Dispassionate Lib ARCHIVES

Sunday, November 07, 2004

I Told You Not To Read That

Oh, what the hell, read this again, then you'll understand why Keith Olbermann had to check on the binding nature of concession speeches

MSNBC -

NEW YORK - Here's an interesting little sidebar of our system of government confirmed recently by the crack Countdown research staff: no Presidential candidate's concession speech is legally binding. The only determinants of the outcome of election are the reports of the state returns boards and the vote of the Electoral College.

I know I am more than curious about why Homeland Security would order a little Southern Ohio hamlet to lock down the vote count. I was wondering if they were using abacuses to tally the punch-cards.

Thus the majority of the media has yet to touch the other stories of Ohio (the amazing Bush Times Ten voting machine in Gahanna) or the sagas of Ohio South: huge margins for Bush in Florida counties in which registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 2-1, places where the optical scanning of precinct totals seems to have turned results from perfect matches for the pro-Kerry exit poll data, to Bush sweeps.

This story isn't going away. And it shouldn't. Keith hasn't seen it all either (or at least he's not blogging about it yet). We should be at a stage where the legitimacy of a president is beyond reproach, merely the details of his policy decisions should be subject of debate.

We have not reached that point, and here in Ohio, with the Secretary of State, Ohio's Chief election officer, Ken Blackwell, making a bid to become Governor in '06, it is inexcusable that he spent more time in court dicking around about challengers and provisional ballots, and not making absolutely sure that the vote count was of unquestionable integrity.

This is all the more important considering that Blackwell fully intends to avail himself of Ohio's broken ballot system to sweep him into the Governor's Mansion.

Helli has even more.

And BOP has a Whole Lot More.
And is starting to believe.

Posted at 11/7/2004 10:11:43 pm by The Lib Permalink |

Fallujah Reality

This is what Actor Jack Nicholson, playing a fictional character, Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, said on the witness stand in A Few Good Men:

We live in a world that has walls and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who is gonna do it? You? I have a greater responsibility than you can imagine. You weep for Santiago and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. You don't want the truth because, deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, and you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code and loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a weapon and man the post. [Courtesy Chief Wiggles]

Interesting indeed. This quote, as well as the entire colloquy between Nicholson and Tom Cruise is the stuff of legend.

Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!
Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup): You want answers?
Tom Cruise (Kaffee): I think I'm entitled.
Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup): You want answers?
Tom Cruise (Kaffee): I want the truth!
Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup): You can't handle the truth!

Dear reader, if you can handle the truth read on. Unlike the foregoing dialogue between two fictional characters written on a Hollywood sound stage, the following is a comment by a real marine who fought in Vietnam, was wounded in the Tet Offensive, who has real sons in harms way today, responding to a conservative blowhard who undoubtedly gets a hardon every time he hears Jack threaten to "tear off your head and shit down your neck."

From Terry Kindlon, criminal defense attorney and former U.S. Marine Sergeant who fought in Vietnam, responds to one of TalkLeft's conservative commentators:

Whenever I read one of your comments in support of "the war" I truly wonder what planet you're living on. As a former Marine Sergeant who was seriously wounded during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and as the father of one son who's an active duty Marine Captain, and another son who's worked for the UN in both Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two years, it is my opinion that you don't have the slightest idea of what you're saying. If you had ever seen the smashed body of a decapitated little civilian girl, or carried the still warm dead body of an 18 year old Marine in your arms, as have I, you would know better than to stand on the sidelines yakking about statistics and cheering while my Marine Corps, the best military force this country has ever assembled, is consistently misused by a delusional civilian administration for highly questionable purposes of very questionable morality.

It is at times like these that I want to say to guys like you that if you love the small of napalm in the morning (you wouldn't, incidentally, because it stinks) and if you think this war is such a great idea, why don't you go fight in it! If you're too old, or too scared, send your son. They have lots of openings, and I'll be happy to cook you up a nice, warm cassarole. Semper fi, pal...Terry Kindlon

Striking in the similarity of the two challenges laid out and the diametrically opposed viewpoint they challenge, no? Do read the comments to Terry's statement at TalkLeft.

Thank you Terry, and your boys for their service as well. Tell them to keep their heads down. The neo-con's Hollywood version of reality won last Tuesday, but the reality based community will keep watching your back.

Posted at 11/7/2004 8:53:37 am by The Lib Permalink |

Remember Ceasar, Thou Art Mortal

In the US majority doesn't rule, majority governs. And governing in a democracy means respecting the rights and the interests of the minority even as you earn the right to govern from the majority.

From a comment on KOS

That's the point isn't it? Who needs a government at all if the many and the powerful are free to run wild, trampling minority and individual rights at will.

