oops... how did THAT get in there?

After a chilling display of nonchalance at a serious abuse of legislative process, the Congressional leadership is forced to reconvene (in classic full retreat mode - I love it) to undo their own chicanery. I doubt this is good for their hopes of future usurpations of power. Nobody I know is looking the other way... (from WashPost)

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bye bye bunker buster

In a surprising rebuke of the Bushministration, Congress squelches research on new nukes (from SF Gate)

Opponents of the new programs were ecstatic.

"This responsible decision demonstrates the growing bipartisan concern and distrust of the Bush administration's irresponsible and risky nuclear policy," Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, said in a statement after the appropriations bill was passed last weekend.

"The administration is using the war on terrorism as a flimsy excuse to find new uses for existing nuclear weapons and new nuclear weapons -- weapons that the Pentagon hasn't even officially asked for."

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squawk! partisan witchhunt! squawk!

from Media Matters comes this outing of the uncritical parrots of DeLay's pitifully contrived defense strategy... or... How to shake the "Liberal Bias" label? Simply ignore the facts and run our critics' talking points verbatim...

Media complicit in spreading false GOP smear of district attorney investigating DeLay

As justification for altering party rules in the House of Representatives in order to allow Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) to retain his leadership position if indicted by a Texas grand jury on political corruption charges, Republicans have claimed that Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who is investigating DeLay, is doing so for purely partisan reasons. This charge was dutifully echoed on FOX News Channel, and most other news outlets have reported it -- without noting that Earle has, in fact, prosecuted more Democratic politicians than Republican politicians.

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the color of scandal

David Brooks, with whom I usually disagree profoundly, has given us a peek into the (hopefully) inevitable downfall of "The Hammer" (from NYT):

Tom DeLay is bleeding and he doesn't even know it.

This week, House Republicans bent their accountability rules to protect their majority leader from what they feel is a partisan Texas prosecutor. But they hated the whole exercise. They sat in a conference room hour after hour wringing their hands. Only a few members were brave enough to stand up and say they shouldn't bend the rule. But afterward, many House Republicans came up to those members and said that secretly they agreed with them.

Somewhere in the psychology of the caucus something shifted. That ineffable thing called political capital began seeping away from DeLay. Someday people will look back and say this could be the moment when his power begins to ebb.

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the red and the blue, cont'd

From the always entertaining Tom Tomorrow:

Because I did grow up in Iowa and Arkansas, I also know that being a liberal in those places--even when you are sequestered in a college town--is a substantively different experience from being a liberal in San Francisco or New York. And anyone who writes me and tries to pretend otherwise, tries to pretend that there is absolutely no difference, that rural Arkansas is every bit as enlightened and tolerant as San Francisco or New York, and only an out-of-touch East Coast elitist would think otherwise--well, you may be kidding yourself, but you're not kidding me.

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there he goes again

Oh, Colin. Will you ever learn?

from the WashPost:

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shared information with reporters Wednesday about Iran's nuclear program that was classified and based on an unvetted, single source who provided information that two U.S. officials said yesterday was highly significant if true but has not yet been verified.

and a few paragraphs down:

The official said the CIA remains unsure about the authenticity of the documents and how they came into the informant's possession. A second official would say only that there are questions about the source of the information.

Officials interviewed by The Washington Post did not know the identity of the source or whether the individual is connected to an Iranian exile group that made fresh accusations about Iran at a news conference Wednesday in Paris. The National Council for Resistance in Iran charged that Iran was enriching uranium and will continue to do so despite the pledge made Sunday to European foreign ministers.

The group also claimed that Iran received blueprints for a Chinese-made bomb in the mid-1990s from the global nuclear network led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. The group, which is considered a terrorist organization by the State Department, exposed a secret Iranian enrichment facility in 2002, but many of its claims have been inaccurate.

Hm... Does this sound familiar to anyone? Does the name Ahmed Chalabi ring a bell?

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Beware, it's spreading...

