Abandon ship! Republican politicos are officially endorsing Kerry, a troubling sign of great significance in this polarized environment. The Nation's John Nichols:

Former Republican members of the U.S. Senate and House, governors, ambassadors, aides to GOP Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush have explicitly endorsed the campaign of Democrat John Kerry. For many of these lifelong Republicans, their vote for Kerry will be a first Democratic vote. But, in most cases, it will not be a hesitant one.

Angered by the Bush administration's mismanagement of the war in Iraq, record deficits, assaults on the environment and secrecy, the renegade partisans tend to echo the words of former Minnesota Governor Elmer Andersen, who says that, "Although I am a longtime Republican, it is time to make a statement, and it is this: Vote for Kerry-Edwards, I implore you, on November 2."

The essay continues on, with direct quotes from over a dozen public "defections" from the GOP faithful to Kerry. This cannot sit well with the Bush camp, and as expected, we've heard little from them (or the media for that matter) about this. How many Dems are endorsing Kerry over Bush. Hmmm?

You have to check out this DKos diary on voter fraud and disenfranchisement around the country. Just a sample, from a flyer circulating in my honey's home state of Alabama:



You have to ask yourself why does the GOP feel they need to do this sort of thing, especially in minority areas? If they put as much effort into trying to recruit the black vote as suppressing it, they could see more dividends, because they are going to vote this time, and it won't be for Bush.

And dammit, can any of them spell? Check this one floating around in Milwaukee:

Remember how you need to be screened, have a ticket and take a loyalty oath before seeing Bush at a rally? We thought it was to keep dissent down. Actually, the real reason is poor, low-self-esteem Shrub needs the pick-me-up of an only-adoring crowd, according to puppetmaster Karl Rove. (NYT).

Karl Rove, the presidential adviser, surveyed the scene one night at a farm in Bucks County, where thousands of supporters stood shoulder-to-shoulder on a plowed cornfield. An American flag, basking in bright lights, hung from the side of a white barn.

"He gets it," Mr. Rove said of the president. "It is really, really energizing. Think about this crowd. Almost everywhere we go it is wild."

Whether it is all the calculated showmanship of a skilled politician, or the genuine George W. Bush refusing to be smothered by the political process, is not up for discussion at the rallies.

When questions to that effect are posed by journalists, the reaction is typically hostile. Many Republicans who attend Mr. Bush's rallies identify the news media as the main source of his problems, and they do not hesitate to challenge or heckle reporters traveling with the president.

The talking heads and MSM have been wondering whether the fact that pollsters are missing cell phone voters who don't have landlines. This would, of course, skewing results. Most pollsters have pooh-poohed this voting block, but Zogby says they're going for Kerry -- and they are planning to goto the polls.

Polling firm Zogby International and partner Rock the Vote found Massachusetts Senator John Kerry leading President Bush 55% to 40% among 18-29 year-old likely voters in their first joint Rock the Vote Mobile political poll, conducted exclusively on mobile phones October 27 through 30, 2004. Independent Ralph Nader received 1.6%, while 4% remain undecided in the survey of 6,039 likely voters. The poll is centered on subscribers to the Rock the Vote Mobile (RTVMO) platform, a joint initiative of Rock the Vote and Motorola Inc. (for more information: http://www.rtvmo.com). The poll has margin of error of +/-1.2 percentage points.

The poll also found that only 2.3% of 18-29 year-old respondents said they did not plan to vote, and another .5% who were not sure if they would. The results of the survey are weighted for region, gender, and political party.

Off political topics for a brief Halloween blast from the past. The missus and I went to an 80s themed party last night and I dug out the only original piece of clothing I have left from my period -- legwarmers. The rest I had to get, including some truly heinous earrings, plastic charm necklaces and the awful pink hat. I didn't have the big hair, as shown in the photo in the middle (1984), or on the right (1981). Had to hide the locs under the cap in 2004.


>
Top left: 80s party, 2004. Top right: Teased, curling iron and sprayed, 1984; bottom: Huge hair -- 1981 -- HS graduation at Carnegie Hall from Stuyvesant High School in NYC and...the locs of 2004. More on the politics of my hair.

The White House can give up on OBL as a deciding factor for voters, according to the NYT">NYT. As one of the interviewees said, "They've spent all this time looking for the guy and here he pops up, none the worse for wear," said Mr. Blake, a construction worker from Crestline, Calif., who was visiting Las Vegas with his wife, Jennifer, and infant daughter, Stephanie. "After all was said and done, we didn't get him. He's very savvy. I don't think he should be underestimated. He's like a rattlesnake in a cage - be careful, he could strike."

Dick Cheney just said this on Friday at an airport rally at a hangar in Montoursville, Pa, according to the AP:

"The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq will be studied for years for their brilliance."

OK, I guess the NYT has it all wrong, as usual, eh Dick? It reports again to the sad state of our military's readiness, especially the National Guard. BC04's amazing ability to boldly lie to the public (and apparently to themselves) when they say they support our troops is just disgusting every time I hear it.

When the 1544th Transportation Company of the Illinois National Guard was preparing to leave for Iraq in February, relatives of the soldiers offered to pay to weld steel plates on the unit's trucks to protect against roadside bombs. The Army told them not to, because it would provide better protection in Iraq, relatives said.

Seven months later, many of the company's trucks still have no armor, soldiers and relatives said, despite running some of the most dangerous missions in Iraq and incurring the highest rate of injuries and deaths among the Illinois units deployed there.

"This problem is very extensive," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former infantry platoon leader with the Florida National Guard in Iraq who now runs an organization called Operation Truth, an advocacy group for soldiers and veterans.

Though soldiers of all types have complained about equipment in Iraq, part-timers in the National Guard and Reserve say that they have a particular disadvantage because they start off with outdated or insufficient gear. They have been deployed with faulty radios, unreliable trucks and, most alarmingly for many, a shortage of soundly armored vehicles in a land regularly convulsed by roadside attacks, according to soldiers, relatives and outside military experts.

Guess Cheney should also ignore the NYT story about more Marines dying in an insurgent attack yesterday near Baghdad.

Eight marines were killed and nine others wounded west of the capital on Saturday when a suicide car bomb rammed into their convoy, military officials said, resulting in the deadliest day for the American forces in half a year.

Bush and Cheney cannot blame Kerry for this national shame.

Tomorrow's GOP leadership today. Building corrupt grassroots politicos from day one.

Local GOP orgs know no boundaries either -- one group is taking advantage of the elderly. In Durham, the Herald-Sun reports on these shady fundraising tactics.

"The Herald-Sun reported Thursday that the College Republican National Committee has received at least 87 percent of its North Carolina donations from people who list their occupation as retired. Most of those contacted by The Herald-Sun were in their 80s.

This campaign season, the CRNC has raised more than $6.3 million nationally, putting it in the top 15 political groups tracked by the IRS. The group raised $93,280 in North Carolina.

Because the CRNC solicits under different names, such as the National Republican Task Force and the National Republican Victory Campaign, many seniors have donated to the group repeatedly, often several times in a single day or week. Many had made more than 50 donations since January, sometimes totaling thousands of dollars.

