involved in Ohio Recount

Kerry Team Seeks to Join Fight To Get Ohio County to Recount

Wednesday, December 1, 2004; Page A08

Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign asked an Ohio judge yesterday to allow it to join a legal fight there over whether election officials in one county may sit out the state's impending recount.

A pair of third-party presidential candidates, who said that reports of problems at the polls on Election Day are not being addressed, are forcing the Buckeye State to recount its entire presidential vote. But David A. Yost, a lawyer for Delaware County, just outside Columbus, won a temporary restraining order last week blocking any recount there. He told the Columbus Dispatch that a second count would be a poor use of county resources. President Bush won the mostly Republican area handily, unofficial results show.

Lawyers for the Kerry campaign asked to join Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik and the National Voting Rights Institute in the fight to force the county to participate in the recount. "If there's going to be a recount in Ohio, we don't want it to exclude Delaware County or any other county that might decide to follow Delaware County's lead," Kerry lawyer Dan Hoffheimer said. "It should be a full, fair and accurate recount."

MORE

Related Stories:

Statement From the Green Party Presidential Campaign Concerning John Kerry's Intervention in Ohio Recount Court Case

Something's fishy in Ohio

November 30, 2004

BY JESSE JACKSON

In the Ukraine, citizens are in the streets protesting what they charge is a fixed election. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell expresses this nation's concern about apparent voting irregularities. The media give the dispute around-the-clock coverage. But in the United States, massive and systemic voter irregularities go unreported and unnoticed.

Ohio is this election year's Florida. The vote in Ohio decided the presidential race, but it was marred by intolerable, and often partisan, irregularities and discrepancies. U.S. citizens have as much reason as those in Kiev to be concerned that the fix was in. Consider:

In Ohio, a court just ruled there can't be a recount yet, because the vote is not yet counted. It's three weeks after the election, and Ohio still hasn't counted the votes and certified the election. Some 93,000 overvotes and undervotes are not counted; 155,000 provisional ballots are only now being counted. Absentee ballots cast in the two days prior to the election haven't been counted.

MORE

No Mandate on Abortion

Yet more evidence that Bush has no mandate for his move towards the far right:

Bush High Court Choice Should Back Abortion Rights, Poll Shows

Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President George W. Bush's nominee for the next Supreme Court vacancy should be willing to uphold the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed abortion rights, according to a majority of Americans in an Ipsos-Public Affairs poll for the Associated Press.

Fifty-nine percent said Bush should choose a supporter of Roe v. Wade, while 31 percent said they want a nominee who will try to overturn the decision, according to the poll. Support for Roe v. Wade was seen among both men and women, across most age and income groups, and in urban, suburban and rural areas, AP said.

MORE

Reproductive Choice Is Fading Fast

November 28, 2004
EDITORIAL
Chipping Away at Roe vs. Wade

With no hearings or debate, the Republican majority this month grafted the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act onto the $388-billion appropriations bill, approved last week. Although the name implies it protects women who are seeking abortions from discrimination, the reverse is true. The act legalizes discrimination, allowing any physician, hospital or health insurer to refuse to perform or pay for abortions and even to tell pregnant women that the option exists. That new right will extend, in practice, to employers, who get to pick which health plans a company will offer.

The amendment is only one brick in a wall, part of a deliberate strategy to shut off access to abortion services, clothe fertilized eggs with the legal rights of a child and discourage, even humiliate, pregnant women who cannot or do not want to raise a child. The obvious aim is to shrink the landmark abortion-rights decision Roe vs. Wade to the point where there is no need for judges to formally overturn it.

In April, President Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, letting federal prosecutors bring separate homicide charges if a pregnant woman and her fetus are killed. Murder is usually a state crime, and if there have been federal murder cases involving pregnant women no one seems to know about them. But this bill was not about punishing murderers; it was drafted specifically to grant a fertilized egg legal rights.

The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act was the first federal law to forbid an abortion procedure since the 1973 Roe decision established a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy. The ban, which Bush signed last year, has been ruled unconstitutional by three federal judges, but appeals are pending. The law bars a rarely used technique for second-trimester abortions, which are themselves rare. Later-stage abortions most often result from fears for the woman's health or fetal anomalies.

The gag order Bush imposed through executive order on his third day in office remains in effect, withholding U.S. aid from foreign health clinics if a worker in such places as India or Africa even mentions the abortion option. The spending-bill amendment allows health corporations to slap that same gag order on U.S. doctors and nurses. Physicians who oppose abortion already are not compelled by law to perform one. But now a hospital chief who opposes abortion could silence every doctor and nurse in his or her employ. In rural communities with few hospitals and health-plan choices, the measure could effectively end legal abortions. And that's the point.

The act overrides laws in California and other states explicitly guaranteeing the right to choose. States insisting that hospitals with a no-abortion policy offer that service to women covered by Med-Cal risk losing millions in federal Medicaid dollars.

With dozens more bills in the congressional hopper, with titles such as the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act or the Post-Abortion Depression Research and Care Act, reproductive choice is fading fast.

Kerry Supporters Can Be The Loyal Opposition

Browsing through the LTE's in the Sunday newspapers, this call for Democrats to stand their ground, caught my eye in the Boston Globe:


Kerry supporters can be the loyal opposition
November 28, 2004

WITH ALL the talk of reuniting the country, it is important for those who supported Jerry Kerry to not mindlessly comply. Democrats must not forget the hopes that were invested in John Kerry, and they cannot let those hopes die after a disappointing election. If the Bush administration fails to address Democratic concerns, it is vital that the party stand its ground, and vocalize the beliefs of nearly half of America. Better is a divided country with a questioning populace than a united country where the government faces no opposition from the people.


Here's a few more LTE's worth reading...
Our children will pay for this election
Politics and religion: more divisiveness
Excuse me, I have no moral values?
Election results will have a huge impact on Supreme Court

Democrats Make Appeal for Hungry on Radio

There are moral values more important than worrying about what movies your neighbor is watching, or who they are sleeping with:

Democrats Make Appeal for Hungry on Radio

DES MOINES, Iowa - Growing numbers of Americans were hungry this Thanksgiving, and the nation should do more to help them enjoy its bounty, the Democrats said Saturday in their weekly radio address.

"Unfortunately, the blessing of abundant food is not shared by all Americans," Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack said. "A recent report from our Department of Agriculture documented an increase in hunger in America, particularly among our children."

Vilsack, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said sharing is an American value rooted in the country's origins when American Indians helped the Pilgrims four centuries ago.

"On that day, sharing became an American value," Vilsack said. "Living up to that value requires us to do what we can, and what we must, to stop hunger in America."

MORE

ENVIRONMENTAL WATCH: The Dirty Big Secret About US Energy Production

Coal's global goal
November 27, 2004

THE DIRTY big secret about US energy production is that coal is about to play an even larger role. Already more than 50 percent of US electricity comes from plants burning coal, the fossil fuel that emits the greatest amount of the most common greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. Coal's share in the power picture is projected to spike upward in coming years as utilities turn to coal as an alternative to increasingly scarce natural gas.

The more than 100 new coal plants that, according to a New York Times survey, are up for approval nationwide will be expected to meet up-to-date federal requirements on such pollutants as nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide. But unless Congress passes the bipartisan bill sponsored by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman that curbs global warming by regulating carbon emissions, there is nothing in federal law to force the power companies to limit the carbon dioxide they will pump into the atmosphere.

Lamentably, the United States is further isolating itself on this issue from the rest of the world. With Russia's recent ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the treaty will go into effect in less than three months. Nations will begin taking steps to cut back greenhouse gas emissions and trading credits for doing so while the United States goes on a spree of new coal plant production. In the past year, US companies have planned more new coal plants than they did in the previous 12 years.

One organization that is leading a campaign to rally support for the McCain-Lieberman bill -- whose limits on carbon emissions are much milder than Kyoto's -- is Environmental Defense. Its director, Peter Goldmark, spoke convincingly to leaders of Boston's business and investment community last Monday on the scientific consensus behind global warming and the role that carbon dioxide is playing in it. Just one of the effects he cited is reduced grain production in three of the world's breadbasket areas, including the North American plains region.

Goldmark said that if he were speaking anywhere except the United States he would not have to explain the science behind climate change, so universal is acceptance elsewhere of the role of man-made gases. But there continue to be skeptics in the United States, especially in the Bush administration, who believe that action to curb carbon emissions is either unnecessary or unaffordable.

There are also more than 50 global-warming ostriches in the Senate. The last time that body voted on McCain-Lieberman, just 43 senators backed it. Environmental Defense and other backers of carbon limits have their work cut out for them. If they fail and 100 coal plants bloom, the planet's attempt to stop its uncontrolled experiment in climate change will suffer a severe setback.

Kennedy Investigating More Effective Talk About Religious Issues From Democrats

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, is investigating how Democrats can talk more effectively about religious issues in the run-up to the midterm elections, when the party of an incumbent president traditionally loses seats in Congress. He was reluctant to talk about his plans until his staff completed research he requested.

"Friends of John Kerry"

Kerry plans to call panel
November 25, 2004

John F. Kerry plans to set up a federal campaign committee as early as this week, which would allow him to seek a fifth term in the US Senate in 2008 while not precluding another run for president that year. The Massachusetts Democrat will call the committee Friends of John Kerry, spokesman David Wade said, and stock it with money from fund-raisers that have yet to be scheduled. Kerry transferred all the money from his previous committee to his presidential campaign committee after retaining his Senate seat in 2002. He could do the same should he decide against seeking reelection in favor of a second bid for the presidency.

Alice's Restaurant

WBCN in Boston, used to make it an annual tradition to play Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving. For nearly 15 years now, I have lived in L.A., but I always think of Alice's Restaurant each year on Thanksgiving...

Happy Thanksgiving to all. It's been a tough year for so many, but there is still much to be thankful for.

Alice's Restaurant
By Arlo Guthrie

This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the
restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant,
that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Alice's
Restaurant.

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on
Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the
restaurant, but Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the
church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and
Fasha the dog. And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of
room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin' all that room,
seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn't
have to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd be
a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So
we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW
microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed
on toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the
dump saying, "Closed on Thanksgiving." And we had never heard of a dump
closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off
into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.

We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the
side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the
cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile
is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we
decided to throw our's down.

That's what we did, and drove back to the church, had a thanksgiving
dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the
next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, "Kid,
we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of
garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And
I said, "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope
under that garbage."

After speaking to Obie for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we
finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down
and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the
police officer's station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the
shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the
police officer's station.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at
the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for
being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and
we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out
and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again,
which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station
there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was
both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said "Obie, I don't think I
can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on." He said, "Shut up, kid.
Get in the back of the patrol car."

And that's what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the
quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of
Stockbridge, Massachusets, where this happened here, they got three stop
signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the
Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars,
being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to
get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of
cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer's station.
They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and
they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each
one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach,
the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to
mention the aerial photography.

After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to put
us in the cell. Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the cell, I want your
wallet and your belt." And I said, "Obie, I can understand you wanting my
wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you
want my belt for?" And he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings." I
said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?"
Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the
toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown, and he took
out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars roll out the - roll the
toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. Obie
was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice
(remember Alice? It's a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few
nasty words to Obie on the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back
to the church, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat,
and didn't get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court.

We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten
colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back
of each one, sat down. Man came in said, "All rise." We all stood up,
and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he
sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the
twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows
and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog.
And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry,
'cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American
blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the
judge wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each
one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And
we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but thats not
what I came to tell you about.

Came to talk about the draft.

They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street,
where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected,
neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one
day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so
I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. `Cause I wanted to
look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted
to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York,
and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all
kinds o' mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave
me a piece of paper, said, "Kid, see the phsychiatrist, room 604."

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I
wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and
he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down
yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me,
sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

Didn't feel too good about it.

Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections,
detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me
at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four
hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty
ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was
inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no
part untouched. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the
last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there,
and I walked up and said, "What do you want?" He said, "Kid, we only got
one question. Have you ever been arrested?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice's Restaurant Massacre,
with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all
the phenome... - and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, did you ever
go to court?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten
colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on
the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want
you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's
where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father
rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And
they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the
bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest
father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly
'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me
and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay
$50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I
said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand,
and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing,
father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the
bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of
things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it
up and said.

"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-
know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-
you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-
officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for
forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had
fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there,
and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it
down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the
pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the
other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on
the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the
following words:

("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")

I went over to the sargent, said, "Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to
ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm
sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench
'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women,
kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and
said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints
off to Washington."

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a
study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm
singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar
situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a
situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into
the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get
anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and
all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the
guitar.

With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and
sing it when it does. Here it comes.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud.
I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it
for another twenty five minutes. I'm not proud... or tired.

So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part
harmony and feeling.

We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.

All right now.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice's Restaurant

©1966,1967 (Renewed) by Appleseed Music Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Read "The Thanks We Give".

Bush Administration Cutting Pell Grants

I'm one of those parents who worries about where the money will come from to send my teenager to college in a couple of years. As funding for education continually gets cut by the Bush administration, I worry, not just about my teenager's future but the future of the children of all low-income and middle-income families...


Undermining the Pell Grants
Published: November 25, 2004

Daunted by soaring costs, as many as a quarter of low-income students with grades and test scores that make them prime college material no longer even apply to college. This is bad news at a time when skilled jobs are moving abroad and a college diploma has become the minimum price of admission to the new economy. The Bush administration, however, has actually made this problem worse by cutting the federal Pell grant program, which was developed to encourage poor and working-class students to pursue higher education.

The cut could cause as many as 1.2 million low-income students to have their grants reduced - and as many as 100,000 could lose their grants altogether. That inevitably means that students will either drop out or take longer to finish their degrees.

The Pell program, which is meant to help students pay for tuition and other expenses, like books and housing, has been gravely underfinanced for a long time. Congress has tried to mask the problem by tricky bookkeeping. In particular, Congress failed to revise the maximum grant to keep pace with rising costs. Left untouched for a decade, the aid formula is still capped at around $4,000 a year - far less than what it takes to support a college student.

The Republican leadership tried to cut the Pell program by changing the formula for distributing the money in a way that would cut out students who had higher - although still inadequate - family incomes. The leaders backed off when middle-income families protested and student aid threatened to become an issue in the presidential campaign.

Back then, Congress agreed to hold off on any changes until it could look at the student aid problem as a whole during reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which is due to come before the body next year. But with the election behind it, the administration slashed the program anyway, by roughly $300 million. Eliminating the resources to help needy and qualified students go to college will not even put a dent in the nation's growing deficit, but it will greatly diminish opportunities for upward mobility for the nation's youth.

Thomas Friedman: In My Next Life

In My Next Life

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: November 25, 2004

n my next life, I want to be Tom DeLay, the House majority leader

Yes, I want to get almost the entire Republican side of the House of Representatives to bend its ethics rules just for me. I want to be able to twist the arms of House Republicans to repeal a rule that automatically requires party leaders to step down if they are indicted on a felony charge - something a Texas prosecutor is considering doing to DeLay because of corruption allegations.

But most of all, I want to have the gall to sully American democracy at a time when young American soldiers are fighting in Iraq so we can enjoy a law-based society here and, maybe, extend it to others. Yes, I want to be Tom DeLay. I want to wear a little American flag on my lapel in solidarity with the troops, while I besmirch every value they are dying for.

If I can't be Tom DeLay, then I want to be one of the gutless Republican House members who voted to twist the rules for DeLay out of fear that "the Hammer," as they call him, might retaliate by taking away a coveted committee position or maybe a parking place.

Yes, I want to be a Republican House member. At a time when 180 of the 211 members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Iraq who have been wounded in combat have insisted on returning to duty, I want to look my constituents and my kids in the eye and tell them that I voted to empty the House ethics rules because I was afraid of Tom DeLay.

MORE

Update on Recount

Some supporters of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and running mate John Edwards cling to the hope that an Ohio recount can swing the election

by Adam Stone

A White House spokeswoman told North County News last Friday that citizens should embrace the Election Day results and dismiss recount efforts in Ohio that could hand Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts the presidency.

"The election has ended, and now is the time for the country to come together to address the challenges our nation faces," the spokeswoman, Suzy DeFrancis, remarked.

Bush won Ohio by a vote of 2,796,147 to John Kerry's 2,659,664, according to the official tally.

In a series of e-mail interviews with North County News two weeks ago, Kerry spokesman David Wade spoke about recount efforts led by a team of 17,000 lawyers that could trigger the removal of President George W. Bush from office.

Since then, under mounting pressure from alternative media outlets as well as progressive voices outside the Democratic Party, Kerry issued a statement to his supporters that left open the possibility that he could obtain--through a recount--the requisite electoral votes to seize the White House.

"Regardless of the outcome of this election, once all the votes are counted--and they will be counted--we will continue to challenge this administration," Kerry said through a web-exclusive statement and video Friday, which, curiously, was not distributed to the press.

The usage of the word 'regardless' in the carefully parsed statement was the first indication Kerry has offered that, in his mind, the official election results might be inaccurate enough to tilt the election in his favor.

Wade was e-mailed the remarks from the White House spokeswoman.

"Any president of the United States should make it a priority to count every vote in our country because every citizen's full faith in the democratic process is critical," Wade responded yesterday (Tuesday). "That's why John Kerry and John Edwards built a voter protection team of lawyers around the country, lawyers who are today monitoring recounts and the counting of provisional ballots including Ohio and New Mexico. Every vote will be counted, and we Democrats aren't afraid to fight to protect voters' rights."

A Kerry victory in Ohio would give the senator enough electoral votes to seize the White House.

In another signal the Kerry/Edwards team is increasing its involvement in the recount effort, a note was posted on the campaign website yesterday that called on supporters to contribute to the Kerry-Edwards 2004 General Election Legal and Accounting Compliance Fund.

"The Federal Election Commission has just granted our request to raise funds now to cover recount expenses," the website states. "Your contribution to Kerry-Edwards 2004 GELAC will provide the resources to make sure we are prepared to win the post election day battles."

Other than alleged voting irregularities, some have called into question the reversal of the exit polls (surveys of individuals who have just cast ballots), which early on predicted a Kerry victory.

Based on the full set of the 4 p.m. Election Day exit poll data Dr. Stephen F. Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania calculated that "the odds of just three of the major swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania all swinging as far as they did against their respective exit polls were 250 million to one."

The Ohio Election Protection Coalition's public hearings have documented insufficient voting machines in black Democratic precincts resulting in five-to-seven hour waits, voter intimidation, machine malfunctions and other irregularities.

Another significant development this week was the Democratic Party breaking its silence on the matter.

Ohio Chairman Dennis White distributed a press release on Monday afternoon that ran the headline: "Kerry/Edwards Campaign Joins Ohio Recount."

It stated "assuring Ohioans receive an accurate count of all votes cast for president has prompted the Democratic Party to join the initiative to recount the results of the November 2 presidential election."

The White House was asked to respond specifically to Wade's statements in last week's North County News article and also address the Ohio recount and reports of voting irregularities.

DeFrancis declined to comment on the particulars.

The article sparked dozens of impassioned e-mail responses from readers outside of North County News' northern Westchester coverage area, with the piece being picked up by assorted alternative media news outlets.

With the recount controversy spreading through the Web universe at a feverish pace, the article ranked as the top hit on the Yahoo search engine for basic research entries about what is being dubbed as "Votergate."

The article buoyed the spirits of a New York-based activist group that was formed to pressure the mainstream media into covering the stories chronicling voting irregularities and the Ohio recount effort commissioned by the Libertarian and Green parties.

"Democracy is at stake and this needs major media attention," remarked Ellen Frank, an East Hampton, New York resident.

"There is an unofficial lockdown by the mainstream press," said Frank, whose brother, Dr. Justin Frank, published a book in June named "Bush on the Couch: Inside the mind of the president."

"When I read the article, I said: '17,000 lawyers. Is this really true? Are they really working on this?,'" remembered Frank, who distributed the article at a MoveOn.org party.

"We're trying to get enough major media attention to challenge the election," said Frank, who filed a complaint with the U.S. Supreme Court during the 2000 election, citing herself as a disenfranchised voter.

Two minor-party presidential candidates raised enough money to file for an official recount of the vote in Ohio.

The Green Party has been working with the Libertarian Party--both parties were on the ballot in Ohio--in securing a recount. Green Party candidate David Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik say they've demanded that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who co-chaired this year's Bush campaign in Ohio, recuse himself from the recount process.

Cobb Media Director Blair Bobier said, "The Ohio presidential election was marred by numerous press and independent reports of mismarked and discarded ballots, problems with electronic voting machines and the targeted disenfranchisement of African-American voters."

"Due to widespread reports of irregularities in Ohio's voting process, we are compelled to demand a recount of the Ohio presidential vote," Badnarik and Cobb said in a joint statement. "Voting is at the heart of the American political process and its integrity must be preserved. When Americans stand in line for hours to exercise their right to vote, they need to know that their votes will be counted fairly and accurately..."

The Ohio vote will be certified on December 3 at the latest, Bobier said. The Electoral College votes on December 13, so it is unclear whether or not a recount would be completed by then.

The minor-party presidential candidates filed a federal lawsuit Monday to force a recount of Ohio ballots, and a spokesman for the state Democratic Party said it intended to join the suit.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Toledo, Bobier said.

Dan Trevas, spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party, said the party would join the recount request after the secretary of state certified the results, or sooner if an early recount is ordered by a court.

"Counties are very upset," said Keith Cunningham, director of the Allen County Board of Elections and incoming president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, who called the lawsuit "frivolous."

"Commissioners are beginning to understand--and if they don't, will understand soon--what kind of financial impact this is going to have on them, in a year when elections already cost a great deal more than expected," Cunningham told the Associated Press.

Badnarik and Cobb have raised $235,000 as of Monday morning, an amount which covers the $113,600 bond they had to provide as demanded by Ohio election law, plus some of their own organizational expenses.

Ohio law requires payment of $10 per precinct, or $113,600 statewide, but election officials say the true expense would be far greater. "It's going to crush county governments," Cunningham said.

Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Blackwell, has estimated the actual cost at $1.5 million.

Dr. Frank, whose book explores Bush's "psychological limitations," believes the Ohio recount will hand Kerry the presidency.

"I think that a recount in Ohio, if done properly, will show a narrow Kerry victory and he should be inaugurated hopefully by January 20, 2005," the Washington D.C.-based, clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at George Washington University Medical Center said.

"The disruption and cries of foul will be huge," the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst said. "But I think Bush lost. Kerry people are finally joining in, though I think they have been active all along, just quietly."

