Pacific Views

Take a Moment...

...to reflect that it's a luxurious privilege to have the time to read and learn about the important issues of the day. They say time is money, but presuming necessities and some financial breathing room are taken care of, excess time seems to be the more valuable good.

That said, I think the following links go to pages that it's worth spending some time to read.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden on the horrors of war.

Burnt Orange shares the results of a Texas election that should be proof positive that Democrats should reject any strategy that writes off big swathes of the country.

Arundhati Roy speaks of human rights, peace, and justice. Her remarks are as thought provoking as usual, describing the "anthem of neo-liberalism" as "Free the markets. Screw the people." (Link thanks to the Black Commentator)

AmericaBlog points to an Arianna Huffington column that articulates well what I've been feeling since the election. If the Democrats want to ever again be successful national campaigners, first fire all the consultants. Republicans recycle bad policy makers, Democrats recycle bad campaign managers, with the practical result that the country ends up with very bad policy makers indeed.

You may find it hard to believe, but Tony Blair wasn't thrilled to be asked if he was Bush's poodle at the press conference held during his visit.

The Stranger's editors write about the urban archipelago nation of blue cities in terms that may be a little harsh on the opposition but put forward some interesting ideas. Sandeep Kaushik says that Democrats have won but don't know it yet. A comforting thought, but more useful to work towards winning than wait for the opposition to lose.

Chris Bowers at MyDD talks about conservatives and freedom, how the agenda of the corporate right is destroying both liberty and the fabric of society. Also, a really interesting article by Oklahoma Senate candidate Brad Carson, who talks about the day he realized his campaign was pushing boulders up a hill. The comments are worth a read.

The Poorman finds a preachy wingnut who can't tell Shakespeare from the Bible, courtesy Atrios. You must, must read the comments, which range from wicked to wise, and are sure to wring at least a giggle out of you. However, in a word to everyone out there who thinks the highest possible avocation is lambasting the heathen, and that the worst crime in the world is being a liberal, a commentor left this:

Proverbs 6:16-19 reveals:
These six things the Lord hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look, A lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil, A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren.

I'm sure such a passage would leave the Bush administration quaking in their boots. That is, if they viewed religion as anything other than a convenient cloak for pride, lying, sowing discord, and spreading death and mayhem.

OTOH, in my own days as a rabid fundie, I was always puzzled by the seven deadly sins. It took many long years of recovery before I came around to understanding why they made the top of the list. They had nothing obvious to do with sex, which years of reinforcement suggested was the source of the Worst Big Sins. That is, the ones that were most likely to get a person kicked out of church. People didn't often mutter in hushed tones about so-and-so getting disciplined for proud looks, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

As to the rest, murder and lying are pretty obvious sins, but murder is relatively rare and few people lie about big enough things for anyone else to even notice. Sowing discord is, let's face it, the second most popular kind of entertainment to be had in a fundamentalist church. Provided the offender wasn't actually guilty of heresy or causing someone else to leave the church, discord was likely to be punished with no more than putting the congregation through a stern sermon on gossip.

In that light, I can sort of forgive other fundies for missing the importance of the seven deadly sins. They aren't very sexy at all, and therefore no fun to talk about. It's well known that speculating about sexual acts the speaker is likely never to engage in, really really wanting to aside, is always the very most popular form of entertainment in any fundamentalist church.

Money, Money Everywhere

Jeff Galley takes umbrage at Magpie's belief that multimillion dollar tax cuts for the wealthy to buy yachts may not be the best way to stimulate the economy. He says:

...Magpie, didn't you read the article? This is proof that tax cuts are putting money into the economy! Liberals like you only focus on the "perks" you see wealthy getting compared to the middle class and poor. ...

I think I recall someone saying "It's the economy, stupid." Yes, and it's not about whining on and on about the perks of the rich.

Jeff, I seem to remember that during the Roaring Twenties and preceding the French Revolution, there were plenty of rich people spending enormous amounts of money on all manner of expensive goodies. In both cases, this failed to result in material improvement in the lives of the average person. In both cases, populist revolts eventually overturned the prevailing systems. Fortunately for the wealthier inhabitants of the U.S., there were ballot boxes handy.

A rule of economics is that the more times money changes hands, the better it is for the overall health of the economy, whereas it most benefits any given individual to hoard it. An indisputible phenomenon of societies with any type of open commerce is that money always flows upward to those who have the greatest ability to hoard it. Policies that reverse the 'natural' flow of money upwards keep it in circulation where it creates greater prosperity, provided that this is not taken to the extreme that it removes the incentive to earn more.

This country prospers because it has a very large class of people whose money tends to change hands almost as soon as they get it, with many of these having some limited ability to hoard it for their own welfare and progress. And out of the cut the government takes of all the money that changes hands, a military, roads, schools, libraries, ports, security, emergency services, and all the other trappings of civilization must be provided for.