Posted at 11/7/2004 7:29:44 am by The Lib Permalink |

Saturday, November 06, 2004

a fulmination of thought

"What a world we live in. Gay marriage and abortion are "moral values", but truth and honesty no longer have any relevance".

Hat Tip: a fulmination of thought

Posted at 11/6/2004 11:59:32 pm by The Lib Permalink |

Economy, Security and Values (2 outta 3 ain't bad)

When Ed Kilgore, the Policy Director of the DLC says: I suggest you give today's New Dem Daily a thorough and dispassionate read. You better believe that I sat up and paid attention.

You should too. (Hat Tip: Talking Points Memo)

The slow but significant erosion of Democratic support in recent years is a collective responsibility for all Democrats, us included. It will not be reversed by any simple, mechanical move to the "left" or the "right;" by any new infusion of cash or grassroots organizing; by any reshuffling of party institutions or their leadership; or by any magically charismatic candidates. That's why engaging in any "struggle for the soul of the party," or any assignment of blame, is such a waste of time. But that's also why Democrats must take the defeat seriously, and pursue a strategy for revival and reform.

There are three "trust gaps" outlined in the piece which can be summarized as:

National Security: We can't shake the "weak on defense" meme, not that Kerry didn't do his damnest to lay that to rest.
Reform: Although the GOP has held Congress for a decade, the Presidency for 24 of the last 36 years and as a result have packed the courts with conservatives, we still give them the edge in taking the "reformer" and "anti-government" lable by sounding the alarm any time they try and dismantle any part of the New Deal and Great Society. I'll add that defense of the UN works towards this perception as well, and in politics, perception is reality.
Culture and Values: We actually have to give a rats ass and act like we appreciate that people really think their way of life is in danger if a gay couple moves in down the street, the local drug store sells Playboy, an abortion clinic opens up in town and Wallmart can't sell AK-47 knock-offs. We have to feel that pain because, as much as we can't stand even the thought, they're winning on this one.

If, as the DLC has long argued, the test for Democrats is to convince voters that they will defend their country, share their values, and champion their economic interests, it's pretty clear Democrats continue to come up short on the first two tests even as they pass the third with flying colors.

Personally, I can't/won't change my values any more than I would ask them to change theirs. The difference is that my values, and I believe the majority of liberals, include the ability to tolerate their values. It's unfortunate that it is not reciprocal.

Call me a neanderthal knee-jerker, but I'd rather not compromise anymore. We didn't do so damn bad as all that, and in the coming years, they're going to walk all over us as if we were irrelevant.

Hubris has always been the Achilles heel of George Bush, and it was in full form at his press conference as he chastised legitimate reporters asking legitimate, yet multi-part questions in violation of his arbitrary and capricious "one-quesiton rule." If you thought he was patronizing and arrogant to the White House press corp, wait 'til you see what he does to Democrats.

We can and do beat them on economic issues and it will be even easier next time, trust me. They are going to wreck this economy for all but the wealthy, which of course is the plan. They're done with health care and the schools have gotten all they're going to get.

Deficits, they don't matter any more than Bush cares about his legacy. We'll all be dead before we have to pay for this ride. They are about to dismantle Social Security and their "simplified tax plan" will consist of reducing the 1040 to two questions:

How much did you make last year after paying increased health insurance, prescripions, tuition, gas, utilities, State and local taxes, and dealing with wage decreases and the usual stagnate job situation?
Sorry, you don't have enough left over for investment loopholes, so where can we pick it up so we can subsidize some more no-bid contracts? (We're losing our shirts on these things, but hey, we're the government, not some tax free chairty that can ring a bell outside a WallMart. Uncle Sam needs your cash.)

When it comes to national security, we can at least fight them to a draw now that they can't blame anyone but themselves for this or their dreadful economy. They own this war, and the next, and the word of a casualty count expected from the imminent flattening of Fallujah will be as high as anything seen since Vietnam.

As with Vietnam, the insurgency will end when we leave, thus neither the Dresdenization of Fallujah, nor elections. nor any continued spin from Washington will reduce our cost for this mistake of a war in either blood or treasure. By the way, what are the chances that Afghan opium production will decrease or Osama will die of anything but old age as long as the neo-cons are in charge? Just how are they going to spin the next terrorist attack on our shores as the Democrats' fault?

But values? I'd be glad to compromise them if I thought for just one moment that they were wrong. They aren't.

Thinking that my values are unacceptable merely because they are at odds with yours, and if I gave in "just a little" I might win the next time, is absolute bullshit. I already to more than social conservatives to in the way of compromise towards a middle ground. I tolerate their right to their views. If I start seeing some movement our way, I might, just might, think about it.