Pursuant to a request by independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, votes in some New Hampshire towns are being recounted. An analysis showed wide differences in voting trends between the 2000 and 2004 elections: about three quarters of precincts with severe changes used Diebold optical scanning machines.

Last week, Diebold agreed to pay $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit with the state of California. Diebold officials misled state leaders about the security and certification of its products to get payments from the state, according to California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

Diebold is headed by Republican Wally O'Dell. Last year, O'Dell wrote to Ohio Republican donors, saying he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year."

Nader doesn't expect to change the outcome: In New Hampshire, Kerry defeated Bush, 50 percent to 49 percent, while Nader got less than one percent from the state's 301 precincts.

Don DeBar, an Ossining resident and Nader campaign worker in San Antonio, Texas this year, is trying to stitch together the fragmented left and have progressive activists unite on the recount issue.

Liberals, he said, need to "get past political antagonisms," for the time being.

"One thing that I've done is bring this to the airwaves in NYC," the area activist said. "As a reporter on the drive-time morning program Wake Up Call on WBAI-FM, I provided some detailed coverage of the issue, from the many reports of intimidation, error and fraud to the failure of the Kerry campaign to act to protect the voting rights of his own voters..."

The University of California's Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team released a statistical study - the sole method available to monitor the accuracy of e-voting -reporting irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 to 260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The official tally in Florida shows Bush with 380,978 more votes than Kerry. The three counties where the voting anomalies were most prevalent were also the most heavily Democratic: Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, respectively.

CNN reported a 377,000-vote margin between Bush and Kerry. The study shows an unexplained discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods, what the team says can be deemed a "smoke alarm."

The probability of this arising by chance, they say, is less than 0.1 percent. The research team formally called on Florida voting officials to investigate.

Kathryn Levy was a volunteer coordinator in the Kerry headquarters in Broward County, Florida and said yesterday she received "innumerable complaints."

She was the supervisor of a hotline in Broward that handled the complaints.

Levy believes "there was a systematic effort to disenfranchise thousands of citizens in that heavily Democratic county."

"Many newly registered voters were told that they needed to present multiple IDs at polling places, when in fact only one is required," Levy wrote for an intended op-ed piece that was truncated into a letter to the editor published last Tuesday in Long Island's Newsday. "Others were informed that they had already voted and were turned away although they had not yet cast their vote. Many of those requesting provisional ballots were denied even that recourse."

"Perhaps the most chilling complaints concerned the electronic voting machines," Levy continued. "We received several reports of voters who repeatedly pressed the name Kerry on their voting screen only to have Bush appear. In other cases, voters pressed Kerry and were later asked to confirm their Bush vote."

John Zogby, president of the polling firm Zogby International, is concerned about the difference between some of the exit polls and the official vote counts.

"We're talking about the Free World here," he told the Inter Press Service News Agency.

"Something is definitely wrong," Zogby also told the news agency.

Bush now leads Kerry by about 136,000 votes in Ohio. A battle is looming over nearly 155,000 provisional ballots. The Ohio Democratic Party has joined a lawsuit by elector Audrey J. Schering, which asks United States District Judge Michael H. Watson to order Blackwell to impose uniform standards for counting provisional ballots in all 88 counties.

The lawsuit cites the United States Supreme Court's opinion in Bush v. Gore, which "held that the failure to provide specific standards for counting of ballots that are sufficient to assure a uniform count statewide violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution."

Of 11 counties that had completed checking provisional ballots, 81 percent have been ruled valid.

On Saturday, November 13, the Ohio Election Protection Coalition's public hearings in Columbus solicited extensive sworn first-person testimony from 32 Ohio voters, precinct judges, poll workers, legal observers and party challengers. An additional 66 people provided written affidavits of election irregularities.

The testimony, according to Harvey Wasserman, a senior editor at the Columbus Free Press, revealed an effort on the part of Blackwell to deny primarily African-American and young voters the right to cast their ballots within a reasonable time.

On November 17, Blackwell wrote an op-ed piece for Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, stating "every eligible voter who wanted to vote had the opportunity to vote. There was no widespread fraud, and there was no disenfranchisement. A half-million more Ohioans voted than ever before with fewer errors than four years ago, a sure sign of success by any measure."

Additional testimony also called into question the validity of the actual vote counts. There are doubts that the final official tally in Ohio, due December 1 to Blackwell's office, will have any validity.

At the Columbus hearings, witnesses testified under oath that the election was riddled with discrimination and disarray.

"In precincts 1 A and 5 G, voting (at) Hillman Elementary School, which is a predominantly African-American community, there were woefully insufficient number of voting machines in three precincts," Werner Lange, a pastor from Youngstown, Ohio, said in his testimony.

"I was told that the standard was to have one voting machine per 100 registered voters," he continued. "Precinct A had 750 registered voters. Precinct G had 690. There should have been 14 voting machines at this site. There were only 6, three per precinct, less than 50 percent of the standard. This caused an enormous bottleneck among voters who had to wait a very, very long time to vote, many of them giving up in frustration and leaving...I estimate, by the way, that an estimated loss of over 8,000 votes from the African American community in the City of Youngstown alone, with its 84 precincts, were lost due to insufficient voting machines, and that would translate to some 7,000 votes lost for John Kerry for president in Youngstown alone. . . ."

According to a November 5 article by the Associated Press, election officials in Ohio admitted that an error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct. Franklin County reported Bush with 4,258 votes and John Kerry with 260, even though only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.

Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting, along with people from Florida Fair Elections, showed up at Florida's Volusia County Elections Office on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 16 and asked to see, under a public records request, each of the poll tapes for the 100-plus optical scanners in the precincts in that county. The election workers, having been notified in advance of her request, handed her a set of printouts dated November 15 and lacking signatures.

Harris pointed out that the printouts given to her were not the original poll tapes and had no signatures, and thus were not what she had requested.

Reportedly, they told her that the originals were held in another location, the election office's warehouse, and that, since it was the end of the day, they should meet her the following morning to show them to her. The next day she started searching the garbage bags outside, finding public record tapes in the trash. Disparities between the November 15 tape and November 2 tape emerged--all reportedly favoring President Bush.

Harris could not be reached for comment by press time.

The mainstream media, which has suffered increasingly in recent years by charges of liberal bias and Democratic partisanship, has largely taken a pass on the recount story. In fact, The New York Times, the symbol and primary target of conservative media critics, published a front-page article two weeks ago that portrayed the recount effort as a campaign being waged by partisan, conspiratorial and error-happy bloggers with a liberal agenda.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has tracked the story aggressively on both his "BLOGGERMANN" msnbc.com web log and "Countdown," a television news analysis program he hosts for the cable network, which is home to commentators of all political stripes, from Pat Buchanan to Ron Reagan.

In fact, Olbermann referenced the North County News article in a Sunday blog entry. He borrowed a quote from the article that triggered perhaps the most attention from activists: "We have 17,000 lawyers working on this, and the grassroots accountability couldn't be any higher -no (irregularity) will go unchecked. Period," Wade had told North County News.

Kerry conceded the 2004 presidential contest on November 3, the day after the election, a decision that carries no concrete legal standing. That day, he and his running mate, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, pledged to ensure every vote is counted, although they said at the time there was no chance a voting tally update would result in swinging the result in their favor.

Former Vice President Al Gore conceded in his 2000 battle with Bush for the White House before demanding a recount, which was ultimately halted by the U.S. Supreme Court, ending the debacle in Florida.

Howard Fineman, chief political correspondent for Newsweek, appeared on Countdown on Monday night.

"They keep saying these little things designed to make clear, at least to their supporters and the whole blogosphere out there, that they take the possibility (of a Kerry victory) and the need for a recount seriously," Fineman said of Kerry and his surrogates during an interview with Olbermann.

Fineman said he talked to Blackwell earlier in the evening.

"There in fact will be a recount," Fineman remarked. "We will be talking about chads once again."

Olbermann posted an entry on his blog on Monday evening, after that night's Countdown telecast.

"As Kerry himself calculated early on November 3, the provisional ballots alone obviously could not provide anything close to enough bona fide Democratic votes to overcome President Bush's 135,000 vote plurality in the Ohio election night tally," he wrote. "But as Howard also pointed out - and my colleague David Shuster so thoroughly extrapolated in a previous post on Hardblogger - the provisionals plus the 'undercount' could make things very close indeed. The punch-card ballots 'where it looks like nobody marked anything' when read by an optical scanning machine, might produce thousands of legitimate votes if hand-counted and judged by Ohio's strict laws defining how many corners of the proverbial chads have to be detached to make a vote valid."

Fineman's analysis, Olbermann writes, "(puts) it in terms that the mainstream can't ignore."

That's heartening to the likes of Ellen Frank.

"There is something very wrong here with the press," said Frank, who suspects, like other recount activists, that top level producers and editors in the mainstream press have barred their talent from covering the story extensively, as to avoid the appearance of partisanship.

"We believe democracy itself is at risk," said Frank, whose ad hoc group of philanthropists, writers and other activists are, among other things, mounting letter-writing campaigns about the recount to newspapers across the nation.

"We believe this was a fraudulent election," she said. "...We are fearful that 'major' media is intimidated. We are fearful we are abandoned by our own Democratic Party. We are working to hold the administration and our party accountable."

Coulter Exposed?

Strap-On Veterans for Truth

An organization dedicating to exposing the truth about the former drag queen now known as Ann Coulter

Ms. Coulter today, with vestigal Adam's apple clearly visible.

We are a coalition of former friends and co-workers of Ann Coulter who are upset by her vicious anti-gay, anti-muslim, anti-feminist rhetoric and feel the truth should be told. Our organization, Strap-On Veterans For Truth, is dedicated to exposing the true past of America’s number one hatemonger.

Ann Coulter is actually a former drag queen from Key West named Pudenda Shenanigans. Ms. Shenanigans was famous for her renditions of “Dude Looks Like a Lady” “I will Survive” and “You Shook Me All Night Long” as well as an extensive Barbara Streisand repertoire. We who used to work with her are concerned for her as well as upset by the vile hatred she has spewed towards her former friends in the gay community. We feel that by bringing the truth to light perhaps Ann will come to grips with her past and change her wicked ways.

As Pudenda Shenanigans, she was well known on the drag circuit in Key West. Whether she actually had a full sex change or not is a matter of debate, although her adam’s apple is still visible in photos, under the appropriate light. We who laughed, cried, worked and danced with her feel her story should be told. We are not out to punish her, but feel it’s time she owned up to what she really is.

Apologies Made and Accepted

There have been many apologies made at Sorry Everybody:

Over on AMERICAblog I see they found evidence that those who have undergone analogous disgraces have forgiven us:

Our Moral Values In New York Times ad

MyMoralValues.com is taking out this ad (click for larger version) in the New York Times on Friday. In the future they might advertise in other papers, possibly in the red states.

Tying Things Together

First we had Bush with the turkey

The we had Bush with his fly open

Therefore, we need a picture of a turkey perhaps closing the President's zipper (or otherwise getting friendly). If that turkey is male, Bush will have big problems with his base.

CANADA BUSY SENDING BACK BUSH-DODGERS

CANADA BUSY SENDING BACK BUSH-DODGERS

by Joe Blundo The Columbus Dispatch 11/16/04

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The re-election of President Bush is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray and agree with Bill O'Reilly.

Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night. "I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota.

The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. "He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences,but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields. "Not real effective," he said. "The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn't give milk."

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them cross the border and leave them to fend for themselves. "A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though."

When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR.

In the days since the election, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs,Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers. "If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age," an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies. "I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them," an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?"

In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice President Dick Cheney met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals, a source close to Cheney said. "We're going to have some Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. And we might put some endangered species on postage stamps. The president is determined to reach out."

Russ Baker Reports In From The Country's First Presidential Recount

Investigative journalist and commentator Russ Baker reports in from the country's first presidential recount -- taking place in, of all places, New Hampshire -- where the national outcome won't come into question, but the efficacy of the voting equipment could:

By Russ Baker, The Nation

The early results are trickling in on the nation's first ballot recount of the 2004 presidential election, which commenced November 18 in New Hampshire. John Kerry, for one, probably won't sit bolt upright at the news that three extra votes were found for him thus far in a state he won anyway. But if nothing else, the process confirms that in an age of technological overkill, old-fashioned paper ballots are still the best guarantee of the integrity of the democratic process.

The focus in New Hampshire is on precincts where results went strikingly against current statewide trends and past localized ones: a kind of under-the-hood check of the controversial private-sector machinery that increasingly drives the ballot- counting process and has drawn the skeptical scrutiny of activists throughout the country.

Final results won't be known until those stolid-paced Granite State folks complete their task sometime after Thanksgiving.

But so far, in the two precincts, or "wards," where official recounts were posted, the vote totals hardly changed at all. In the town of Litchfield, both Bush and Kerry gained three votes-- precious little out of more than 5,000 ballots cast. In Manchester's Ward 7, with a similar number of voters, Bush's total remained the same, while Kerry picked up three.

Clearly, New Hampshire plays no role in the crucial Electoral College (news - web sites) math in which we're all interested. Hence, verifying the integrity of the mechanism is the entire game here. The recount came about at the behest of Ida Briggs, a Michigan computer programmer and database designer whose number-crunching led her to doubt the trustworthiness of new voting and counting technologies. She zeroed in on bite-sized New Hampshire, and principally on certain Democratic-inclined precincts that trended more conservative while a conservative state trended more liberal. The suspect precincts, she noted, overwhelmingly relied on ballot-reading technology from Diebold Inc. -- the GOP- friendly Ohio company and ten-ton gorilla of the elections business. Her analysis convinced the Nader campaign to call for a recount, a purely civic-minded venture since the quixotic Nader, of course, would not benefit.

If the results from the two completed precincts are mirrored in the remaining targeted ones (another nine out of 126 total statewide), it may reassure the most skeptical among us that Diebold's much-criticized optical-scanning machines (35 percent of votes nationally are now opscan-counted) do a surprisingly good job of reading hand-marked ballots.

But even if Diebold receives a passing mark, the Concord recount, perhaps the first of several in statehouses nationwide (all-important election-decider Ohio may be reviewed in December), could by no means be considered a waste of time and resources. Irrespective of the outcome, the exercise itself teaches us important things about the benefits of openness in the pursuit of functioning democracy. It reveals a lot about what's good about our voting system -- and offers hints of what needs to be fixed, which is plenty. (continued.)

Full Text can be found at http://www.thenation.com.

DiFi to run in '06

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, viewed as one of the few moderate Democrats in an increasingly polarized Senate, is running for re-election in two years, and even Republicans admit she's an overwhelming choice to keep the seat she first won in a 1992 special election.

"You can probably call the result of this ... two years in advance," said Kevin Spillane, a GOP consultant. "There would have to be an event of 9/11 proportions to make her vulnerable.''

"She's going to be heavily favored," agreed Allen Hoffenblum, a Republican consultant whose California Target Book analyzes political races in the state. "I doubt if you'll see any heavyweights running against her."

Feinstein is known as someone who is willing to work behind the scenes with politicians of both parties to get things done. Her ability to find common ground with the majority party will be more important beginning in January when the GOP increases its advantage over the Democrats to 55-44, with one independent. Feinstein's bipartisan reputation has eluded California's other senator, Barbara Boxer, who's seen as more liberal and more partisan.

"If you've got a serious problem, you go to Dianne Feinstein," said Hoffenblum. "If you want a rally in front of the Capitol steps, you go to Barbara Boxer."

More Doubts on Moral Values Winning Election for Bush

Here's yet another article debunking the post-election conventional wisdom that it was conservative "moral values" which won the election for Bush:

The Gay Marriage Myth
Terrorism, not values, drove Bush's re-election.
By Paul Freedman
Posted Friday, Nov. 5, 2004, at 1:16 PM PT

Did "moral values"—in particular, the anti-gay marriage measures on ballots in 11 states this week—drive President Bush's re-election? That's the early conventional wisdom as Democrats begin soul-searching and finger-pointing. These measures are alleged to have drawn Christian conservatives to the polls, many of whom failed to vote last time. The theory is intriguing, but the data don't support it. Gay marriage and values didn't decide this election. Terrorism did.

Full article

Swift Boat Vets Continue To Expose Kerry

Above: A Swift Boat Veterans For Truth ad questions Kerry's coffee-purchase record.

Above: "Crossing The Line," an ad which claims Kerry wore street shoes on the lanes at a local bowling alley.

Bush Windows

Disclaimer Stickers for Science Textbooks

In light of the prevailing views in this country on religion as opposed to science (The Triumph of Ignorance) text books will never be the same. It's time to fight back against the anti-scientific viewpoints being promoted by the radical right since they have taken power.

Click Here For Some Great Examples of "Disclaimer Stickers for Science Textbooks"

Government Accountability Office to Conduct Investigation of 2004 Election Irregularities

Government Accountability Office to Conduct Investigation of 2004 Election Irregularities

(Washington, DC) Reps. John Conyers, Jr., Jerrold Nadler, Robert Wexler, Robert Scott, and Rush Holt announced today that, in response to their November 5 and 8 letters to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the GAO has decided to move forward with an investigation of election irregularities in the 2004 election. The five Members issued the following statement:

"We are pleased that the GAO has reviewed the concerns expressed in our letters and has found them of sufficient merit to warrant further investigation. On its own authority, the GAO will examine the security and accuracy of voting technologies, distribution and allocation of voting machines, and counting of provisional ballots. We are hopeful that GAO's non-partisan and expert analysis will get to the bottom of the flaws uncovered in the 2004 election. As part of this inquiry, we will provide copies of specific incident reports received in our offices, including more than 57,000 such complaints provided to the House Judiciary Committee.

"The core principle of any democracy is the consent of the governed. All Americans, no matter how they voted, need to have confidence that when they cast their ballot, their voice is heard."

The Members listed above were joined in requesting the non-partisan GAO investigation by Reps. Melvin Watt, John Olver, Bob Filner, Gregory Meeks, Barbara Lee, Tammy Baldwin, Louise Slaughter and George Miller.

Mr. President, The Barn Door's Open

Reported on Craig's List

Former Kerry-Edwards Staffer Still Isn't Getting Any - m4 - 29

---

Reply to: anon-49380405@craigslist.org
Date: 2004-11-23, 9:02AM EST


I'm a SWM who worked on the Kerry campaign and I wasn't getting any then... now that I've entered the deepest levels of depression after working 18 hour-days I'd like to feel better if only for a little while. If you're a woman and you're willing to just spoon with me naked for a night you'd make me feel a lot better. Sex would be great too but its been so long and I put on weight during the campaign I don't feel like I could ask for it. No Republicans need apply. You guys already screwed me over once. George Bush is responsible for my job loss too.


this is in or around Adams Morgan, DC
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

49380405

(I knew I'd find something quotable if I kept reading Wonkette)

Bush Joke of the Week

Bush dies and is immediately sent down to Hell. Lucifer tells him that he can take his pick from three different rooms, but once a room is passed up, he must continue to the next.

When they get to the first room Lucifer opens the door. Inside is a large swimming pool with Tricky Dick Nixon in it, desparately trying to stay afloat, but submerging and nearly drowning over and over again. Dubya says: "No way, I can't swim!"

Room number two holds Ronald Reagan swinging a huge sledgehammer blasting tons of rock into gravel. Dubya again declines: "I got a bad shoulder, and that looks like hard work."

He arrives at the third room, where Lucifer tells him "You must take this one, or you will burn in the hottest fire for all eternity!"

He opens that door and sees a large bed with Bill Clinton naked on his back. Monica is kneeling between his legs doing what she became famous for. Dubya starts smirking and says, "I think I could live with that!"

Lucifer leads Bush into the room and says, "OK Monica, you may go now."

Bush Cabinet Moves Seen as Stifling Dissent

Bush Cabinet Moves Seen as Stifling Dissent

By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush is moving to concentrate power as he begins his second term, placing trusted members of his inner circle in key positions, but some analysts believe he risks stifling healthy debate within his administration.

"It is understandable that this president, like any president, wants his decisions to be taken as writ," said William Galston, a government professor at the University of Maryland, who served as a domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton.

"However this president is running the risk of restricting the range of debate within the administration very seriously," Galston said.

Alarm bells rang in Washington's political circles last week when the new CIA director, Porter Goss, sent a memo to agency employees telling them their job was to "support the administration and its policies."

"As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies," Goss said in the memorandum, which came after several top officers resigned.

Even Republicans criticized that choice of words, saying it was crucial for the CIA to retain its objectivity and ability to "speak truth to power." Democrats, noting that Goss until recently was a highly partisan Republican member of the House of Representatives, saw it as part of a disturbing pattern.

Bush moved swiftly after his Nov. 2 election victory to consolidate power. He installed trusted White House counsel Alberto Gonzales as attorney general and nominated national security adviser Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, while elevating her deputy, Stephen Hadley, to replace her. Loyalists from the inner circle will also take over as White House counsel and at the Education Department.

Some historians believe that with Republicans securely controlling both houses of Congress, Bush will begin his second term with more power and fewer constraints than any president since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

DANGER OF HUBRIS

David Gergen, who served as White House adviser to four presidents, said the two dangers facing Bush were hubris and group-think, the tendency for everyone in an organization to adopt the prevailing view.

"By closing down dissent and centralizing power in a few hands, he is acting as if he truly believes that he and his teams have a perfect track record, that they know best and that they don't need any infusion of new heavyweights," Gergen wrote last week in The New York Times.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan last week denied that Bush was surrounding himself with "yes" men and women.

"Once a decision is made, the president expects the administration to work together," he said. "But he's always welcomed a wide diversity of views from members of his team."

Gary Schmitt of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, who served in the White House under President Ronald Reagan, dismissed the idea that alternative views would not be heard in inner circles as absurd.

"There's a massive amount of commentary, both inside and outside of government. You can't live in Washington, D.C., and not be exposed to all kinds of views," he said.

But political scientist Dean Spiliotes of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics said history taught that second term presidents often became increasingly impatient with and intolerant of dissenting views.

"Bush seems particularly susceptible to this because of his personal style. He doesn't like people in there playing devil's advocate. The result has been a higher risk of mistakes when you're all staffed with like-minded people," he said.

Full Article

Dan Rather Stepping Down as Anchor

Dan Rather is stepping down as anchor of the CBS Evening News in March, 24 years after he took the position. Previously Rather was the White House correspondent, best known for helping to expose Richard Nixon post-Watergate.

Rather has recently been the topic of controversy after both criticizing the right wing attack machine and after apparently being misled to use forged documents in a story on George Bush's National Guard record. The details of the alleged forgery remain under investigation, with the information provided by Rather (beyond the validity of the controversial memos) being verified as accurate. Following this incident he became a target of the right wing's attempts at suppressing free speech and free flow of information.

