Entries from October 2004 ↓
October 31st, 2004 — impolite company
Well, the Redskins lost, which is supposed to be a good sign for John Kerry’s prospects on Tuesday. My sister the (American) football fanatic, who is more of an emotional Kerry supporter than one who comes to her decision based on solid facts, told me the whole Redskins-election-predictor theory. Yes, correlation != causation, but, as Salon says, “Everyone knows a football game isn’t going to decide this election. But by golly, when it’s this close, every tea leaf is going to get treated like the Ten Commandments.”
My mother reported in from Florida tonight that she’s been absolutely amazed at the enormous lines at all the early voting sites in West Palm Beach and in Broward County. For some strange reason (she’s a retiree), she was out very early on Friday morning and said that there was a huge line around the Public Library in Delray Beach. Most of the people she knows are voting Kerry, and most of them have voted already.
And one more family surprise: my aunt, a notorious “forwarder”, whose politics have generally been somewhat more hawkish than Paul Wolfowitz, sent me a pro-Kerry e-mail today. I groaned when I got the email, entitled, “10 Things to Know About John Kerry“, certain it was going to be filled with Swift Boat Liar crap or some other distortions. Boy was I surprised when I opened it and read the first sentence: “Election Day is only a few days away. And the campaign of disinformation and distortions against John Kerry is still going strong within the Jewish community.” It then proceeded to outline a number or positives about Kerry, which — even more surprisingly — didn’t ALL concern Israel! The e-mail originated with the National Jewish Democratic Council, an organization which I hadn’t heard of, but, if they can convince my aunt, they must be doing something right!
Then there’s the Electoral Vote Predictor at electoral-vote.com, which is showing Kerry with 283 votes tonight. The knot in my stomach is getting a little looser.
October 29th, 2004 — impolite company
Some people are keeping their sense of humor in the final hours of a grim election season. Here’s a couple of items that made me laugh:
Foul-mouthed Dick Cheney might’ve given this speech to the Republican National Convention had his career path led him to become a Miami drug lord rather than the CEO of a “respectable” company. (Headphones required if you’re watching from work.)
Bush’s one-fingered victory salute. Or, what he’ll say to the nation should he (heaven forbid) win the election on Tuesday.
Weapons of mass seduction. Proudly mining the possibilities of “the economy is getting bigger… and bigger… Oooh… it’s so big….” And remember: The call is free because your grandchildren will be paying for it. (No nudity or foul language, but… probably NOT safe for work anyway.)
October 29th, 2004 — impolite company
It’s coming down to the final hours of the campaign, and in browsing around, I came across this reminder of John Kerry’s original position on the Iraq war. Despite claims otherwise, Senator Kerry has been completely consistent in his position regarding the war in Iraq, his repudiation of any international veto or “global test”, and in his commitment to international cooperation. On October 9, 2002, during the Senate debate over the resolution to give the President power to go to war in Iraq, Kerry said: [emphasis mine]
…Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies.
In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days–to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out…
…If in the end these efforts fail, and if in the end we are at war, we will have an obligation, ultimately, to the Iraqi people with whom we are not at war. This is a war against a regime, mostly one man. So other nations in the region and all of us will need to help create an Iraq that is a place and a force for stability and openness in the region. That effort is going to be long term, costly, and not without difficulty, given Iraq’s ethnic and religious divisions and history of domestic turbulence. In Afghanistan, the administration has given more lipservice than resources to the rebuilding effort. We cannot allow that to happen in Iraq , and we must be prepared to stay the course over however many years it takes to do it right…
…The international community’s support will be critical because we will not be able to rebuild Iraq singlehandedly. We will lack the credibility and the expertise and the capacity…
…By standing with the President, Congress would demonstrate our Nation is united in its determination to take away that arsenal, and we are affirming the President’s right and responsibility to keep the American people safe. One of the lessons I learned from fighting in a very different war, at a different time, is we need the consent of the American people for our mission to be legitimate and sustainable. I do know what it means, as does Senator Hagel, to fight in a war where that consent is lost, where allies are in short supply, where conditions are hostile, and the mission is ill-defined.