When asked about their giving, many of them had little understanding of how much they had donated or where their money was going. The group's high-pressure mailings, which often play on senior citizens' emotions, suggest that the money would help re-elect President Bush and other Republicans. But according to the Center for Public Integrity, which monitors campaign spending, the CRNC has spent at least 83 percent of its proceeds since 2000 on direct mailings and other fund-raising expenses.
Officers with the CRNC have refused to answer questions about the organization.

'You've got to talk to somebody else,' CRNC treasurer Paul Gourley said Friday when reached on his mobile phone.

Gourley's name and signature appear on many of the group's solicitation letters, but he refused to say whether he stands behind the fund raising.

In Washington, Lindsay Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, the core organization of the party, said the RNC "is in no way affiliated" with the CRNC, although the RNC still has a link to the CRNC on its Web site.

In Durham, John T. Plecnik, policy adviser for the Duke College Republicans, said his group also has nothing to do with CRNC fund raising and encouraged donors to give directly to the Duke group instead of to the CRNC.

Oh and here are the NC Chapter Chairs:
* North Carolina Chapter Chairman Information
* Appalachian State University Tom Greene
* Campbell University Bret Thevaos
* Davidson College Joseph Adams
* Duke Laura Carpenter
* Elon University Lindsey Guice
* Lenoir-Rhyne College Leslee Baker
* Meredith College Jennifer Smith
* Pfeiffer University Matt Bolen
* University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Jordan Selleck
* University of North Carolina-Pembroke Aubrey Ardiente
* University of North Carolina-Wilmington Michael Pomarico

Meghan O'Rourke at Slate has an interesting and on-point essay on Eminem's "Mosh" video.

Eminem has long been one of the best musical storytellers around, with a knack for turning his own life into the stuff of enduring caricature. "Mosh"—which is, in fact, animated—puts this talent to good use, capitalizing in part on the fact that reality seems like caricature to so many anti-Bush folks these days. "Mosh" is a pointed assault of the Bush administration and its disastrous handling of the Iraq war; it opens with a plane striking a building off-screen and concludes with a horde of disenfranchised citizens and soldiers, dressed in black hoodies with their faces masked, storming courthouse steps in order to vote. (Most versions end with the words "Vote. November 2nd.") Done in stark black-and-white tones—leavened occasionally by the muted blues and reds of a presidential power suit—"Mosh" takes aim at the Bush administration's tax cuts (and the widening gap between the rich and the poor); its self-serving appropriation of the heroic sacrifices made by young soldiers; and, most of all, the "psychological warfare" it has waged on those who "beg to differ" (hoping "to trick us into thinking that we ain't loyal/ if we don't serve our country"). Hence its warm embrace by lefty types everywhere.

...It combines animation and live action to disconcerting effect, moving from bombed-out ghettoes to stylized faces with large, imploring eyes. (GNN also produced the video to "White America," which was never aired on MTV.) Planes fly menacingly overhead, we cut to Eminem as a Bush stand-in reading an upside down book about a pet goat. (One wonders if Eminem knows the similar image that went around the Internet for a while was doctored.) The police harass a black man (hip-hop artist Lloyd Banks); a single mother is evicted from her home; a soldier is redeployed. All of this is powerful but fairly easy to swallow; more complicated—and more interesting—are images in which a loner Eminem stands before a terrifying wall of anti-Bush newspaper clippings and scribblings worthy of the kookiest conspiracy theorist; or the figure of Private Kelly, whose fury divides him even from the voters transfigured by Eminem's battle cry. As figure after figure silently joins Eminem's determined march on Washington, "Mosh" coyly plays against the viewer's sense of wishfulness—perhaps things really will change—by amping up the menace. The central conceit—an army of Eminem-inspired voters "moshes" to freedom—is not meant to be merely reassuring, in the same way that P. Diddy's "Vote or Die" campaign is not simply a noble call to civic duty.

Indeed, what's most remarkable about "Mosh" has little to do with partisan politics. Eminem is hardly carrying water for Kerry and the Democrats; the mode is noirish, fascistic, overtly menacing and antiauthoritarian. Em's native mode is debunking the status quo, not building a new one up, and in "Mosh" he's plainly taken measure of the fact that his video will be watched by upper-middle-class liberals thrilled by the PR value here: Even the pop culture hero who found nothing sacred—the savage from the urban jungle—is outraged by Bush. And so the image of an army of youth marching down the street is meant to make you feel, momentarily, that the peace between the classes is a precarious one, and that violence is the recourse—and the idiom—of those who feel themselves to be terminally disenfranchised.

The article is a good read. The video itself is here.

The Pentagon screws another 6,500 soldiers by extending their tours of duty. There's also fear of more violence by the insurgents. The The New York Times reports that the Department of Defense is thinking of increasing forces by as many as 15,000, but they haven't moved on this yet (probably pending the election). I hope all those Bush voters are packing the bags of all their draft-age kids. They're next.

The Pentagon has ordered about 6,500 soldiers in Iraq to extend their tours, the first step the military has taken to increase its combat power there in preparation for the January elections, senior Defense Department officials said Friday.

About 3,500 members of the Second Brigade of the First Cavalry Division will stay in Iraq two months longer than initially ordered, and about 3,000 soldiers assigned to headquarters and support units of the First Infantry Division will have their tours extended by two and a half weeks.

While Pentagon officials and military officers previously had left open the possibility that additional troops would be required to battle a tenacious insurgency ahead of the elections, they had also expressed hopes that new Iraqi security forces or foreign units might fill the need. The decision to extend the stay of American forces in Iraq at a time when replacement troops also are arriving means a significant increase in the overall American combat presence for the first time since the summer.

No other extensions have been approved, and no units now preparing for Iraq duty have been ordered to speed up their departure, according to Pentagon and military officials.

But senior Defense Department officials said they had considered plans that would allow the American military in Iraq to quickly increase its forces by as many as three brigades - a total of as many as 15,000 troops, the combat power of a traditional Army division - but that no steps had been taken other than the extensions discussed Friday.

...The Islamic holy month of Ramadan has already prompted a 25 percent increase in daily attacks, according to Pentagon officials. But these officials said they had seen no indication yet of a major insurgent offensive like the one a year ago. But military commanders said they must prepare for a guerrilla offensive that could come in November or December, as voter registration gets under way in earnest, or for attacks timed to the elections in January.

NYT:

"'It comes down to this,' Mr. Kerry said Friday morning in Orlando. 'If you believe we need a fresh start in Iraq, if you believe we can create and keep good jobs that pay more here in America than the jobs were losing overseas, if you believe we need to get health care costs under control and make it available to all Americans, if you believe in the promise of stem cell research, if you believe our deficits are too high and we're too dependent on Mideast oil - then I ask you to join me, and together, we will change America.'"

Bye, bye Furious George.

Had a 90 minute wait last night at Githens Middle School, one of four centers open for early voting. It ends today, with polls open from 9-1 and I know there will be people queued up way before 9. The system was overwhelmed by the turnout; I arrived at 6; the doors were to close at 7, but they pulled every last person that was outside into the school before locking the doors so all could vote. When I left, around 7:30, there were many, many people packed in the building patiently (and cheerfully) waiting.