There is no word yet on his successor as anchor. He will continue working full time at CBS as a correspondent for 60 Minutes and on other assignments. I am hoping that no longer being tied down by the duties of the anchor position will allow him to spend more time on investigative journalism.

Encouraging News in NY Times/CBS Poll

There's several items of interest in a new New York Times/CBS News poll. Here's a condensed version of their findings:

At a time when the White House has portrayed Mr. Bush's 3.5-million-vote victory as a mandate, the poll found that Americans are at best ambivalent about Mr. Bush's plans to reshape Social Security, rewrite the tax code, cut taxes and appoint conservative judges to the bench. There is continuing disapproval of Mr. Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, with a plurality now saying it was a mistake to invade in the first place.

While Democrats, not surprisingly, were the staunchest opponents of many elements of Mr. Bush's second-term agenda, the concerns extended across party lines in some cases. Nearly two-thirds of all respondents - including 51 percent of Republicans - said it was more important to reduce deficits than to cut taxes, a central element of Mr. Bush's economic agenda.

The poll reflected the electoral feat of the Bush campaign this year. He won despite the fact that Americans disapproved of his handling of the economy, foreign affairs and the war in Iraq. There has been a slight increase in the number of Americans who believe the nation should never have gone into Iraq. A majority of Americans continue to believe the country is going in the wrong direction, traditionally a warning sign for an incumbent.

Even as two-thirds of respondents said they expected Mr. Bush to appoint judges who would vote to outlaw abortion, a majority continue to say they want the practice to remain either legal as it is now, which was Mr. Kerry's position, or to be legal but under stricter limits.

Americans said they opposed changing the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, which Mr. Bush campaigned on in the final weeks of his campaign. A majority continue to support allowing either same-sex marriages or legally recognized domestic partnerships for gay people.

The public appears ambivalent about the two proposals that Mr. Bush has identified as his major domestic initiatives for a second term: rewriting the Social Security system and reshaping the tax code, including more tax cuts.

On the tax code, administration officials are discussing plans that would, among other things, lower the tax rate on higher-income Americans and eliminate some deductions. In the poll, more than 6 in 10 of the respondents said people with higher incomes should pay a greater proportion of their income in taxes; 3 in 10 said all income groups should pay the same proportion.

About one-third of the respondents said the tax cuts passed in Mr. Bush's first term had been good for the economy; but nearly a fifth said they had done more harm, and just under half said the tax cuts had made little difference.

On Social Security, 45 percent said a proposal to permit people to invest their Social Security withholding money in private accounts was a bad idea; 49 percent said it was a good idea. The poll also found little confidence among Americans that Mr. Bush would assure the future solvency of the program: 51 percent said that Mr. Bush was unlikely to "make sure Social Security benefits are there for people like me."

In this poll, when allowed freely to name the issue that was most important in their vote, 6 percent chose moral values, although smaller numbers named issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. On a separate question in which voters were given a choice of nine issues, 5 percent chose abortion, 4 percent chose stem cell research and 2 percent chose same-sex marriage.

The top issue was the economy and jobs, which was cited by 29 percent of respondents.

By 48 percent to 40 percent, respondents said they believed four more years of a Bush presidency would divide the nation more than it would unite it.

Finally, in one bit of presumably good news for a party that is looking for it, Americans now have a better opinion of the Democratic Party than of the Republican Party: 54 percent said they had a favorable view of Democrats, compared with 39 percent with an unfavorable view. By contrast, 49 percent have a favorable view of Republicans, compared with 46 percent holding an unfavorable one.

Lawsuit: NYC Created 'Guantanamo' at RNC

GOT CIVIL LIBERTIES? Apparently not if you were a protester in NYC during the Republican National Convention!

Saying the city had created its "own little Guantanamo on the Hudson" during the Republican National Convention, a lawyer Monday filed a lawsuit on behalf of nearly 2,000 people arrested at demonstrations.

The federal lawsuit claims protesters and bystanders alike were rounded up in mass arrests without cause; were kept without access to their lawyers or families at an old bus depot used as a temporary detention center; and were exposed for days to cruel and inhuman conditions.
The lawsuit asks for unspecified damages.

"All that was missing were the orange jumpsuits," lawyer Jonathan C. Moore said. "Under the guise of terrorism and the fear of terrorism, we are all losing our rights."

Deputy Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne said the allegations were false and denied conditions were hazardous, noting police installed lights, ventilation, sanitary facilities and other amenities.

Among bystanders arrested were a 15-year-old diabetic girl on her way to a movie and a former vice president of Morgan Stanley who was riding her bicycle.

Barbara Friedman, who had encouraged her 16-year-old daughter's participation in a peaceful protest, said she could not locate her for two days. "I just see all our civil liberties slipping away," Friedman said. "It's very, very frightening."

Moore said the treatment of those arrested violated "a bedrock principle of our democracy that the police cannot simply sweep the streets because they find protest inconvenient or embarrassing."

"They created their own little `Guantanamo on the Hudson' equipped with chain-link fences and razor wire and guards armed with machine guns escorting prisoners everywhere," he said.

Brown contended that all weapons were banned. "In fact, the police commissioner surrendered his own gun before visiting the facility," Browne said in a statement.

Ammending the Constitution

There's been a lot of talk about ammending the Constitution to allow non-native born Americans to run for President. This has primarily been from Arnold supporters who would like to see him run for President. (After all, who is better prepared to protect us from the impending rise of the machines?)

I doubt that many Republicans will really go for this. First of all, do they really want a socially moderate candidate, considering how they have been ostracizing moderateRepublicans recently? Secondly, if they think about it, they might realize that this could be used to make them face a difficult to beat politician nationally, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, who was born in Canada and is currently unable to run for President.

(The picture below is from when I met Governor Granholm at the pool of Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in September. While I had Kerry gear on most days, I happened to see her after having left a hotel bar where I was watching the Michigan football game. Note that at least I watched the game wearing my Michigan for Kerry badge. This is actually part of my plan to be photographed with as many Democratic women as possible--see previous picture of me with Teresa Heinz Kerry.)

Watch The Commercial Or Do The Time?

Lastest GOP act to put more government on our backs might be to make it illegal to fast forward through commercials:

How can this be possible? Because language that makes fast-forwarding through commercials illegal—no doubt inserted at the behest of lobbyists for the advertising industry—was inserted into a bill that would allow people to fast forward past objectionable sections of a recorded movie (and I bet you already thought that was OK). And that’s but one, albeit scary, scenario that may come to pass if the Intellectual Property Protection Act is enacted into law. Deliberations on this legislation will be one of the tasks for the lame-duck Congress that commenced this week.

In a statement last month, Senator John McCain stated his opposition to this bill, and specifically cited the anti-commercial skipping feature: “Americans have been recording TV shows and fast-forwarding through commercials for 30 years,” he said. “Do we really expect to throw people in jail in 2004 for behavior they’ve been engaged in for more than a quarter century?”

Identify Today's Mystery Country

Identify the Mystery Country. To make it more difficult, some words are removed from these quotes from the Washington Post article:

*** was thrown into turmoil Monday by nearly-complete election results from *** presidential election, which gave *** an insurmountable three point lead but raised the threat of unrest because of angry charges by the opposition and *** observers that the vote was tainted by widespread fraud.

Tens of thousands of people flooded *** in the capital Monday amid calls for a general strike or even the kind of revolution that toppled regimes in Serbia and Georgia after suspect elections.

In strikingly frank language, election monitors laid out a litany of election day abuses that they said called into question the validity of the vote, as well as the future legitimacy of any *** presidency. One British member of a European Parliament observer group, using language rarely heard in election missions in Europe, said the turnout and results from certain districts favorable to *** could best be compared with elections in North Korea or in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

"It is now apparent that there was a concerted and forceful program of election day fraud and abuse enacted with the leadership or cooperation of authorities," said *** of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "In my judgment President ***, even at this late stage, has the opportunity and responsibility to review all of this."

Western monitors cited among a long list of complaints unusually heavy turnouts in districts favorable to ***.

Observers also said that *** were forced to apply for absentee ballot certificates by their managers, and the filled-in ballots were collected at their places of work. Students were similarly coerced by professors and deans, according to the OSCE at a press conference in which officials said there were simply too many violations to enumerate them all.

"*** did not meet a considerable number of standards of the OSCE and the European Council for democratic elections," said George of the OSCE. The organization called for an almost complete review of the vote by the *** authorities.

The answer to our Mystery Country quiz is in the Comments section.

Democracy Cell Project

Another site from former Kerry bloggers, including blogmaster Dick Bell has opened:

Welcome to the Democracy Cell Project

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the opening of the Democracy Cell Project, a new blog and website intended to encourage people across this country to use all the tools at our disposal, online and off, to build the institutions from the grassroots up that we must have to take our country back from the radical forces that have seized power in Washington. The image of “democracy cells” is an image for us of any group of people who come together to work for a better country, whether they’re members of an existing organization or are just taking the first steps in founding something entirely new.

The people who have come together to share this site with you have been through a unique experience in American politics: they were moderators and volunteers of John Kerry’s blog, the first presidential general election campaign blog that was open for comment from the public (the Bush campaign blog was closed to the public). I was the blogmaster for the Kerry blog, and together the moderators and I plunged headfirst into a sea of comments, complaints, and suggestions, seeing over and over again how blog-mediated interactions transformed people from a state of being simply curious to a state of deepening activism, from working in their local communities, to donating funds, and to traveling thousands of miles to volunteer for days or weeks in other states.

More in comments and at http://www.democracycellproject.net/democracy_cell_project/

Recount efforts in Ohio by Kerry intensify

Recount efforts in Ohio by Kerry intensify

John Kerry

by Adam Stone
A top-ranking official with Democratic Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign told North County News last week that although unlikely, there is a recount effort being waged that could unseat Republican President George W. Bush.

"We have 17,000 lawyers working on this, and the grassroots accountability couldn't be any higher -no (irregularity) will go unchecked. Period," Kerry spokesman David Wade said.

A verbal firestorm erupted last week between an area supporter of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Wade after the Kerry spokesman derided Nader for creating a "phony wedge issue between progressives."

Nader has been calling on Kerry and his vice presidential running mate, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, to, in his words, "follow through on their post-election promise to the American people to make sure every vote counts, starting in Ohio."

A Kerry victory in Ohio means he would have the necessary electoral votes to take the White House.

The local Nader supporter, Don DeBar, an Ossining resident, took umbrage with Wade's remarks.

"It seems to me the (wedge) was created when Kerry, after promising to ensure that every vote would count, conceded before they were counted," DeBar, who worked for the Nader campaign in San Antonio during the ballot access drive, wrote in an e-mail message to Wade.

The Kerry spokesman said, so far, "there hasn't been any indication" of swinging a state or the overall election.

"…But we'll make sure every single vote is counted," he added.

Full story

Democracy Continues to Suffer at GOP Hands

We've already seen moves by Bush and DeLay to centralize power and undermine Constitutional check and balances. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frisk is moving in the same direction. The Hill reports:

The Republican Conference changed its rules yesterday to give Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) new powers to ensure party discipline.

A coalition of loyalist and new senators managed unexpectedly to push through the more sweeping version of the proposed changes, defeating a watered-down proposal.

The stronger one, which passed on a 27-26 secret-ballot vote, allows Frist to fill half
of all vacancies on “A” committees as he chooses. The other half would be made by seniority, the traditional way Republicans award committee slots.

“It certainly leaves the option open for significant changes in the way we do business around here,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), an opponent of the idea.

Critics warned that Frist could use his new powers to punish those who challenge party orthodoxy and reward those to toe the leadership line. Asked how he would employ his new powers, Frist told The Hill, “Sensibly, reasonably, responsibly.” He said he looked forward to “maximizing the strength of each U.S. Senate member.”

But Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a maverick who has criticized White House strategy, said, “I’m one who believes we must always be careful of centralization of power in any institution. We have to be careful with this. It has some unintended consequences.”

In their Tipsheet for November 19, The Hill also noted that Frisk plans to procede with plans to utilize "the nuclear option" to prevent filibusters of judicial nominees, but will postpone this until at least February.

The Triumph of Ignorance

Our hopes for overturning the theocracy which seems to be replacing American democracy looks like an uphill battle based upon a recent Gallup poll:

Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence. The rest say they don't know enough to say. Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.

I fear this data goes along with other data on the difference between blue and red state voters previously noted here (Stupid Enough to Vote for Bush).

Hawks Push Deep Cuts In Forces In Iraq

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff November 22, 2004

A growing number of national security specialists who supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein are moving to a position unthinkable even a few months ago: that the large US military presence is impeding stability as much as contributing to it and that the United States should begin major reductions in troops beginning early next year.

Their assessments, expressed in reports, think tank meetings, and interviews, run counter to the Bush administration's insistence that the troops will remain indefinitely to establish security. But some contend that the growing support for an earlier pullout could alter the administration's thinking.

Those arguing for immediate troop reductions include key Pentagon advisers, prominent neoconservatives, and some of the fiercest supporters of the Iraq invasion among Washington's policy elite.

The core of their arguments is that even as the US-led coalition goes on the offensive against the insurgency, the United States, by its very presence, is stimulating the resistance.

Ohio Presidential Results to be Challenged

Ohio Presidential Results to be Challenged
by Steven Rosenfeld

Ohio’s 2004 presidential vote will be challenged as soon as next week in the state Supreme Court, a coalition of public-interest lawyers announced Friday.

The lawyers have taken sworn testimony from hundreds of people in hearings in Columbus and Cincinnati, and will use excerpts as well as documents obtained from county election officials and Election Day exit polls to make a case that thousands of votes were incorrectly counted or not counted on Election Day.

“The objective is to get to the truth,” said Columbus Ohio lawyer Cliff Arnebeck, coordinator of the Ohio Honest Elections Campaign. “What’s critically important, whether it’s President Bush or Sen. Kerry, whoever’s been elected actually elected, is to know you won by an honest election. So it’s in the interest of both sides as American citizens to know the truth and have this answered.”

Read more.

Also read:
More Ohio Voter Suppression Testimony Prompts Upcoming Legal Filing for Statewide Recount

Rules of War Are Ignored in Iraq, Says Red Cross

GENEVA — The International Committee of the Red Cross is "deeply concerned" about the killing of noncombatants in Iraq, operations director Pierre Kraehenbuehl said in a statement released late Friday. He stressed that international law prohibits killing anyone who is not actively taking part in fighting.

"As hostilities continue in Fallouja and elsewhere, every day seems to bring news of yet another act of utter contempt for the most basic tenet of humanity: the obligation to protect human life and dignity," Kraehenbuehl said. "We are deeply concerned by the devastating impact that the fighting in Iraq is having on the people of that country."

He also said that all parties must provide adequate medical care for the wounded — regardless of the side they fight on — and that hostage-taking was forbidden in all circumstances.

"If these rules or any other applicable rules of international humanitarian law are violated, the persons responsible must be held accountable for their actions," Kraehenbuehl said.


Meanwhile...
Officials Signal Need for Additional Troops in Iraq

Pelosi on "Saturday Night Massacre"

Pelosi: 'Republicans Perpetrated a Saturday Night Massacre on the Privacy of American Taxpayers'

Washington, D.C. - House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement on a provision inserted into the Omnibus spending bill that would give the Appropriations Committee chairmen and their staff access to income tax returns.

"Yesterday, House Republicans perpetrated a Saturday night massacre on the privacy of American taxpayers, giving the chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committee and their staff access to income tax returns without any privacy safeguards.

"This taxpayer persecution provision did not have the support of the Congress. The Republican leadership simply did not give Members the required time to read the bill. This is another clear example of how the legislative process under Republican leadership is broken. The Republicans lack of transparency and willingness to abuse their power is undermining democracy.

"It should be of grave concern to all Americans that their privacy could be invaded by such an outrageous provision."

Improving Provisional Ballots

One of the brightest spots in this year's election was the nationwide debut of the provisional ballot. In 2000, many voters were turned away if their names were not on the rolls, even if they should have been. This year, any voter whose eligibility was in doubt had the right to cast a ballot whose validity would be determined later. This was a major improvement, but provisional ballots were still less effective than they should have been because of misguided rules at the state level. Congress and the states should fix the flaws in the system.

The guarantee of provisional ballots was one of the few valuable reforms in the Help America Vote Act, which Congress passed after 2000. Hundreds of thousands of voters used these ballots this year. In Colorado, more than 50,000 were cast, of which more than three-quarters were found to be valid. In Ohio, there were more than 155,000 provisional ballots, though it remains unclear how many will be counted.

Unfortunately, Congress left decisions about which provisional ballots would be counted to the states, which adopted some bad rules. Many decided to throw out provisional ballots cast in the wrong polling place. Such a rule ignores the fact that many voters are in the wrong place because elections officials have misdirected them, or never told them where to vote. One Missouri man who tried to vote this year went to four polling places. At each one, poll workers told him he was in the wrong polling place, but they could not tell him where to go. At the fourth polling place, he cast a provisional ballot that was thrown out because he was registered at a fifth.

The reasons given for throwing out provisional ballots cast at the wrong polling place are weak. The rule is said to deter "convenience voting," people voting wherever they please. But there is no evidence this would be a huge problem, and in any case, the solution - throwing out valid votes - is worse. It is sometimes said that counting provisional ballots cast at the wrong polling place increases the risk of fraud, though there is no reason it should in a well-run election system. Congress should make clear that provisional ballots count if they are cast in any polling place in the jurisdiction, and states that have adopted the wrong-polling-place rule should rescind it.

Another problem is the lack of uniform standards nationally, and even within states, for counting provisional ballots. In 2002, a close Congressional race in Colorado ended up in court because the three counties in the district each had different standards for which provisional ballots were valid. Rather than continuing to invite postelection litigation over whether ballots with small defects should be thrown out, Congress should adopt uniform national standards. Failing that, states should adopt a statewide standard.

On Election Day, there were scattered reports of voters being turned away without being offered a provisional ballot. In other cases, voters who should have been given regular ballots may have been required to cast provisional ballots, which have a greater chance of being disqualified. Local election officials should improve poll worker training, and recruit better poll workers, to fix this problem.

This year, the provisional ballot proved to be a valuable reform. There is still work to be done, however, before it delivers on its promise that every eligible voter who shows up on Election Day will be allowed to cast a ballot that counts.

Making Votes Count: Editorials in this series remain online at nytimes.com/makingvotescount.

Clever Marketing Ideas

Much has been written since the election about the need for Democrats to do a better job in presenting their ideas to the public.

Oliver Willis has several graphics such as this at his blog, which can be used for anything from ads to t-shirts.

Other ideas there include:

What Happens in Your Bedroom Stays in Your Bedroom--It's Just None of Our Business

Call Us Crazy But We Think Sick Kids Should Have Health Care

Our Congressional Leadership Isn't Under Any Form of Criminal Investigation

We Won World War II

Several other ideas are also there. Check them out.

And So It Begins!

Negotiators Add Abortion Clause to Spending Bill
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Carl Hulse

House and Senate negotiators have tucked a potentially far-reaching anti-abortion provision into a $388 billion must-pass spending bill, complicating plans for Congress to wrap up its business and adjourn for the year.

The provision may be an early indication of the growing political muscle of social conservatives who provided crucial support for Republican candidates, including President Bush, in the election.

House officials said Saturday morning that the final details of the spending measure were worked out before midnight and that the bill was filed for the House vote on Saturday.

The abortion language would bar federal, state and local agencies from withholding taxpayer money from health care providers that refuse to provide or pay for abortions or refuse to offer abortion counseling or referrals. Current federal law, aimed at protecting Roman Catholic doctors, provides such "conscience protection'' to doctors who do not want to undergo abortion training. The new language would expand that protection to all health care providers, including hospitals, doctors, clinics and insurers.

"It's something we've had a longstanding interest in," said Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee. He added, "This is in response to an orchestrated campaign by pro-abortion groups across the country to use government agencies to coerce health care providers to participate in abortions."

The provision could affect millions of American women, according to Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, who warned Friday that she would use procedural tactics to slow Senate business to a crawl if the language was not altered.

"I am willing to stand on my feet and slow this thing down," Ms. Boxer said. "Everyone wants to go home, I know that, and I know I will not win a popularity contest in the Senate. But they should not be doing this. On a huge spending bill they're writing law, and they're taking away rights from women."

Ms. Boxer said that she complained to Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who is the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, but that he told her that House Republican leaders insisted that the provision, which was approved by the House in July but never came to the Senate for a vote, be included in the measure.

"He said, 'Senator, they want it in, and it's going in,' " Ms. Boxer recalled.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Stevens, Melanie Alvord, said on Friday that her boss would have no comment on the spending bill because House and Senate negotiators had not settled on the final language.

Some lawmakers and Congressional aides interpreted the House leaders' insistence as reflection of the new political strength of the anti-abortion movement and of Christian conservatives, who played an important role in re-electing Mr. Bush this month.

"They are catering to their right wing doing this," said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. "It doesn't make it right. I think this is the first step."

Mr. Harkin said he intended to try to force a vote next year on support for upholding the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, which legalized abortion. "I think it is time the women of America understand what is happening here," he said.

The spending measure, called an omnibus bill, was the main reason Congress returned to Washington after the election, and members of both parties say that despite Ms. Boxer's warnings, it is likely to pass with the abortion language intact.

The alternative is to let government funding for a wide array of agencies - like the F.B.I., the National Park Service and the Environmental Protection Agency - run out, in effect causing a partial government shutdown.

Lawmakers in the House and the Senate intended to vote on the omnibus bill on Saturday, when a stopgap spending measure is set to expire at midnight. Congress failed to pass 9 of its 13 required spending bills before its election recess, leaving much of the government - with the exception of the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security - to operate under the interim measure.

The 11th-hour controversy over the abortion language capped a long and chaotic day Friday. In the House, the ethics committee ruled that a Democratic lawmaker had brought exaggerated charges against Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority leader, a finding that provoked another round of bitter recriminations between Republicans and Democrats.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/politics/20spend.html


TAKE ACTION NOW!

Last chance to help stop anti-choice proposal

Anti-choice lawmakers are on the verge of sneaking a major new anti-choice bill into law – and they’ll succeed unless we can generate enough opposition to stop them.

Take action today and urge our pro-choice Senate leaders to fight!

Contact Your Legislators

Go to congress.org to find the number of your Rep. in Congress--and please CALL the office in DC today! By tonight, this will be law. AND it is only the beginning.

You can also call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard (202) 224-3121 an operator is available to connect you to the appropriate office of your choice.

