Osama bin unforgotten

Top of the news is the Osama video. His major point? We don't hate freedom, we want to be free:

“Your security is not in the hands of (Democratic candidate John) Kerry or Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands,” bin Laden said. “To the U.S. people, my talk is to you about the best way to avoid another disaster,” he said. “I tell you: security is an important element of human life and free people do not give up their security.” “If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn't attack Sweden, for example. It is known that those who hate freedom do not have dignified souls, like those of the 19 blessed ones,” he said, referring to the 19 hijackers. “We fought you because we are free .. and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours.”

Of course, he has a point, and neither candidate is really addressing his complaints; neither seems able to say anything other than “terrorism bad.” But regardless of the content of Bin Laden's message, I agree with Dave Winer about how the pundits are spinning this—the bias for Bush is incredible. But even NPR's Daniel Schorr took that spin (that the video helps Bush more than Kerry), and he's usually fairly critical on these things. Sorry, but the fact that Osama's still free to release videos whenever he wants only means Bush's much-vaunted “war on terror” has failed in major ways. Call that spin if you want, but that's how I see it. Elsewhere in the election-related grab bag: Bush's war has killed over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, a large majority of them the result of coalition airstrikes. Here's an enblogment for Kerry. The Electoral College Meta-Analysis provides yet another way to speculate about how the vote might go. [link via John's Ponderings] along with Electoral College Predictions (which has shifted decisively for Bush today) this seems a good way to sort through the polling madness. The Pentagon is saying maybe the military destroyed and/or moved some of the munitions that are missing from Al Qaqaa. Hmm. John Stewart made an excellent point the ohter night on The Daily Show when he ran a clip of Bush saying this about the Al Qaqaa munitions:

[A] political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not the person you want as the Commander-in-Chief.

All Stewart had to say is, “that's true.” Can you say Iraq, WMD, links to Al Qaeda, and more? I knew you could! In more good news for Bush, imaging experts confirm, the Bush Bulge was not bad tailoring. Jesse Ventura is campaigning for Kerry. He's not pulling any punches:

“To me, a president should not put his personal spiritual beliefs in front of science. If we had that type of attitude, we'd probably still have polio today, if we had beliefs that didn't allow scientific discovery. Now, people may say you're not very religious -- yes, I am. I believe God gave me a brain to use,” Ventura said. Ventura also criticized Bush for the growing federal deficit, saying Bush paid for tax cuts by racking up debt on the nation's credit card. And he had harsh words for the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq. Ventura says Bush has alienated the rest of the world, and the war has not made the U.S. safer. He says Bush invaded Iraq when he should have been focusing on Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. “I would have hunted down Osama Bin Laden 'til he was dead, before I would have ever entertained anything about Iraq. My parents taught me (to) finish the job at hand, finish the job you got in front of you, before you worry about the other job down the road,” he said. Ventura says leaders shouldn't ask troops to do something they didn't do themselves. He says Bush did not serve with honor when he was in the National Guard, and received preferential treatment.

Sounds like Ventura might like Internet Vets for Truth. So is anyone polling whether Americans think this election will be over next Wednesday? I'm predicting a decisive win for Kerry with 294 electoral votes. In my world he gets Colorado, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, and all the other states he's basically wrapped up. What's your prediction?

Posted 10:36 AM | Comments (6) | election 2004

Holding Pattern

Is anything happening with this election? We wait wait wait for next Tuesday. Meanwhile... A Minneapolis ABC affiliate broke big news yesterday, saying it had pictures of the weapons at Al Qaqaa that were after the Americans moved in there. The NY Times has picked up the story. Again, I don't see that it matters whether the weapons were there when U.S. forces arrived. Sure, it's worse if they were, but the fact that the weapons are missing is what's telling as far as this administration's priorities and lack of planning. Pushing to decrease the third-party factor, a group of international Greens implore Americans to vote for Kerry, and basically sum up the position of many Kerry voters:

The Bush administration has acted with a unilateralism that discounts the opinions of, and demeans the humanity of, non-Western peoples. Though John Kerry is far from the ideal candidate, he will in most respects be a significant improvement to Bush.