Oh, and there was no one out representing the GOP passing out voter guides. All Dems. The crowd was demographically middle-class, all races. I would have been shocked if there were any significant number of BC04 voters in this group. Everyone was energized about change.

Also, see the diary NC early voting stats 3 urban counties. Dems are out in full force.

Next, you'll have to kiss Bush's feet at a rally and weep. Slate's Chris Suellentrop is witness to the loyalty oath on the campaign trail. This is so bizarre, but it shows you why Bush can no longer think on his feet -- he has handpicked crowds of worshippers, no tough questions, just his wet dream of an adoring audience that believes he is a deity.

"I want you to stand, raise your right hands,' and recite 'the Bush Pledge,' said Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: 'I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States.'

I know the Bush-Cheney campaign occasionally requires the people who attend its events to sign loyalty oaths, but this was the first time I have ever seen an audience actually stand and utter one. Maybe they've replaced the written oath with a verbal one. "

I'm sick of this racist sh*t. For the GOP, it's been a series of stories where it isn't even beneath-the-surface racism. It's outright in-your-face -- from voter intimidation of the elderly blacks in FL to the racist and false flyers in Milwaukee attempting to suppress the vote.

The latest piece of bigotry comes right out of the mouth of Tom Coburn, the wingnut running for the Senate in Oklahoma. Here are his pearls of wisdom...

A Republican Senate candidate from Oklahoma who has run into trouble over verbal gaffes was drawing fire again on Friday for saying black men have a "genetic predisposition" for a lower life expectancy than whites.

Dr. Tom Coburn, a Republican physician locked in a neck-and-neck struggle for a pivotal U.S. Senate seat, made the comment in a discussion of Social Security privatization during a locally televised debate on Wednesday night.

Coburn said black males were statistically more likely to die before they could benefit from Social Security.

"What kind of plan is that, that we are going to take from those who have a genetic predisposition of less life expectancy, that we are going to steal from those and give it to somebody else?" Coburn asked on Wednesday.

...Angela Monson, a Democratic state representative from Oklahoma City, said the suggestion that blacks are genetically inferior was "bizarre."

"I think he was so bent on pushing the privatization of Social Security that he took this leap," she said. "A leap off the deep end."

Has this man read ANYTHING about the environment and society's effect on the health of black Americans and life expectancy? This comment is just moronic, even if the overall statistics are true. As a doctor, he should be well-aware of studies on the health of minority groups.

"Risk factors for heart disease include high blood pressure, elevated serum cholesterol levels, smoking, diabetes, physical inactivity, and obesity. Public health professionals should focus efforts on prevention and risk reduction at all ages, and particularly at younger ages among racial/ethnic minorities. Improved health promotion and primary and secondary prevention strategies are needed to decrease the burden of heart disease and eliminate health disparities in the population."

Coburn=Asswipe.

Well look at this development -- the State Dept tried to stop the airing of the bin Laden tape. (AP)

The State Department on Friday urged the government of Qatar, which finances Al-Jazeera, not to broadcast a videotaped speech by Osama bin Laden, a senior State Department official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the State Department spoke to officials in Qatar before Al-Jazeera showed a portion of the tape. In it, the al-Qaida leader said the United States can avoid another attack if it stops threatening the security of Muslims.

The request to the Persian Gulf government, which is considered an ally in the U.S. campaign to counter terror, was passed through the U.S. embassy in Doha, Qatar's capital.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and other Bush administration officials have appeared in Al-Jazeera interviews, although the State Department has occasionally denounced the network as biased against the United States. The reason for going on these programs is to convey the U.S. message to the Arab world, the official said.

Do you think they felt this was going a blow to Bush? After all, bin Laden came out and spoke looking healthy and strong, even taunting Bush. Rough translation here, from Drudge. Yeah they had to try and stop it from airing --but that didn't go over well with Al-Jazeera:

OBL: You American people, my speech to you is the best way to avoid another conflict about the war and its reasons and results. I am telling you security is an important pillar of human life. And free people don't let go of their security contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. He should tell us why we didn't hit Sweden for instance. Its known that those who hate freedom don't have dignified souls.like the 19 who were blessed. But we fought you because we are free people, we don't sleep on our oppression. We want to regain the freedom of our Muslim nation as you spill our security, we spill your security.

I am so surprised by you. Although we are in the fourth year after the events of sept 11, Bush is still practicing distortion and misleading on you, and obscuring the main reasons and therefore the reasons are still existing to repeat what happened before. I will tell you the reasons behind theses incidents.

I will be honest with you on the moment when the decision was taken to understand. We never thought of hitting the towers. But after we were so fed up, and we saw the oppression of the American Israeli coalition on our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind and the incidents that really touched me directly goes back to 1982 and the following incidents. When the US permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the assistance of the 6th fleet. In these hard moments, it occurred to me so many meanings I cant explain but it resulted in a general feeling of rejecting oppression and gave me a hard determination to punish the oppressors. While I was looking at the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it came to my mind to punish the oppressor the same way and destroy towers in the US to get a taste of what they tasted, and quit killing our children and women.

OBL: We didn't find difficulty dealing with Bush and his administration due to the similarity of his regime and the regims in our countries. Whish half of them are ruled by military and the other half by sons of kings and presidents and our experience with them is long. Both parties are arrogant and stubborn and the greediness and taking money without right and that similarity appeared during the visits of Bush to the region while people from our side were impressed by the US and hoped that these visits would influence our countries. Here he is being influenced by these regimes, Royal and military. And was feeling jealous they were staying for decades in power stealing the nations finances without anybody overseeing them. So he transferred the oppression of freedom and tyranny to his son and they call it th e Patriot Law to fight terrorism. He was bright in putting his sons as governors in states and he didn't forget to transfer his experience from the rulers of our region to Florida to falsify elections to benefit from it in critical times.

Female Presenter: Bin Laden considered the way Bush dealt with the first moments of Sept. 11, giving a good chance to the executors of Sept. 11 to complete it.

OBL: We agreed with Mohamed Atta, god bless him, to execute the whole operation in 20 minutes. Before Bush and his administration would pay attention and we never thought that the high commander of the US armies would leave 50 thousand of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors by themselves when they most needed him because it seemed to distract his attention from listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting was more important than paying attention to airplanes butting the towers which gave us three times the time to execute the operation thank god.

Male presenter: the final part of the message is that the security of the Americans depends on the policy that they execute despite the winner of the elections.

OBL: Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your hands. Each state that doenst mess with our security has automatically secured their security.

Looks like Osama is resurfacing on video today at 4PM. It's airing on Aljazeera. What precious timing.

UPDATE: Osama thumbed his nose at Bush; he looks healthy and apparently recounted his rational for the 9/11 attacks, and mentioned Kerry, so the White House cannot say it's an old tape, nor that Osama is out of it. Of course their spin will be that there is some hidden message that will require a raising of the terror alert this weekend. Just wait.