Happiness is Crushed Buckeye Nuts

It is about time for the kickoff in the annual battle between the Blue (very BLUE) state of Michigan and the Red (or Scarlet & Grey) state of Ohio. While Michigan, which has a Democratic governor, two Democratic Senators, and a slate of Kerry electors, showed gains for Democrats this year, we know the story in Ohio.

Despite growing up with chants of "Fuck the Bucks," this year I'm prepared to make a bargain in a Kubler Ross state of mind. I'd trade a victory in this game, as important as it is, in return for Ohio's electors. For the first time I must admit that the future of the world does not depend upon this football game, as might be the case with the election.

One way or another, Go Blue!

Update
Better idea: If we win, can we also take their electoral votes?

Changing The Face Of Politics

When John Kerry reached out to his supporters yesterday online, he let them all know that they had changed the face of politics with their grassroots activism.

The internet has proved to be a driving force in the discussion of politics. Never before have so many people had so many avenues to discuss politics. All across this country people are hungry for change and committed to carrying out the work that so many started who had never been activists before.

Yesterday, reaching out to his many supporters across the the country, John Kerry asked that they join him in his continued fight "against George Bush's extreme policies" while we "also uphold our own values."

In a brilliant move to mobilize his grassroots supporters into action, Kerry urged supporters to sign a petition for healthcare for children; a petition that will be the first "bill co-sponsored by hundreds of thousands of Americans being presented on the floor of the United States Senate."

If you haven't received the email, I urge you to join John Kerry in this fight:

http://johnkerry.com/EveryChild.

Kerry reminded his supporters that "They want you to disappear; they are counting on that. I'm confident you will prove them wrong, and you will rewrite history again."

I, too am confident that we, the grassroots activists, will prove them wrong... because "We've still got your back John Kerry" and we're not going to disappear.

Read the full text of John Kerry's message here.

Also read More Evidendence of Bush Administration Leaving Children Behind!

Cronkite Rips Bush's Record

Now outspoken, Cronkite rips Bush's record

No longer the just-the-facts newsman, retired CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, 88, blasted the Bush administration during a charity appearance on Fisher Island.

BY GLENN GARVIN

ggarvin@herald.com

What America needs right now, legendary TV anchor Walter Cronkite said Thursday, is a new election -- and, he warned a laughing press conference full of reporters, he wasn't kidding.

''That's not entirely a joke,'' Cronkite said solemnly, arguing that the Bush administration has spent itself into ruin while embroiling the country in a war that will eventually make public revulsion to the war in Vietnam look ``like peanuts.''

''I think you journalists today have a great four years ahead of you,'' Cronkite observed dryly. ``It's going to be a great story to cover.''

Cronkite -- in South Florida on a promotional visit for the Fisher Island Philanthropic Fund, a children's charity -- spent 30 years at CBS News, including 18 as anchor of the network's evening newscast, before retiring in 1982.

His retirement has mostly been a quiet one. But during the past year, Cronkite -- who turned 88 earlier this month -- has made some startling departures from his old just-the-facts anchorman's demeanor. He proclaimed that most journalists are liberals and praised them for it, and accused Republican political operative Karl Rove of orchestrating the release of a new Osama bin Laden tape last month to help President Bush win reelection.

On Thursday, he whacked away at the Bush administration even harder, accusing it of destroying the nation's infrastructure and wrecking its education system to the point that American democracy itself is in danger.

''You want to get down to the nub of how this democracy is going to defend itself,'' Cronkite said. ``We've got to have an intelligent electorate and we're not going to have it because our education system is in a shambles right now.''

The most immediate problem, Cronkite warned, is Iraq.

''We have a war that is tearing us apart,'' he said. But, he added, the administration's deficit spending is a close second, creating ``a debt that will have to be paid by our great-grandchildren, and maybe beyond that.

''In the meantime, we do not have the money to do the things that we ought to -- have to -- do here at home,'' Cronkite said.

Cronkite said the news media have generally done a good job covering the problems, including during the presidential election. But he backed away from a question about the troubles at his old network, where an independent panel is investigating a report by Cronkite's replacement, Dan Rather, that raised questions about President's Bush's Vietnam-era service in the National Guard.

''I'm not going to comment on the Dan Rather matter until the investigators come up with their report,'' said Cronkite. ``I've had great difficulty keeping my lips buttoned, but so far I've made it.''

Election Challenge Threatened

Lawyers documenting voting problems say they'll challenge election

Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Lawyers who have been documenting voting day problems in Ohio say they'll challenge the results of the presidential election as soon as the vote is official.

The lawyers say documented cases of long lines, a shortage of machines and a pattern of problems in predominantly black neighborhoods are enough evidence to bring such a challenge.

"The objective is to get to the truth," said Cliff Arnebeck, a lawyer who said he'll represent voters who cast ballots Nov. 2. Arnebeck said the effort is bipartisan.

"What's critically important, whether it's President Bush or Sen. Kerry, whoever's been actually elected, is to know you won by an honest election," he said. "So it's in the interest of both sides as American citizens to know the truth and to have this answered."

More than 200 people in Columbus voiced their complaints Nov. 13 about voting problems on Election Day, some accusing the state of voter suppression. Many were Kerry supporters.

The hearing was organized by Robert Fitrakis, a lawyer and political science professor at Columbus State Community College, who is also involved in filing the challenge.

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell will certify the election results by Dec. 6, spokesman Carlo LoParo said Friday.

New Rule

With Bill Maher on hiatus, I'll give the New Rule this week:

No shows on the 2008 election at least until they finish counting the vote for the 2004 election.

While it might not be the first installment, I noticed this in C-SPAN's listing for Sunday:

· Road to the White House 2008: Sen. McCain Speech in NH (6:30pm)

Higher Interest Rates Thanks to Dubya

Clinton brought about economic expansion due to creating a budget surplus, which also resulted in lower interests rates (and more money in the pockets of home buyers, among others). George Bush's policies do the opposite. The Kiplinger Letter today predicts further increases in interest rates:

 A new era of higher long-term interest rates is dawning.

A year from now, 10-year Treasuries will be up at least a point

as the economy continues to grow and inflation picks up steam. But...

       It's the reemergence of a budget deficit "premium" on rates

that will pack the real punch. A growing realization that Uncle Sam

will be a big borrower for years will once again push rates higher.

There's little chance that President Bush can cut spending much,

especially as costs mount in Iraq. Moreover, White House proposals

to lock in tax cuts and establish private Social Security accounts

further cloud the outlook for a return to balanced budgets.



       Plus there’s likely to be less help from foreign investors.

In recent years, long-term U.S. interest rates have been moderated

by big purchases of Treasuries by China, Japan and other countries.

But as China gradually eases the fixed exchange rate for its yuan,

its dollar reserves will dwindle, curbing the need to buy Treasuries.

Similarly, Japan will cut back as the U.S. dollar continues to soften

and as its own economy begins to show more muscle next year.



       The bottom line: Rates padded by one to two percentage points

over the next several years, dampening economic growth a bit.

Kerry's Email to Supporters

CLICK TO PLAY VIDEO Watch this special video message from John Kerry Sign John Kerry's "Every Child Protected" pledge today and forward it to your family, friends, and neighbors:

Following is the email sent to Kerry supporters:

I want to thank you personally for what you did in the election -- you rewrote the book on grassroots politics, taking control of campaigns away from big donors. No campaign will ever be the same.

You moved voters, helped hold George Bush accountable, and countered the attacks from big news organizations such as Fox, Sinclair Broadcasting, and conservative talk radio.

And your efforts count now more than ever. Despite the words of cooperation and moderate sounding promises, this administration is planning a right wing assault on values and ideals we hold most deeply. Healthy debate and diverse opinion are being eliminated from the State Department and CIA, and the cabinet is being remade to rubber stamp policies that will undermine Social Security, balloon the deficit, avoid real reforms in health care and education, weaken homeland security, and walk away from critical allies around the world.

Regardless of the outcome of this election, once all the votes are counted -- and they will be counted -- we will continue to challenge this administration. This is not a time for Democrats to retreat and accommodate extremists on critical principles -- it is a time to stand firm.

I will fight for a national standard for federal elections that has both transparency and accountability in our voting system. It's unacceptable in the United States that people still don't have full confidence in the integrity of the voting process.

I ask you to join me in this cause.

And we must fight not only against George Bush's extreme policies -- we must also uphold our own values. This is why on the first day Congress is in session next year, I will introduce a bill to provide every child in America with health insurance. And, with your help, that legislation will be accompanied by the support of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

There are more than eight million uninsured children in our nation.

That's eight million reasons for us to stay together and fight for a new direction. It is a disgrace that in the wealthiest nation on earth, eight million children go without health insurance.

Normally, a member of the Senate will first approach other senators and ask them to co-sponsor a bill before it is introduced -- instead, I am turning to you. Imagine the power of a bill co-sponsored by hundreds of thousands of Americans being presented on the floor of the United States Senate. You can make it happen. Sign our "Every Child Protected" pledge today and forward it to your family, friends, and neighbors:

http://johnkerry.com/EveryChild

This is the beginning of a second term effort to hold the Bush administration accountable and to stand up and fight for our principles and our values. They want you to disappear; they are counting on that. I'm confident you will prove them wrong, and you will rewrite history again.

Here is what I want you to know. I understand the strength, commitment, and passion that are at the core of what we built together -- and I am determined to make our collective energy and organization a force to be reckoned with in the weeks and months ahead.

Let's roll up our sleeves and get back to work for our country.

Thank you,

John Kerry

Message From John Kerry to be Emailed Today

A videotaped message from John Kerry is to be emailed to supporters today. Here's the excerpts which have been posted around the web so far:

And we must fight not only against George Bush's extreme policies -- we must also uphold our own values. This is why on the first day Congress is in session next year, I will introduce a bill to provide every child in America with health insurance. And, with your help, that legislation will be accompanied by the support of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

There are more than eight million uninsured children in our nation.

That's eight million reasons for us to stay together and fight for a new direction. It is a disgrace that in the wealthiest nation on earth, eight million children go without health insurance.

Normally, a member of the Senate will first approach other senators and ask them to co-sponsor a bill before it is introduced -- instead, I am turning to you. Imagine the power of a bill co-sponsored by hundreds of thousands of Americans being presented on the floor of the United States Senate. You can make it happen. Sign our "Every Child Protected" pledge today and forward it to your family, friends, and neighbors. . .

Regardless of the outcome of this election, once all the votes are counted -- and they will be counted -- we will continue to challenge this administration. This is not a time for Democrats to retreat and accommodate extremists on critical principles -- it is a time to stand firm.

I will fight for a national standard for federal elections that has both transparency and accountability in our voting system. It's unacceptable in the United States that people still don't have full confidence in the integrity of the voting process.

I ask you to join me in this cause.

Pete Daou also reports that the message:

CHALLENGES BUSH ON "EXTREME POLICIES" AND SAYS "NOT A TIME FOR DEMOCRATS TO RETREAT"

C-SPAN Radio to Play RFK Interview

Exclusive Robert F. Kennedy Interview on C-SPAN Radio

For the next 3 weeks, C-SPAN Radio will air an exclusive oral history interview with Robert F. Kennedy that's never been aired before. The 3 1/2-hour interview, airing in three installments, focuses on civil rights, especially some of the crises that occurred during JFK's presidency, and RFK's tenure as Attorney General.

The interview from December 4, 1964, was conducted by New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis. Also participating in the interview was Burke Marshall, the chief of the Civil Rights Division in RFK’s Department of Justice.

The interview airs Saturdays, beginning Nov. 20, at 10 am ET, with encore presentations Mondays at 10 pm ET. C-SPAN Radio is available at 90.1 FM in the Washington area, nationwide on Sirius and XM Satellite Radio, and online at C-SPANradio.org.

Topics covered in this interview include:

Saturday, November 20
RFK's tenure as Attorney General, desegregation in the south, Martin Luther King, Jr., and his conversations with JFK on civil rights.

Saturday, November 27
The Freedom Riders and the transformation of the Democratic Party in the south.

Saturday, December 4
Judicial appointments, organized crime, and J. Edgar Hoover.

League of Women Voters Calls for Investigation of Voting Irregularities

VOTING PROBLEMS SHOULD BE FULLY INVESTIGATED & RESOLVED

Statement by Kay J. Maxwell, President of the League of Women Voters

WASHINGTON, DC - "The League of Women Voters is deeply concerned about voting irregularities in the 2004 election. The appropriate officials must fully investigate these concerns through open and public processes. Election officials should look into problems quickly and thoroughly and fix what proves to be wrong. Transparency and a willingness to look into potential problems will strengthen voter confidence and ultimately improve our electoral system.

"It is important to ensure that every properly cast ballot is counted and to make improvements for future elections. Attention must be given to inadequate polling place procedures, problematic voting machines, voter registration system failures, casting and counting of provisional ballots, and absentee voting issues.

"This was far from a perfect election. Although voter turnout reached record levels, the election system showed signs of stress and voters faced real problems. Two key areas deserve special inquiry. First, voter registration problems plague the system. These problems - from failures to fully process registration applications in time to bureaucratic requirements that blocked voter registration - must still be resolved by election officials. Second, the reasons for the very long lines that voters faced in too many states and localities must be thoroughly examined. Having to wait several hours to vote is an unacceptable barrier to citizen participation. What were the reasons? Were there not enough voting machines? Were these polling places poorly organized? Were long lines a greater problem in minority or student precincts than in rural or suburban precincts? Changes clearly need to be made in polling place operations to address these concerns.

"Finally, the League calls on every voter who cast a provisional ballot to find out whether their ballot was counted. The provisional ballot counting process is still ongoing and must be monitored. But every voter who cast a provisional ballot has the right, under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), to know whether it is counted, and, if it is not counted, why it is not counted. States are required to have a toll-free hotline or Internet system so voters can get this information about their ballot.

"The League's nationwide network of state and local Leagues will continue to work closely with election officials to identify and correct all voting problems."

***

The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan political organization, encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and influences public policy through education and advocacy.

More Evidence of Bush Administration Leaving Children Behind!

Yet another travesty from the Bush administration... "some 200,000 low-income children will be at risk of losing health coverage in the next three years. "

Children Left Behind
Friday, November 19, 2004

DEFICIT SPENDING didn't bother the Bush administration when the issue was tax cuts. Congress had no trouble finding "savings" to supposedly offset new costs when the costs were in a corporate tax bill stuffed with special-interest provisions. But when it comes to health care for poor children, different, stricter rules seem to apply. This week's lame-duck Congress is poised to leave town without taking any action to restore $1 billion in federal funding for children's health care that wasn't used before its Sept. 30 expiration and therefore reverted to the Treasury. Republican lawmakers say they don't oppose renewing the funding but insist that it has to be paid for with cuts elsewhere. The result is that some 200,000 low-income children will be at risk of losing health coverage in the next three years.

The issue involves the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which was launched in 1997 to help states provide coverage to low-income children whose families earn too much to be eligible for Medicaid. With $40 billion in federal matching funds over 10 years, this was the largest expansion of health coverage for children since the adoption of Medicaid in the 1960s; last year alone the program enrolled 5.8 million children. Even as the share of Americans without health insurance is growing, the percentage of children lacking coverage has stayed stable, in large part thanks to Medicaid and SCHIP.

But under SCHIP's complicated use-it-or-lose-it formula, unspent money is going back to the Treasury just as some states are starting to run out of money -- money they need not to expand coverage but to keep serving the children who already have it. Between now and 2007, 18 states (including Maryland) are projected to have insufficient federal funding, which would require them to drop some children or find money elsewhere.

"America's children must have a healthy start in life," President Bush declared in accepting the Republican nomination in September. "In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government's health insurance programs. We will not allow a lack of attention, or information, to stand between these children and the health care they need." Stirring rhetoric, but what's the point of providing information and then failing to provide money? It's a dubious sort of fiscal responsibility that only kicks in when poor children's health is at stake.


It's time for Bush to put some money where his mouth is! The underpriveleged children of America are suffering while Bush & Co drive the deficit higher. Maybe it's just me... but I fail to see where the values are in the "value" party that gives to the rich while taking from the poor!

Group Cites Electronic Voting Problems

The record use of electronic voting machines on Nov. 2 led to hundreds of voting irregularities and shows the need for higher standards, a voting rights group said Thursday.

The companies that make the electronic machines said their equipment was reliable and had relatively few problems considering the millions who cast their ballots.

The Election Verification Project reviewed nearly 900 reports of electronic voting problems on Election Day, ranging from lost votes in North Carolina to miscounted votes in Ohio and breakdowns in New Orleans that caused long lines and shut down polling places.

"The documented problems with touch screen machines, vote-counting irregularities and the fact that votes cannot be verified or recounted show us how vulnerable our democracy will be in the future when there are disputed or unclear results," said Kim Alexander, a project member and president of the California Voter Foundation.

Read more ...

Also Read:
'Stinking Evidence' of Possible Election Fraud Found in Florida

John Kerry Attends Clinton Library Opening

John Kerry acknowleges the crowd as he walks to his seat at the William J. Clinton Presidential Center during opening ceremonies in Little Rock, Ark. on Thursday, Nov. 18, 2004.
(AP Photo/Danny Johnston)

A number of celebrities traveled to Little Rock for the opening, including actors Ed Begley Jr., Kevin Spacey, and Robin Williams, and Democratic luminaries John Kerry and Al Gore, Clinton's vice president.

Message to come from John Kerry

Pete Daou has posted this message on his new blog, The Daou Report:

JOHN KERRY TO REACH OUT TO HIS GRASSROOTS AND NETROOTS SUPPORTER BASE - EMAIL HITTING INBOXES AS SOON AS FRIDAY - FORWARD-LOOKING, STRONGLY WORDED STATEMENT - MORE TO COME...

Quote of the Day

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and theWhite House will be adorned by a downright moron."

H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Getting Your Money's Worth

Top fund raisers for Bush appear to get their money's worth:

Some of Bush Fund-Raisers Got Appointments

By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - One-third of President Bush (news - web sites)'s top 2000 fund-raisers or their spouses were appointed to positions in his first administration, from ambassadorships in Europe to seats on policy-setting boards, an Associated Press review found.

AP Photo

The perks for 246 "pioneers" who raised at least $100,000 also included overnight stays at the White House and Camp David, parties at the White House and Bush's Texas ranch, state dinners with world leaders and overseas travel with U.S. delegations to the Olympics and other events, the review found.

Full article

Bush Introduces Latest Cabinet Appointee

Democrats take up fight over ballots

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Bill Sloat

Plain Dealer Reporter

Cincinnati - Seeming to brush aside John Kerry's concession speech, the Ohio Democratic Party has launched a federal court fight over nearly 155,000 provisional ballots by contending a proper accounting of those votes might decide who really won.

In Ohio, Bush now holds a lead of about 136,000 votes over Kerry.

County officials across the state began tabulating provisional ballots Friday.

"Given the closeness of the presidential and other elections," Ohio's provisional ballots "may prove determinative of the outcome," Democrats argue in a legal filing made public Wednesday by the U.S. District Court.

The lawsuit asked U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson to order Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to impose uniform standards for counting provisional votes on all 88 counties. Democrats want the judge to take action quickly - before the results of the election are certified.

Watson, who was appointed by Bush, has not set a hearing.

Don McTigue, a Columbus lawyer who filed the lawsuit for the Ohio Democratic Party, said the Democrats have concerns that different standards are being applied from county to county.

"Our action is not tied to some hope of changing the outcome of the election. We're being consistent with the Kerry campaign, and the Democratic Party's interest in seeing all eligible ballots are counted," McTigue said.

Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Blackwell, defended Ohio's rules for handling provisional ballots as explicit. He said Blackwell, a Republican, is adamant that every valid vote will be counted.

In court papers, the Democrats cite Bush v. Gore - the Supreme Court ruling after Florida's contested election that awarded Bush the White House in 2000 - as a legal precedent for the Ohio lawsuit. That case was decided by a majority of five justices.

"In Bush v. Gore, the United States Supreme Court held that the failure to provide specific standards for counting of ballots that are sufficient to assure a uniform count statewide violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution," their court filing said.

In Ohio, Democrats argue, the state lacks clear statewide rules that guarantee provisional ballots are processed consistently from county to county.

Democrats intervened in an existing lawsuit filed by Republicans on election night. That case has been inactive," said Dan Hoffheimer, the Kerry campaign's chief lawyer in Ohio.

"I think the Republicans went to court first to protect their interests. Now, it looks like the Ohio Democratic Party is doing the same. Certainly, as far as I know today, the Kerry-Edwards campaign is not planning to file such a case," Hoffheimer said.

Provisional ballots are special ballots used by voters who believe they are registered but who don't appear on the rolls, those who could not provide proof of identity and others who had moved, but did not update their registration information. Once local officials verify that the voters were indeed registered and that they voted in the correct precinct, their provisional ballot can be counted.

Most of Ohio's provisional ballots were cast in urban areas where Kerry typically fared well. Cuyahoga County had the most - nearly 25,000. About 13,000 of those had been verified as of Wednesday, with about 8,600 of that group deemed valid.

Meanwhile, the presidential candidates from the Green and Libertarian parties have said they will demand a recount of all the ballots in Ohio - which could include a review of another group of votes; 92,672 "spoiled" ballots that recorded no vote for president.

Still, many political experts - including top Kerry campaign operatives - believe Bush's margin cannot be overcome.

"I think the Democrats are more worried about avoiding a controversy in 2006 or 2008," said Dan Takaji, an Ohio State University law professor who is an expert on election law. He views the Democrats' court action as a move to make sure that there are solid, court-approved guidelines for future elections.

"But there's no way the math is going to change," Takaji said. "The margin might shrink as the provisionals are counted, but if you look seriously at the numbers, the outcome won't change."

Gene Beaupre, a political scientist at Xavier University in Cincinnati, saw the suit as an effort by Democratic officials to assuage party loyalists who feel Kerry quit without a fight in Ohio.

"There's certainly a feeling out there that people were let down by the leadership," Beaupre said. "All you have to do is look on the Internet, and that sense of disappointment is a political reality among a lot of people who are Internet users."

The Depressed Democrats Guide to Recovery

Help is on the way with The Depressed Democrats Guide to Recovery.

Research Team Calls for Immediate Investigation

Press Release

Source: UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley Study Questions Florida E-Vote Count
Thursday November 18, 1:23 am ET

Research Team Calls for Immediate Investigation

BERKELEY, Calif., Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ --

     When:   Thursday, November 18, 2004, 10:00 a.m. PST



    Where:  UC Berkeley campus, Survey Research Center Conference Room --

    2538 Channing Way (intersection of Channing/Bowditch). Parking on Durant

    near Telegraph.