I'm willing to go pretty far, but when liberals start compromising the values, they are no longer liberal are they?

Posted at 11/6/2004 10:19:41 pm by The Lib Permalink |

Did We Ask Your Advice?

Other than my sorrow for the youth of America at having four years of seeing Jenna and "Not Jenna" Bush as pop culture icons, and the smear on their character for lack of involvement which was completely undeserved; I am bewildered by the themes that admonish liberals to let morality into their lives or they will continually lose, or that liberalism itself is dead and we should just "shut the fuck up!"

No! You shut up!

How dare anyone presume that liberals lack morality. Just who the hell do you think you are?

"Shut up, indeed." When sanctimonious asshats equate terrorists with liberals, and I can be tolerant enough neither to ban them out of hand nor delete their comments, why should I shut up when you feel quite free to vomit such bile. (Update: Duke, I'm not referring to you, if that's what you thought. It was a true asshat.)

By the way, just what am I supposed to conclude when The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) studies clearly show that not merely a lot, but the majority of Bush supporters have a completely erroneous view of reality. "Dumbasses" may be a bit harch, but not too far off.

When I see this report (press release) which shows the stunning lack of facts which form Bush supporters' opinions, and the stark difference they have with Kerry supporters who seem much better informed in this one, (PR), how can I conclude other than these people, regardless of their intellectual capacity, are ignorant, malinformed, willfully cultish, or just subbornly acting like dumbasses?

This tendency of Bush supporters to ignore dissonant information extends to other realms as well. Despite an abundance of evidence�including polls conducted by Gallup International in 38 countries, and more recently by a consortium of leading newspapers in 10 major countries--only 31% of Bush supporters recognize that the majority of people in the world oppose the US having gone to war with Iraq. Forty-two percent assume that views are evenly divided, and 26% assume that the majority approves. Among Kerry supporters, 74% assume that the majority of the world is opposed.

Similarly, 57% of Bush supporters assume that the majority of people in the world would favor Bush�s reelection; 33% assumed that views are evenly divided and only 9% assumed that Kerry would be preferred. A recent poll by GlobeScan and PIPA of 35 of the major countries around the world found that in 30, a majority or plurality favored Kerry, while in just 3 Bush was favored. On average, Kerry was preferred more than two to one.

Bush supporters also have numerous misperceptions about Bush�s international policy positions. Majorities incorrectly assume that Bush supports multilateral approaches to various international issues�the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the treaty banning land mines (72%)�and for addressing the problem of global warming: 51% incorrectly assume he favors US participation in the Kyoto treaty. After he denounced the International Criminal Court in the debates, the perception that he favored it dropped from 66%, but still 53% continue to believe that he favors it. An overwhelming 74% incorrectly assumes that he favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements. In all these cases, majorities of Bush supporters favor the positions they impute to Bush. Kerry supporters are much more accurate in their perceptions of his positions on these issues.

�The roots of the Bush supporters� resistance to information,� according to Steven Kull, �very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters--and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters.�

How about this? Why don't we start "valuing" truth.

Posted at 11/6/2004 5:39:01 pm by The Lib Permalink |

Don't Read This

Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Or did he? The evidence clearly indicates this cannot be the basis of any mandate.

Interested? Maybe at least for the idea that as warned here and so many other places, Ohio's election system is broken?

Can you at least stomach this enough for the argument that Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell should never hold elected office in Ohio again? Certainly not Governor under the same system rigged for him, by him.

Mind you, an unbelievable number of people rewarded Bush's administration for tax giveaways to companies that outsourced Ohio's manufacturing base, cherry-picked intelligence, mismanaged the war and destroyed our foreign policy. But even if Greg Palast has overstated the case (and I'm undecided about that as of yet) the so-called "mandate" about to be shoved down our throats is more like a whisper thin piece of tissue.

The Evidence:

4,000 votes for Bush in a precinct with 638 voters

And this was only a situation where Blackwell's office screwed up overtly. How many precincts were "nickled and dimed" in Bush's favor?

Just some data points E-mailed to me:

Ohio's ballots still outstanding...

Provisional - 155,337
Military/overseas - 86,512

Total yet to be counted - 241,849

Ohio's ballots cast and counted to date...

Total votes cast - 5,574,476
Bush received - 2,796,147
Kerry received - 2,659,664

Undervote/discarded/spoiled - 118,665

Number of votes separating the two candidates / number of votes needed from total still outstanding in a percentage (based on the 90% which was certified as valid in the last general election in 2000)...

136,483 / 217,664

At the very least this shows that Kerry need not have receive "All" the outstanding votes to cover the spread. By this math moron's caluclations, he would have had to get about 89% of the outstanding ballots that will be counted and only (too high still by far) but only when including the "spoiled" ballots he needed 69% of the votes had all the ballots been counted -- starting to get into the realm of possibility.