2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes, courtesy of The Stranger.com. Just brilliant. And there are plenty more of these creative costumes, including Florida's Electronic Touch-Screen Voting Machines, Arrested Protestor, and "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid.


The Littlest Prisoner at Abu Ghraib
Your child will be the hit of the neighborhood costume parade in this recreation of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal's most indelible image. As an added bonus this easy-to-make costume will remind everyone on your child's trick-or-treat route of our national shame! Simply roll a cone from a sheet of 24"x38" black cardstock, making sure to cut out a hole for the face. Drape with two yards of black felt, and add leftover wires from your last lamp-rewiring project. Voila! So easy, so quick, and so terrifying!

Total cost: Under $20.
Total time: Under two hours.

Thanks to AMERICAblog for the pointer.

Whoops. The dumbass Bush campaign didn't bother to check with the songwriter of "Still the One" (the 80s Orleans tune, not the Shania Twain song) before using it during his rallies. John Hall is filing a complaint. (AP)

Hall, a former Democratic county legislator in upstate New York, co-wrote "Still the One" and recorded it with his band Orleans in 1976. The cheery pop tune was played at Bush events Thursday and again Friday to open and close a rally for the president in New Hampshire.

"I was watching TV, and there all of a sudden was my song, my guitar playing, my voice coming out of the speakers," said the 56-year-old Hall, still a working musician.

Hall wrote "Still the One" with his then-wife, Johanna D. Hall. The two as well as surviving members of the band are supporters of Democratic Sen. John Kerry and don't want their work used to promote Bush's re-election, Hall said.

...Hall's lawyers are drafting a formal letter of complaint to the Bush campaign. A spokesman for the Republican did not immediately return calls for comment.

There's also a good DKos thread on this. Did these Bushies not learn anything from Reagan's campaign when they attempted to appropriate Bruce's "Born in the USA" in '84?

This is where they planned to take the campaign, if it got too desperate -- 9/11 and images of the WTC burning. The Blue Lemur reports on the latest pathetic attempt to sway voters in PA.
Repugs realize now that Dems are serious about "get out the vote" and the early vote numbers are coming in and it's scaring the GOP. See a DKos diary for an example of why they should be worried in NC, for example (which should be a solid state for Bush): NC early voting stats 3 urban counties.

There is a two-hour wait at the early voting locations, and I regularly pass a one school (Githens) that serves as an EV location, and at 1PM today the line was way out the door and has been all week.

Another religious wingnut with queer offspring works to make her a second class citizen. This time it's Georgia Christian Coalition head Sadie Fields. Her daughter Tess finally couldn't take it anymore and has spoken publicly about being ostracized from the family by her mom.

Just days before Tuesday's referendum, Tess Fields sent a letter to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's editorial page criticizing what she called her mother's "bigotry" and "abject hostility toward gay and lesbian people."

Tess Fields, a 35-year-old mother who lives in Oregon, said in an interview with the newspaper that she was speaking out partly to answer an opinion piece her mother previously wrote in the newspaper.

She also wanted to offer encouragement to people opposing the amendment.

Georgia is one of 11 states with gay marriage ban amendments on the Nov. 2 ballot. The amendment also would specify that the state need not recognize same-sex marriages performed by other states and would declare that Georgia courts will have no jurisdiction to settle property division disputes arising from same-sex unions.

Sadie Fields said her daughter's sexuality and their strained relationship is deeply painful for her. The Christian Coalition leader, who also has two sons, said that she loves her daughter and prays for her daily.

"I would give my life for her, but I can't affirm her in her choices," she said.

Sadie Fields said she would continue to support the constitutional amendment because she says it's the right thing to do.

"The amendment issue is larger than just one relationship," Sadie Fields said. "It's not just about me and my daughter. It's about the future of this country."

The sad truth is that these measures are likely to pass in all the states that has it on the ballot. Family values indeed.

Bob Herbert does it again, illuminating the blow that this government has dealt to to those serving in the armed forces. (NYT):

"Not long ago I interviewed a soldier who was paralyzed from injuries he had suffered in a roadside bombing in Iraq. Like so many other wounded soldiers I've talked to, he expressed no anger and no bitterness about the difficult hand he's been dealt as a result of the war.

But when I asked this soldier, Eugene Simpson Jr., a 27-year-old staff sergeant from Dale City, Va., whom he had been fighting in Iraq - who, exactly, the enemy was - he looked up from his wheelchair and stared at me for a long moment. Then, in a voice much softer than he had been using for most of the interview, and with what seemed like a mixture of sorrow, regret and frustration, he said: 'I don't know. That would be my answer. I don't know.'

We have not done right by the troops we've sent to Iraq to fight this crazy, awful war. We haven't given them a clear mission, and we haven't protected them well. I'm reminded of the famous scene in 'On the Waterfront' when Terry Malloy, the character played by Marlon Brando, tells his brother: 'You shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit.'

The thing to always keep in mind about our troops in Iraq is that they were sent to fight the wrong war. America's clearly defined and unmistakable enemy, Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, was in Afghanistan. So the men and women fighting and dying in Iraq were thrown into a pointless, wholly unnecessary conflict.

That tragic move was made worse by the failure of the U.S. to send enough troops to effectively wage the war that we started in Iraq. And we never fully equipped the troops we did send. The people who ordered up this war had no idea what they were doing. They were wildly overconfident, blinded by hubris and a dangerous, overarching ideology. They thought it would be a cakewalk.

In May of 2003, President Bush thought the war was over. It had barely begun. Many thousands have died in the long and bloody months since then. Even now, Dick Cheney, with a straight face, is calling Iraq "a remarkable success story."

The Washington Blade is covering the state senate race in NC of out lesbian Julia Boseman, who is weathering some seriously homophobic ads from her challenger.

"One of the strongest reactions surfaced in New Hanover County, N.C., where lesbian county commissioner Julia Boseman, a Democrat, is challenging State Senator Woody White, a conservative Republican and supporter of former U.S. Senator Jesse Helms.

White's campaign purchased newspaper ads this week noting that Boseman would be the state's first openly gay legislator and would pursue a "liberal, activist homosexual agenda" if elected.

The ads, some of which were paid for by the state Republican Party, declared that Boseman had been endorsed by the Victory Fund, which it described as a homosexual group based in Washington, D.C.

The ads angered the Wilmington, N.C., Star News, where some of the ads had been placed. The newspaper abruptly withdrew its endorsement of White, saying it strongly disapproved of his decision to attack Boseman based on her sexual orientation."

Wilmington, N.C., Star News, came out strong in its condemnation of White.

It would be legitimate to criticize the significant contributions Ms. Boseman has solicited and received from out of state. This is, after all, a local race to see who will represent voters in New Hanover County. And because the main source of those out-of-state contributions was a special interest group – an Internet fund that collects money for openly gay candidates – it would be fair to mention that.

It's something else to use language such as "known lesbian activists" and "radical homosexual rights and privileges" and to conclude by saying "The truth is … Julia Boseman seeks to be the first openly gay or lesbian State Senator in North Carolina History."