These services, including regulatory agencies that create conditions where consumers can buy goods from complete strangers with relative confidence, are the prerequisites for optimal commerce and wealth maintenance. Which as I mentioned, structurally favors those already on top.

Policies that accelerate the flow of money upwards tend to create the sort of economic growth which can hardly be noticed on the lower rungs of society. The financial markets and purveyors of luxury goods have a grand time, but the majority of middle market businesses see a drop in consumption. No amount of free capital will inspire investment in manufacturing when there are few customers to be had.

As an example of where the real power to move an economy forward lies, consider that Walmart is one of the wealthiest companies in the world. They make their money by selling lots of cheap things to people who can't afford yachts. Volkswagen bought Audi, and not the other way around, because many more people can afford to buy Volkswagens.

When the country can allow households making less than $40,000 a year to write off half their rent or mortgage and their transportation to work on their taxes, people like us may quit complaining about perks that allow the wealthy to write off Hummers and luxury yachts. Helping people who need the most help isn't just the path advocated by every major world religion, it makes good economic sense.

Though I don't expect this argument to hold any ground with a conservative viewpoint idolizing business and wealth for its own sake. While businesspeople and entrepreneurs are important engines of the economy, the contempt displayed by the conservative end of the tax debate for the contributions of the people who do most of the work in this country comes through loud and clear.

How would you feel?

If this was your place of worship, and you saw this picture on the front of the newspaper?

[The photo was on the front page of this morning's LA Times, by the way.]

Jeanne at Body & Soul nails it:

Apparently I'm still capable of shock, because I at least did a double take when I saw soldiers in a shattered mosque lying on my kitchen table. I know what my reaction would be if this were my church. Desecration. I am not a Muslim, but the violence done to any holy place hurts. There was at least talk of concern about desecration in Najaf, and I wonder now if we have given up any pretense of caring about that. I wonder if I will look back and think that desecration was the whole point.

My god is bigger than your god. Beyond that symbolism, can anyone explain what the point of attacking Falluja is? Does control of that city matter if it angers the rest of Iraq? Do we just keep playing whack-a-mole when they pop up again in Mosul and elsewhere?

Or do we just hope that if we keep feigning divinity, it will eventually be ours?

We'd also ask: What effect do you think this photo is having on the people in Iraq that the US is supposedly in the country to help? Or on Muslims in other countries?

Appropriating the Language

Seattle P-I columnist Julia Youngs came out yesterday with a positively astonishing frame for the election. That the more progressive candidate won. I'll share this mind-bending quote, and send you over to read the rest:

...Bush's victory was due to the fact that nationally the majority of voters was tired of the status quo, tired of the knee-jerk conservatism of the left and wanted a progressive administration. ...

In this editorial, Youngs manages to imply that Kerry supporters came up with the idea that moral issues were decisive in the election. But that's not all. To sum up the bizarre assertions: The left owns the policies of maintaining stability above all and cozying up to dictators [hello, Rummy], while Bush is a champion of freedom and pluralism [Anywhere but Iraq?]. That it's essentially the left who treated terrorism as isolated criminal acts pre-9-11 [Wag the dog? August 6th PDB?], and opposed pursuing terrorists in the future [Except for promising to hunt down and kill them.] That the No Child Left Behind act [screwing schools], restrictions on abortion [telling women they can't be trusted with reproductive choice], privatization of social security [screwing the next crop of retirees], health care savings accounts [making sure that people who can't afford healthcare never get it], and a flat tax [taxing work more than wealth] are progressive ideals. Also, that being attached to '60s ideas makes one reactionary [This from a party who seems fond of the 1860s].

She seems to be suggesting that progress means 'doing something different than what we were doing before.' That misses the point. The Constitution is an inherently progressive document, even as originally conceived, in all its flawed and incomplete glory. Not because it was different than what had preceded it, but because it was a step forward in the welfare of humankind. Because it was centered around the welfare of the public, rather than the welfare of the powerful few, its progressive character endures to inspire people even today.

When something works, you keep it to build on. When something doesn't work, you work to phase it out with as little harm as possible. Tearing everything down just because it's there isn't progress, it's anarchy.

Important Things

Moral Virtues posts a quote that should loom large in our determination to put forth a credible alternate agenda over the next few years:

More than half of Iraq's 24 million people are children under the age of 15. That's 12 million kids. Kids like me. Well, I'm almost 13, so some are a little older, and some a lot younger, some boys instead of girls, some with brown hair, not red. But kids who are pretty much like me just the same. So take a look at me -- a good long look. Because I am what you should see in your head when you think about bombing Iraq. I am what you are going to destroy.