That is why I believe so strongly before one American soldier steps foot on Iraqi soil, the American people must understand completely its urgency. They need to know we put our country in the position of ultimate strength and that we have no options, short of war, to eliminate a threat we could not tolerate…
October 27th, 2004 — impolite company, the web-wide world
Infoworld has the reason I can’t visit the Bush campaign website – it’s blocking access to foreigners.
Huh? I’ve got a machine-readable passport, I should be eligible?
I can’t believe this is a deliberate decision by the Bush campaign, I mean, they surely want to get their message across to their millions(?) of ex-pat citizens in other countries, don’t they? They wouldn’t want to leave this all up to the ‘liberal’ European press to describe what’s happening.
(Via We are not Sheep. A wooly connection?)
UPDATE: I sent an email to The Register – bing! I see this isn’t a recent problem . Boing Boing has a post about it as well.
I still can’t understand why they were doing this – maybe a temporary measure against a DDDOS? But the IP (http://65.172.163.222/) still resolves.
Hey, maybe it was just a really clever campaign to get all the blogs to link to the site, rouse interest…you know, now that I’ve visited the site, I’ve got it all wrong – Bush isn’t the asshole we all think he is…ummmm.
October 26th, 2004 — impolite company, the web-wide world
DEAD LETTER OFFICE: GeorgeWBush.org: Bush/Cheney in 2004! This is pretty cool – www.georgewbush.com
is a spoof of the .com site – and they’ve been erroneously sent emails intended for the staffers of the Bush campaign.
Not a huge amount of grubbiness, although this is a fun quote:
> >May I request that you or someone on your staff send directions
> >regarding what Counties can and cannot do as it pertains to newsletters and phone
> >banks usage for federal candidates. There is a great deal of ignorance
> >out here and many counties are violating the campaign law as I understood it from you.
> >
> >God help us if the Democrats find out
That’s a little out of context, but fun anyway. It is an interesting insight into the way these campaigns are run – less West Wing, more Chicken Wing; There’s a mail ruminating on the merit’s of one of George’s daughters and the some confusion on how crack is ingested.
And this excerpt isn’t out of context – advice on how to support the concerns of a small business advertiser on Sinclair’s TV network, who’s worried about threats of economic boycott due to the Swift Boat programme:
>
> I’d suggest an op-ed piece written by a” friend” that exposes the
> injustice of these attacks on a local family owned business.
> The friend could focus on the notion that Kerry supporters are
> apparently willing to damage local businesses and families in their
> effort to stifle free speech.
> Pineworks isn’t sponsoring the anti-Kerry piece right? They are simply
> buying ad time on the local channel.
>
>
> Politics is however, a contact sport.
Never a truer word spoken, huh?
(Via Wonkette.)
October 26th, 2004 — impolite company, the web-wide world
what’s going on here? www.georgewbush.com and www.georgebush.com (which redirects) look like they’ve been either hacked or denial of service – I’d say hacked, because you can reach the server.
This has been like this since at least 7pm EST tues 25 Oct (it’s 4am EST, 26 oct now).
Maybe it’s excessive demand for all those wolf ads?
Still at least the ‘official‘ campaign site is still working 
October 24th, 2004 — impolite company
Here’s my contribution to lowering the level of civil discourse: Daniel Okrent, the New York Times’ “Public Editor” is an ignorant scumbag who is obviously not qualified to write for the smallest “shopper newspaper”, let alone for one of the most prestigious papers in the world.
For a recap: Times “reporter” Adam Nagourney writes another of his war-hyping, Kerry-hating, front-page articles. A reader writes him an email with intemperate remarks. Nagourney is so hurt by these comments — which are obviously the first negative comments he’s ever received — that he forwards the message to Okrent, the public editor (obviously not called the Ombudsman for a reason). Okrent decries the level of civil discourse in his twice-monthly column, and, while doing so, debases it even more by using his million-plus circulation megaphone to announce the nasty letter-writer’s name and city. The letter-writer is, predictably, beset by right-wing idiots who easily find his home address and phone-number and begin harassing him and his family incessantly, a result which Okrent either intended or is too stupid to expect.
And what is the Public Editor’s response? Well there’s this choice quote in an article in BusinessWeek
“…I decided that someone who goes out at night and paints a swastika on the door of a synagogue doesn’t want it written about either,” says Okrent. “There have to be consequences. [What the blogger wrote] was vile. No one should ever wish that on another person.”