So what? Most sensible voters don't care what a state senator does at home. They care about what he or she does at the legislature.

Ms. Boseman's private life had no apparent effect on her performance as a County Commissioner, and there's no reason to think that would change in Raleigh. Even if she wanted to press for same-sex marriage or similar causes, it wouldn't matter. In the foreseeable future, few colleagues would join her.

Until he allowed these ads to be circulated, Mr. White seemed the more promising candidate.

But now a vote for him would be a vote for intolerance and dirty politics.

The bulge is back, only this time a NASA photo analyst shows that it was, indeed, a wire. Kevin Berger at Salon has the goods. Man, he's earner his taxpayers' dollar.

George W. Bush tried to laugh off the bulge. "I don't know what that is," he said on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday, referring to the infamous protrusion beneath his jacket during the presidential debates. "I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt."

Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He's a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis. Currently he's engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn's moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons.

For the past week, while at home, using his own computers, and off the clock at Caltech and NASA, Nelson has been analyzing images of the president's back during the debates. A professional physicist and photo analyst for more than 30 years, he speaks earnestly and thoughtfully about his subject. "I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate," he says. "This is not about a bad suit. And there's no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt."

Nelson and a scientific colleague produced the photos from a videotape, recorded by the colleague, who has chosen to remain anonymous, of the first debate. The images provide the most vivid details yet of the bulge beneath the president's suit. Amateurs have certainly had their turn at examining the bulge, but no professional with a résumé as impressive as Nelson's has ventured into public with an informed opinion. In fact, no one to date has enhanced photos of Bush's jacket to this degree of precision, and revealed what appears to be some kind of mechanical device with a wire snaking up the president's shoulder toward his neck and down his back to his waist.

Nelson stresses that he's not certain what lies beneath the president's jacket. He offers, though, "that it could be some type of electronic device -- it's consistent with the appearance of an electronic device worn in that manner." The image of lines coursing up and down the president's back, Nelson adds, is "consistent with a wire or a tube."

Desperation grows...can Bush not draw enough with this road show? This is a hysterical Kos diary on the fake troops in Bush's new ad. They have to manufacture them, courtesy of Photoshop.



UPDATE: Judy Woodruff on CNN's Inside Politics today asked GOP shill Ken Mehlman about this photo and he called it an "editing error" (har-dee-har-har) and that they would be correcting it. It's now gone from the BC04 web site. Yes, how do you inadvertently open Photoshop and select the clone tool and just create the error.

Dumbass.

Beautiful. From a post on a DKos thread.

100,000 Civilians Dead In Iraq War . We really helped them out, didn't we Mr. President? (SkyNews)

Around 100,000 Iraqis have been killed in violence since the US-led invasion last year, according to a new report.American public health experts said the high death rate was partly due to US air strikes on towns and cities. "Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths have happened," said Les Roberts of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a report published by The Lancet medical journal.

"The use of air power in areas with lots of civilians appears to be killing a lot of women and children."

Mortality was already high in Iraq before the war because of United Nations sanctions blocking food and medical imports, but the researchers described what they found as "shocking".

Previous estimates based on think tank and media sources put the Iraqi civilian death toll at up to 16,000.

The researchers blamed air strikes for many of the deaths.

"What we have evidence of is the use of air power in populated urban areas and the bad consequences of it," Roberts said.

Gilbert Burnham, who collaborated on the research, said U.S. military action in Iraq was "very bad for Iraqi civilians".

"We were not expecting the level of deaths from violence that we found in this study and we hope this will lead to some serious discussions of how military and political aims can be achieved in a way that is not so detrimental to civilians," he said.

Woohoo! This one should go over big with the fundy crowd here in NC. I just hope it gets media play. From Raw Story and BlogActive: Friends of grandaughter of anti-gay Senator Jesse Helms say she's a lesbian; Upset she uses him as "motivating factor" in campaign. Jesse is legend here, and the fact that there are homo genes floating around in his pool is going to drive more than a few bonkers.

The granddaughter of Senator Jesse Helms, whom many consider the most anti-gay legislator in U.S. history and who is touting him during her elective campaign, is herself a partnered lesbian, friends of the couple tell RAW STORY.

Jennifer Knox, granddaughter of the retired North Carolina Republican senator, has been in a committed relationship with her partner Shields Carstarphen for over three years, they say. Knox is vying to become a district judge in North Carolina; Carstarphen is the treasurer of her campaign.

Our sources, who asked RAW STORY to keep their names private, say they have known the parties for many years. They have also communicated with blogACTIVE.com, a site known for reporting on closeted anti-gay politicians.

The site will report that the Republican Party, while refusing to answer questions about Knox’s sexuality, has mailed homophobic flyers in a state senate race.

Throughout his long career, Senator Helms consistently excoriated gays for their “revolting conduct” and “unnatural acts.” Calling Martin Luther King a “pervert,” he dubbed the 1964 Civil Rights Act “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress.”

Knox and Carstarphen share a home in Raleigh, where they have lived for more than a year. They have an active social life in the Triangle area and travel together on vacations.

Knox’s mother confirmed that they resided together in a telephone conversation early this week, referring to Carstarphen as her roommate. Knox is 30.

Each of the sources expressed that they and their friends had wrangled with the consequences of outing Knox, but asserted that Knox’s decision to use Helms as a motivating force in her campaign pushed them to come forward.

When Knox announced her Wake County candidacy Apr. 30, she said Helms was the primary factor in driving her to run for elective office.

“He’s dedicated 30-plus years of his life to the American people and to the people of North Carolina and that has really made an impact on me,” she said. “That’s the biggest thing in making me want to go into elected office.”

These friends found the decision to bring Helms front and center in the campaign unacceptable.

“I think they’ve made a mistake,” one said. “I don’t feel good about throwing stones, but I don’t think this is right, and in today’s political climate I don’t think this type of hypocrisy should go on.”

The state’s Republican Party platform is unequivocal about homosexuality.

“We believe homosexuality is not normal and should not be established as an acceptable ‘alternative’ lifestyle either in public education or in public policy,” the platform states. “We do not believe public schools should be used to teach children that homosexuality is normal… We commend private organizations, such as the Boy Scouts, which defend moral decency and freedom.”

While it is in many ways a local story, this ranks up there with SC's Strom Thurmond hiding his black daughter while railing on against civil rights.

At least this time it puts the hypocrisy front and center -- while Jesse is still around to comment on it.

Is this kinda funny? Hell, yeah. Man accused of trying to run down Rep. Katherine Harris.

What class. And it's on video.

In the "Watch This Space" department: Mike Rogers at BlogActive is at it again. Looks like a couple of homosexual homophobic legislators are about to get outed, a la Ed Schrock. Can't wait...

Over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, blogACTIVE will be releasing two cases on the site. One of them promises to be one of the biggest GLBT news stories of the decade. While, I am confident that the gay and lesbian press will cover this item, I am hoping, with your help, to begin an extensive advertising campaign on mainstream sites to attract readers from this candidate’s home state and district.

This candidate is running on a party platform that is among the most homophobic in the nation. I promise you this…the news of this candidate’s homosexuality is certain to shake things up a bit for years to come.