    What:  A research team at UC Berkeley will report that irregularities

    associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded

    130,000 - 260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in

    Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained

    discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic

    voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting

    methods. Discrepancies this large or larger rarely arise by chance -- the

    probability is less than 0.1 percent. The research team, led by Professor

    Michael Hout, will formally disclose results of the study at the press

    conference.



    To attend the conference or request dial-in information, contact:



    Erin Reasoner

    Eastwick Communications

    650-480-4057

    erin.reasoner@eastwick.com



    Erica Pereira

    Eastwick Communications

    650-480-4024

    erica@eastwick.com



    Noel Gallagher

    UC Berkeley Media Relations

    510-643-7944

    noelgallagher@berkeley.edu 

Olbermann Posts More Qiestions on Florida & Ohio Vote

Keith Olbermann has some more stories about questions on the election results, starting with this one:

SECURE UNDISCLOSED LOCATION - We return to Academic Dueling In Our Time, already in progress.

A UC Berkeley sociology professor, director of his school’s survey research center, is scheduled to conduct a news conference at 1 PM ET today at which his “research team” will report that “irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more excess votes” to President Bush in Florida.

Bush Administration Cracks Down on New Terrorist Group

NEW YORK - A public school teacher was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney General John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'There are 3 sides to every triangle'."

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes." White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the president.

Bloggers on West Wing

Yet another sign that bloggers have made the mainstream was a scene on West Wing last night involving a blog (with an embarassing picture and story on Josh). Josh even called the blogger to protest, although I doubt that any real bloggers ever received a phone call from the White House. Josh, ignoring warnings that "bloggers are not journalists," sees his "off the record" protests being quoted and posted on the blog as he spoke.

I wish we could get that imaginary software. The new blog comments quoting Josh appeared on screen as he spoke, without any need to refresh the browser.

Media Accused of Ignoring Election Irregularities

Two weeks after Election Day, explosive allegations about a media coverup are percolating.

There's the widely circulated e-mail about a CBS producer who complained that a news industry "lock-down" has prevented journalists from investigating voting problems that cropped up on Nov 2. There's the rumor that MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who has devoted serious air time to discussing Election Day irregularities, was fired for broaching the topic. There's the assertion by Bev Harris, executive director of Black Box Voting Inc., that she had received calls from network employees saying they had been told to lay off the sensitive subject of voting fraud.

In the days after Nov. 2, the Internet was abuzz with charges from partisans that voting irregularities might have cost John F. Kerry the White House.

With some media outlets moving swiftly to debunk the notion that the election had been stolen by the Republicans, the press itself has come under scrutiny, accused of everything from a conspiracy of silence to a collective passivity about pursuing voting irregularities.

"The mainstream media is not treating this as an important story overall," said Steve Rendall, senior analyst at the liberal media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. "The mainstream media has largely treated the story as some crazy Internet story." At the same time, Rendall acknowledged: "There has been excess in the way stuff has flown around the Internet and e-mail lists."


Media Matters for America, a liberal media monitoring organization, posted an item on its website recently that cited several stories about faulty voting equipment in Ohio that did not generate much media interest. David Brock, the organization's president, said in an interview: "I haven't seen anything that is suggesting that further probing of the issue would change the results of the election." But he added that "there are some irregularities, and I would imagine some reader and viewer interest. . . . It seems that there should have been somewhat more coverage of this. There was all this pressure and buildup and very little follow-up."


TomPaine.com, a liberal website that collects news and commentary about public policy issues, has posted several analyses arguing that Kerry was hurt in Ohio by a shortage of voting machines, as well as by discarded votes that came disproportionately from minority precincts. The website's executive editor, Alexandra Walker, said her organization leaves the conspiracy theories surrounding the media's behavior to "the blogosphere."

Read the full story here.

Double Trouble in Ohio

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Election officials in one Ohio county found that about 2,600 ballots were double-counted, and two other counties have discovered possible cases of people voting twice in the presidential election.

Prosecutors were trying to determine Wednesday whether charges should be filed against a couple in Madison County accused of voting twice. In addition, Summit County election workers investigated possible double votes found under 18 names.

In the other case, Sandusky County election officials discovered that about 2,600 ballots from nine precincts were counted twice, likely because of worker error, elections director Barb Tuckerman said.

Read more!

ENVIRONMENTAL WATCH: ANWR Back On Table

Environmentalist's take heed...

The US Senate will reconsider legislation to allow oil and gas exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said.

"ANWR is a very important issue," Frist said. "Energy production in this country is very important. If ANWR had not been vetoed by President (Bill) Clinton in the mid-1990's, we'd have a million barrels more of oil coming in every day.

"Clearly, that is something that we will likely address" in the coming months, Frist said.
President George W. Bush's administration, along with Republicans in Congress, have long insisted that opening the 7.7-million-hectare (19-million-acre) wildlife refuge to exploration would help secure America's energy supply.

Environmentalists, however, strongly oppose opening the pristine refuge to exploration.
Past attempts in Congress to approve oil exploration in ANWR have failed, but legislative approval may now be within reach after the November 2 elections, which saw Republicans add four US Senate seats.

Also read:
On The ANWR Path
New Congress means oil drilling in Alaska refuge could be closer
Bush's vision: a new environment

Check out The Struggle Continues, on the Sierra Club website.
Also check out the Sierra Club's Take Action page.

No doubt John Kerry will continue to fight the GOP on this issue. We've still got your back, John, we'll be in this fight with you!

Protest the Botched Presidential Election

Protest the Botched Presidential Election or Prepare for the Post-Democracy Era: ReDefeatBush Gathers at LaFayette Park Friday

WHAT: ReDefeatBush and others protest crimes against democracy in the election

WHERE: Friday, Nov. 19, from noon to 2 p.m.

WHERE: LaFayette Park in Front of the White House, Washington, DC

WHO: ReDefeatBush is the popular name of a federal political action committee

HOW: Latest updates available online at http://www.beamerica.org

The Committee to ReDefeat the President, a federal political action committee, is calling upon citizens to rise up and be America. It is holding a demonstration against the suspcious and highly selective mismanagement of the 2004 election by local authorities in Florida, Ohio and elsewhere on Friday November 19th from noon to 2 p.m. in LaFayette Park in front of the White House.

"Our goal is to expose the crimes against democracy committed in Ohio and Florida and show them as part of a pattern designed to benefit Bush rather than as isolated, local, minor 'glitches,'" said ReDefeatBush founder David Lytel. "There is compelling evidence that the voting 'irregularities' last week were not random, and we are calling upon state and local law enforcement authorities to investigate. We would not expect either the Congress nor the U.S. Department of Justice to take effective action; as they failed to act in 2000 -- because the leaders of these institutions place loyalty to their political party above their love of their country, its laws, and the Constitution, which specifically sets out penalties for states that disenfranchise citizens."

"We are calling upon concerned citizens to get off of the Internet and into the streets," said Lytel.

ReDefeatBush's list of the Top Ten Questions about the Legitimacy of the Presidential Election is available online at http://www.redefeatbush.com/downloads/tenquestions.pdf

ReDefeatBush's petition calling for peaceful protests of the crimes against democracy and other updates are available online at http://www.beamerica.org

ReDefeatBush is a political action committee formed in October 2003. It operated ReDefeatBush Calling Crews around the country in 2004 and generated tens of thousands of new registered voters in Pennsylvania and Oregon. Founder David Lytel holds a PhD in government from Cornell, served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in President Clinton's first term, and is a former Democratic elected official. ReDefeatBush reaches approximately 50,000 Democratic activists on a regular basis with its Web site and e-mail newsletters, with its greatest strengths in the National Capital Region and the San Francisco Bay area.

An Attack on American tolerance

An attack on American tolerance

By Robert Kuttner November 17, 2004


BACK IN the 1950s, political scientists celebrated America for its "pluralism." That meant people had multiple, cross-cutting identities. Maybe you were a Catholic and also a trade unionist, a sport fisherman, a member of a veterans group, and an engaged PTA parent in a multi-ethnic neighborhood. No single identity absolutely defined you.

Why was this special? Because it created multiple, overlapping communities and prevented the cultural or political absolutism that plagued most societies. It wove tolerance and political suppleness into the fabric of American democracy. People with multiple affiliations could vote for Roosevelt one year and Eisenhower another and not hate neighbors for their party identities.

Indeed, when the philanthropist George Soros set out to undermine communism by stealth in Eastern Europe, he began by subsidizing innocent-seeming voluntary associations of the sort for which Americans are famous in order to quietly break the regime's stranglehold on institutions of all kinds. Imagine the surprise of the commissars when chess clubs turned out to be hotbeds of independent thinking.

America has done this longer, better, and more democratically than any other society, but it is not the only example. In Sarajevo, under both the Turks and later the communists, Muslims, Jews, and Christians enjoyed a cultural coexistence. Under the crumbling Ottoman Empire, diverse ethnic groups lived together without killing each other. And for nearly 300 years in medieval Spain, under history's most liberal Arab regime ever, Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in harmony guaranteed by the regime. A citizen could be both a Jew and an Arab and think of himself as Andalusian.

All these societies of tolerance and multiple identity came to grief, and there are dangerous portents that America is heading the same way. If ever most Americans took on monochromatic identities -- evangelical, Republican, and gun-toting conservatives versus abortion-defending, secular, Democratic liberals -- our democracy would be seriously at risk.

The problem is not that America has hardened into red states and blue ones. That vocabulary should be expunged from media shorthand, because it makes a distressing trend seem far more rigid than it is.

In fact, there are rational secular liberals in Texas and religious fundamentalists in Boston. More important, most people who worship God are not yet intolerant of people who worship in different ways or not at all.

The problem, rather, is first, that religious fundamentalists have lately become more absolutist and more insistent. For centuries in the United States (which, after all, was founded on the principle of religious pluralism and tolerance) religion was mostly a personal affair. Keeping religion out of the American Constitution was the triumph of reason over absolutism, and it made America safe for a wide diversity of creeds.

For millennia, faith and reason have co-existed uneasily. They skirmished as far back as the Middle Ages, when Christian theologians nervously contemplated the rediscovery of Aristotle, and later when Galileo was condemned as a heretic. But in most of the West, reason won.

In Europe, religion remains a source of personal comfort, community bonding, and association with cherished traditions. But organized religion no longer rules. Regular church attendance is low, women in Catholic Italy and Spain divorce, use contraceptives, and sometimes have abortions; and the idea that dogma should override science on something like stem-cell research or AIDS prevention strikes most Europeans as bizarre.

In the United States, meanwhile, reason is on the defensive as we head backward toward creationism and religious absolutism. This is one of those moments when people all over the world, threatened by cultural and economic assaults far beyond their local control, are turning to fundamentalisms. Author Ben Barber sums it up in three words: Jihad vs. McWorld.

What is uniquely alarming in the United States today, among all the democracies and in our own history, is that a president of the United States is explicitly on the side of antimodernism. Never before has an American chief executive worked deliberately to foment a fundamentalist absolutism that is ultimately tribal, theocratic, antiscientific, and incompatible with pluralist democracy.

What are we who believe in reason and democracy to do? We need to revive the American tradition of appealing to citizens based on their multiple selves, including family selves, civic selves, and economic ones. We need an uncharacteristically fierce alliance of the tolerant -- good people of diverse faiths who share a basic humility about the multiple ways to worship, or not.
Despite George W. Bush's dangerous role as self-appointed proselytizer in chief, most Americans are not yet zealots. God help America if they ever are.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.

The Friends of George

The Friends of George
Published: November 17, 2004

Now that Condoleezza Rice has been nominated to be the next secretary of state, the whole world seems to be noticing that George Bush is stuffing his second-term cabinet with yes men and women. It's worrisome, although when the president did have dissident voices in the top tier of his administration, he did a very thorough job of ignoring them. Optimists can regard the new team as a more efficient packaging of the status quo.

Our concern about Ms. Rice is not that she makes the president feel comfortable. It's that as national security adviser, she seemed to tell him what he wanted to hear about decisions he'd already made, rather than what he needed to know to make sound judgments in the first place.
That was particularly true when it came to the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Ms. Rice, who appeared so often on the Sunday morning talk shows and even on the campaign trail that she sometimes seemed more like a press secretary than a national security adviser, was the one who told the country that Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing nuclear weapons. And she ominously warned that "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Her staff knew that the evidence behind those claims was extremely dubious, at best. Ms. Rice was either ignoring facts that were right in front of her, unable to screen out the bad intelligence, or deliberately misleading the nation. In any case, she failed in her duty to keep the president from seizing upon the same unreliable intelligence to defend his policy of preventive war with Iraq before the American public and the world.

As secretary of state, Ms. Rice is going to be first and foremost a loyal servant of Mr. Bush's agenda and worldview, and that does not bode well for those who were hoping for a more nuanced approach to American diplomacy. Much more worrisome is where the people around her and directly under her will be getting their marching orders. Stephen Hadley, who will become national security adviser after four years as Ms. Rice's loyal second, has ties to Vice President Dick Cheney, as do other officials who have been mentioned for possible top jobs at the State Department. If Ms. Rice surrounds herself with ideologues who adopt Mr. Cheney's my-way-or-the-highway attitude toward the rest of the world, she'll be undermining herself and the United States' national interests from Day 1.

Ms. Rice, a former academic, has no real background in managing a vast bureaucracy or in hands-on diplomacy. But she has other attributes that could serve her well in her new job. Unlike Colin Powell, Ms. Rice seems willing to travel constantly. That's a critical requirement for a secretary of state. Diplomacy is a world of formal positions and personal relationships - breakthroughs almost always occur when players at the highest level meet face to face. And when Ms. Rice negotiates in her new job, she will not only have an exalted title, but will also have all the power that comes from having the president's trust and attention.

The greatest service Ms. Rice could do for the nation, the world and the legacy of President Bush would be to focus her considerable energies on encouraging a permanent peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. This is the real key to long-term stability in the Middle East, and opportunities to achieve it have opened up with the death of Yasir Arafat. If Mr. Bush could manage to do what Bill Clinton tried so hard to do, but failed, it could be an achievement that would overshadow many of the foreign policy disasters of the first term. And Ms. Rice would have proved beyond argument that she deserved the president's - and the nation's - trust because of qualities far more important than knee-jerk loyalty.


Also worth reading:
The Bush Revolution

The truth about Colin Powell

Questions for Rice

Everyone Banned?

The official Kerry forum has not had any new discussion posts for a week. Rumor has it that Mike has finally achieved his goal--everyone has now been banned or restricted!

They have opened a new forum, which will remain open until they restrict or ban all members there. Presumably they will then create a newer forum and repeat this pattern.

Colin Powel's Resignation Letter

This is what Colin Powell's resignation letter should have said.

Republicans Don't Care If He's A Crook (He's Their Crook)

The House Republicans have changed their rules to allow those who have been indicted by state prosecutors to keep leadership positions. They are acting in case the Texas grand jury, which already indicted three of his political associates, should proceed to indict Tom Delay.

Delay remains under investigation for fund raising activities related to his redistricting actions in Texas. Allegedly political action committees were used to collect illegal corporate donations and funnel them to Texas legislature races. If not for the redistricting, the Democrats would have gained, rather than lost, seats in the House this year. DeLay also remains in his leadership position despite being admonished by the House Ethics Committee.

There is a clear double standard in play when compared to the previous acts of the House Republicans to impeach former President Bill Clinton for much less significant transgressions.

Kerry Looks Towards The Future

John Kerry, departing from past practice for losing Democratic presidential nominees, doesn't plan to do a disappearing act. He returns to the Senate Tuesday and aims to be a force in his party.

Kerry does not rule out another run in 2008 but calls it "inconceivable" to think about that now.

More immediately, he anticipates pressing his signature campaign issues on Capitol Hill and on the national stage. He has pledged to continue to fight to expand health coverage and stem cell research, build energy independence and protect Social Security "with all of the energy that I have and all of the passion I brought to the campaign."

Kerry is looking for creative ways to promote those ideas and also planning a think tank to serve as a "venture capital fund" for new ideas. And he is taking steps to form a political action committee to keep alive a network that generated record fund-raising and voter turnout for Democrats. The PAC would fund his travel and allow him to help congressional candidates in the 2006 elections.

Though he is going back to his old job as junior senator from Massachusetts, associates say Kerry will be doing it in a new way. He was "changed forever" by his presidential campaign, spokesman David Wade says, and returns "on a mission" to lead the nation toward affordable health care and "a foreign policy in the tradition of Roosevelt and Truman."

Kerry is "looking ahead at how to be a voice for the 56 million people who voted for him," his brother Cameron says. "There is a process of transformation that you undergo when so many people invest their hopes and aspirations in you and your campaign. You become enlarged by the weight of all that."

Another Plus For Canada

We knew there were many reasons to like Canada. Here's yet another example of how Canada is more civilized than Red America:

Should Canada indict Bush?
THOMAS WALKOM

When U.S. President George W. Bush arrives in Ottawa — probably later this year — should he be welcomed? Or should he be charged with war crimes?It's an interesting question. On the face of it, Bush seems a perfect candidate for prosecution under Canada's Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act.This act was passed in 2000 to bring Canada's ineffectual laws in line with the rules of the new International Criminal Court. While never tested, it lays out sweeping categories under which a foreign leader like Bush could face arrest.In particular, it holds that anyone who commits a war crime, even outside Canada, may be prosecuted by our courts. What is a war crime? According to the statute, it is any conduct defined as such by "customary international law" or by conventions that Canada has adopted.

Full Article

The Daou Report

Pete Daou, formerly of the Official Kerry Blog and D-Bunker, has started a new blog, The Daou Report. This new blog lists items of interest from blogs and discussion groups across the political spectrum.

The Euro Sees Red

November 15, 2004

EDITORIAL

The Euro Sees Red

Wall Street has rallied since George W. Bush painted the country red, led by the stocks of defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies and insurance peddlers that expect to benefit from four more years. But Bush hasn't fared so well in what we might call — with a nod to the vanquished John F. Kerry — the global test. In what amounts to a vote of no confidence in the U.S. economy, the dollar has faded against the euro and the yen on fears that a second Bush administration will continue to do to the nation what the first did — hobble it with a lot more debt.

The weak dollar reflects growing concerns that Washington is unwilling or unable to get its books in order. Foreign investors also worry that the president and Congress will bend in the face of growing protectionist pressure from apparel companies, furniture makers and other industries being pummeled by cheaper foreign goods. Anything that hurts confidence in this country's economy would be bad news, because the United States is increasingly dependent on foreign investment.

The administration blithely maintains that it wants a strong dollar and that the U.S. economy will grow itself out of any problems. Future growth, the rosy story line suggests, will drive new tax revenue, even as American companies make goods so attractive that foreigners can't resist.

The last week did bring good news on that front, with September's trade deficit coming in slightly lower ($51.6 billion) than had been predicted. The Federal Reserve also nudged up interest rates, though they still will have to be raised further to stem the erosion of the greenback's value. On Wednesday, the dollar slipped to a new all-time low against the euro.

The world's central banks clearly are feeling political pressure to intervene on the increasingly touchy subject of whether exchange rates reflect economic realities. Regardless of that debate, the dollar will remain hamstrung by the administration's refusal to raise taxes or cut spending. The danger is that in order to continue attracting foreigners' money, the day will come when the Fed will have to respond to a weak dollar and widening federal and trade deficits by raising interest rates more abruptly than otherwise prudent.

After all, the buck has to stop somewhere.

Evidently the Bush administration is color blind... whatever happened to the good old days when this country was in the BLACK?

The Honeymoon's Over

Election Over, McCain Criticizes Bush on Climate Change

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Published: November 16, 2004

Wasting no time distancing himself from President Bush on an issue that has long divided them, Senator John McCain yesterday called the White House stance on climate change "terribly disappointing" and said inaction in the face of mounting scientific data was unjustified.

Two weeks after the end of a campaign in which he stumped for Mr. Bush's re-election, Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, is convening a Senate hearing today on the human effect on climate and what to do about it.

Full Article

Yale Law School Dean Questions Election Fraud

Did lawyer-observers on Election Day miss fraud incidents?

By IAN H. SOLOMON, Special to The Hartford Courant
Published: Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004

Could we have been so naive?

Thousands of the country’s most credentialed lawyers flocked to Florida to guarantee a fair election. Did we inadvertently miss an election debacle even greater than that of 2000 and negligently allow our client to concede?

I am a supporter of Sen. John F. Kerry and a critic of President Bush. I went to Florida because my mother, a Florida resident, asked me to help protect the right of all Florida citizens to vote and to ensure that all votes counted.

I walked the polling lines for early voting in Daytona Beach, distributing sample ballots and helping citizens understand their rights.

I tried to ensure that poll workers obeyed the laws about provisional ballots and that ballots were correctly fed through the optical scanner machines.

And by my presence, along with other Democratic lawyers, I lent an air of legitimacy to the voting process, which, by and large, seemed fair enough. But one thing troubled me: who was checking to make sure the data contained in the digital memory cards actually matched the voters’ intentions marked on the paper ballots?

Could we take the accurate counting of computer votes for granted, since the CEO of the leading voting machine manufacturer promised to “deliver” the election for Bush?

At first, the question didn’t matter, because I, like most others, thought Kerry would win. In fact, I was shocked when the official election results started coming in so different from historically reliable exit poll results and my own gut sense of the results in Florida.

But then, the stories of voting irregularities poured in.

There was the Ohio county where a memory card showed several thousand more votes for Bush than there were total votes cast. There was the machine in North Carolina that “lost” several thousand votes.

There were the reports of several counties in Florida, all using optical scanner machines, where Democratic precincts voted overwhelmingly for Bush.

There was the realization that exit poll errors were correlated with the use of electronic voting machines.

There was the sense that the data from the precincts where I had worked understated what felt like a Kerry landslide. And there were the increasing allegations of machine vulnerability to hacking made public by Blackboxvoting.org and others.

And that’s when I realized that I might have been an unwitting accessory to fraud.

Like every other Democrat, I had prepared to avoid the problems of 2000 only to be blindsided by new problems in 2004. We had been so worried about the safekeeping of paper ballots that we neglected the security of digital memory devices.

We had been so worried about voting law that we neglected voting technology. Most important, we had been so worried about voter suppression in poor and minority areas that we didn’t pay attention to voter inflation in Republican areas.

We should have had trained observers - computer scientists, not lawyers! - verifying the integrity of polling data from machine upload through the tabulation of countywide and statewide results.

Somehow we neglected the most vulnerable step in the vote-counting process, leaving a gaping hole for error and fraud, casting in doubt the validity of election results in many states.

So what is to be done now?

