MAD Magazine has a lovely parody of Bush’s advertisements.

In some swing states, Democratic voter registration efforts are absolutely trouncing similar efforts across the aisle. So in Ohio, the Republican Secretary of State is attempting to invalidate many of the new registrations based on the weight of the paper they’re printed on (the blog’s PDF link is also here; it’s a reprint from a Dayton paper).

Atrios has an image of the wildly inflammatory and downright untruthful mass mailing the RNC sent out in two battleground states.

The Republican Party acknowledged yesterday sending mass mailings to residents of two states warning that “liberals” seek to ban the Bible. It said the mailings were part of its effort to mobilize religious voters for President Bush. The mailings include images of the Bible labeled “banned” and of a gay marriage proposal labeled “allowed.” A mailing to Arkansas residents warns: “This will be Arkansas if you don’t vote.” A similar mailing was sent to West Virginians.

A vote for GWB is an endorsement of tactics like these.

The whole GOP campaign in a single editorial cartoon.

Proposing blatently unconstitutional bills to force Democrats to vote against them, on the theory that “under God” is important enough to mock the Constitutional notions of “checks and balances” and “judicial review.”

Christ.

At a school in Eden Prairie, a teacher arranged for a “mock election” at a parent/teacher/student meeting:

He read where each of the candidates stood on the main issues of the campaign. He didnÕt say who was who… just “this is what candidate one says, this is what candidate two says”. The kids made tally marks about each thing they agreed with from each candidate. Then the kids voted on the issues. Four kids voted for Bush. 26 kids voted for Kerry. … most of the kids who voted for John Kerry were greatly upset by it. They booed the results of their vote. They were upset that they had voted for the “wrong guy”. The teacher went on to say that he assured the kids that the election was not yet over, and that there still might be many issues where they would agree with George W. Bush, and maybe when they tried again later, they would end up voting for him. The parents looked relieved as well. . . The gears that had begun to grind uncomfortably in their heads smoothed out and they relaxed. We moved on to talk about other things, and everyone was happy.

Yeah, best not to actually THINK about what your candidate might do. Just vote. Right, George?

Wired News has more. Remember, people will use these things to vote in November. And they’re not secure. If I, as a tech-savvy person, wanted to create a way to rig an election, I’d start with tools like Diebold’s.

No, really.

Fred Clark elaborates on the notion that journalism is dead, and Bush knows it and takes advantage of it.

John Ashcroft has run roughshod over the Bill of Rights for three years now, claiming all the while he was chasing legitimate criminal convictions. Guess how many he’s gotten.

Yup. Zero. Here we were thinking the debate was liberty vs. security, and here we discover no actual convictions have happened — i.e., not one of those detained, lawfully or unlawfully, by the DoJ has been found guilty of anything. Kinda makes you wonder about that particular trade-off, doesn’t it?

Slate gives us the rundown on how they’re using an obscure law to abrogate free speech in arbitrary zones, thereby keeping protestors far, far away from the President in the name of “security.”

The Pentagon is apparently blocking access to a government web site designed to help American expats get and use absentee ballots.

I keep posting “how much lower can the GOP go?” and, well, they keep showing me. I mean, damn.

Once again, I could write this, but it’s more efficient just to send you over to Fred at Slacktivist, or this discussion with military experts over at Salon. Sigh.

Iraqi insurgents are only attacking because they want to influence the election in Kerry’s favor, or so says Dick Armitage.

Jesus.

If you clicked through, you may remember that the fired worker’s boss said something along the lines of “you can either work for me, or work for John Kerry.” In the wake of the publicity about the firing, two intersting things happened. First, the boss tried to re-hire her; second, John Kerry actually did.

Original post here.

Slacktivist has two fine posts this morning:

• No DD-214, no job. A DD-214 documents the circumstances under which an individual left the military. Fred notes “I am not interested in the typographical capabilities of the IBM Executive Model D typewriter . . . I want to see the man’s DD-214.”
• Careless committees. Here Mr. Clark notes the sad state of environmental legislation in general — and the Endangered Species Act in particular — under this administration, but also includes this gem: “The British scientist J.B.S. Haldane, the story goes, was asked by a clergyman what we might learn about God from studying the creation. Haldane replied that, ‘He has an inordinate fondness for beetles.'” Gotta love that.

“More money and less ideology could improve the reproductive health of millions.” Guess which side Bush is on?

An Alabama woman has been fired for refusing to remove a Kerry/Edwards sticker from her car. The boss in question has apparently also been stuffing employee mailboxes with pro-Bush fliers, which, while not illegal, is certainly creepy. Especially in light of his actions where this woman is concerned. (Original story here.)

Any members of the Alabama Bar want to contact this woman about a wrongful termination case?