~~Charlotte Aldebron, 13, from Presque Isle, ME (a speech)

Because we live in the US, even if we haven't been able to turn things around just yet, we have the most power of anyone to push this country towards a sane foreign policy. It's funny to talk about moving, but here is where we have the greatest power to do the most good.

Stand and fight.

A Letter To Liberals

Steve Gilliard writes what I'd consider to be one of the more important messages to send to the base of people getting ready to turn this election into another 2000. (Link thanks to Avedon, who had her own response to Steve's letter.)

Dear liberal,

It's time you put your ass where your mouth and money is. Stop the whining. You want to preserve abortion rights, defend them. Don't whine about Bush and his future judges.

You like your values, well you better defend them, and I mean for real, every day, in your lives. The free ride is over. I'm tired of the bitching and moaning. Time to do. It is simply time to do.

All you stolen election people: please, please shut the [****] up and listen.

...Let me explain how I feel about this: I don't trust or like how Diebold was implimented. I don't like the lack of paper trails. I strongly dislike Diebold's lack of accountability. But to make your case, you need hard proof. Indictable proof. If you accuse the GOP of stealing the election, you have to have more than suspicion. Just because Bev Harris says it happened doesn't mean it did. It would really help if she was a computer scientist or statistician. And if we're all waiting before making serious charges it's not because we sold out. It's because we're not idiots. It's one thing to be wrong about a Kerry landslide. Tucker Carlson and I can have a laugh over that one day. But to steal an election like this is basically treason. And you need a really sturdy standard of proof before you scream traitor. ...

Please go read the rest, where Steve talks about what will be the hard and important work of building a party that will have something important to say to disenchanted Bush voters come 2008.

Ticked off about the paper trail problems? Start a campaign in your home state to require voter-verifiable paper trails with every machine. In fact, look into your state election laws and start thinking about sensible ways to make the vote totals sacrosanct and the registration process free, fair, and uncorruptible, should there be any question on those points. Hint: you will have better luck selling this as a common-sense measure that everyone should get behind rather than something that should be done because the Republican party steals elections. It's politically difficult to oppose the former, easy and consequence-free to oppose the latter.

Frustrated about a poor local ground campaign? Don't wait three years to find out if you can do something about it.

Angry that opposition party candidates ran unopposed? Look into running for or recruiting candidates to that race. Make it a point to be sure that every race in your area is a real contest.

Feel like the party didn't do enough to reach out to a community you're part of? Reach out to your own community on behalf of the ideals of yours that you feel the party represents.

This is a time to strengthen our resolve, to look ahead, and decide that the next election isn't going to come down to a state or two with a sketchy electoral process. Decide that the next election will be as indisputably free and fair as you can possibly contribute to making it. Decide that for the midterms in 2006, and the election in 2008, you will not come out the other side wondering if some of the energy you put into frustrations over the past kept you from doing everything you could.

We didn't get killed in a landslide like when McGovern or Mondale ran. In spite of the fact that this is a time of national fear and uncertainty, despite the fact that our party still hasn't mastered the art of coming together to defend our standard bearer and put forth a consistent message, and that our media communication infrastructure is nearly nonexistent, very nearly half the voting public went with us anyway. To put it another way, even though Democrats have become terrible campaigners, our message still gets a decent reception.

This is a time to look ahead. This is a time to commit to affecting change at the state and local levels to mitigate the harm of another four years of Bush. This is a time to go back to school on these issues and figure out where there are any small ways we can contribute.

We must decide whether we want to complain or to win. There isn't enough time for both.

An Arrest

With the hubbub over the death of Yasser Arafat, the re-arrest of an Israel's nuclear whistleblower, has slipped below the radar. Mordechai Vanunu had just been released from 18 years of imprisonment, largely solitary confinement.

This article has more background.

In The News

Kevin Drum takes a look at inevitability of Congressional incumbency and proposes an end to gerrymandering. Not the first such proposal, hopefully not the last, either. Wouldn't we all be better off if our Congresscritters really had to talk to us, to seriously reapply for their jobs every two years? I bet more people would know who their representatives were, and that would be a good thing.

Digby has two must-read posts on the nature of the culture wars. He says that the other side won't be happy until they get complete capitulation on issue after issue, one brought out after another, faster than a DLC shill can cave to their demands. I think his analysis is spot on. It might not be a strategy proposal, but it's solid grounds on which to absolutely reject planning a party-wide shift to the right.

In case you've been hesitant to follow the Fallujah story that closely, Body and Soul brings us the unpleasant details. Matt Yglesias brings us a summary of the fight in Fallujah: "Boy -- guerilla force flees rather than stand and be slaughtered by better-armed foe. Who could have predicted that except every goddamn person on the face of the earth."