My jaw dropped when I read that. Equating a nasty comment in a private email with public desecration of a place of worship? Surely, Okrent must’ve been misquoted or hyperbolically intemperate in his own remarks. (Besides, the guy wasn’t even a blogger: he didn’t post his message on the internet where it could be read by any number of people; he simply wrote a private letter to a person with whom he disagreed.)
But no, he wasn’t being hyperbolically intemperate — he really believes it! This is obvious, because Okrent repeats that disgusting equation today, in a supposed “apology” on the letter pages of the online Week in Review section of the Times:
Many people were distressed by my mention of various readers’ names in my Oct. 10 column, and particularly by my singling out one who had sent an especially vituperative message to Times reporter Adam Nagourney. My policy: I consider all messages sent to me, or forwarded to me by Times staff members, to be public unless the writer has stipulated otherwise.
Every message sent to my office gets an instant response asking if the writer wishes his or her name to be withheld. No signed comments are published without confirmation of authorship, either by telephone or e-mail.
I published the name of the man who wrote to Nagourney for the same reason that newspapers publish the names of people who commit other grievous acts. The man who vandalizes a church, say, doesn’t want his name in the paper either. But I don’t think his wishes should protect him from public responsibility for what he has done.
Same goes for public editors: I was wrong to call the reader a coward; that was engaging in the same debased discourse that I condemn. I apologize.
DANIEL OKRENT
What a guy! Owning up to his mistakes, right?
How fucking wrong can you be!
“The man who vandalizes a church” (notice how its “vandalizing a church” this time, rather than the more incendiary swastika on a synagogue) is committing a felony act and his name is published when he is arrested and his crime becomes a matter of public record. The man who curses someone in public or private has not committed a crime in this country. (Not yet, anyway.)
If Okrent cannot understand this fundamental difference in the workings of this country, its Constitution and its legal system, then he is just a bully abusing the pulpit afforded him by the First Amendment. For the sake of the continuing freedom of the press, Okrent’s bosses need to set him straight or send him to the unemployment line.
October 23rd, 2004 — impolite company
Honestly, did this ad scare you? It was supposed to. Instead, it’s evoking laughter, as Atrios reports was the case in its airing on Crossfire where Paul Begala said, “Those are puppies… Oh, I’m afraid. These puppies are coming. The puppies are coming.” I’m no expert in animal behavior — other than the misbehavior of my dog and 5 cats — but it seems to me that the pack of wolves were just laying about, when they heard the Bush campaign coming along and decided to run for their lives!
The ridicule is coming fast and furious, from Wolfpacks for Truth, where the stars of the ad allege that “We were tricked by George W. Bush! They told us we were shooting a Greenpeace commercial!”, to the Democratic National Committee’s new ad showing the contrasts between the eagle and the ostrich:
The eagle soars high above the earth.
The ostrich buries its head in the sand.
The eagle can see everything for miles around.
The ostrich? Can’t see at all.
The eagle knows when it’s time to change course.
The ostrich stands in one place.
Given the choice, in these challenging times, shouldn’t we be the eagle again?
Honestly — and maybe it’s because I’m a tree-hugging member of The Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, and The Humane Society of the US — when I look at the Republican ad, I see a beautiful pristine forest, inhabited by a group of endangered animals, which this administration has effectively removed from protection under the Endangered Species Act. We shouldn’t be scared of the wolves; its the wolves who should be scared of George W. Bush!
October 20th, 2004 — impolite company
Guardian Unlimited | US elections 2004 | Hollow Victory
Ok, so it’s a Guardian article written by a left wing blogger, but facts is facts – there is (again) a concerted, distributed rigging of the electoral process by Republicans. If Kerry gets in, he should throw these fuckers in jail.
I’m absolutely amazed at the hollowness of the electoral process in modern day America;
Broken voting machines causing chaos (why can’t I find mentions if this in the mainstream US media?)
I laughed about similar events in 2000. That was before.
October 20th, 2004 — time-wasters
This has nothing to do with anything, and I’ll be damned if I can remember or figure out where I found the link, but this is one of the most intense optical illusions I’ve ever seen. It’s alive!