Also, through the power of the internet, I will be sharing a story of a Congressional “outing” that took place before the web was a powerful action tool. This Congressman has racked up quite a voting record – one that even a part-time sodomite should be ashamed of!

In the "Watch This Space" department: Mike Rogers at BlogActive is at it again. Looks like a couple of homosexual homophobic legislators are about to get outed, a la Ed Schrock. Can't wait...

Over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, blogACTIVE will be releasing two cases on the site. One of them promises to be one of the biggest GLBT news stories of the decade. While, I am confident that the gay and lesbian press will cover this item, I am hoping, with your help, to begin an extensive advertising campaign on mainstream sites to attract readers from this candidate’s home state and district.

This candidate is running on a party platform that is among the most homophobic in the nation. I promise you this…the news of this candidate’s homosexuality is certain to shake things up a bit for years to come.

Also, through the power of the internet, I will be sharing a story of a Congressional “outing” that took place before the web was a powerful action tool. This Congressman has racked up quite a voting record – one that even a part-time sodomite should be ashamed of!

Why the GOP is doing all it can to suppress the minority vote. At this point they know that they are going to lose if minorities go to the polls. It's all about turnout now. The Washington Monthly has the scoop.

Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio has just finished a survey of 12 battleground states and finds Bush and Kerry tied with 47% of the vote apiece. But when he weights for minority turnout based on the 2000 exit polls, Kerry is ahead 49.2%-45.7%. And when he further updates the weighting to take into account the most recent census results, Kerry is ahead 49.9%-44.7%.

As Fabrizio blandly puts it, "It is clear that minority turnout is a wildcard in this race and represents a huge upside for Sen. Kerry and a considerable challenge for the President's campaign." More accurately, if Fabrizio is right — that Kerry is ahead by 5% overall in the battleground states — Kerry is a sure winner on November 2.

Suddenly the Bush campaign's obsession with challenging voters in minority neighborhoods makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Their own internal polling is probably telling the same thing that Fabrizio's poll says: unless they somehow manage to keep the minority vote down, they're doomed.

Jon Cohen as a superb piece on Slate about why there is such a high percentage of HIV and AIDS among black women. This was a question both Cheney and Edwards blew in their debate. They were clueless.

When Gwen Ifill asked a pressing question about AIDS during the vice-presidential debate, both candidates were utterly lost. "I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts," said Ifill. "What should the government's role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?"

Cheney did not bother trying to hide his ignorance. "I have not heard those numbers with respect to African-American women. I was not aware that it was—that they're in epidemic there [sic]," he said. Edwards resorted to dodge ball, spending his 90 seconds on AIDS in Africa, the genocide in Sudan, uninsured Americans, and John Kerry. "OK, we'll move on," said Ifill, who somehow restrained herself from rolling her eyes à la Jon Stewart.

...Coming up with a sophisticated answer to Ifill's question is a tall order. AIDS researchers don't have a solid explanation for why black women in America have such a shockingly high prevalence of HIV infection and AIDS, which makes it difficult to spell out precisely how the government should respond to the problem—other than to reach out to these women more aggressively and to conduct more studies.

Many theories abound, the most interesting of which is the DL or down-low phenomenon, where self-identified "straight" black men who sleep with men and also sleep with (and have relationships with) women.

Some men on the DL are becoming infected by anal intercourse with men and then spreading the infection to their female partners, a transmission route that became widely discussed earlier this year with the publication of J.L. King's On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of "Straight" Black Men Who Sleep With Men. But the great unknown is how frequently this occurs, and whether it's truly different in blacks versus whites or Hispanics.

...A fascinating CDC study published last year specifically looked at men who have sex with men and do not disclose their sexual orientation versus those who do disclose. The study recruited participants from only six gay bars (which already tilts the results away from DL men who may not go to gay bars), but the findings were startling. More black men were nondisclosers (18 percent)—that is, on the DL—than white men (8 percent), and all nondisclosures reported having more sex with women than with men. But nondisclosers of all races were also less likely to be infected with HIV than disclosers, and black nondisclosers in particular reported significantly less unprotected anal intercourse with men than did black disclosers. Several other recent studies have found higher proportions of bisexual black men than white men, but it's unclear whether how much of an HIV "bridge" they are to black women.

It's clear, however, that the biggest and most easily identifiable factor in HIV transmission is the high incarceration rate of black men (where high-risk same-sex activity is assumed). Women on the outside are infected by these men upon release. And the sad truth is that good men are sparse, and there is a lot of non-monogamous activity that increases the likelihood of the spread of HIV.

They mix with new partners when their men leave and often reunite with them when they are released. Incarceration also exposes many men to anal sex, whether by coercion or choice, and injection-drug use, the two most efficient ways to spread HIV. And if the locked-up man was the main wage earner, poverty can be a factor, too.

One superb study of concurrency in African Americans in rural North Carolina found that 53 percent of the men and 31 percent of the women reported concurrent partners during the preceding five years. Interestingly, 80 percent of the men in the study who said they had been incarcerated for more than 24 hours reported having had concurrent partners within five years; that percentage plummeted to 43 percent if a man had not been locked up for a day or longer.

Equally important, black women have a small pool of black men to choose from at any given time. "African American women are the only group in the United States where there are fewer men than women," says Gail Wyatt, an associate director of the AIDS Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The availability of a partner who shares the same values is much less likely. The women are more likely to be educated than their partners. They're more likely to be employed." As a result of the shortage of black men, black women are vulnerable to becoming involved with men who are engaging in risky behaviors that they don't know about, whether it be having unprotected sex with other partners, female or male; visiting sex workers; or injecting drugs.

There's a great L.A. Times piece on how Bush is on shaky ground with his "base" of evangelicals.

With their ardent, Bible-based opposition to abortion and gay marriage, evangelical Christians are a key target of the massive Republican get-out-the-vote drive heading into next week's election. Party leaders consider conservative Christians to be as near a lock for President Bush as any group can be.

But GOP strategists might want to have a chat with Tim Moore, an evangelical who teaches civics at a traditional Christian school near Milwaukee. He shares Bush's religious convictions, but says the president has lost his vote because of tax cuts for the wealthy and the administration's shifting rationales for invading Iraq.

"There's no way I'm going for Bush. That much I know," said Moore, 46. He remains undecided between Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and a third-party candidate.

Moore reflects a potential problem for Bush in Wisconsin and other closely contested states, where the GOP and conservative groups have invested heavily in turning out a record conservative Christian vote through mailings, voter guides, targeted phone calls and announcements by prominent evangelists such as Jerry Falwell and James Dobson aired on religious radio stations.

...An estimated 80% of the evangelical vote went to Bush in 2000. But Bush's senior political strategist, Karl Rove, said after the 2000 election that the president might have won the race against Democrat Al Gore by a comfortable margin had 4 million more evangelicals gone to the polls rather than sitting out the election.

...A poll published last week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 70% of self-described evangelicals or born-again Christians planned to vote for the president, down from 74% in the same survey three weeks earlier. That was not only a slight decline, but lower than the 80% to 90% support that Bush campaign officials had been forecasting.