At Daily Kos, Pericles gives us all a Terrorist 101 quiz. It doesn't hurt to be reminded that triangulation is the policy of the establishment, whereas to a radical, the obvious enemy does double duty as best friend. Also, Kos shares a briefing on the diverse Latino voting picture, and they give the 2004 Democratic coordinated campaign poor marks for complacency.

The Left Coaster on the sad state of journalism, and the problem that poses for democracy.

Liberal Oasis talks about obstructionism and fighting back in a post that highlights the absurdity of Democrats reflexively taking advice from conservatives on how they should conduct themselves. Also, tax simplification

MB at Wampum suggests making the environment a prominent issue, both for coalition building and future campaigns.

The Sideshow talks spiritual strategy, and she has a whole bunch of other good finds that you should scroll down to read. I like her suggestion of encouraging outlets like Air America to give a voice to the liberal spiritual community, because they really don't get much of a public forum anywhere. She quotes from the Real Live Preacher, and it reminds me of the time when Archbishop Desmond Tutu came on the Daily Show. I'm not Catholic, and I don't hold much with public worship, but it was refreshing to me to hear someone talk whose perspective was so clearly informed by an abundance of goodwill. No one with a secular perspective would have been able to get away with talking that way, they'd immediately be written off as a hippie-dippy pacifist. It's a particular relief after hearing 'religion' represented almost exclusively on the talking head forums by people like James Dobson and Jerry Falwell to have a humane religious perspective be aired in public, but it really transcends religion. The big problem that Democrats seem to have is a difficulty advocating for the humane, for the generous, for the kind, without seeming too New Agey. Maybe it isn't such a bad idea to pick up some tips on how to advocate for generosity from an Old Agey perspective.

Dave Pollard talks about why intelligence gathering isn't enough.

In case you've been preoccupied with US and Iraq-related news, the BBC covers the exodus of foreign nationals from the Ivory Coast after the renewed violence. There are links in the sidebars to timelines, more pictures, and other coverage of the developing story.

Dancin' with them that brung you.

Here's a real good example of how Dubya's administration is paying back the wealthy for their support:

When Layne Sapp takes delivery of a yacht four times the size of an average American home next month, he will be acquiring a multimillion-dollar tax break.

Yacht brokers on both coasts have lately been promoting the tax break he's using, a temporary deal provided by the Bush administration and Congress through a law passed in 2003.

Sapp said he'll first qualify the 130-foot yacht named Infinity as a business expense. Then he will depreciate the $15 million yacht by half its value -- $7.5 million -- immediately. Then he'll use the depreciation as a loss on his personal income and save about $3 million in income taxes, a rough estimate based on the fact he is in the top tax bracket.

Experts say he's on solid ground if he can prove the yacht is a business expense. Other yacht buyers are scrambling to do the same. All are taking advantage of the 2003 Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act.

Signed by President Bush in May 2003, the law has a provision designed to stimulate business and job growth by enticing business owners to buy new equipment in 2003 and 2004. Rather than taking the normal seven years (on average) to depreciate equipment, they can declare a loss on half its value in the first year.

Sapp and others believe yacht buying is a legitimate way to stimulate job growth. For one thing, his boat is being built at Westport Shipyard in this state, and it will employ a captain, engineer, chef and two deckhands. It will also require local repairs.

With 8,500 square feet of living space, the 130-foot yacht has five lush bedrooms for guests, five quarters for crew, eight bathrooms, an eight-person hot tub, a 19-foot fishing boat on deck, two personal watercraft and luxurious dining and cooking facilities. It has inlaid burl wood, a movie theater and four bars.

So what's your tax bill going to be like this April?

Via Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The exam is over. Here come the grades.

And giving out grades is pretty much what Campaign Desk is doing in its six-part series looking at how the US media performed during the 2004 presidential campaign.

In the first installment, Thomas Lang looks at how the press was an accomplice in the spreading of misinformation about the candidates. At first, says Lang the press was seemingly unable to do the most basic fact-checking. And then, when it shifted into fact-checking mode after the Republican convention in September, it hedged its bets and sabotaged its own efforts:

First off, many of the fact-checks focused on dubious claims that had already influenced the decision-making process of the voters, such as the revised Bush campaign talking point that Kerry voted 98 times to raise taxes (another inflated number) or the Kerry campaign talking point that the Iraq war had cost $200 billion (also exaggerated). While it's never too late to ensure that readers receive the truth, polling showed that in these cases, many of them had already made up their minds. The horse was out of the barn -- months before a negligent press suddenly got busy shutting barn doors and windows.

Second, the fact checking, in both print and television, was ghettoized -- denoted, for instance, by a "for the record" heading in the Washington Post and a "fact check" banner on ABC News. While this technique can grab the reader's or viewer's attention, it also reveals the news media's reluctance to acknowledge that the candidates' deliberate attempts to mislead the public is the story that should be making front page news, not the latest musical chairs game shuffling various campaign personnel.