I wonder if Canada has anything they can import that would mitigate this condition:

Subject: New CDC Virus Warning
The Center for Disease Control has issued
a warning about a new
virulent strain of a sexually transmitted
disease. This disease is contracted
through dangerous and high risk behavior.
The disease is called Gonorrhealectim
(pronounced "gonna re-elect him").Many
victims have contracted it after having
been screwed for the past 4 years, in
spite of having taken measures to protect
themselves from this especially virulent
disease. Cognitive sequellae of individuals
infected with Gonorrhealectim include, but
are not limited to: Anti-social personality
disorder traits; delusions of grandeur with
a distinct messianic flavor; chronic mangling
of the English language; extreme cognitive
dissonance; inability to incorporate new
information; pronounced xenophobia; inability
to accept responsibility for actions;
exceptional cowardice masked by acts of mis-
placed bravado; ignorance of geography and
history; tendencies toward creating evangel-
ical theocracies; and a strong propensity
for categorical, all-or-nothing behavior.

free and fair?

from MoveOn:

Subject: Tell Congress to Investigate the 2004 Election

Dear friend, Questions are swirling around whether the election was
conducted honestly or not. We need to know -- was it or wasn't it? If people
were wrongly prevented from voting, or if legitimate votes were mis-counted or
not counted at all, we need to know so the wrongdoers can beheld accountable,
and to help prevent this from happening again. Members of Congress are demanding an investigation to answer this question.

Join me in supporting their call at:http://www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/

OK, I feel much safer now

From the Daily Show With Jon Stewart:

We begin tonight with a shakeup in the cabinet. After serving President Bush for four glorious, terror-filled years, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his resignation yesterday with a statement reading in part, 'the objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.

OK! Done, and done. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to cure cancer. Call you after turkey day.

The resignation came in the form of a five-page letter Ashcroft handwrote so that, quote, 'its confidentiality could be maintained.' So apparently America is safe other than the computers at the Justice Department. But really, how important are those intelligence-wise?

so much for compassion

from Mark Morford at SFGate

We are all suckers, all losers in this election. Are you a Democrat? Republican? Doesn't matter. The line is no longer liberal/conservative. It is no longer tax 'n' spend versus cut 'n' deficit, Toyota Prius versus Ford Expedition, happy godless heathen sodomite versus Mel Gibson.

It is now ultrawealthy, power-hungry Bushite CEO versus, well, the rest. Do you see? News flash to conservatives: Bush just pretended to care about you, because he had to, because Karl Rove told him to, because he needed your fear and your blind faith to win another term. You matter about as much as a U.S. soldier in Fallujah, now.

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purple, schmurple

from Talking Points Memo:

The oddity of this Red State moralism argument emerges most clearly when you look at statistics for virtually every form of quantifiable social dysfunction. Divorce, out-of-wedlock birth, poverty, murder, incidence of preventable disease --- go down the list and you’ll see that they are all highest in the reddest states and lowest in the bluest.

Not to mention the productiveness and dominance of Blue State business and industry in terms of contribution to the national economy and tax base... Lots of mean-spirited discourse abounds (like here), but suffice it to say that their holier-than-thou attitude is B.S.

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hack the vote... OK, now I'm getting sick.

from Common Dreams:

While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking – the results seem to contain substantial anomalies.

In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.

In Dixie County, with 9,676 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.

The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.

I'm not normally one for conspiracy theories, but this stinks.

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regrouping

Howard Dean, from The Dartmouth Online:

"There will not be retreat on behalf of the Democratic Party," Dean said, exhorting the audience to make the United States the strongest nation in the world in moral values and moral leadership.

Dean emphasized the importance of the Democratic Party's commitment to its core values and principles, saying that the nation did not need "two Republican parties." He was emphatic about not sacrificing Democratic values for public appeal.

I think we know what we stand for and what our "values" proposition is... now how do we best communicate it?