Speaking of third parties, NPR is airing part of an interview w/George Bush 41 (the former president) where he says third parties always fizzle "and rightly so," as if the fact that third parties have never achieved strong support in the U.S. is some sign that people prefer a two-party system or that the two-party system is better. Bollocks! When you've got two parties w/massive organization and resources combining to marginalize and destroy third parties, the fact that no third ever grows very large shows nothing more than that the two existing parties don't want any competition. Come on, do you really want to vote for this guy? And since it's almost Halloween: Did you ever consider carving your pumpkin with a Dremel tool? They even provide patterns, but these are still better, I think.

Posted 09:12 AM | Comments (2) | election 2004

Spin Spin Sugar

I admit it. The Bush team is good at what it does, and if there's one thing this administration has done a lot of, it's spinning. The Bush tactic, which is probably really the Rove tactic, seems to be to know your own weaknesses well enough to pin them on your opponent. IOW, accuse your opponent of doing exactly what you're doing. That's what Bush is doing with the spin on the 380 tons of missing munitions—he's making wild claims by accusing Kerry of making wild claims. He's also saying anything to get elected by saying that Kerry will say anything to get elected. Talking Points Memo has the comments I'm talking about. I wish I had the time to examine all the speeches both candidates are giving in this last week of the campaign and compare the claims each is making to see which is lying the most. Of course both of them are spinning, but I'd like to know it's more than my own partisanship that makes me think Bush is spinning harder (aka, lying more). That aside, it's still funny to hear Bush tell audiences that if Kerry had been president for the last three years Saddam would still be in power and he could be giving weapons to terrorists to attack the U.S. Seems like might have been the Bush administration that gave weapons to terrorists, doesn't it? Salon's War Room has even more on that story. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said:

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

Maybe the Bush campaign never got that memo. But hey, you gotta believe! In the theme of laughing in the face of disaster, Get Your War On continues its ever-brilliant satire of current events:

Do you think Mohamed ElBaradei is currently running around with 380 tons of Schadenfreude?

Elsewhwere in humorpolitik, a campaign to support Bush has decided to support Kerry:

Before breaking with Bush, the Yes, Bush Can team worked earnestly to support him. They went to the Pacific Northwest to promote Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative--and discovered it was enabling the logging industry to cut down our last old-growth forests. They visited a nuclear power plant in Ohio to promote Bush's domestic security policies--and found no one in the guard booth to meet them. In western Pennsylvania, while promoting the President's energy policy, they learned that it allows coal emissions which kill 23,000 people a year. Finally, while defending Bush's war on terrorism, they found out that even Donald Rumsfeld feels the Iraq War has made the world a more dangerous place.

All right, although the depiction of Bush's policies appears accurate, the rest is a joke. But still, their Patriot Pledge is pretty good. Question: Why is the Bush campaign blocking non-U.S. web visitors?

Posted 08:44 AM | Comments (2) | election 2004

Congratulations Boston!

So it's official, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series! Now let's just hope Boston fans and police play nice tonight...

Posted 11:47 PM | Comments (1) | life generally

Fool Me Once...