Despite a court ruling to the contrary (on the grounds that the Reform party doesn’t qualify as a national party), the Florida Secretary of State has ordered Ralph Nader’s name placed on the November ballot.

Now, if he gets support he ought to be on the ballot, but a ruling is a ruling, isn’t it? I guess not if Jeb’s in charge.

No, not the obsolete Sony also-ran, but the Supreme Court decision that made owning a Betamax legal. The MPAA whined and whined — and sued — over the whole notion of time-shifting and home taping, insisting (famously) that the Betamax was some sort of technological equivalent of the Boston Strangler (thanks, Valenti), and that home taping in and of itself was infringment on their copyright (and never mind Fair Use), and further wanted Sony held liable for contributory infringement for making the VTR available in the first place. The Supremes saw it differently, and thereby allowed the market for home video to explode — which, of course, is now part of the bread and butter revenue stream for that very same MPAA that sought to ban the Betamax and its ilk in the first place.

Now we have something called the INDUCE Act before Congress; this law would essentially undo the Betamax ruling, conceivably making Apple liable for the infringment of iPod owners, for example. (Read it, or some analysis, yourself; it’s not pretty.)

In response, some concerned folks have created SaveBetamax.org, and online grassroots organization whose first task is a coordinated day of phone calls to targetted Congresspeople. Go sign up and make a call if you like the idea of deciding when to watch the Sopranos, or on what format you wish to listen to your newest CD. It’s that kind of fair use that the RIAA and MPAA would dearly love to eliminate, and that’s what the INDUCE Act is about. It won’t take much time — hell, some of you spend more time than this will take on this site alone, if the access logs are to be believed. (Heh.)

According to Cheney, the poor economic data is flawed because it skips all those people selling crap on eBay. Riiiiight.

“If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking,” [John] Edwards said in a statement.

We don’t really listen to Keillor’s show much, but after reading a piece like this, we may need to reconsider:

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil ArmstrongÕs moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, NewtÕs evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks weÕre deaf, dumb and dangerous. Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace. Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedyÑthe single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the presidentÕs personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

As quoted by Atrios:

And finally, New Rule: You can’t run on a mistake. Franklin Roosevelt didn’t run for re-election claiming Pearl Harbor was his finest hour. Abe Lincoln was a great president, but the high point of his second term wasn’t theater security. 9/11 wasn’t a triumph of the human spirit. It was a fuck-up by a guy on vacation. Now, don’t get me wrong, Mr. President. I’m not blaming you for 9/11. We have blue-ribbon commissions to do that. And I’m not saying there was anything improper about your immediate response to the attacks. Someone had to stay in that classroom and protect those kids from Chechen rebels. But by the looks of your convention, you’d think that the worst thing that ever happened to us was the best thing that ever happened to you. You just can’t keep celebrating the deadliest attack ever as if it’s your personal rendezvous with greatness. You don’t see old men who were shot down during World War II jumping out of a plane every year. I mean, other than your dad. … So I say, if you absolutely must win an election on the backs of dead people, do it like they do in Chicago, and have them actually vote for you. Cite

This Onion story just isn’t anywhere nearly as funny was it was four years ago:

“We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two,” Bush said. “Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there’s much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation’s hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.”

Sigh.

Head on over to Defective Yeti for a hi-larious riff on the scripted Q&A sessions our President has been enjoying of late. Trust me on this, and read all the way to the end of the entry.

Cheney: Vote for us, or you might DIE.

TPM has the text of a letter from former President Jimmy Carter to Zell Miller.

As it happens, some of the people that the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” cited as supporters of their cause had no idea their names were being used, and aren’t too happy about it.

As if they couldn’t sink lower. Christ.

Molly Ivins has quite a bit to say about the RNC. It’s worth a read.

From Sen. Kerry:

Let me tell you what I think makes someone unfit for duty. Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this nation. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting 45 million Americans go without healthcare makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting the Saudi Royal Family control our energy costs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Handing out billions of government contracts to Halliburton while you’re still on their payroll makes you unfit. That’s the record of George Bush and Dick Cheney. And it’s not going to change. I believe it’s time to move America in a new direction; I believe it’s time to set a new course for America.

Atrios has more, natch.

The Agonist points out a bit of a “Harper’s Index” rundown of Bush’s administration from The Independent.

This, we presume, is what went through Alan Keyes noggin before he gave these quotes.

The always-excellent Fred Clark over at Slacktivist points out a long piece in the upcoming New Yorker about the direction of Bush’s economic policies. Short answer: if you earn a living, you’ll be taxed, but if you live off wealth, the trend is toward eliminating those taxes.