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red, blue, and purple - let's go the map

Election result maps from the University of Michigan:

The (contiguous 48) states of the country are colored red or blue to indicate whether a majority of their voters voted for the Republican candidate (George W. Bush) or the Democratic candidate (John F. Kerry) respectively. The map gives the superficial impression that the "red states" dominate the country, since they cover far more area than the blue ones. However, as pointed out by many others, this is misleading because it fails to take into account the fact that most of the red states have small populations, whereas most of the blue states have large ones. The blue may be small in area, but they are large in terms of numbers of people, which is what matters in an election.

We can correct for this by making use of a cartogram, a map in which the sizes of states have been rescaled according to their population. That is, states are drawn with a size proportional not to their sheer topographic acreage -- which has little to do with politics -- but to the number of their inhabitants, states with more people appearing larger than states with fewer, regardless of their actual area on the ground. Thus, on such a map, the state of Rhode Island, with its 1.1 million inhabitants, would appear about twice the size of Wyoming, which has half a million, even though Wyoming has 60 times the acreage of Rhode Island.

Here are the 2004 presidential election results on a population cartogram of this type:

As my friend Kathy says: "It is really really hard to force people to see their own ignorance. And that is true whether one lives in Louisville or Los Angeles." Amen. The first step towards true understanding is to recognize our own ignorance.

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just the facts, ma'am

from NYT:

OK, so I may be an elitist, but at least I'm not STUPID...

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the wheels of justice

from NYT:

God bless the ACLU. Somebody's got to defend these poor schmucks... And it sure ain't gonna be the Bushministration.

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Maureen Dowd tells it like it is...

from NYT:

Instead of the New Frontier, Karl and W. offer the New Backtier.
Even as a child, I could feel the rush of J.F.K.'s presidency racing forward, opening up a thrilling world of possibilities and modernity. We were going to the moon. We were confronting racial intolerance. We were paying any price and bearing any burden for freedom. We were respecting faith but keeping it out of politics. Our president was inspiring much of the world. Our first lady was setting the pace in style and culture.
W.'s presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities, stirring intolerance, confusing church with state, blowing off the world, replacing science with religion, and facts with faith. We're entering another dark age, more creationist than cutting edge, more premodern than postmodern. Instead of leading America to an exciting new reality, the Bushies cocoon in a scary, paranoid, regressive reality. Their new health care plan will probably be a return to leeches.

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towards a purple consciousness

from NYT:

Ms. Camhe explained the habits and beliefs of those dwelling in the heartland like an anthropologist.

"What's different about New York City is it tends to bring people together and so we can't ignore each others' dreams and values and it creates a much more inclusive consciousness," she said. "When you're in a more isolated environment, you're more susceptible to some ideology that's imposed on you."

As an example, Ms. Camhe offered the different attitudes New Yorkers may have about social issues like gay marriage.

"We live in this marvelous diversity where we actually have gay neighbors," she said. "They're not some vilified unknown. They're our neighbors."

But she said that a dichotomy of outlooks was bad for the country.

"If the heartland feels so alienated from us, then it behooves us to wrap our arms around the heartland," she said. "We need to bring our way of life, which is honoring diversity and having compassion for people with different lifestyles, on a trip around the country."

Instead of sending Paris Hilton to rural America, I think the next reality show should feature Blue State and Red State families in cultural exchanges. College students should be required to spend a semester "abroad" to get to know their fellow Americans. If intolerance is left unchecked, civil war is the inevitable outcome. There has been so much personal rancor on both sides that we cannot hope to find common ground unless we make an effort to put a human face on "the other".

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count me in

from netpolitik:

Bringing Light to a World in Darkness

By Nick Lewis

There is no political movement whose goals are more admirable, necessary, or virtuous than that of the Progressives. We fight the forces of war, ignorance, and greed with all of our hearts; many of us even understand that the survival of civilization, and perhaps humanity itself, may rest upon our shoulders during the next 100 years. And for better or worse, it will be up to us: we who, against all odds, are willing to fight for a better world.