My client conceded the race on the belief that the results were clear. The results are anything but clear, however, and American democratic legitimacy requires an honest reappraisal of the events in Florida and around the country.

Three members of Congress already have requested that the GAO conduct an investigation into the troubling reports of problems with voting machines.

The mainstream media must immediately realize that this issue rises above partisanship and demands attention.

The time is now for voters from all states that used electronic voting machines to request an audit of results and a manual recount of ballots if possible.

We have a duty as Americans to fix these problems for the future and make sure there is a transparent and trustworthy voting system.

What’s at stake is not merely the outcome of a close election; what’s at stake is our faith in democratic government and the rule of law.

Ian Solomon is associate dean at the Yale Law School.

Bush Threatens Mankind

Bush threatens mankind, says Caldicott

By David Williams
November 16, 2004

Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr Helen Caldicott fears US President George Bush's re-election will lead to Armageddon and she isn't sure if mankind would survive another four years.

"This is the most serious election that has ever occurred in the history of the human race, without a scrag of doubt," she told smh.com.au.

"I don't know if we'll survive the next four years ... I don't think the Americans have, on the whole, the faintest idea - and I have to say also I don't think most Australians do either. But it's not just the threat from nuclear war. It's the threat of what's happening to the environment, the global warming which is occurring rapidly now, to ozone depletion, to species extinction, to deforestation - it's the whole thing."

Full Article

Colin Powell Announces Resignation

As widely expected, Colin Powell has announced his resignation. Even more so than with the Attorney General spot, I'm sure this will be a case of someone far worse replacing the outgoing cabinet member.

It has been disappointing to see Powell go along with the neocons who have damaged our standing in the world and undermined our national security. I fear Powell will continue to be the "good soldier" and not speak out. I hope I am wrong with this prediction, and he comes to realize that being a good patriotic American means speaking out against what has been going on.

We have seen evidence that Powell understands the damaged by the neocons when Powell described neo-conservatives in the Bush administration as "fucking crazies" during the build-up to war in Iraq.

Update:

Will Condi be his replacement? Not if anyone consider's George Tenet's opinion, per the New York Daily News:

The former spy chief "trashes" the national security adviser in his book proposal, one publishing insider tells us.

"He claims she was incompetent, that she didn't do her job" when it came to protecting the country from terrorists, the source says.

Why Not Join Canada?

With all the bad news in the last few posts, it becomes more tempting to look at Canada, as Salon does today:

Part of the reason, too, may be a different rural history. In America's hinterlands, the famous "paranoid style" of politics has been stoked into blazing fear and resentment. But not nearly so much across the Canadian prairies, which historically have given rise to great, empowering cooperative movements. Universal healthcare up here started in Saskatchewan's wheat basket. It's the philosophical cousin to the Wheat Pool co-op and the chicken growers' cartel that makes me pay 10 bucks for a scrawny fryer -- but it keeps the lights on in Moose Jaw.

Whatever the reasons, "the central difference" between Canada and the United States, writes political philosopher Joseph Heath, "is that the majority of Canadians have no ideological opposition to government."

Heath's book "The Efficient Society" is his attempt to explain why, year after year, the U.N. Human Development Index ranks Canada among the tiptop nations on earth to live, well ahead of America in most respects. "We do not love the state, but neither do we fear it. Thus we get all the benefits of a loosely regulated economy while also enjoying the massive improvements in social welfare that can be organized and delivered only by government. This has proven to be a winning formula."

Boring, I know. Except Canada keeps cranking out social experiments way too daring for Americans. Same-sex marriage? Legal in six provinces. Guns? Gotta be licensed and registered. Kyoto? Check. Executing prisoners? No way. School funding? Tying that to local property taxes would be illogical, so poor neighborhoods get the same school funding as rich ones, or more. Cannabis? Canada was the first nation to allow marijuana as medicine, and our Senate says pot should be legal. Heroin? Um, I go by a government-funded safe-injection site on the way to work every day in downtown Vancouver. Soon a trial experiment prescribing the stuff to hardcore addicts will be underway.

Some of those suggestions for new post-election maps are looking more and more tempting:

From Bad to Worse?

Newsweek has an interview with Georgetown University Law Professor David Cole on the outgoing and probably incoming Attorney Generals which is not very flattering:

After Ashcroft

A critic of the attorney general explains why he thinks the outgoing Bush appointee is the ‘one of the worst we’ve ever had’—and whether the president’s new choice will be any better

On Ashcroft:

I think his legacy is going to be as one of the worst attorney generals we’ve ever had, not only in terms of the constitutional freedoms this country stands for but also in terms of national security.

On Gonzalez:

What we know about Gonzales is not very reassuring. We know that Gonzales is the person who called the Geneva conventions “quaint” and argued very forcefully in favor of refusing to extend its protections to the people being held in Guantanamo—and in part urged that view so that they could be subjected to coercive interrogation tactics. We also know from a New York Times account of the debates that surrounded the development of the military tribunal policy down in Guantanamo that in those debates John Ashcroft was actually the voice of reason and Alberto Gonzales was lined up with the most extreme right-wing voices arguing that there should be virtually no rights to the people who are being tried—in some cases for the death penalty.

No Free and Fair Elections

If we can't have free and fair elections here, why should the Iraquis get to? The Guardian
reports that the elections are now in doubt:

Iraq's deputy prime minister has indicated for the first time that the much-heralded elections due in January could be derailed by the country's violent insurgency.

Barham Salih said the authorities were determined to hold the vote, but admitted they would have to assess the security situation nearer the time.

"Holding free and fair elections on time is an obligation that we have undertaken towards the Iraqi people," he said. But he added: "Nearer the time, the Iraqi government, the United Nations, the independent election commission and the national assembly will have to engage in a real and hard-headed dialogue to assess the situation."

It is the first time a senior figure in the interim government has acknowledged that the dire security situation in large parts of the country could affect the political process.

CIA: Hotbed of Liberal Democrats

Another example of one party rule. I never realized the CIA was such a hotbed for "liberal Democrats" before.

CIA plans to purge its agency

Sources say White House has ordered new chief to eliminate officers who were disloyal to Bush

BY KNUT ROYCE
WASHINGTON BUREAU

November 14, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

Full story

I Smell A Rat

I smell a rat. It has that distinctive and all-too-familiar odor of the species Republicanus floridius. We got a nasty bite from this pest four years ago and never quite recovered. Symptoms of a long-term infection are becoming distressingly apparent.

The first sign of the rat was on election night. The jubilation of early exit polling had given way to rising anxiety as states fell one by one to the Red Tide. It was getting late in the smoky cellar of a Prague sports bar where a crowd of expats had gathered. We had been hoping to go home to bed early, confident of victory. Those hopes had evaporated in a flurry of early precinct reports from Florida and Ohio.

By 3 AM, conversation had died and we were grimly sipping beers and watching as those two key states seemed to be slipping further and further to crimson. Suddenly, a friend who had left two hours earlier rushed in and handed us a printout.

"Zogby's calling it for Kerry." He smacked the sheet decisively. "Definitely. He's got both Florida and Ohio in the Kerry column. Kerry only needs one." Satisfied, we went to bed, confident we would wake with the world a better place. Victory was at hand.

The morning told a different story, of course. No Florida victory for Kerry--Bush had a decisive margin of nearly 400,000 votes. Ohio was not even close enough for Kerry to demand that all the votes be counted. The pollsters had been dead wrong, Bush had four more years and a powerful mandate. Onward Christian soldiers--next stop, Tehran.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

I work with statistics and polling data every day. Something rubbed me the wrong way. I checked the exit polls for Florida--all wrong. CNN's results indicated a Kerry win: turnout matched voter registration, and independents had broken 59% to 41% for Kerry.

Polling is an imprecise science. Yet its very imprecision is itself quantifiable and follows regular patterns. Differences between actual results and those expected from polling data must be explainable by identifiable factors if the polling sample is robust enough. With almost 3.000 respondents in Florida alone, the CNN poll sample was pretty robust.

The first signs of the rat were identified by Kathy Dopp, who conducted a simple analysis of voter registrations by party in Florida and compared them to presidential vote results. Basically she multiplied the total votes cast in a county by the percentage of voters registered Republican: this gave an expected Republican vote. She then compared this to the actual result.

Her analysis is startling. Certain counties voted for Bush far in excess of what one would expect based on the share of Republican registrations in that county. They key phrase is "certain counties"--there is extraordinary variance between individual counties. Most counties fall more or less in line with what one would expect based on the share of Republican registrations, but some differ wildly.

How to explain this incredible variance? Dopp found one over-riding factor: whether the county used electronic touch-screen voting, or paper ballots which were optically scanned into a computer. All of those with touch-screen voting had results relatively in line with her expected results, while all of those with extreme variance were in counties with optical scanning.

The intimation, clearly, is fraud. Ballots are scanned; results are fed into precinct computers; these are sent to a county-wide database, whose results are fed into the statewide electoral totals. At any point after physical ballots become databases, the system is vulnerable to external hackers.

It seemed too easy, and Dopp's method seemed simplistic. I re-ran the results using CNN's exit polling data. In each county, I took the number of registrations and assigned correctional factors based on the CNN poll to predict turnout among Republicans, Democrats, and independents. I then used the vote shares from the polls to predict a likely number of Republican votes per county. I compared this ‘expected' Republican vote to the actual Republican vote.

The results are shocking. Overall, Bush received 2% fewer votes in counties with electronic touch-screen voting than expected. In counties with optical scanning, he received 16% more. This 16% would not be strange if it were spread across counties more or less evenly. It is not. In 11 different counties, the ‘actual' Bush vote was at least twice higher than the expected vote. 13 counties had Bush vote tallies 50--100% higher than expected. In one county where 88% of voters are registered Democrats, Bush got nearly two thirds of the vote--three times more than predicted by my model.

Again, polling can be wrong. It is difficult to believe it can be that wrong. Fortunately, however, we can test how wrong it would have to be to give the ‘actual' result.

I tested two alternative scenarios to see how wrong CNN would have to have been to explain the election result. In the first, I assumed they had been wildly off the mark in the turnout figures--i.e. far more Republicans and independents had come out than Democrats. In the second I assumed the voting shares were completely wrong, and that the Republicans had been able to massively poach voters from the Democrat base.

In the first scenario, I assumed 90% of Republicans and independents voted, and the remaining ballots were cast by Democrats. This explains the result in counties with optical scanning to within 5%. However, in this scenario Democratic turnout would have been only 51% in the optical scanning counties--barely exceeding half of Republican turnout. It also does not solve the enormous problems in individual counties. 7 counties in this scenario still have actual vote tallies for Bush that are at least 100% higher than predicted by the model--an extremely unlikely result.

In the second scenario I assumed that Bush had actually got 100% of the vote from Republicans and 50% from independents (versus CNN polling results which were 93% and 41% respectively). If this gave enough votes for Bush to explain the county's results, I left the amount of Democratic registered voters ballots cast for Bush as they were predicted by CNN (14% voted for Bush). If this did not explain the result, I calculated how many Democrats would have to vote for Bush.

In 41 of 52 counties, this did not explain the result and Bush must have gotten more than CNN's predicted 14% of Democratic ballots--not an unreasonable assumption by itself. However, in 21 counties more than 50% of Democratic votes would have to have defected to Bush to account for the county result--in four counties, at least 70% would have been required. These results are absurdly unlikely.

The second rat

A previously undiscovered species of rat, Republicanus cuyahogus, has been found in Ohio. Before the election, I wrote snide letters to a state legislator for Cuyahoga county who, according to media reports, was preparing an army of enforcers to keep ‘suspect' (read: minority) voters away from the polls. One of his assistants wrote me back very pleasant mails to the effect that they had no intention of trying to suppress voter turnout, and in fact only wanted to encourage people to vote.

They did their job too well. According to the official statistics for Cuyahoga county, a number of precincts had voter turnout well above the national average: in fact, turnout was well over 100% of registered voters, and in several cases well above the total number of people who have lived in the precinct in the last century or so.

In 30 precincts, more ballots were cast than voters were registered in the county. According to county regulations, voters must cast their ballot in the precinct in which they are registered. Yet in these thirty precincts, nearly 100.000 more people voted than are registered to vote -- this out of a total of 251.946 registrations. These are not marginal differences--this is a 39% over-vote. In some precincts the over-vote was well over 100%. One precinct with 558 registered voters cast nearly 9,000 ballots. As one astute observer noted, it's the ballot-box equivalent of Jesus' miracle of the fishes. Bush being such a man of God, perhaps we should not be surprised.

What to do?

This is not an idle statistical exercise. Either the raw data from two critical battleground states is completely erroneous, or something has gone horribly awry in our electoral system--again. Like many Americans, I was dissatisfied with and suspicious of the way the Florida recount was resolved in 2000. But at the same time, I was convinced of one thing: we must let the system work, and accept its result, no matter how unjust it might appear.

With this acceptance, we placed our implicit faith in the Bush Administration that it would not abuse its position: that it would recognize its fragile mandate for what it was, respect the will of the majority of people who voted against them, and move to build consensus wherever possible and effect change cautiously when needed. Above all, we believed that both Democrats and Republicans would recognize the over-riding importance of revitalizing the integrity of the electoral system and healing the bruised faith of both constituencies.

This faith has been shattered. Bush has not led the nation to unity, but ruled through fear and division. Dishonesty and deceit in areas critical to the public interest have been the hallmark of his Administration. I state this not to throw gratuitous insults, but to place the Florida and Ohio electoral results in their proper context. For the GOP to claim now that we must take anything on faith, let alone astonishingly suspicious results in a hard-fought and extraordinarily bitter election, is pure fantasy. It does not even merit discussion.

The facts as I see them now defy all logical explanations save one--massive and systematic vote fraud. We cannot accept the result of the 2004 presidential election as legitimate until these discrepancies are rigorously and completely explained. From the Valerie Plame case to the horrors of Abu Ghraib, George Bush has been reluctant to seek answers and assign accountability when it does not suit his purposes. But this is one time when no American should accept not getting a straight answer. Until then, George Bush is still, and will remain, the ‘Accidental President' of 2000. One of his many enduring and shameful legacies will be that of seizing power through two illegitimate elections conducted on his brother's watch, and engineering a fundamental corruption at the very heart of the greatest democracy the world has known. We must not permit this to happen again.

(11/12/2004) - By Colin Shea, The Freezer Box

On the trail of Kerry's failed dream

The Boston Globe has a must read article on Kerry's campaign. There are many interesting points, but the article fails to be a definitive report on the campaign due to failing to fully explain Kerry's position at key points.

The article starts with the August question on Iraq which wound up reinforcing common misunderstandings about Kerry's position on Iraq:

The senator explained to aides that part of the question had been lost in the wind; he thought he was answering a variation on the same basic query he'd been asked countless times: Was it right to give Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq? Kerry had simply given his standard "yes," with the proviso that he would have "done this very differently from the way President Bush has" -- yet the misunderstanding now muddied Kerry's message.

Worried advisers briefly considered issuing a clarification, but feared it might further feed Republican efforts to portray Kerry as a "flip-flopper."

The story notes that Kerry felt he was consistent, but unfortunately never did a good job of explaining Kerry's position of authorizing force as a last resort, as distinct from agreeing with the decision to go to war:

The senator firmly believed he was being consistent -- voting yes on the resolution to give the president the clout to resume inspections, but warning Bush not to move hastily. At one point, when aides tried to coax him into a simpler message, he spread papers on the floor to show how the fine points of his arguments fit.

"John got caught with his legalistic and logical mind wanting to make consistency matter, and not let them say [he's] a flip-flopper," said Kerry's longtime friend David Thorne.

Even as aides fretted that Kerry had not found his voice on the issue, they continued to hope that his hybrid position -- maintaining vigilance in a post-9/11 world, but planning more carefully than Bush -- would capture the mood of the country. They were buoyed by the fact that voters in the primaries, when Kerry was also attacked for inconsistency, suddenly moved to his side, as if they had understood him all along.

They hoped it would happen again.

Similarly, the article discusses the $87 billion dollar vote, but never addressed the real issues in the dispute over how the measure would be funded:

Bush had learned in his only losing campaign -- a 1978 US House race in West Texas, where he was labeled a liberal Eastern elitist -- that it was political death to let your opponents define you first. So in the ensuing years he had turned that same strategy against his foes. In the case of Kerry, Bush readily agreed to a plan to define the senator as a flip-flopper weak on defense.

A Bush campaign negative ad, released March 16, criticized Kerry for voting against an $87 billion bill to fund US troops in Iraq. The ad depicted Kerry voting no on "body armor for troops in combat," on "higher pay," on "better healthcare for reservists and their families."

While concentrating on Kerry strategy, the article also looks at the strategy of the Swift Boat vets, including pointing out that " O'Neill had not served with Kerry, so his knowledge of the candidate's combat action was limited." Despite this lack of knowledge, decisions were made as to what might most hurt Kerry, without regard for the truth:

The group debated strategy: Should it focus on Kerry's assertions that US soldiers had committed atrocities? Or should it go after his combat record, raising questions about whether he deserved his medals and three Purple Hearts?

Spaeth and others believed the group should focus its attacks on Kerry's antiwar efforts. Michael Bernique, who had gone on missions with Kerry, argued that he had acted courageously in combat. But others were adamant about going after his combat record.

O'Neill and Hoffmann had heard reports questioning whether Kerry deserved his first Purple Heart, given for a wound that Kerry's commanding officer had compared to a rose-thorn prick. They also entertained suspicions from veterans about Kerry's medals -- one a Bronze Star, the other a Silver Star. "We got very disquieting e-mails about what he had done in Vietnam," O'Neill said.

The O'Neill faction also argued that poking holes in Kerry's combat record would attract fresh media attention.

When the group decided to focus on Kerry's combat record as well as his antiwar activities, Bernique and several others objected and dropped out.

By May the news was going against Bush, but Kerry failed to take full advantage of his opportunities:

This might have been an ideal time to hit Bush hard. Instead, the candidate proceeded on a deliberate course, crafted by media adviser Bob Shrum and campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, to raise money, broadcast policy proposals. and advertise Kerry's life story. In early May, the campaign announced a $25 million, mostly biographical advertising buy -- the largest single buy to that date by either side.

Kerry's appearances focused on domestic issues, largely because campaign-organized focus groups rated healthcare and the economy as top concerns. At one campaign stop, Kerry even refused to answer whether the prison scandal should force Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign, saying "I've already commented."

When Kerry finally started giving foreign policy speeches by the end of May, his words had a term paper quality. He would lay out "four imperatives" and insist that in the war on terror "we need to be clear about our purposes and our principles." Bush, meanwhile, was casting the campaign as a "choice between an America that leads the world with strength and confidence or an America that is uncertain in the face of danger."

As summer came, the article reports how the campaign may have blown an opportunity to have Paul Begala on board to help clarify the message of the campaign. The more well known decisions of the next couple of months are discussed in detail, including the pick of John Edwards and the decision not to use the convention to make the case against Bush.

By August, the Swift Boat Vets were back, and the campaign made the mistake of not responding quick enough:

Ten days earlier, an inflammatory book by his Nixon-era foe, O'Neill, had topped a national best-seller list. "Unfit for Command" used mostly unsupported allegations to label Kerry a liar who didn't deserve some or all of his combat medals.

At the same time, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began airing ads, mostly in swing states, quoting men who said Kerry "has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam," "lied" to get his medals, "is no war hero," and "betrayed all his shipmates."

Kerry wanted to fight back right away, but Shrum and other media advisers cautioned against it, concerned about fanning the flames. "We watched as the story jumped from the Internet, to Fox News, to the other cable networks," said Cahill. "Our concern was we didn't want to help it along by our reaction."

The campaign hoped that the episode would blow over with minimal damage, as it had the previous spring. But this time, there was no prison scandal, or anything else, to swallow the swift boat veterans' crusade. "The August echo chamber was a difficult environment because nothing else was going on," said Thorne.

"The campaign collectively underestimated the effect of the swift boats. It was a collective mistake," recalled Michael Whouley, a longtime Kerry operative. "I think the candidate was probably the most concerned about it. It pissed him off, people attacking his Vietnam service."

The campaign started to rebound, including taking advice from Bill Clinton:

In the 90-minute conversation, aides say, Clinton counseled Kerry never to let another assault go personally unchallenged for so long. He also advised the candidate to make more sustained criticisms of Bush and to focus on core issues in battleground states -- job losses in Ohio, the toll of Iraq on military families throughout the Midwest.

It was the debates which really made the race competitive again, with the article showing both the preparation by Kerry and by Bush:

"Kerry wanted to do this differently than either Clinton or Gore; he wanted to do a lot of work early," said Klain. "Both Clinton and Gore liked to cram. Kerry really wanted to absorb and needed to get stuff done early. . . . He was much more methodical [than Clinton or Gore]. He's a much more avid reader than either. His reading wasn't the prelude to learning; his reading was the learning. He was extremely disciplined about it."

The sessions that began in earnest in Nantucket and continued as mock debates in Spring Green, Wis., had one goal: Kerry wouldn't hear a single word from Bush that he hadn't heard before.

In the White House, meanwhile, Bush resisted practice sessions. His debate preparations were marred by irritation and distraction, advisers said. Bush engaged in at least two miserable sessions with his sparring partner, Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. Aides did not even force Bush to watch the sessions that went badly, because "everybody knew" they had not gone well, one adviser said. Finally, frustrated by the intrusions at the White House, senior aide Karen Hughes moved the practice to Bush's ranch at Crawford, Texas.

Still, by the time the first presidential debate opened in Miami on Sept. 30, Bush advisers thought they had already one-upped the Democrat by insisting on a buzzer to enforce time limits.

If Bush aides thought this strategy would show the Democrat as a pompous windbag, they were wrong. Instead, the time limits forced a steely and determined Kerry to make a crisp prosecutor's case against his opponent.

Kerry brought skills honed over summer practice sessions, as well as renewed energy from two effective foreign policy speeches he had delivered the previous week. Kerry was finding his voice on Iraq. Whereas before he talked of a "wrong direction" in the war on terror, he now hammered Bush for "colossal failures in judgment."

There was a surprise statement at the end of the race:

Later that day, a new videotape of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden emerged. Kerry wanted to react in a statesmanlike way, but some aides -- seeing a rare opening to hit Bush on a core vulnerability -- toyed with releasing a statement with a different tone. "It would say something like: 'You see that guy up there on the screen looking fat and happy in his robes? Well, he would not be there if George Bush had captured him,' " said one senior adviser. Fearful of elevating the terrorist's influence, Kerry and his aides quashed the idea.