Dennis Hastert — the Speaker of the House, for crying out loud — suggested in an interview with Chris Wallace that progressive patron George Soros was funded by drug lords:

On “Fox News Sunday,” the Illinois Republican insinuated that billionaire financier George Soros, who’s funding an independent media campaign to dislodge President Bush, is getting his big bucks from shady sources. “You know, I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know where – if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from,” Hastert mused. An astonished Chris Wallace asked: “Excuse me?” The Speaker went on: “Well, that’s what he’s been for a number years – George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he’s got a lot of ancillary interests out there.” Wallace: “You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?” Hastert: “I’m saying I don’t know where groups – could be people who support this type of thing. I’m saying we don’t know.” Daily News, via TPM

As Josh Marshall put it, there’s literally no depth to which these people won’t sink. Lest you think this is just a case of loose lips, Marshall notes that Hastert has been repeating the charge at the convention this week, a technique we might call the Big Lie, because that’s what it is. Soros, however, isn’t taking this lying down, and has issued a public challenge for Hastert to put up or shut up:

I’ve talked to reporters who’ve asked Hastert this around the convention hall. And he’s been aggressively restating the ‘charge.’ I’m told he even shoved his finger in the chest of one of them when repeating it. Now Soros has written this letter to Hastert, asking him to put up or shut up, or, more specifically “either substantiate these claims — which you canont do because they are false — or publicly apologize for attempting to defame my character and damage my reputation.” Whatever you think of Soros, this is the sort of slur that only comes from a real pig. And to think that the author of it is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and out in the light of day. TPM

Remember: one side of this race has aggressively mislead the American people at every possible turn, and when they’re not misleading they’re stonewalling (e.g., the 9/11 commission, or GWB’s military records). Their fetish for secrecy is anathema to the freedoms we claim to cherish. They have and will continue to disparage the records of honored veterans with ridiculous insinuations (see Cleland, Max) or outright lies (see Kerry, John). They’ll even recruit other honored veterans who know better (see Dole, Bob). If someone with resources puts his money where his mouth is, they insinuate that he’s up to no good just because he’s against their agenda. They do this because they cannot compete on ideas and merits, and know the only way they can keep power is to keep the debate from every becoming substantive by cultivating a culture of fear and lies. They will keep doing this until someone calls them on their bullshit, and you can be damned sure the lapdog mainstream media won’t do that. Pay attention.

Excessive governmental secrecy and freedom are not compatible; The Agonist has more. Read it.

Update: The Memory Hole has a bit more, wherein the DOJ redacted a portion of a Supreme Court ruling before releasing the material in question. How fucked up is that?

The RNC will open with a speech by Sheri Dew. Atrios gives us a sample of her work wherein she compares those who fail to oppose gay marriage to those who failed to stop Hitler. Interestingly for the Fundie-dominated GOP, she’s a Mormon.

Salon explains the history of Karl Rove’s political dirty tricks and outright evil.

Fred Clark has a bit to say about the Daily Show excerpt we quoted yesterday. Summary: journalism is dead.

And they’re not doing their job. They’re behaving as if giving equal time to both sides of an issue — say, the Swiftie thing — is being “objective,” when in reality we have actual facts on one side and an enormous pile of lies on the other. Any real journalist — are there any on TV anymore? — would actually examine what’s being said, and try to separate the wheat from the rhetorical chaff (read: bullshit).

At least SOME people are noticing this. From the Times’ Alessandra Stanley, quoted at TPM; she referrs to the softball treatment Wolf Blitzer gave Bob “Hatchetman” Dole, who said demonstrably untrue things about Kerry’s war record on his show:

That kind of air-kiss coverage is typical of cable news, where the premium is on speed and spirited banter rather than painstaking accuracy. But it has grown into a lazy habit: anchors do not referee – they act as if their reportage is fair and accurate as long as they have two opposing spokesmen on any issue.

More satirically, The Daily Show made the same point Monday night:

STEWART: Here’s what puzzles me most, Rob. John Kerry’s record in Vietnam is pretty much right there in the official records of the US military, and haven’t been disputed for 35 years? CORDDRY: That’s right, Jon, and that’s certainly the spin you’ll be hearing coming from the Kerry campaign over the next few days. STEWART: Th-that’s not a spin thing, that’s a fact. That’s established. CORDDRY: Exactly, Jon, and that established, incontravertible fact is one side of the story. STEWART: But that should be — isn’t that the end of the story? I mean, you’ve seen the records, haven’t you? What’s your opinion? CORDDRY: I’m sorry, my *opinion*? No, I don’t have ‘o-pin-i-ons’. I’m a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called ‘objectivity’ — might wanna look it up some day. STEWART: Doesn’t objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence, and calling out what’s credible and what isn’t? CORDDRY: Whoa-ho! Well, well, well — sounds like someone wants the media to act as a filter! [high-pitched, effeminate] ‘Ooh, this allegation is spurious! Upon investigation this claim lacks any basis in reality! Mmm, mmm, mmm.’ Listen buddy: not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me. STEWART: So, basically, you’re saying that this back-and-forth is never going to end. CORDDRY: No, Jon — in fact a new group has emerged, this one composed of former Bush colleages, challenging the president’s activities during the Vietnam era. That group: Drunken Stateside Sons of Privilege for Plausible Deniability. They’ve apparently got some things to say about a certain Halloween party in ’71 that involved trashcan punch and a sodomized pi–ata. Jon — they just want to set the record straight. That’s all they’re out for. STEWART: Well, thank you Rob, good luck out there. We’ll be right back. Via Atrios