So about those 380 tons of munitions that are missing in Iraq. Some people are saying that the weapons may have gone missing before American troops entered Iraq, that Saddam Hussein's troops removed them sometime after the U.N. weapons inspectors last checked on them and found them secure, but before the U.S. could have had a chance to secure them [link via JR]. As I mentioned in a comment here, that's possible. Yesterday's Talking Points Memo argued that that story was bunk (see also many other posts at TPM from the last few days), but who knows? The point is that even if that proves to be the case, we still learn two things from these missing weapons. First, we learn yet again that the planners of the U.S. attack on Iraq put oil at the top of the list, and thought of little else. Securing weapons was not on their agenda, just like securing Iraq's cultural heritage was irrelevant. They secured the oil ministry and the oil fields first and foremost; everything else was an afterthought. Second, we learn yet again that we really may not be more safe now that Saddam is in jail. When Saddam was in power, these weapons were controlled and contained by the U.N. inspectors. Saddam could not have used them against Iraqis, or American soldiers, or anyone else. Now that Saddam is out of power, these weapons are gone, and most likely they have been and are being used to kill Iraqis and Americans. So yeah, thank goodness we removed Saddam from power. But the weapons inspectors were standing in the way of war; they said and still say it wasn't necessary, and Bush was determined to prove them wrong. Over time, it's still possible that Iraqis will be better off thanks to our invasion of their country. It's possible. But it's also possible that leadership far worse than Saddam—and far more dangerous to the U.S. and Iraq's neighbors—could be elected or could come to power some other way. We just don't know what's going to happen. But my point was about that 380 tons of missing munitions, and the bottom line is: Whichever way you slice that story, it's bad for Bush. He led us into this war against the wishes and advice of the rest of the world. And although he likes to say that everyone was misled by faulty intellignece, that's just not true. Oh, and by the way, that 380 tons of missing munitions may just be the tip of the iceberg. In other election-related bits: 100 Facts and One Opinion: The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration. Of course, we know Bush supporters don't care about about facts, but still, it's a pretty damning list. And the opinion?

If the past informs the future, four more years of the Bush Administration will be a tragic period in the history of the United States and the world

That's what Molly Ivins and others said in 2000—Bush's record in Texas showed he'd be a disastrous president. Now his record as president has proven that. And still he polls at 50%? How!? Why!? Elsewhere, Greg Palast reports on a new potential Florida vote scandal—are Republicans planning mass voter challenges on Nov. 2? The law says any voter can challenge any other voter for any reason, which effectively means that any voter could bring voting to a complete halt at any polling location in the nation. If Republicans stationed challengers at majority Democratic polling places, they could easily suppress a lot of Democratic votes. Of course, the Dems could do the same, or some malicious third party could play the spoiler for all. Palast is basing his report at least partially on some “caging” emails via which Republicans have exchanged lists of voters. I guess we'll know soon enough wether this is anything but speculation. More from Salon's War Room. The War Room also suggests that Justice Rehnquist's condition may be more serious than we're being told. The stakes just get higher and higher. For your audio-visual election-related pleasure, Eminem, now a political activist, suggests we mosh for the future. Errol Morris has also released a cornucopia of Republican-to-Democrat “switcher” vids. For your old-school gonzo journalism take, Hunter S. Thompson is still fighting the good fight. As far as the horserace aspect of the election goes, this electoral college predictions site is rather fascinating. Depending on which numbers you consult, Kerry has a 74% or a 28% chance of winning. Yeah, I'm thinking polls are pretty helpful at this point. Not! And don't forget to download your Kerry or Bush jack-o'-lantern carving templates! Whichever one you find more scary could make a great halloween decoration!

Posted 07:47 AM | Comments (6) | election 2004

Election Protection

By the way, although my last post suggests this, let me be more explicit: If you're a lawyer or law student and you'd like to help make sure voting is free and fair next Tuesday, get in touch with your local Impact coordinator to see how you can help. Impact is non-partisan, so this is a great way to help out, regardless of your political views. If you'd like to be more activist and partisan about your election protection and you live in or near a swing state, I'm betting ACT can set you up with ways to help out. Does anyone know of other cool election protection opportunities out there?

Posted 01:27 PM | election 2004

Laughing in the face of disaster?

It's good to know I'm in good company in being unable to focus on much besides the election. Half-Cocked (and others) might be interested to see this little Nebraska tidbit from Electoral Vote Predictor:

A new poll in Nebraska answers that age-old question: could Nebraska split its votes in the electoral college with a resounding: NO! Bush has huge leads in all three congressional districts. Similarly, Kerry is way ahead in both of Maine's congressional districts and the Colorado referendum is behind. Looks like it is going to be winner-take-all in every state.