Add in folks who walked away from stations where the lines were hours long (there was no excuse for the situation in Kenyon College), didn't open on time, or were shut down for a couple of hours, and this thing was a lot closer than one would think. And if Iwere to speculate well within the 16,000 vote spread which would have triggered an automatic recount.

Kerry deserved the Ohio Medal of Honor for sparing us another FloriDUH, but that's exactly what we have here and it must be fixed and fixed now -- well before Ken Blackwell's run for Governor.

Graphic from the Columbus Dispatch.
Click for larger image.

The Anecdotal:

False Change of Registration. She shows up at her precinct and has to demand a provisional ballot. Hasn't missed an election in 34 years. Has no idea who reregistered her and changed her address.

That's not even the tip of the iceberg. Let's just say that this deserves it's own blog. My in box is full and still filling up. I have a lot of work to do.

One item that was directed to my attention was the story of a man currently in Germany who requested an absentee ballot from the Hamilton County (Cincinnati) Elections Board. He registered as a Democrat and the ballot never came. As the deadline approached he requested another, this time as a Republican, and his absentee ballot promptly arrived in time for him to vote.

If this was in any way a trend and not merely a coincidence, it is more than alarming.

The Analysis:

TomPaine.com - Kerry Won is a start.

KOS has quite a bit more and Ohio Voter Supression News. should be looked at too.

More On This, Please
. . . reported election results vs exit polls are different for areas with and without touch-screen machines that do not have a paper trail, and that those differences always favor Republicans. Clean and untraceable, nice.

Maybe there's something to this and the nagging uncertainty and outright distrust of a system we didn't like in the first place.

But I'll repeat, I'm not saying that Bush lost, just that in the 21st century, this kind of thing should not happen. This is 2004 and after the last election the integrity of this election was paramount. After all, we have much better technology than they did in 1984.

UPDATE: Don't Read This either, not on a full stomach anyway.

Posted at 11/6/2004 4:24:11 pm by The Lib Permalink |

Shorter David Brooks

The Values-Vote Myth

I don't know what all that talk about values means, but there's "a zillion other issues" on which liberals are out of touch on, and that's why they hate America and lost the election.

This view goes hand in hand with Today's theme in the NYT that asking whether moral values ranked before taxes, education, Iraq, terrorism, economy/jobs, or health care. Since the Times is making a value judgment itself that "one of these things is not like the other," they are rejecting the idea that "moral values" has any meaning due to it's vagueness.

Uh, excuse me if I beg to differ on the premise and wasted space taken up in defense of this crap in the NYT's op/ed pages.

I guess two things are happening here.

1.) The Grey Lady doesn't like the fact that values won the plurality of opinions by voters versus the more "concrete" subjects, and rather than confront the phenomenon which does not fit in their world-view they would ignore the answer given most often as the result of a meaningless question.

2.) The Times itself is so out of touch, even more so than the lack of grounding they accuse liberals of clinging to, that they can neither fathom what morality means in the vernacular. nor accept that people would vote in such great numbers on faith and gut instincts rather than the informed choice offered to regular readers of the NYT.

I guess that takes the weight of newspaper endorsements right out of the picture too. Ego is a terrible thing.

How about this to explain the "moral values" question? Over 20 percent of Bush supporters either could not think of a decent concrete answer as to why they would vote for him on policy grounds, because there were none.

Posted at 11/6/2004 3:21:40 pm by The Lib Permalink |

Friday, November 05, 2004

Meanwhile . . .

Fallujah: 3 Britons, Ohio soldier killed And we haven't even gone in with force yet. Ponder just how many roadside bombs were dug, booby traps set, and insurgent positions fortified while Bush spent the last six months on the trail and organized photo ops with Allawi.

Disgraceful. Don't even try to defend this neglect. The war against liberalism was far more important to this administration than the war in Iraq. Protecting tax cuts naturally takes precedence over protecting our troops.

Mount up Marines, there's a city to flatten, finally.

Posted at 11/5/2004 9:48:37 am by The Lib Permalink |

Drinking Disclaimer

Cuervo Party 6:30 to 8:30
If you're in the Toledo area today, you can join me and the folks at our bar before I dismantle the smoking lounge the city made me install (and then the people exempted me after Tuesday's vote -- Freedom smells like menthol!)

The Cuervo Girls will be there!!

Louie's Cafe, Corner of Sylvania at LaGrange, Toledo

I'll be drinking "liberally" which means I will hardly be responsible, although I surely will be held accountable, for anything written here tonight.

Posted at 11/5/2004 9:34:46 am by The Lib Permalink |

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