No wonder mainstream media hates these guys. They’re the only ones still doing any sort of real commentary.

Several vets are protesting Clackamas County (Oregon) assistant DA Alfred French’s participation in the Swift Boat Liar’s ad, even calling for his resignation.

By now it’s old news, but we’ve been meaning to put this up for days. Salon’s coverage of the “must sign loyalty pledge to see George” story is pretty spot-on. I mean, What. The. Fuck? Are they just allergic to, you know, the democratic process? Are they afraid he’ll self-destruct if he gets asked hard questions? And can’t they get a fer-crying-out-loud copyeditor? Sheesh.

“U.S. Uses Secret Evidence In Secrecy Fight With ACLU.” Excerpt:

The Justice Department is using secret evidence in its ongoing legal battles over secrecy with the American Civil Liberties Union, submitting material to two federal judges that cannot be seen by the public or even the plaintiffs, according to documents released yesterday. In one of the cases, the government also censored more than a dozen seemingly innocuous passages from court filings on national security grounds, only to be overruled by the judge, according to ACLU documents. Among the phrases originally redacted by the government was a quotation from a 1972 Supreme Court ruling: “The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.”

Read that last graf again, just for emphasis. Secrecy is not democratic. This is why sunshine laws exist. Our government — or at least this Justice Department — appears to hate the idea that it is ultimately accountable to you and me.

As much as the White House has tried to spin it otherwise, there’s a large difference between pro-Kerry/anti-Bush ads financed by organizations like MoveOn and the anti-Kerry ads produced by the Swifties. Atrios has more, but the gist is this:

• SBVfT is an organization that exists only to slam Kerry with demonstrably untrue allegations from people who did not in fact serve with him in Vietnam, whereas
• MoveOn has existed for a while now, and has yet to run any ad that’s simply and objectively false.

On a related note, this Boston Glob editorial wonders how it might have played out had Clinton attacked Bob Dole’s record in 1996.

Much has been made lately of the soon-to-expire Asault Weapons Ban. Antigun people love this law, and want it extended/renewed; for the most part, people who’ve actually read the law laugh out loud at how ridiculous it it. The big, ugly secret is that “assault weapon” is a meaningless term that has nothing to do with the actual functions of a given rifle; the weapons banned by the AWB are weapons that fail cosmetic, not functional, tests. (Remember that fully-automatic weapons are already illegal, and that semiauto guns must not be easily convertable to full-auto, so the AWB has nothing to do with rate of fire.)

It’s just plain a bad law. People who oppose gun regulation already hate it, but people who support gun control laws ought to hate it, too. For illustration, see if you can tell the illegal ones from the legal ones.

It’s no secret what we Heathen think of the bizarre, Kafka-esque “no-fly list” created in the wake of 9/11; it’s a system and notion positively brimming with opportunities for abuse, and one that seems utterly allergic to transparency.

Now the troubles have extended to Senators, so perhaps something will be done.

Clerical error puts Kennedy on “no fly” list CAPITOL HILL The Senate Judiciary Committee has heard this morning from one of its own about some of the problems with airline “no fly” watch lists. Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy says he had a close encounter with the lists when trying to take the U-S Airways shuttle out of Washington to Boston. The ticket agent wouldnt let him on the plane. His name was on the list — in error. After a flurry of phone calls, Kennedy was able to fly home, but then the same thing happened coming back to Washington. Kennedy says it took three calls to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to get his name stricken from the list. The process took several weeks, in all. And Kennedy asks — what about the little guy? AP

Note: we don’t want to hear it if your comment includes any reference to Florida date-rape trials or auto accidents. Let it go, or post about it with the Freepers. <?p>

Kos points out that while both candidates were in Portland last week, their events were rather different in character.

Alan Keyes wants to end the direct election of Senators on the grounds that it somehow erodes the sovereign role of the states. Presumably, this means he thinks “states” are made up of something other than “voters.”

The California Supremes have summarily declared all of San Francisco’s same-sex marriages null and void.