Karl Rove, the toad, has emerged from his cave, and slammed Bill Clinton for appearing in Philly. The scent of desperation and envy is in the air...

(AP):

Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, spoke dismissively of Clinton's scene-stealing pairing with Kerry. Seven weeks after quadruple bypass heart surgery, Clinton joined Kerry at a Philadelphia rally that packed cheering supporters shoulder-to-shoulder along three city blocks.

"They had to roll Clinton out of the operating room and onto the campaign trail in order to basically help Kerry with the weaknesses he has among core Democratic constituencies," Rove said, taking liberties with his depiction of the former president as a near-invalid.

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Pam :: permalink

Crap. The voter suppression tactics are reaching fever pitch. The latest is an attempt to keep 58,000 voters from receiving absentee ballots. Of course, it's Florida. (Local10 News)

that were supposed to mailed out on Oct. 7 and 8 could be missing.

The Broward County Supervisor of Elections office is saying only that the situation is "unusual," and they are looking into it.

Gisela Salas, Broward Deputy Elections Supervisor, said, "I hate to say 'missing' at this time because that has not yet be substantiated. Some ballots are starting to arrive. But there is an extraordinary delay."

An elections office representative told Local 10 that the office has investigated with the U.S. Post Office what might have happened to the ballots, but so far, no one has been able to figure it out.

"It is unusual. It's a puzzle on the part of our office and the postal service," Salas said. "Our office did make the delivery and the post office assures us they were processed. What happened is in question."

The postal service told Local 10 late Tuesday that they don't have 58,000 ballots floating around. They did say that they have several employees assigned to deal only with ballots and they are being delivered in one to two days -- once they get them.

As far as the voters go that haven't received their ballots, the elections office is now suggesting that they take the opportunity to vote early.

Since many who request absentee ballots cannot physically vote in their county, there are likely to be some angry voters.

MSNBC has a story up on the conservatives irked by Bush's statement on civil unions.

Some conservative organizations sharply disagreed with Bush and pressed him to seek a constitutional amendment that would ban both gay marriage and civil unions.

“Civil unions are a government endorsement of homosexuality,” said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women For America. “But I don’t think President Bush has thought about it in that way. He seems to be striving for neutrality while defending marriage itself.” Knight said “counterfeits” of marriage, such as civil unions, “hurt the real thing.”

...The head of another group, the Campaign for California Families, said it, too, wants a sweeping constitutional amendment that bars civil unions and same-sex marriage.

“Here’s the truth, civil unions are homosexual marriage by another name,” said Randy Thomasson, the group’s executive director. “Civil unions rob marriage of its uniqueness and award homosexuals all the rights of marriage available under state law.”

“Bush needs to understand what’s going on and resist counterfeit marriages with all his might no matter what they’re called,” Thomasson said.

Think some fundies are going to stay home on election day?!

I have been surfing the Freeper site (I need a shower), and this one had me rolling...a security risk?

To: Eva
Civil unions should not be allowed period, it is a security risk to survival of the United States. Civil Unions are a perversion of our system of laws that are based on the principals of justice. The spirit of the law is to promote lives that are healthy and happy, not to promote self-destructive behavior.

In addition, I will repeat that civil unions are a security risk to the United States. I say this, because to go against the spirit of the law is to sellout. And when one sells out on principal, then evil enemies are encouraged because they know we have weakened ourselves from a character point of view, and that makes them smell blood. And we know how blood thirsty the enemy is.

87 posted on 10/26/2004 5:50:26 AM PDT by rodeo-mamma (the democrats always encourage our enemies)

Well, I thought he would sit out this election and not endorse anyone. Sully endorses Kerry (via TNR)...

So we have two risks. We have the risk of continuing with a presidency of palpable incompetence and rigidity. And we have the risk of embarking on a new administration with a man whose record as a legislator inspires little confidence in his capacity to rise to the challenges ahead. Which is the greater one?

You can tell the man is tortured by his decision...

Domestically, the [Bush] record is horrifying for a fiscal conservative. Ronald Reagan raised taxes in his first term when he had to; and he didn't have September 11 to contend with. Ronald Reagan also cut domestic spending. Bush has been unable to muster the conservative courage to do either. He has spent like a drunken liberal Democrat. He has failed to grapple with entitlement reform, as he once promised. He has larded up the tax code with endless breaks for corporate special interests; pork has metastasized; and he has tainted the cause of tax relief by concentrating too much of it on the wealthy. He has made the future boomer fiscal crunch far more acute by adding a hugely expensive new Medicare prescription drug entitlement.

He ran for election as a social moderate. But every single question in domestic social policy has been resolved to favor the hard-core religious right. His proposal to amend the constitution to deny an entire minority equal rights under the law is one of the most extreme, unnecessary, and divisive measures ever proposed in this country. And his response to all criticism--to duck the hardest questions, to reflexively redirect attention to the flaws of his opponents, and to stay within the confines of his own self-reinforcing coterie--has made him singularly unable to adjust, to learn from mistakes, to adapt to a fast-changing world. In peacetime, that's regrettable. In wartime, it's dangerous.

Oh, this must hurt for him to type this...

Domestically, Kerry is clearly Bush's fiscal superior. At least he acknowledges the existence of a fiscal problem, which this president cannot. In terms of the Supreme Court, I have far more confidence in Kerry's picks than Bush's. In 2000, Bush promised moderate, able judges; for the last four years, he has often selected rigid, ideological mediocrities. Obviously, Kerry's stand against a constitutional amendment to target gay citizens is also a critical factor for me, as a gay man. But I hope it is also a factor for straight men and women, people who may even differ on the issue of marriage, but see the appalling damage a constitutional amendment would do to the social fabric, and the Constitution itself. Kerry will also almost certainly face a Republican House, curtailing his worst liberal tendencies, especially in fiscal matters. Perhaps it will take a Democratic president to ratchet the Republican Party back to its fiscally responsible legacy. I'll take what I can get.

And when you think of what is happening in the two major parties, the case for a Kerry presidency strengthens. If Bush wins, the religious right, already dominant in Republican circles, will move the GOP even further toward becoming a sectarian, religious grouping. If Kerry loses, the antiwar left will move the party back into the purist, hate-filled wilderness, ceding untrammeled power to a resurgent, religious Republicanism--a development that will prove as polarizing abroad as it is divisive at home. But if Bush loses, the fight to recapture Republicanism from Big Government moralism will be given new energy; and if Kerry wins, the center of the Democratic party will gain new life. That, at least, is the hope. We cannot know for sure.

On the Bush/civil unions story, I smell flopsweat...the Freepers are fretting over this...here's a sample:

-- Well, this should make some Bush supporters stay home. Or at least the NY Times/Kerry campaign hope so

--Can we step into any more potholes this final week?

--I don't believe this. The NYT is really going full boar trying to smear the President.

--I gotta think he's just pandering for the moderates or something. I'm disappointed, he needs to cater to his BASE.

--He's shooting for the Andrew Sullivan/Log Cabin vote.