Third, evenhanded-to-a-fault notions of "objectivity" obscured more than one real truth. Thus, fact-checks often suffered from a bending-over-backward attempt to present an equal number of misleading claims from each candidate. This did not represent reality, and is approximately as realistic as expecting each candidate to weigh the same as the other, or dress the same, or behave the same. Furthermore, the fact-checks would have been more effective with stronger language and less-tempered headlines. At times, asserting the newspaper's voice is the most powerful way to convey a message, yet it's something reporters and editors fear to this day. In the face of well-funded political operations that exist to deceive, news organizations should not be hesitant to say so.

Lang's article is a must-read.

Another amazing coincidence.

Now that the election is done with, the US government is dropping the terror warning level at financial centers in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, DC.

Obviously, the terrorists are afraid to attack these financial centers now that Dubya received that overwhelming mandate and has the 'will of the people' behind him. Only a cynic or al-Qaeda sympathizer would think that the terror limit was raised to orange three months ago in order to influence the election, and dropped back to yellow today because the political need has passed.

Via AP.

Bye-bye Ashcroft!

US Attorney General John Ashcroft has resigned.

Of course, Dubya will replace Ashcroft with someone whose politics are just as right-wing, and who has an equal contempt for civil liberties and the constitution — except that the new guy (and it will be a guy) will have a smiley face.

And then Dubya will nominate Ashcroft for a vacancy on the Supreme Court.

Via Reuters.

Useful phrases ...

... for the Canadian border.

"Hello. Are you a Canadian border guard?"
"Bonjour. Êtes-vous une esti de garde canadienne de frontière?"

"I would like to apply for permanent residence"
"Je voudrais solliciter la résidence permanente"

"I am a political refugee. The reason? My former country has been overrun with morons and rednecks."
"Je suis un chris de refugé politique. La raison? Mon ancien pays a été débordé avec des asti d'innocentes et des batardes."

"Before I step over the border, I have a couple of questions for you."
"Avant que je passe la frontière, j'ai un couple des questions pour vous."

-"Can the Prime Minister say the word 'nuclear'?"
-"Peut le premier ministre dire le mot 'nucléaire'?"

-"Is Canada at war with anyone for no good reason?"
-"Le Canada à la guerre avec n'importe qui, et est-il pour aucune bonne raison?"

-"Do you allow pretend cowboys to be in positions of power?"
-"Laissez-vous des osti de cowboys dans des positions de pouvoire?"

"Yes, no, and no? Fine. Let me the f%#k in."
"Oui, non, et non? Et ben, Laissez-moi rentre la dedans chris de tabarnaque de callis."

Moi aussi!

Via Follow Me Here.

Ooooooh, shiny!

Northern lights over Seattle!

While the aurora borealis (northern lights) aren't a stranger to the skies over Seattle, a brilliant eight-hour display as occurred on Sunday night/Monday morning isn't usual. That night, people in North America as far south as Oklahoma and the Carolinas saw the aurora as a result of a major geomagnetic storm. While that storm has diminished, there is still a chance to see the northern lights tonight in the northern tier of the lower 48 states, as well as in Canada and Alaska.

The Seattle Times has a slideshow of aurora pictures taken on Nov. 7 from around the US here. More pictures are here at spaceweather.com.

Vengeance on the Coasts

I think I finally know why modern conservatives and their corporate backers are so keen to bring on global warming: it may swamp the coasts much faster than previously thought, and we all know how much they hate the margins of continents. Plus, it might turn into a plum excuse to move the capital to Texas, and won't that be a hoot.

REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Global warming (news - web sites) is melting the Arctic ice faster than expected, and the world's oceans could rise by about a meter (3 feet) by 2100, swamping homes from Bangladesh to Florida, the head of a study said on Tuesday.

...He said a 2001 U.N. report forecast world ocean levels would rise by 20-90 cms by 2100. He said some U.N. forecasts assumed melting Greenland ice would cause just 4 mm of the rise.

"We'll be at the top of the range, about a meter," he said. The ACIA report says that Greenland's melt alone could add 10 cms to global sea levels by 2100. Melting of other Arctic glaciers would also contribute.

About 17 million people in Bangladesh live less than one meter above sea level. Pacific islands like Tuvalu could be swamped and much of Florida south of Miami would be inundated by a one meter rise.

...Much of the rise projected by U.N. surveys in the years to 2100 is because water in the oceans expands as it warms, and so is not directly connected to melting ice. ...

Eh, but who cares if a shrunken Asian continent becomes home to millions upon millions of refugees who have no home to return to? I mean, it isn't like it would be hurting anything. A little starvation here, the loss of biodiversity there, a few wars, maybe some rioting. Pah.