With the election just days away, no one wanted to rock the boat. Greenberg's daily tracking numbers indicated that Kerry was nudging ahead in mid-to-late October and ahead in a majority of battlegrounds, though aides worried that few other polls suggested the same.

By the next day, Kerry found he came up a little short in a close Ohio race:

Kerry sat in the kitchen, sipping a bowl of soup, and shook his head as he turned to a friend and said simply, "We worked so hard." There were tears and hugs.

As Kerry sat, he started to analyze the race. Many voters, he concluded, cast their ballots on single issues, such as abortion or gay rights. Kerry had tried to walk a fine line on both issues, saying life began at conception while supporting abortion rights, and opposing same-sex marriage but also rejecting a constitutional amendment to ban it. From the start, it had been difficult for a Bostonian to appeal to the conservative South and some Midwest states. Kerry felt he had done it.

But through it all, the rivers of war -- Iraq and Vietnam -- ran through the campaign.

As the friends and family gathered around him, Kerry's daughter Vanessa comforted her father.

"I'm so proud my name is Kerry," she said.

Stupid Enough to Vote for Bush

This table will be no surprise, as intelligence is ranked by state, with the top primarily blue.

Updated November 14:

Taking a closer look, I find the top states which Kerry lost to be of interest for the future.

Virginia is the red state with the highest IQ, and Kerry was doing better than expected in some late polls there, despite not campaigning there. Next come Colorado, Iowa, and Nevada, three states where Kerry appeared to have a chance late in the race, and states where Democrats are likely to concentrate on in the future. Demographic changes in Colorado and Nevada gave increased hope to the Democrats this year, while Iowa was blue in 2000.

Next is Ohio (actually in a six way tie with three red and three blue states). If only they were just a little smarter there!

Alaska follows, and I hope that ultimately their independent streak will lead them to reject the religious right's new dominence of the Republican party. The next two states are also traditional swing states, Missouri and Florida.

From there we have a long list of likely red states dominating the bottom. Kansas leads this list. Falling at 38, perhaps we see why New Mexico is likely to turn red this year (with the final result not in yet).

These findings are consistent with what we reported before the election regarding Bush supporters being poorly informed on the issues per a study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes.

More Confusion on Exit Polls

It's difficult to tell what to believe about the exit polls lately, as is seen in this item from Bloggermann:

Two conflicting scholarly studies on the variance between the national exit polling and the presidential election results, are flying across the Internet, eating up your e-mail storage capacity.

One, from the University of Pennsylvania, reminds us that exit polls are used as 'audits' on the elections in places like Germany and Mexico, and suggests the actual statistical odds that the exit polling was that wrong in the battleground states were 250,000,000 to one.

The other, from a voting project managed by CalTech and MIT, says that while the incorrectness of national exit polling can't be explained by the proverbial 'margin of error,' on a state-by-state basis, it actually was within that margin.

Knows Her Mind

Newsweek looks at The Unfair Attacks on Teresa Heinz Kerry.

After this picture fromwhen I had the pleasure of meeting Teresa last winter, here's some of their comments:

What we minded is that she knows her mind—and speaks it in all those languages, the show-off! We deemed her too exotic. And, Calvinists that we are, decided that she clearly has too much money and possibly, too much fun.

We found it odd that she made no attempt to hide the fact that she had a life before John Kerry. (What really grated was not that she thinks "it's all about her"--but that she doesn’t think it’s all about him.) Then, too, for all of our purported yearning for authenticity, we balked at her refusal to feign complete absorption in whatever phony political moment was at hand.

Perhaps most unforgivably, she is unself-consciously sexy at 66 and not unaware of her power as a woman. And to the last moment of the campaign, she was true to herself in a way that few of us dare. When speaking to a friend about her critics in the press a few months back, she said, "If I do what they want me to do, there will be nothing left of me." She never let that happen.

Will The Flat Earthers Go Along With The Flat Tax?

As an online poll, it is hardly scientific, but this survey from Kiplinger does give a clue as to where the businessmen backing Bush want tax policy to go:

Amid talk of tax reform, which option do you prefer?
Keep the system as is	14.46 %
A national sales tax	30.12 %
A flat tax on income	39.76 %
A tax on earned income only	15.66 %

What are the chances that the "moral issues" voters who take credit for Bush's victory will realize that they are losers in such a change?

Is The Far Right Enough For Long Term Success?

Jonathan Rauch of The National Journal questions some of the conventional wisdom coming out of the 2004 election results. He questions how great a victory this really was for George Bush and the Republicans:

A triumph? Only by the anomalous standards of 2000. By any other standard, 2004 was a squeaker, given that an incumbent was on the ticket. The last conservative, polarizing Republican incumbent who slashed taxes and campaigned on resolve against a foreign enemy won 49 states and received 59 percent of the popular vote. That, of course, was Ronald Reagan, who did not need to scrounge for votes to keep his job.

Most incumbent presidents win in a walk. The prestige and visibility of the White House gives them a powerful natural advantage. Bush enjoyed the further advantage of running against a Northeastern liberal who had trouble defining himself and didn't find the battlefield until September. By historical standards, Bush in 2004 was notably weak.

The boast that Bush is the first candidate to win a popular majority since 1988 is just pathetic. Bush is the first presidential candidate since 1988 to run without effective third-party competition, and he still barely won. No one doubts that Bill Clinton would have won a majority in his re-election bid in 1996 if not for the candidacy of Ross Perot.

A new political era? A gale-force mandate for change? More like the breezeless, stagnant air of a Washington summer. Despite much higher turnouts than in 2000, only three states switched sides -- a startling stasis. Despite Bush's win, the House of Representatives barely budged. In fact, the Republicans might have lost seats in the House had they not gerrymandered Texas. The allocation of state legislative seats between Republicans and Democrats also barely budged, maintaining close parity. The balance of governorships will change by at most one (at this writing, Washington state's race was undecided). If that's not stability, what would be?

In the Senate, the Democrats were routed in the South and their leader was evicted. Those were bruising blows, to be sure; but it was no secret that the Democrats had more Senate seats to defend, that most of those seats were in Republican states, and that five were open. "Early predictions were that the Republicans would pick up three to five seats overall," notes my colleague Charlie Cook. (See NJ, 11/6/04) In the end, the Republicans picked up four.

Here is the abiding reality, confirmed rather than upset by the election returns: America is a 50-50 nation. According to the National Election Pool exit poll (the largest and probably most reliable such poll), voters identified themselves this year as 37 percent Republicans, 37 percent Democrats, and 26 percent independents. That represents a shift in Republicans' favor, from 35-39-27 in 2000 -- but it is, of course, a shift to parity, not to dominance.

Rauch also questions the overall move towards the right:

Has the electorate turned right? A bit. In the National Election Pool survey, the share of voters identifying themselves as conservative increased by 5 points over 2000, to 34 percent -- which, however, returned the conservative-identified share of the electorate to the level of 1996 (33 percent). A plurality of voters consistently describe themselves as moderate.

Social conservatives and the media ballyhooed the National Election Pool survey's finding that "moral values" topped the public's list of voting issues, at 22 percent (narrowly edging out the economy and terrorism). In particular, the Religious Right spun the "moral values" answer as endorsing their agenda (against gay marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research). Actually, the concern with "moral values" is neither new nor, for most voters, specific. Bowman notes that the Los Angeles Times exit poll has regularly included "moral/ethical values" on its list of "most important issues," and that this choice emerged on top in 1996, 2000, and 2004. In 2004, the same proportion chose it as in 1996. Clearly, those 1996 voters were not up in arms against gay marriage and stem cells.

Most voters who plump for "moral values" seem to equate that term not with a particular policy agenda but with plain speaking, solid values, and a clear moral compass, all of which Bush offered. In 2004, the electorate barely moved on abortion, which only 16 percent of voters think should always be illegal; and 60 percent of voters supported gay marriage or civil unions (predominantly the latter).

Religious conservatives boast that they won the election for Bush. True, their turnout rose in 2004, but so did everyone else's. According to Luis Lugo, the director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, evangelical Christians made up about 23 percent of the electorate in both 2000 and 2004. What happened in 2004, Lugo says, is that evangelicals and Catholics shifted more of their support toward Bush; about 78 percent of evangelicals voted for Bush this year, as compared with about 72 percent in 2000. Those votes certainly mattered, but only because the election was so close. In other words, marginal evangelical votes were important because the center did not move.

More precisely, the electorate's center did move, but only about 3 percentage points. That was about how much Bush improved his showing over 2000 in the average state he won twice, and it is also about the size of his margin of victory this year. It was enough to win him a close election, but hardly a breakthrough.

The election did raise awarness of the tremendous cultural divisions which exist in this country, and does provide evidence a a new voting group for the GOP to attract. It does remain to be seen whether they can continue to win by appealing to the far right without advantages of incumbency and a wartime mentality. As Rauch concludes:

A 50-50 country has produced a lopsided government and a sore temptation for Republicans to overreach. If they steer hard to starboard, they may capsize the boat.

Of Course Nothing Like This Could Have Happened in Ohio

Computer Glitch Changes Election Result

BROOKVILLE, Ind. - A hand recount of ballots cast using optical scanning technology gave a Democrat enough extra votes to bump a Republican from victory in a county commissioner's race.

The erroneous tally was caused when the Fidlar Election Co. scanning system recorded straight-Democratic Party votes as votes for Libertarians in southeastern Indiana's Franklin County.

The recount Thursday pushed Democrat Carroll Lanning from fifth to third in the three-seat commissioners race, while Republican Roy Hall fell to fifth.

Democrats had suspected a glitch after preliminary election results included a Libertarian congressional candidate winning 7.7 percent of the vote in Franklin County, more than four times better than he did across the entire district.

Fidlar workers said no programming problems were found in the Accuvote 2000 ES system, but said the Rock Island, Ill.-based company is going over its programming elsewhere in the state and in Wisconsin and Michigan, which, like Indiana, have straight-party voting.

Fidlar national sales manager Bill Barrett on Friday called the glitch an "isolated incident" and said no other election results were in question.

A spokeswoman for the Indiana secretary of state's office said state officials were waiting to learn more from the company and Franklin County. Pre-election tests had found no problems, Kate Shepherd said, and the state was unaware of other similar troubles.

AARP Opposes Bush Plan to Replace Social Security With Private Accounts

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 - Gearing up for battle over the future of Social Security, AARP, the influential lobby for older Americans, said Thursday that it opposed President Bush's plan to divert some payroll taxes into private retirement accounts. But it supports new incentives for private accounts that supplement Social Security.

Working closely with Congress and the White House, AARP helped shape legislation adding drug benefits to Medicare last year. Social Security is an even bigger issue, politically and financially, and lawmakers said Congress was unlikely to make major changes in Social Security over the organization's objections.

Marie F. Smith, president of the organization, said, "AARP adamantly opposes replacing any part of Social Security with individual accounts.'' But Ms. Smith added that the group supported incentives for people to establish personal retirement accounts in addition to Social Security.
John C. Rother, the organization's policy director, said, "We favor private accounts when they are in addition to Social Security, but not as a substitute.''

The fight over Social Security, pitting Mr. Bush's vision of an "ownership society" against the Democrats' determination to preserve a cornerstone of the New Deal, is reflected in a battle over the proper terminology.

The White House dislikes the word "privatization,'' which it sees as a misleading and imprecise way to describe Mr. Bush's ideas for Social Security. Democrats insist that the term is accurate.
E-mail messages circulated within AARP in recent weeks indicated that the group would avoid the word whenever possible.

One message, by an editor of an AARP magazine, says, "There is a new forbidden word at AARP: Social Security privatization.''

The Bush Record on Civil Rights

The Bush Record on Civil Rights
Published: November 12, 2004

In a rare gesture of transparency, a majority of the eight commissioners on the United States Commission on Civil Rights voted in 2002 to put the agency's staff reports on the Internet as soon as they are completed. That way, the public can read them before the commissioners hold public hearings to discuss the staff's findings.

The latest report - an assessment of President Bush's civil rights record - was put on the agency's Web site in September. But at their October meeting, less than a month before the election, the commissioners declined to discuss it. Objecting to the report's timing, the four commissioners appointed by President Bush and the Congressional Republican leadership managed to put off any discussion until the postelection meeting, scheduled for today.

The commission owes the public a spirited debate, especially if, as the report indicates, the apparent aim of the Bush administration is to break with long-established civil rights tactics and priorities. This question takes on a new urgency with the appointment of the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, as the next attorney general because he was deeply involved in the formulation of administration policy on these issues in the first term.

The report, which is still available online, is a scathing 166-page assessment of an administration that has, at best, neglected core civil rights issues. It cites numerous examples of administration attempts to replace affirmative action with "race neutral" alternatives, to focus on voter fraud rather than the more insidious problem of voter disenfranchisement and to recast taxpayers' support for religious institutions as a civil right for people of faith, rather than as a constitutional issue involving the separation of church and state.

In the most telling research into the way that Mr. Bush uses talk of civil rights to promote his own agenda, the report says that of Mr. Bush's public statements on civil rights, only 17 percent have outlined plans of action. Of those, it says, more than half pertained to "faith-based initiatives." It criticizes the president for using the language of civil rights - terms like "remove barriers" and "equal access" - to frame his case.

Earlier this year, the conservative commissioners simply voted down, without explanation, a staff report on language barriers in federal programs. Such disdain - for the very issues the commissioners are supposed to examine - deprives Americans of the dialogue they need and deserve. It is our hope that the conservative commissioners will engage with the issues and their fellow commissioners at today's meeting. In any case, Americans can judge the civil rights report for themselves by going to http://www.usccr.gov.

Former Chief of CIA's Bin Laden Unit Leaves

Michael Scheuer, the author and former chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, announced yesterday that he had resigned from the agency so he could speak openly about terrorism and what he sees as the government's failure to understand the threat from al Qaeda.

"I have concluded that there has not been adequate national debate over the nature of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and the force he leads and inspires, and the nature of the intelligence reform needed to address that threat," Scheuer, whom the CIA banned from speaking publicly in July, said in a statement issued by his publisher.

INSIDE THE ELECTION FRAUD BATTLE

INSIDE THE ELECTION FRAUD BATTLE

Think Kerry Is Not Involved In This Fight? Think Again.
Also: Fallujah = Operation Distract From Fixed Election.
by Betsy R. Vasquez

NOVEMBER 10, 2004 – When Senator John Kerry (D-MA) talked about how his policy would be different in Iraq, he kept saying, in effect, ‘It’s the how, stupid.’ He said repeatedly he would fight a “smarter” war.

Flash forward to today. Following the election, there was a problem apparent. The exit polling didn't match the ballot count, and many reasons for that began to become apparent.
John Kerry was faced with three options. One, fight on publicly rather than conceding and put the nation into a media frenzied limbo. Two, concede and go on with his life, turning his back on his promise to his supporters to ensure that “every vote will be counted.”

Most people are assuming that John Kerry opted for the second of these while John Edwards, his runningmate, opted for the first, and since Kerry was the big dog, he won out. But people who think this are thinking in Bush terms, all or nothing, either you are for the war or against it, that either Senator Kerry was for recounting the votes or he was against it.

The reality is, John Kerry has chosen a third, much smarter course – just as he said he would all along.

John Kerry realized that to launch a public campaign calling the vote into question would be disastrous. In fact, he likely realized he would we walking right into a Bush-set booby trap.
In particular, during our election coverage we talked about the pending battle of Fallujah, about the timing of it being an election ploy, about how it was following in the constant Bush pattern of creating a media event to sway the election, as he did last time by making the run up to the Iraq invasion come to a head exactly on election week.

Well, the battle in Fallujah began hitting the media hard in the week before the election, right on cue. Of course it was billed as the solution, the battle that – if you just keep Bush in office – will wipe out those insurgents and solve the problems over there. This was yet another obvious use of our nation’s troops by President Bush as if they were campaign volunteers rather than non-partisan volunteers to defend our nation.

But Fallujah, it turns out, seems to be even more than that. Fallujah, in effect, was the get away car for an election heist.

Following the fiasco in Florida in 2000, Gore was able to battle on for 30 days to try and get a fair accounting. All the while, the Bush camp claimed he should just stop and give up because his delaying of what they were saying was the inevitable end was threatening the nation’s security and stability. They said the stock market was suffering, the nation was unstable, and so Gore should just give up and accept the result as is.

This time, John Kerry had made clear he was prepared to fight 100 times as hard and long as Gore did if necessary. In fact, he had solicited fund just for that eventuality so he could battle all over the nation if necessary to ensure that every vote was properly counted.

Enter Fallujah. As we know – and saw on election night, as Bush’s people began calling Networks and demanding they call Ohio for their camp – the Bush team’s strategy was to try and force all questions to be closed ASAP. Last time, they weren’t prepared for that part. This time, they were.

Picture if John Kerry had chosen to call the election into question. Immediately, the Bush camp would talk about how 50,000 of our troops are just about to launch the biggest military operation since the invasion of Baghdad. And, just a couple of days after the election, it was launched.

You can imagine the arguments from the Bushies: “How could Senator Kerry undermine our security while our troops are in the midst of battle.” Fallujah was to be the pressure point that would, if not stop Kerry from uncovering all the dirt and getting a fair election count, would at least tarnish his name with much of the nation and, as importantly, create something for the right-wing dominated media to hammer away at him on, making it seem as if he is only caring about himself and not the nation.

It was quite a well-crafted plan. Completely amoral, but smart.

Unfortunately for them, John Kerry was smarter.

Read more here -
http://kerrylibrary.forumflash.com/index.php?showtopic=251&view=findpost&p=2274

A Salute to John Kerry and His Band of Brothers

Thank you to John Kerry and your Band of Brothers, for your service to our country!

And a special thank you to all the Veteran's who volunteered for his campaign.

Just In Case They Try To Run On Bush's Record

Moore set to shoot sequel to `Fahrenheit 9/11'
-
Thursday, November 11, 2004

Michael Moore plans a follow-up to "Fahrenheit 9/11," his hit documentary that assails President Bush over the handling of the Sept. 11 attacks and the war on terrorism, according to a Hollywood trade paper.

Moore told Daily Variety that he and Harvey Weinstein, the Miramax boss who produced the film, hope to have "Fahrenheit 9/11 1/2" ready in two to three years.

"Fifty-one percent of the American people lacked information (in this election) and we want to educate and enlighten them," Moore was quoted in Thursday's edition of Variety. "They weren't told the truth. We're communicators and it's up to us to start doing it now."

A spokesman for Fellowship Adventure Group, formed by Weinstein and brother Bob to help distribute "Fahrenheit 9/11," did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

"Fahrenheit 9/11," which won top honors at May's Cannes Film Festival, became the first documentary to top $100 million at the domestic box office. Moore, who won the documentary Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine," is pushing "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the best-picture category for the upcoming Oscars.

The issues for the follow-up film will remain the same, Iraq and terrorism, Moore said.

"The official mourning period is over today and there is a silver lining: George W. Bush is prohibited by law from running again," Moore said.

Center for American Progress on Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales: A Record of Injustice

As White House Counsel

GONZALES APPROVED MEMO AUTHORIZING TORTURE: An August 2002 Justice Department memo "was vetted by a larger number of officials, including...the White House counsel's office and Vice President Cheney's office." According to Newsweek, the memo "was drafted after White House meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and [Cheney counsel] David Addington." The memo included the opinion that laws prohibiting torture do "not apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants." Further, the memo puts forth the opinion that the pain caused by an interrogation must include "injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions—in order to constitute torture." The methods outlined in the memo "provoked concerns within the CIA about possible violation of the federal torture law [and] also raised concerns at the FBI, where some agents knew of the techniques being used" overseas on high-level al Qaeda officials. [Gonzales 8/1/02 memo; WP, 6/27/04; Newsweek, 6/21/04; NYT, 6/27/04]

GONZALES BELIEVES MANY GENEVA CONVENTIONS PROVISIONS ARE OBSOLETE: A 1/25/02 memo written by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales said "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war" and "this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." The memo pushes to make al Qaeda and Taliban detainees exempt from the Geneva Conventions' provisions on the proper, legal treatment of prisoners. The administration has been adamant that prisoners at Guantanamo are not protected by the Geneva Conventions. [Gonzales 1/25/02 memo; Newsweek, 5/24/04]

GONZALES ADMITTED HIS VIEWS 'COULD UNDERMINE U.S. MILITARY CULTURE': The 1/25/02 memo shows Alberto Gonzales was aware of the risk that ignoring the Geneva Conventions could create for the military. One concern expressed is that failing to apply the Geneva Conventions "could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries," which is what happened at Abu Ghraib. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly warned against taking this decision, as did lawyers from the Judge Advocate General's Corps, or JAG. This week, a federal judge ruled that "President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions" when he established military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to try detainees as war criminals. [Gonzales 1/25/02 memo; Bloomberg, 6/14/04; New York Times, 11/9/04]

GONZALES BLOCKS INFORMATION FROM CONGRESS: Historically, senators have been allowed to review some memoranda by judicial nominees. But, in a letter [about nominee Miguel Estrada], Gonzales told the Democrats that the administration would not produce the memos, because to do so would chill free expression among administration lawyers and violate the principle of executive privilege, which protects the internal deliberations of the president's aides. [New Yorker, 5/19/03]

As Texas Chief Legal Counsel

DEATH PENALTY MEMOS: GONZALES'S NEGLIGENT COUNSEL: As chief legal counsel for then-Gov. Bush in Texas, Gonzales was responsible for writing a memo on the facts of each death penalty case – Bush decided whether a defendant should live or die based on the memos. An examination of the Gonzales memoranda by the Atlantic Monthly concluded, "Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." His memos caused Bush frequently to approve executions based on "only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute." Rather than informing the governor of the conflicting circumstances in a case, "The memoranda seem attuned to a radically different posture, assumed by Bush from the earliest days of his administration—one in which he sought to minimize his sense of legal and moral responsibility for executions." [Atlantic Monthly, July/August, 2003]

MEMORANDUM ON TERRY WASHINGTON: A CASE STUDY IN INCOMPETENCE: In his briefing on death-row defendant Terry Washington – a mentally retarded 33-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old – Gonzales devoted nearly a third of his three-page report to the gruesome details of the crime, but referred "only fleetingly to the central issue in Washington's clemency appeal—his limited mental capacity, which was never disputed by the State of Texas—and present[ed] it as part of a discussion of 'conflicting information' about the condemned man's childhood." In addition, Gonzales "failed to mention that Washington's mental limitations, and the fact that he and his ten siblings were regularly beaten with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts, were never made known to the jury, although both the district attorney and Washington's trial lawyer knew of this potentially mitigating evidence." Nor did he mention that Washington's lawyer had "failed to enlist a mental-health expert" to testify on Washington's behalf, even though "ineffective counsel and mental retardation were in fact the central issues raised in the thirty-page clemency petition" it was Gonzales's job to review. This all came at a time when "demand was growing nationwide to ban executions of the retarded." [Atlantic Monthly, July/August, 2003]

GONZALES TOLD GOV. BUSH HE COULD IGNORE INTERNATIONAL LAW: In 1997, Alberto Gonzales wrote a memo for then Gov. Bush to justify non-compliance with the Vienna Convention. The Vienna Convention, ratified by the Senate in 1969, was "designed to ensure that foreign nationals accused of a crime are given access to legal counsel by a representative from their home country." Gonzales sent a letter to the U.S. State Department in which he argued that the treaty didn't apply to the State of Texas, as Texas was not a signatory to the Vienna Convention. Two days later, Texas executed Mexican citizen Irineo Tristan Montoya, despite Mexico's protestations that Texas had violated Tristan's rights under the Vienna Convention by failing to inform the Mexican consulate at the time of his arrest. (Slate, 6/15/04)

GONZALES GETS BUSH OUT OF JURY DUTY TO KEEP DUI SECRET: In 1996, as counsel to Gov. Bush, Gonzales helped to get him excused from jury duty, "a situation that could have required the governor to disclose his then-secret 1976 conviction for drunken driving in Maine." Gonzales argued "that if Bush served, he would not, as governor, be able to pardon the defendant in the future." [USA Today, 3/18/02]

As Texas Supreme Court Justice

GONZALES DOES ENRON'S BIDDING: As an elected member of the Texas Supreme Court, "Enron and Enron's law firm were Gonzales's biggest contributors," giving him $35,450 in 2000. Overall, Gonzales raked in $100,000 from the energy industry. In May 2000, "Gonzales was author of a state Supreme Court opinion that handed the energy industry one of its biggest Texas legal victories in recent history." Since Bush brought him into the White House, Gonzales has worked doggedly to keep secret the details of energy task force meetings held by Vice President Cheney. [New York Daily News, 2/2/02]

ACCEPTING DONATIONS FROM LITIGANTS: In the weeks between hearing oral arguments and making a decision in Henson v. Texas Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance, Justice Alberto Gonzales collected a $2,000 contribution premium from the Texas Farm Bureau (which runs the defendant insurance company in this case). In another case, Gonzales pocketed a $2,500 contribution from a law firm defending the Royal Insurance company just before hearing oral arguments in Embrey v. Royal Insurance. [Texas for Public Justice]

Who Was The True Conservative?