It's a shame about the colorado referendum which would split electoral votes among candidates according to their percentage of the total vote. We need electoral reforms like this, but it's not surprising that Colorado isn't going to be the state to lead here. Other numbers on Electoral Vote are also somewhat depressing. Right now it predicts a Bush electoral college win of 285 to 247, and continued Republican domination of the Senate. People should think about that when they go to vote: Do we really want Republicans controlling every branch of government for another four years, or would a little balance maybe be a nice change? So the question of the day: Are negative developments in Iraq and Chief Justice Rehnquist's hospitalization a combined “October Surprise”? While you think about that, have you thought about voting absentee? If you need to vote absentee in D.C., MD, or VA, this article will tell you basically what you need to do. For my own record:

District absentee voters also can cast their ballots in person at the Fourth Street office, above the Judiciary Square Metro station, through Nov. 1. Voting hours are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday. For more information, voters can call 202-727-2525.

And the DC Board of Elections (or the site of your local election board) might be a good site to check out in the coming days you can be sure of your polling place, ID requirements, etc. Try My Polling Site to find the details you need. [link via Letters of Marque] I spent a couple of hours last night at a training session with the President of IMPACT 2004, which has led one of a couple nationwide efforts to protect the right to vote on Nov. 2. I'm currently signed up to hop a bus to Philadelphia Nov. 1 so I can be there all day on the second watching the polls in a non-partisan way. But I'm kind of torn. I could also go to Ohio starting Saturday and returning after the polls close. I wonder which would be more valuable? Will all those partisan ACT volunteers descending on Ohio be like the orange hats for Dean in Iowa? Some people argue that the huge influx of out-of-state partisans knocking on doors and trying to turn out the vote in Iowa caused Iowans to vote against Dean, rather than for him, because they felt invaded and overwhelmed. I'd hate to see something like that happen to Kerry in Ohio. But hey, that's all like serious and stuff. It's just an election, right? So here's Monster Slash, a funny little flash video highlighting the Bush administration's stellar environmental record. Is it good to be able to laugh at the folly of our supposed leaders? And here's a demo of Diebold's new voting machines. Is it good to be able to laugh at the potential implosion of democracy?

Posted 08:16 AM | Comments (1) | election 2004

Concentration Impossible

Ok, it's official. There's just no way I'm going to be able to concentrate this week. Did you see this about the 380 tons of weapons we “lost” in Iraq? And these most excellent numbers showing Bush's chance of winning plummeting? Yeah, ok, those numbers might be out of date as the disclaimer at the top of the page says, but they're still way more interesting than anything I could possibly be reading about closely held corporations right now. Tell me again why I took corporations law? Stupid stupid stupid. It's going to be a long week.

Posted 03:42 PM | Comments (2) | election 2004

Reasons 1-2 to vote for Kerry

There are so many reasons to vote for Kerry (all of which are reasons to vote against Bush), I don't know where to begin, but since the election is so close I might spin every post this week into a reason to get to the polls and get us some regime change. Then again, I might not. But today I am, and the first two reasons are two overlooked news stories that should convince anyone that this administration is not good for America. First, the ongoing scandal of sweetheart deals for Halliburton. Billions of dollars in giveaways to the vice president's former company, the company from which he still receives benefits, and very few people seem to care. In another day, something like this would have been enough to bring down an administration all on its own. Unfortunately, the Halliburton scandal is far from the only blight on the Bush administration; we also have the backdoor draft. Two members of the National Guard have sued the military, claiming that the so-called “stop-loss” policy that extended their enlistments was illegal.

Attorneys for the soldiers, citing the report of the Sept. 11 commission that found no evidence of any “collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaida terrorists, say the executive order did not cover “nation-building service in Iraq.” In the absence of any declaration of war by Congress, the soldiers say the involuntary call is a violation of their enlistment contract. “This is not a frivolous lawsuit,” said Michael Noone, a military-law specialist at Catholic University of America and a former judge advocate in the Air Force. “I had assumed the government had an ironclad case, but the complaint looks valid on its face. I'm really curious how the government will respond.”