Bring me my V-8 engine, and a smokestack to steer her by.

Stealing Elections, Part II

My first posting on the subject produced a near unanimous outcry from friends on the Left that dwelling on potential election fraud is a waste of time. So why am I risking ridicule by making another post on the subject? I’ve been getting emails from other friends that tell a different story. There’s also the fact that I’ve been working for 20 years with large complex systems, and the cardinal rule of problem-solving is make sure you’re solving the right problem. I’m not saying that the Republicans stole the 2004 election. But we shouldn’t reject out of hand the possibility either. Otherwise, we’ll learn all the wrong lessons from this election. Change 70,000 votes in Ohio and instead of eulogizing the demise of the Democratic party, we’re patting ourselves on the back, saying what a great job we did. Well, perhaps we’d still be criticizing ourselves, but you get the idea.

Magpie posted some interesting facts and a column by Bob Fikrakis in the Ohio Free Press. Thom Hartman has a good piece Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked and these charts by voting machine type in Florida and Pennsylvania are very revealing, particularly this analysis that shows significant pro-R and anti-D deviations between voter registration and votes cast, not one county of which crosses over in the other direction! A friend sent me this gif that shows very graphically the discrepancies between exit polls and machine tallies in a number of states. I don't know the source of the data (and therefore its validity).

From Keith Olberman, host of MSNBS's Countdown, we have this story, excerpted:

"...there is a small but blood-curdling set of news stories that right now exists somewhere between the world of investigative journalism, and the world of the Reynolds Wrap Hat. And while the group’s ultimate home remains unclear - so might our election of just a week ago.

Stories like these have filled the web since the tide turned against John Kerry late Tuesday night. But not until Friday did they begin to spill into the more conventional news media. That’s when the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that officials in Warren County, Ohio, had “locked down” its administration building to prevent anybody from observing the vote count there."

There’s a note you’ve probably seen in your inbox from Cynthia Butler (or someone calling themselves that) urging Kerry to unconcede the race. (see read more) Finally, here are a number of other articles on election fraud with links, etc.

Don’t get me wrong. We still need to reach out to people, voters and non-voters alike and do some serious listening and dialoguing. But at the same time, let’s figure out what actually happened so we can solve the right problem.

This magpie isn't a mathematician ...

But then it doesn't take one to see that there's something weird about these unofficial results from Cuyahoga County, Ohio:

Bay Village: 13,710 registered voters; 18,663 ballots cast
Beachwood: 9,943 registered voters; 13,939 ballots cast
Bedford: 9,942 registered voters; 14,465 ballots cast
Bedford Heights: 8,142 registered voters; 13,512 ballots cast
Brooklyn: 8,016 registered voters; 12,303 ballots cast
Brooklyn Heights: 1,144 registered voters; 1,869 ballots cast
Chagrin Falls (VIL): 3,557 registered voters; 4,860 ballots cast
Cuyahoga Heights: 570 registered voters; 1,382 ballots cast
Fairview Park: 13,342 registered voters; 18,472 ballots cast
Highland Hills: 760 registered voters; 8,822 ballots cast
Independence: 5,735 registered voters; 6,226 ballots cast
Mayfield (VIL): 2,764 registered voters; 3,145 ballots cast
Middleburg Heights: 12,173 registered voters; 14,854 ballots cast
North Olmsted: 25,794 registered voters; 25,887 ballots cast
Oakwood (VIL): 2,746 registered voters; 7,099 ballots cast
Olmsted Falls: 6,538 registered voters; 7,328 ballots cast
Pepper Pike: 5,131 registered voters; 6,479 ballots cast
Rocky River: 16,600 registered voters; 20,070 ballots cast
Solon (Ward 6): 2,292 registered voters; 4,300 ballots cast
South Euclid: 16,902 registered voters; 16,917 ballots cast
Strongsville (Ward 3): 7,806 registered voters; 12,108 ballots cast
University Heights: 10,072 registered voters; 11,982 ballots cast
Warrensville Heights: 10,562 registered voters; 15,039 ballots cast
Woodmere (VIL): 558 registered voters; 8,854 ballots cast

Unless someone accidentally read the registration numbers into the ballot section, and vice versa, something is really fishy here.

Via Suburban Guerrilla.

More To Read

MyDD: Real conservative values, as practiced, not preached. Why it's more important to reach the rural vote than the southern vote. How the House Republicans waged war and the House Democrats didn't.

Also from MyDD, to create a better party, first fire all the consultants. Anyone remember what a good communicator Wesley Clark was before the brainwashing team consultants got hold of him?

Juan Cole on the attempt to smear a professor at Columbia.