After the election results were in, Andrew Sullivan quickly tried to jump back into bed with the Republicans, as uncomfortable as they may be with this. I hope he does not forget some of his pre-election wisdom as he shows how Kerry was the true conservative (in the best sense of the word) while Bush was the radical (in the worst sense):

Left, Right, Bush, Kerry
The Labels Are Obsolete

Why is this election so hard for so many people? Here's one theory. It's not so easy to tell who's the liberal and who's the conservative anymore. You want a candidate who pumps unprecedented amounts of money into agricultural subsidies, uses tariffs to protect some American industries and adds a whole new entitlement to Medicare? That would be the, er, Republican, George W. Bush.

You want a future President who will be hard nosed about committing U.S. troops abroad, wants to balance every new spending item with a tax hike or a spending cut elsewhere and backs states' rights on social issues? Then go ahead and vote for the, er, Democrat, John Kerry.

You think there's too little federal control over education? Vote Bush. Want to expand health-care coverage primarily through the private sector? Vote Kerry.

Confused yet? You're not the only one. For conservatives there's plenty to worry about in Bush's record. By any measure, the government is bigger, more powerful and more intrusive than when he found it. Domestic spending has gone up at a greater rate than under any other President since Lyndon Johnson. The President hasn't found a single spending bill he wanted to veto. And he cannot even blame Congress. His own party controls all of it. In foreign policy, conservatives have long tended to be realists, acting only in response to hard-faced national interest, exercising prudence and caution, only reluctantly intervening in other countries' affairs. That's the kind of conservative Bush campaigned as in 2000, lambasting "nation building" in the debates and calling for fewer troops than Al Gore did.

On 'Moral Values,' It's Blue in a Landslide

Here's an excellent look at the culture wars from Frank Rich.

There's only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media's conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results - and about American culture itself - confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry's defeat notwithstanding, it's blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of "The Passion of the Christ" should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.

The blue ascendancy is nearly as strong among Republicans as it is among Democrats. Those whose "moral values" are invested in cultural heroes like the accused loofah fetishist Bill O'Reilly and the self-gratifying drug consumer Rush Limbaugh are surely joking when they turn apoplectic over MTV. William Bennett's name is now as synonymous with Las Vegas as silicone. The Democrats' Ashton Kutcher is trumped by the Republicans' Britney Spears. Excess and vulgarity, as always, enjoy a vast, bipartisan constituency, and in a democracy no political party will ever stamp them out.

I recommend reading the full article at the New York Times.

How Important Was The Born Again Vote?

I find the numbers in this item hard to believe--anyone have any good data?

Christians Push Bush Over the Top

Overall, born again Christians supported President George W. Bush by a 62% to 38% margin. In contrast, non-born again voters supported Senator John Kerry by an almost identical 59% to 39% division. The difference was in the rates of turnout of each segment. Although the born again population constitutes just 38% of the national population, it represented 53% of the vote cast in the election. If the born again public had shown up proportional to its population size, Senator Kerry would have won the election by the same three-point margin of victory enjoyed by Mr. Bush.

More Reason to Question the Mandate

MyDD points out that more votes were cast for Democratic than Republican Senate candidates, despite the Republican control of the Senate:

As difficult as it may be to believe, in the one-hundred Senate elections that have involved the one-hundred Senators who will serve next year, Democrats actually received more votes than Republicans:

Total Two-Party Votes: 189,334,976 (unofficial)
Democratic Candidates: 94,965,901 (50.16% of the two-party vote)
Republican Candidates: 94,369,075 (49.84% of the two-party vote)

These totals do not include the 2000 Senate elections in Georgia and Missouri, since there have been more recent Senate elections for the seats that were contested that year. Also, Jim Jeffords ran as a Republican in 2000, and thus his votes are counted in the Republican column. I did not total the third-party votes in these one-hundred races. Also, these results are unofficial, and I took them from CNN 2004 Senate Returns, CNN 2002 Senate Returns, and CNN 2000 Senate Returns.

So, Democrats won the Senate popular vote, but are facing a 55-45 minority. Peachy.

This is a fact Democrats should use as a justification to filibuster pretty much everything. They have the will of the people at their backs. It is time they spend their political capital to block the Republican agenda.

Besides, as Andrew Sullivan points out, mandate sounds like an awfully gay term for the GOP to be using.

Update on Elizabeth Edwards

Edwards' Wife Starts Cancer Treatment

A test shows no sign the disease has spread from her breast to the lymph nodes, doctors say.

November 11, 2004

WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards, has begun chemotherapy to shrink a half-dollar-sized lump in her breast. Doctors found no sign the cancer had spread, a family spokesman said Wednesday.

After a 16-week chemotherapy course, Edwards will take a four- to six-week break. Georgetown University Medical Center doctors who are treating Edwards will then surgically remove the lump.

A needle biopsy of Edwards' lymph nodes Tuesday found "no indication of cancer," spokesman David Ginsberg said. "From what we know now, it has not spread."

As a safety precaution, however, doctors will remove some of her healthy lymph node tissue. Edwards will then undergo radiation.

The mood at the Edwards household was upbeat. Well-wishers have written to say "they know she's strong and she's going to fight through this and their thoughts and prayers are with her," Ginsberg said.

Edwards, 55, said she discovered the lump in her right breast on Oct. 21, during a campaign trip. She said she had not gotten a mammogram in recent years.

She was diagnosed with invasive ductal cancer, the most common type of breast cancer, which can spread from milk ducts to other parts of the breast.

Well-wishers can send e-mail to elizabeth@oneamericacommittee.com or can send cards to Elizabeth Edwards, P.O. Box 5428, Washington, D.C., 20013.

And So The Sorting And Discarding Of Kerry Votes Begins

And so the sorting and discarding of Kerry votes begins
November 10, 2004

Are the provisional ballots in Ohio being thrown out? A new rule for counting provisional ballots in Cuyahoga County, Ohio was implemented on Tuesday, November 9 at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon, according to election observer Victoria Lovegren.

The new ruling in Cuyahoga County mandates that provisional ballots in yellow packets must be “Rejected” if there is no “date of birth” on the packet. The Free Press obtained copies of the original “Provisional Verification Procedure” from Cuyahoga County which stated “Date of birth is not mandatory and should not reject a provisional ballot.” The original procedure required the voter’s name, address and a signature that matched the signature in the county’s database.

Lovegren described the clerks as “kind of disturbed” after the new ruling came down. She said that one of the clerks told her, “This is new. This just came down. They just changed it in the last thirty minutes.” According to Lovegren, 80 yellow-jacketed provisional ballots piled up in the hour and 45 minutes she observed. By Lovegren’s tally, three provisional ballots were rejected because the registered voters’ registration had been “cancelled.” The rest, she said, were being discarded because of no date of birth.

In 2000, an estimated 9% of Ohio’s provisional ballots were rejected and not counted, according to Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Many election observers are predicting the number will be much higher this year due to directives from Blackwell’s office.

An earlier analysis in the Free Press of the 155,428 unofficial provisional ballots recorded at the Secretary of State’s website found that a clear majority, 85,096, came from the 15 counties Kerry won. An additional 17,038 came from urban Hamilton County, home of Cincinnati, and Wood County, where Bush won with 53% and 53.5% respectively. Traditionally, Hamilton County’s provisional ballots are disproportionately cast in the African American majority wards of the central city and not in the affluent Republican-dominated suburbs. Thus, nearly two-thirds (65.7%), or 102,134, provisional ballots come from areas where the provisional ballots are likely to be pro-Kerry.

The official county-by-county board of elections’ final tally will begin on Saturday, November 13, the 11th day after the election and be completed by the 15th day. Following this canvassing period, 11-15 days after the election, an automatic recount would ensue if the gap between Kerry and Bush narrowed to less than one quarter of one percent, an estimated 16-19,000 votes, depending on how many are actually counted.

During the canvassing, Bush will no doubt lose 3,893 votes from the infamous ward 1B in Gahanna, Ohio where a “computer glitch” counted 4,258 votes for Bush from 638 voters. But it is unlikely that Kerry will draw within the needed automatic recount margin.

At the end of the canvass, candidates including Kerry have five days to apply for a paid recount, according to election attorney Donald McTigue. McTigue served as U.S. representative Dennis Kucinich’s campaign treasurer during the Democratic presidential primaries. The recount would be held within five days, and gives any candidate who applies, Kerry or others, the right to physically inspect the polling place materials including 92,672 ballots that failed to record a vote for President.

Under Ohio law, like Florida law in 2000, the recount can include these ballots, many of them punch cards with the notorious “hanging chads” and optically scanned ballots where marks may have gone slightly astray but a vote for president is clearly evident.

Overseas ballots postmarked by Election Day and late absentees just prior to the election also remain to be counted. During a recount, candidates may also inspect authorizations to vote, to make sure that the machine tallies are in line with the actual votes cast. They also may examine voter registration forms to argue for improperly rejected provisional ballots.

Local boards of elections may amend election results if obvious mistakes are pointed out. It will cost $10 per precinct in Ohio, or an estimated $120,000, to recount the whole state.

The official tallies are due at the Secretary of State’s Office by December 1. The Secretary of State must certify the election under Ohio law by December 3.

U.S. representative Dennis Kucinich complained in an article on CommonDreams.org that “Dirty tricks occurred across the state, including phony letters from Boards of Elections telling people that their registrations through some Democratic activist groups were invalid and that Kerry voters were to report on Wednesday because of massive voter turnout.”

The Free Press, in its November 7 article “None dare call it voter suppression or fraud,” pointed to possible voting anomalies in Miami County, Ohio where nearly 19,000 new ballots appear to have been added after 100% of the precincts had reported. The additional votes were at virtually the exact same ratio as earlier Bush votes, 65.8% for earlier votes and 65.77% for the latter. Kerry’s vote percentage was identical, despite the nearly 19,000 new votes at 33.92%.

Roger Kearney of Rhombus Technologies, Ltd. told the Free Press, “The report you saw the following morning at 9 a.m. was probably either the 60 or 80 percent report.” Kearney’s company is the reporting company for vote results for Miami County; he claims that the problem was not with his reporting and that the additional 19,000 votes came before 100% of the precincts were in.

As for the statistical anomaly that showed virtually identical ratios after the final 20-40% of the vote came in, Kearney offered no explanation and said he merely reports the results given to him.

Miami County reports its votes in 20 percent blocks instead of a continuous running tally. “I watch as Steve Quillen, the Board Director, put floppy disks that he had taken from the tabulating computer and put them into the reporting computer. He did this at about 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% of the count ... I looked at each of these reports. When the final one came out about midnight, we copied the report file onto my floppy disk. I came home and immediately posted it to the website. The page is still on our website exactly as it was shortly after midnight ... No one had access to this computer but me.”

Kearney told the Free Press that the software used at the Miami County Board of Elections for counting the votes is from Elections Systems & Software (ES&S). The strong Republican ties of ES&S are well established in the public record. (See for example, “Diebold’s political machine” at motherjones.com).

Such statistical anomalies may be examined if Kerry has the courage to demand a recount, or if other candidates who have legal standing to request a recount are curious. McTigue told a gathering of suburban Democrats that Kerry may recount eight counties of interest, and other candidates may recount the rest of Ohio. Unless the opportunity is seized, more than 100,000 votes will likely go uncounted, and statistical anomalies and “computer glitches” will remain unexamined.

--Bob Fitrakis is a Professor in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at Columbus State Community College. He has a Ph.D in Political Science and a J.D. from The Ohio State University Law School. He is the author of seven books, an investigative reporter, and Editor of the Columbus Free Press (freepress.org). He has won ten major investigative journalism awards including Best Coverage of Politics in Ohio from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists. He served as an international election observer in the 1994 presidential elections in El Salvador and was the co-author and editor of the report to the United Nations. He served as legal advisor for eight polling locations on Columbus' Near East Side for the Election Protection Coalition.

After Ashcroft

After Ashcroft
November 11, 2004

SENATORS CONSIDERING President Bush's nomination of his chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, as the next attorney general should question him closely to make sure they are not replacing one divisive and authoritarian lawyer with another.

John Ashcroft, in his letter of resignation, declared himself greatly satisfied with his four-year record. "The rule of law has been strengthened and upheld in the courts," he said.
In fact, Ashcroft was chastened several times for trampling with abandon on civil liberties. In June the Supreme Court ruled that the administration could not deny people it designated enemy combatants the right to challenge their detention. The court also questioned Ashcroft's much publicized prosecution of a US citizen, Jose Padilla. A month earlier another court threw out Ashcroft's directive trying to make Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law illegal, saying it was "unlawful and unenforceable."

The Justice Department's own inspector general last year blasted the prolonged detention of illegal immigrants after the Sept. 11 attacks. Even Bush's spokesman said earlier this year that the president was "disappointed" that Ashcroft declassified documents to discredit the 9/11 Commission.

Ashcroft's legacy is that the country badly needs an attorney general who will act not only as an effective fighter against crime and terrorism but also as the chief protector of constitutional rights, not as the chief apologist for the ultimate power of the state.

Bush yesterday praised Gonzales's "sharp intellect and sound judgment." And Gonzales said: "Just give me a chance to prove myself."

Gonzales should certainly have that chance, starting in a Senate hearing room.
What stands out from Gonzales's public resume is his long and loyal service to George Bush. Such a close relationship can be an asset to the country as well as the president -- if it is accompanied by the independence to investigate the administration's own agencies, to appoint truly independent and aggressive special prosecutors when needed, and to be guided by the Constitution and the law, not politics.

On this count, serious questions are raised by Gonzales's support of the administration's now repudiated detention policy and his 2002 memo suggesting some terror suspects are not protected from torture by law or the Geneva Conventions. In both cases, Gonzales gave Bush the answer he wanted rather than sound legal judgment.

Unlike other Cabinet members, the attorney general has as his primary responsibility the protection of the people, not the president. Only if Gonzales can demonstrate that he believes this to his core and will act on it should he be confirmed.

Also read:
Change at Justice

"He brings a lot of baggage to the job of healing the breach his predecessor created, baggage the Senate Judiciary Committee should inspect carefully."

No Need To Scare The Red Masses Any More

U.S. to Lower Finance Terror Alert Status

By Lexie Verdon and Sari Horwitz

Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 10, 2004; 6:16 PM

The federal government today lowered the terror alert level from orange to yellow for five financial institutions in Washington, New York and Newark, Homeland Security Deputy Secretary James M. Loy announced.

It looks like the neocons decided they can lower the alert now that Americans in the red states (which weren't even the ones most threatened by terrorism) were scared into voting down open government, individual liberties, and a government with Constitutional checks and balances.

To comment further on this, we will turn to Benjamin Franklin:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

ENVIRONMENTAL WATCH: Beyond Science Fiction

Arctic Thaw
Tuesday, November 9, 2004

NOT ONLY HAS it moved beyond the realm of science fiction, but the Arctic ice cap's melting has been much faster than anyone has suspected. That is one of the important conclusions of a report published yesterday at the behest of the Arctic Council, a forum composed of eight nations with Arctic territories, including the United States. Yet the report, produced over four years by several hundred scientists, government officials and indigenous groups, is not sensational or alarmist. It simply compiles the data, noting that because of long-term global warming, average winter temperatures in Alaska, western Canada and eastern Russia have increased by as much as seven degrees over the past 50 years. If the trend continues, about half of the Arctic sea ice is projected to melt by the end of this century.

The report describes some of the possible environmental effects of this change. Many northern animal species, including polar bears and seals, are likely to become extinct. Vegetation and animal migration patterns around the world will shift. Low-lying parts of the world, including Florida and coastal Louisiana, are likely to experience serious flooding. But although the report's scientific conclusions will be the subject of an international conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, this week, the authors intentionally do not offer specific recommendations, political or environmental, on how to halt or cope with these changes.

Such recommendations are supposed to come from diplomats and indigenous representatives who will also be meeting at the Reykjavik summit, however. And already, these are the subject of controversy: Some participants have accused the Bush administration of resisting a mild endorsement of the report and of rejecting even vague language suggesting that greenhouse gas reduction might be part of the solution. Given the thorough nature of this report, and given that the election is now over, that would be inexcusable. At the very least, we hope that the final language reflects a practical, commonsensical and depoliticized approach to what will certainly be one of the most pressing environmental issues of the next half-century.

For more on this subject:
Study Says Polar Bears Could Face Extinction
Global warming could cause polar bears to go extinct by the end of the century by eroding the sea ice that sustains them, according to the most comprehensive international assessment ever done of Arctic climate change.

Study: Arctic warming threatens people, wildlife
Eight-nation report faults fossil fuels; U.S. in wait-and-see mode
OSLO, Norway - Global warming is heating the Arctic almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet in a thaw that threatens the livelihoods of millions of people and could wipe out polar bears by 2100, according to an eight-nation report released on Monday...

President Bush has made clear he opposes mandatory curbs on gases like carbon dioxide, which create a greenhouse effect on Earth. Many scientists fear fossil fuel sources of CO2 and other gases are warming the Earth beyond the natural greenhouse effect.

Bush also pulled out of the U.N.’s 1997 protocol on global warming, arguing it was too expensive and exempted China, India and other rapidly developing nations.

The Arctic report is online at http://amap.no/acia/.

Ohio to Count Provisional Ballots

Counting of the Ohio provisional ballots is expected to begin on Saturday, with Kerry supporters continuing to have hopes of a miracle. Looking at the numbers, we would need some unexpected breaks. The LA Times looked at the number of Kerry votes which would be needed:

If all provisional votes are deemed valid, Kerry would need 88% of them to overcome Bush's margin of victory in Ohio, assuming the remaining overseas absentee ballots were split evenly.

But many provisional ballots will probably be tossed out. In past elections, about 10% were judged as not coming from legitimately registered voters. What's more, Blackwell ruled before the election that provisional ballots had to be cast in the correct precinct, and that any cast at the wrong polling place would not be counted.

If 10% of the provisional ballots were rejected, Kerry would need to get 97.6% of those remaining to overcome Bush's lead.

Ironically, our hopes rest partially on the efficiency and ruthlessness of the GOP challengers as we must hope that they challenged unusually high numbers of legitimate voters, and that they successfully selected Kerry voters to challenge. Finding further irregularities, such as the those in Franklin County which gave significantly extra votes to Bush, could also affect the outcome. Our chances would improve further if Kerry should do better than expected among the overseas absentee ballots.

If these additional votes should pull within around 17,000 votes he might come close enough to trigger an automatic recount. We saw in Florida how the vote could have changed substantially if the recount was allowed to be completed. Kerry also has the option of requesting a recount, and has the funds to pay for it. Should the margin get closer, requesting such a recount would be understandable. The worst that could happen would be that Bush would accuse him of flip flopping on his concession.

The number of votes needed suggest that it is unlikely that Kerry could pick up the necessary votes to carry Ohio. Such an event would be as unprecedented as coming back from being down three games against the Yankees.

So Why Did We Lose?

Voters fail to back Bush priorities

Gary Younge
Tuesday November 9, 2004
The Guardian

American voters' priorities differ substantially from those set out by President Bush in the immediate aftermath of his victory, polls suggest.

An Associated Press poll showed voters support, by a huge majority, cutting the country's enormous deficit rather than slashing taxes.

By a narrow margin, voters also back the nomination of a supreme court judge who will preserve abortion rights.

More than 25% of the respondents, who were questioned in the three days after the election, listed Iraq as the top priority for Mr Bush's second term, ahead of terrorism, the economy and healthcare in that order. Seven out of 10, including a majority of Democrats, said they would prefer US troops to stay in Iraq until the country is stable.

Only 2% named taxes as the top priority and when asked specifically whether they would prefer the president to balance the budget or cut taxes further they favoured balancing the budget by two to one.

Following his victory President Bush said: "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it."

Yet few of his priorities, namely the privatisation of social security, tax laws and medical malpractice surfaced as being a big concern for voters.

Most were relieved that the election had been concluded quickly compared with 2000.

Though there have been some claims that ballots in some quarters were tampered with, 54% said the election results had improved their confidence in the electoral system. Six in 10, including a third of Democrats, said they felt "hopeful" after the election.

One Kerry Promise Fulfilled

The Era of Ashcroft is over!!!