--Gay marriage is one of my main issues as a Christian so this is very relevant to me.

--A civil union is the equivalent of marriage in all but name. I do oppose it and so do the American people.

--Wake up! Can you not see that every day now the NYTimes is trying to hit President Bush and help their boy, Kerry? Everyday!

--It is disgraceful. The Times is engaged in blatant political activism. It's as if Terry McAulliff is actually directing what hits he wants the Times to take on President Bush. It is so obvious. You are a hopeless fool if you fall for it, or succumb to it.

--I understand the difference between civil unions and gay marriage, but I'm strongly opposed to both. It's an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.

-- "Civil unions" give the blessing of the state to perversion and immorality.

--They are also unavoidable, as it's far too late in the game politically to stop them. Bush, the practical politician, realizes this. He also realizes that the existence of civil unions makes a ban on gay marriage more palatable to a lot of moderate voters than it would be if there were no alternatives.

Hahahahahaha.

So, is Bush trying to stop the voter slide by saying the GOP is wrong for not supporting civil unions? The folks on the Right are really going to choke on that. Naturally, this doesn't address the inequity of over 1000 federal benefits conveyed with civil marriage that gay couples are denied with a mere civil union.

Mr. Bush has previously said that states should be permitted to allow same-sex unions, even though White House officials have said he would not have endorsed such unions as governor of Texas. But Mr. Bush has never before made a point of so publicly disagreeing with his party's official position on the issue.

In an interview on Sunday with Charles Gibson, an anchor of "Good Morning America" on ABC, Mr. Bush said, "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so." ABC, which broadcast part of the interview on Monday, is to broadcast the part about civil unions on Tuesday.

According to an ABC transcript, Mr. Gibson then noted to Mr. Bush that the Republican Party platform opposed civil unions.

"Well, I don't," Mr. Bush replied.

He added: "I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights. And I strongly believe that marriage ought to be defined as between a union between a man and a woman. Now, having said that, states ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others."

Mr. Gibson then asked, "So the Republican platform on that point, as far as you're concerned, is wrong?"

"Right," Mr. Bush replied.

Why doesn't the bastard just pick the taxpayer's pocket for his follies? He wants $70 billion more in "emergency funds" for his war efforts. I'm sure he isn't talking about THAT on the campaign trail. (WP):

The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said yesterday.

White House budget office spokesman Chad Kolton emphasized that final decisions on the supplemental spending request will not be made until shortly before the request is sent to Congress. That may not happen until early February, when President Bush submits his budget for fiscal 2006, assuming he wins reelection.

But Pentagon and House Appropriations Committee aides said the Defense Department and military services are scrambling to get their final requests to the White House Office of Management and Budget by mid-November, shortly after the election. The new numbers underscore that the war is going to be far more costly and intense, and last longer, than the administration first suggested.

The Army is expected to request at least an additional $30 billion for combat activity in Iraq, with $6 billion more needed to begin refurbishing equipment that has been worn down or destroyed by unexpectedly intense combat, another Appropriations Committee aide said. The deferral of needed repairs over the past year has added to maintenance costs, which can no longer be delayed, a senior Pentagon official said.

The Army is expected to ask for as much as $10 billion more for its conversion to a swifter expeditionary force. The Marines will come in with a separate request, as will the Defense Logistics Agency and other components of the Department of Defense. The State Department will need considerably more money to finance construction and operations at the sprawling embassy complex in Baghdad. The Central Intelligence Agency's request would come on top of those.

The U.S. has really been providing and example of moral leadership (Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, etc.). Now the NYT reports that the Bushies have been relying on a legal opinion that non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are sh*t out of luck if they think they are protected by the Geneva Conventions.

The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said.

They said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A. to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply.

AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian

Big Bill is back giving Kerry a boost in Philly. (MSNBC)

A smiling, energetic former President Clinton campaigned for Democratic Sen. John Kerry on Monday just seven weeks after undergoing heart surgery, telling a crowd of thousands that President Bush and Republicans are trying to “scare the undecided voters” away from the Democrat.

“If this isn’t good for my heart, I don’t know what is,” Clinton said of the enthusiastic response from the crowd.

...“From time to time, I have been called the comeback kid. In eight days, John Kerry is going to make America the comeback country,” Clinton said to cheers.

...“Isn’t it great to have Bill Clinton back on the trail?” Kerry said, drawing thunderous applause.

Kerry drew cheers of delight when he said that he had asked Clinton “if there’s anything you have in common with George W. Bush? He thought for a moment and he said, ’In eight days and 12 hours, we will both be former presidents.”’

Another must-see ad, this one from truthandhope.org, which goes for the jugular in juxtaposing Shrub reading The Pet Goat and people fleeing the WTC. Lots of people on the blogs have talked about developing this kind of ad, but until now, I haven't seen one. This is effective.

The organization also has an ad similar to the Win Back Respect ad that capitalizes on Bush's unbelievable joking about looking for WMDs around the Oval Office.

"Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere..." Bush joked, playing a slide show of the president playfully looking around the Oval Office for WMDs...

...Brooke Campbell lost her brother in Iraq. He was looking for those WMDs. Win Back Respect, a group supported by George Soros and Moveon.org, has a powerful new ad up (QT and WMA) that hits hard. It's called "He Just Doesn't Get It."

Nothing like your president doing a standup routing at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner when men and women are dying over there because of your policies. Get this bastard out of office.

I was pointed to this story via David Corn's blog.

Sh*t. Anyone left that is a fence sitter on this election or doesn't think their vote means anything needs to get off their ass and VOTE. AP: Rehnquist Hospitalized With Cancer in Md.

This is so out of control -- a DKos diary by scottmaui on a Hawaii Republican state senate candidate that supports execution of gays. His name is Robert Finberg, a pastor for the Christian Fellowship Church. He is a freakshow.

Video is here (WMA):
http://mikegabbard.info/rob_finberg.htm

The fun begins about halfway through. From scottmaui:

Finberg was interviewed by Forrest Bradford, who has a show called Religious Phonies on local cable access channel AKAKU.

After explaining his creationist views of history's timeline, Finberg was asked: "If there was a law that supported the execution of people found guilty of performing homosexual acts, would you support that law?"

After stating "Unfortunately, nearly 300,000 Americans have suffered the death penalty as a result of homosexual activity," Finberg answered, "Yes, if it were the law of the land. Yes."

The video is hosted on a site exposing Republican Congressional candidate Mike Gabbard, who is challenging my congressman, Rep. Ed Case, for HI-02 (Rural Oahu and neighbor islands). Gabbard was endorsed by Finberg, who said they "share the same beliefs." Gabbard was a leading figure in the Hawaii constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

How does something like this happen? A huge cache of explosives, supposedly secured by American forces in Iraq, has disappeared. The NYT reports that 380 tons, yes TONS, of explosives that are nicely all-purpose -- they can be used to demo buildings, serve as missile warheads and detonate nukes.

Things are really "up in the air", aren't they? More Bush/Rummy incompetence. This could have horrific impact on global terrorism.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."

Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings.

The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. The other components o