Sisyphus shares some demographics to think about, and reminds Democrats that it's time to fight, anyway. A Democrat she quotes who thinks it's time to give up? One of the strategists involved with the Clark campaign, possibly the very guy who turned Clark from dynamic general to mealy-mouthed campaigner.

The Village Voice on the anti-choice agenda, courtesy of First Draft.

Digby talks about a below the radar effort to recruit Republicans on the job, and he finds the review I wish I'd written of Andrew Sullivan's bizarre behavior when he showed up on Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday. I found it curious that Sullivan talked about the electoral college having been instituted for the sake of the 'middle of the country'. Well guess what, Sullivan? At the time of the founding of the republic, the middle of the country was somewhere around Pennsylvania. Dolt. Sullivan also went off about how important it was to export democracy, while reminding viewers that in America, we have a republic, not a democracy.

What Steve Gilliard really thinks.

DailyKos: The backdoor draft is now catching people who already completed their inactive duty. Iraq is just a mess, and people expect that we'll be able to recruit thousands of Iraqis to work for police and army duty, which has become synonymous with painting a target on your back before leaving the house. A little bit of election hype debunked, and a few more bogus lessons of the election. Why Democrats should stop playing nice, aside from the fact that we're the only side to whom anyone would seriously make an appeal for 'peace, love, and understanding.' Why supporter email lists shouldn't be treated like a cash machine, but rather, an information distribution medium. The politics of crying vote fraud, and necessary voting system reform, something that Democrats should get motivated to work hard at for the next four years.

Out of the Woodwork

It didn't take long for the Republicans to start taking off the friendly uncle masks they wore during the election. Common Dreams profiles Frank Gaffney and his latest screed [interjections in brackets]:

...When Perle became an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan he brought Gaffney along as his deputy. When Perle left in 1987, Gaffney succeeded him before setting up [the Center for Security Policy] CSP in 1989.

As Perle's long-time protégé and associate, Gaffney sits at the center of a network of interlocking think tanks, foundations, lobby groups, arms manufacturers and individuals that constitute the coalition of neo-conservatives, aggressive nationalists like Cheney and Rumsfeld and Christian Right activists responsible for the unilateralist trajectory of U.S. foreign policy since 9/11.

Included among CSP's board of advisers over the years have been Rumsfeld, Perle, Feith, Christian moralist William Bennett, Abrams, Feith, Joseph, former United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Navy Undersecretary John Lehman and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director James Woolsey.

Woolsey also co-chairs the new Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), another prominent neo-con-led lobby group that argues Washington is now engaged in ''World War IV'' against ''Islamo-fascism.'' ... [Me: Hmm. The CPD, isn't that the group that Joe Lieberman jumped into with both feet? Do we need anymore proof that the man is little more than a pro-choice neo-con?]

...His article opens by trying to pre-empt an argument that is already being heard on the right against expanding Bush's ''war on terrorism'': that since a plurality of Bush voters identified ''moral values'' as their chief concern, the president should stick to his social conservative agenda rather than expand the war.

''The reality is that the same moral principles that underpinned the Bush appeal on 'values' issues like gay marriage, stem-cell research and the right to life were central to his vision of U.S. war aims and foreign policy,'' according to Gaffney. ...

The right to life. What a curious value to use to support an ever widening circle of war, conflict, feuding, pandemonium, and general anarchy.

Here's Gaffney's article in its full glory, and here are the highlights of his plan, emphasis mine:

...[1] The reduction in detail of Fallujah and other safe havens utilized by freedom's enemies in Iraq ...[2] Regime change — one way or another — in Iran and North Korea ...[3] Providing the substantially increased resources needed to re-equip a transforming military and rebuild human-intelligence capabilities (minus, if at all possible, the sorts of intelligence "reforms" contemplated pre-election...) ...[4] protection of our homeland ...by deploying effective missile defenses at sea and in space, as well as ashore ...[5] Keeping faith with Israel, whose destruction remains a priority for the same people who want to destroy us (and for the same reasons — i.e., our shared, "moral values") ...[6] Contending with the underlying dynamic that made France and Germany so problematic in the first term ...[7] [C]contending with China's increasingly fascistic trade and military policies, Vladimir Putin's accelerating authoritarianism at home and aggressiveness toward the former Soviet republics, the worldwide spread of Islamofascism, and the emergence of a number of aggressively anti-American regimes in Latin America.

These items do not represent some sort of neocon "imperialist" game plan. Rather, they constitute a checklist of the work the world will demand of this president and his subordinates in a second term.

None of these priorities will be easy or painless. All will require of President Bush a readiness to incur political costs and to assume risks far in excess of those his handlers were comfortable running before the election. ...