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uncomfortably numb

It's been a somber day here in the City by the Bay. We're all looking a little down in the mouth. Uncomfortably numb. I'm looking forward to mending relationships damaged by the campaign of bitterness, resentment, and lack of understanding. If only it could all be dismissed as a wardrobe malfunction.

I've been considering folding this blog, expecting that my original anger, the eponymous boiling point of water, would have cooled with the outcome of the election. But having sat and reckoned with my disappointment, I've decided to carry on. The roiling pot empties quickly, so let's turn it down to a simmer. For now anyway.

It's time to put Inherit the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ten Angry Men, and Mr Smith Goes to Washington on the Netflix queue. Time to rekindle our cultural memories of fairness and justice. We have survived and will live to fight another day.

the arc of history

from MoveOn:

Although George Bush won by 3% nationally, we must remember that 55.4 million Americans stood with you and with John Kerry. You are certainly not alone. And a healthy environment, a strong and fair economy, good schools, domestic safety and the end of the war in Iraq are goals we all share -- red states and blue states alike.

Our journey toward a progressive America has always been bigger than George Bush. The current leg is just beginning -- we're still learning how to build a citizen-based politics together. But it's a journey our nation has been on for a long time. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."

To be Progressive is to strive for progress. It is the manner in which we strive that will ultimately define us. Let us be mindful that history will judge us harshly if we allow our methods to detract from our message. Lead by example. Tomorrow's heroes are being educated right now. They are the future. They will write our history.

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economics vs. values

food for thought from NYT's Nicholas Kristof:

"The Republicans are smarter," mused Oregon's governor,
Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat. "They've created ... these
social issues to get the public to stop looking at
what's happening to them economically."

"What we once thought - that people would vote in their
economic self-interest - is not true, and we Democrats
haven't figured out how to deal with that."

Bill Clinton intuitively understood the challenge, and
John Edwards seems to as well, perhaps because of their
own working-class origins. But the party as a whole is
mostly in denial.

The day will come when that 51% of the country realizes they've been had. In 1972, it took criminal indictments. The disillusionment this time around, if it ever comes, will not be pretty. And I, for one, will refuse the urge to gloat.

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keep the faith

cold comfort from Daily Kos:

Not a few people have spoken in the past few hours about an Americanist authoritarianism emerging out of the country's current leadership. I think that's not far-fetched. Fighting this requires that we stick together, not bashing each other, not fleeing or hiding or yielding to the temptation of behaving as if "what's the use?" It's tough on the psyche to be beaten.Throughout our country's history, abolitionists, suffragists, union organizers, anti-racists, antiwarriors, civil libertarians, feminists and gay rights activists have challenged the majority of Americans to take off their blinders. Each succeeded one way or another, but not overnight, and certainly not without serious setbacks. After a decent interval of licking our wounds and pondering what might have been and where we went wrong, we need to spit out our despair and return - united - to battling those who have for the moment outmaneuvered us. Otherwise, we might just as well lie down in the street and let them flatten us with their schemes.

Chin up, friends.

Call a friend this morning and commiserate. It may be difficult to do, but go congratulate a conservative. This is not the time for bitterness and recriminations. We are in the minority in this country and we cannot simply lie down and suck our thumbs. Let's not engage in a circular firing squad. We must continue the strong tradition of informed dissent. Our values are just as deeply held and as legitimate as theirs.

Teach your children tolerance and persistence. Nothing is more important than speaking our minds and fighting for what we believe in.

Keep in touch.

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It all comes down to turnout

Well, here we are. It's been a long, strange trip, but election day is finally here! Let's all get out and vote - prove the pundits and networks wrong and demonstrate our power to determine the course of history.

My wish list:
Big turnout, a clear winner before midnight Pacific time, and oh yes, a long vacation for George W. Bush.

Keep the faith! VOTE!!!