The fact that I only heard yesterday about this lawsuit means it's just not getting enough coverage in the media. Oh, and look, here's another one. Why isn't Kerry talking about this every day? Of course, the lawsuit also raises the whole issue of the so-called “war on terror,” which can't be a war because war never declared. Nor can Bush be a “wartime president” as he and the media like to say. Sadly this is almost as much a failure of Congress as it is a failure of the Bush administration or the media. I could probably go on all day about reasons to vote for Kerry all day—and I could even talk about some positive ones, rather than just the “reasons to vote against Bush” variety above—but I probably better go to class. Class blows, but it's better to go than to miss. P.S.: Unless you'd like your dreams to be scary, haunting, and traumatic try to avoid researching the death penalty in the wee hours of the morning just before you go to sleep. Of course, maybe dreams like that would be good preparation for a halloween or the prospect of four more years of Bush, but still, I don't recommend it.

Posted 08:13 AM | Comments (2) | election 2004

Nine More Days?

I don't know if I can take it. The election is only nine days away but I fear they're going to be the longest nine days of the whole darn odyssey. I'm not concerned about the polls so much, both because they're not really changing much and because they may not be measuring a pretty large number of newly-registered voters and cell phone users who could swing the election either way, although they're perhaps more likely to break for Kerry. Still, even if you're not hanging on the polls, there are little bits of news every day that could change the race. For example, how will Wolfpacks for Truth skew the results? ;-) Probably not much, since, according to a new survey, Bush supporters live in a fantasy world. The summary of that survey's results shows that Bush supporters stubbornly refuse to believe findings of the 9/11 Commission or dozens of other experts on issues related to Iraq and terrorism. According to Steven Kull (via Alternet), director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the survey, this is classic cognitive dissidence:

“To support the president and to accept that he took the U.S. to war based on mistaken assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about pre-war Iraq,” Kull says. He added that this “cognitive dissonance” could also help explain other remarkable findings in the survey. The poll also found a major gap between Bush's stated positions on a number of international issues and what his supporters believe Bush's position to be. A strong majority of Bush supporters believe, for example that the president supports a range of international treaties and institutions that the White House has vocally and publicly opposed. In particular, majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assume that he supports multilateral approaches to various international issues, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (69 percent), the land mine treaty (72 percent), and the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming (51 percent). In August, two-thirds of Bush supporters also believed that Bush supported the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although that figure dropped to a 53 percent majority in the PIPA poll, it's not much of a drop considering that Bush explicitly denounced the ICC in the first, most widely watched presidential debate in late September. In all of these cases, majorities of Bush supporters said they favored the positions that they imputed, incorrectly, to Bush. Large majorities of Kerry supporters, on the other hand, showed they knew both their candidate's and Bush's positions on the same issues.

So there you have it: Kerry supporters are more well-informed and have a more realistic view of the world than do Bush supporters. Isn't “faith-based” government a wonderful thing?

Posted 02:28 PM | Comments (4) | election 2004

RitzPix Needs Work

When I got a new digital camera just over a year ago (a very generous gift from L.), I started taking lots of pictures, some of which I post, but most of which I don't. The great thing about digital pics is you can take as many as you want for virtually no cost; however, the drawback can come when you want to share a photo with someone in real life, someone who is not online or who would like their own copy of a picture. You can always print your own photos on an inkjet printer, but I've never been thrilled with the result/cost ratio there, so I've turned to different online services for prints of digital pics. I've had good luck with Shutterfly, and I just put in an order with Snapfish, which is a little cheaper. With both services, you upload your photos, order prints or enlargements or other items (i.e., coffee mugs, mousepads, and calendars with your photos on them), then they ship the results to you in a few days. But I recently learned of a new service through Fuji Film. It involves Ritz Camera stores and lets you upload your pictures and then choose a local camera store to print them so that you can go pick them up in just a few hours. They call it Ritz Pix, and for a handful of photos, it works great. I uploaded just a couple of photos the other day, then picked up great prints a couple of hours later. Very cool. So I thought I'd try a few more photos, like 70. Bad idea. The RitzPix site just couldn't handle it. It took forever to upload the photos in the first place, and then, no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to complete an order. On Safari, the browser would time out, on Mozilla, I got a little farther, but still reached a point where the website would no longer respond. Maybe the site really isn't compatible with the Mac. I dunno. What I do know is that if you only want to print a couple of photos and you want the prints quickly, RitzPix works well. For larger orders, I'll stick with one of the larger online services.

Posted 01:05 PM | Comments (5) | life generally