I can hear the world clamoring for this to be done even now. Yes, certainly a majority of the world citizenry who either thought that a) no change in US president could possibly make their lives any better, or b) that last Tuesday's results were an unmitigated catastrophe, just can't wait to see the neocon grand dream spread 'freedom fighting' to still more parts of the world. I'm surprised the NGOs and nations of the world didn't come up with this plan themselves, march it into the UN, and demand that the US enact it with all speed.

Oh yeah, I forgot. When neocons talk about 'the world', they mean their friends.

Gaffney would essentially have the US pick fights with at least one country in every populated region of the world save Africa. He reduces the Israeli-Palestinian issue to one of moral values, a frame under which no conclusion could be reached. He thinks we can 'fix' Russia and China just like that. He wants to cut Germany and France out of any possible means of interference with the grand design, because they're just terrorist allies anyway.

Here at home, he wants to jettison the intelligence reforms suggested by the 9-11 commission, and to push costly missile defense programs that don't yet work against missiles and will never work against terrorism of the type we saw on 9-11. And he seems to be under the impression that because so much of 'the world' is behind these policies, he can talk about difficulties in terms of domestic political reaction.

Finally, what the hell does "reduction in detail" mean? That sounds like a bloodless way of saying that no living thing is safe within a 10 mile radius of wherever it's happening.

Anyone feel safer yet?

About Dubya's election victory last week.

You might want to read this column by Bob Fitrakis in the Columbus (OH) Free Press to catch up with the latest developments in the state that delivered the White House to Dubya.

Here are a couple of tidbits:

— In Miami County, with 100% of the precincts reporting at 9am EST Wednesday, Nov. 3, Bush had 20,807 votes (65.80%) and Kerry had 10,724 (33.92%). Miami reported 31,620 voters. Inexplicably, nearly 19,000 new ballots were added after all precincts reported, boosting Bush's vote to 33,039 (65.77%) to Kerry's 17,039 (33.92%). CASE [Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections] is investigating why the percentage of the vote stayed exactly the same to three one-hundredths of a percentage point after nearly 19,000 new ballots were added. CASE members speculate that it's either a long-shot coincidence with the last three digits remaining the same, or that someone had pre-set a database and programmed a voting machine to cough up a pre-set percentage of votes. Miami County uses an easily hackable optical scanner with the central counter provided by the Republican-linked vendor ES&S.

— In Warren County, administrators and election officials locked down the county administrative building and prohibited all independent election observers from watching the vote count. County officials cited "homeland security," according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. WCPO-TV Channel 9 News Director Bob Morford told the Enquirer that he had "never seen anything like it." Morford asserted that throwing the media and independent observers out of the centralized counting area under the guise of "homeland security" was a "red herring." He said, "That's something to put up when you don't know what else to put up to keep us out." In Warren County, Bush picked up an additional 12,000 votes over his 2000 election total.

Via The Gadflyer.

The draft.

You know, the one that Dubya swears won't be re-introduced in the US?

TalkLeft has this interesting item, which we present in its entirety:

I received this e-mail today from someone in Minnesota who provided his name and telephone number:

About a year ago, the reality-based blogs started noticing how the Selective Service System was looking for volunteers to fill up county draft boards, nationwide. I signed up, and was accepted to the Hennepin County Draft Board. And just got a call Sunday, telling me to set aside January 8 for a day's training.

Is this happening elsewhere?

Well, is it?

An Immoral Win

Today's WaPo has an article about Rove's victory and how he has moved the country from a 49-49 tie.

John Weaver, a strategist for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who ended a longtime feud with Rove this year when Bush sought McCain's help, said Rove has moved closer to the goal of creating a Republican majority not by seeking one big realigning election, but by recognizing that political change often is incremental and using every election to get a little bit closer.

"He gets three feet here, three feet there, constantly eroding the other side and grabbing turf," Weaver said. "He has proved his point that you can expand the base, and not just among white males, without drifting or modifying either language or policy. I'm not sure it would work with any other candidate, at any other time. But it worked, and he proved the skeptics wrong."

Rove's assessment is that the 2004 election pushed the country away from deadlock, where it had come to rest after the disputed election four years ago. "We now clearly are not the country that was 49-49," he said. "We're now at 51-48 and may be trending to 51-47. It is incremental but small, persistent change. We saw it in 2002, and we saw it again this year. . . . It tells me we may be seeing part of a rolling realignment."

Yet, despite the laudatory praise given by this article, the truth is that Karl Rove's win was based on ugly tactics -- tactics that are likely to destroy our Constitutional democracy. Karl Rove and George W Bush have tapped into demagoguery to create their win.

What is demagoguery and why is it so antithetical to our Constitutional democracy? In a very fine article published at the History News Network, PM Carpenter says that the characteristic signs of demagoguery can be qualified by two things:

Uh-oh, more fraud in Dubya's vote totals.

Via Scott Bateman:

You can find more of Bateman's political cartoons here.