End of the year

Last year at this time I was busily preparing a list of top stories for the year 2003. This year I'll let Project Censored do the heavy lifting.

The year 2004 will be remembered for the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Everything else seems trivial.

My sons and I have been preparing a quilt commemorating the years 2003 and 2004. We are adding buttons or beads marking large earthquakes and active volcanoes to a cloth map of the world. [We use larger beads for earthquakes over 7 on the Richter scale--I don't know what we will use for 9. Tim has an idea for marking concentric circles around the Sumatra epicenter to show the tsunami.] I will embroider major hurricane and cyclone paths on their proper places. I am not sure how we will mark wars and incidents of terrorism. We also need a special marker for the space shuttle that fell from the sky early in 2003. I need special markers for 'velvet revolutions' in Georgia and the Ukraine, too. I thought the election in the United States was going to be a big event worthy of a marker--instead, I found out how much work we have to do still. Politics in this country has been so 'dumbed down' that I fear fascism is just around the corner--a red, white, and blue pseudo-fascism [links to David Niewert's 7 part series 'The Rise of Pseudo Fascism,' my nominee for the best blog series for 2004]

When I received a phone call from the Kerry campaign before the primary in Oklahoma, I was impressed by how competent it was. I couldn't have been more wrong. By stressing the Vietnam War 'heroics' and then not successfully countering the Swift Boat Liars, Kerry doomed his campaign. Kerry's strengths--his role uncovering the Iran-contra drug connection and the shady BCCI terror financing network--were ignored in favor of a tepid 'anybody but Bush' message that didn't convince anybody in the undecided, apathetic middle. After I signed up with the Kerry campaign, all I received from them were solicitations for donations. Admittedly, Oklahoma was not a battleground state, but was there nothing to do locally? One 'progressive' Democratic group in Oklahoma that I flirted with focused on homosexual rights and Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 911. Boy, that's the way to win votes here! For more on the incompetence of the Kerry campaign, read 'It's the incompetence, stupid' by James Verini at Salon.com [subscribe or watch an ad] Here is an excerpt:

Most of the Kerry supporters I met on the campaign trail, meanwhile, were really just Bush-haters. The lack of knowledge or even curiosity about Kerry, his career and his proposals, was astonishing. Almost no one working alongside me had the slightest inkling of Kerry's policy initiatives (clearly laid out on his Web site). No one knew what he'd done in the Senate. Many volunteers, even some paid staffers, didn't know how long he'd been a senator. In the Bush offices I visited, posters of the president and vice president were plastered all over the walls, as were posters of Ronald Reagan (strangely, or maybe not so strangely, in one office the Reagan posters outnumbered the Bush posters). But in the four Kerry-Edwards offices there was not so much as a snapshot of either man on public display.

[snip]

The precinct captains, whose job it was to decide which precincts to target, and to divvy those precincts up and shuttle canvassers to them, were for the most part poorly paid kids in their early 20s, just out of high school or still in college. They, too, seemed to have only the vaguest idea of who Kerry was or why they working for him, outside of a nameless dread of the future. They were committed but left largely unguided and, it appeared to me, uninspired by their superiors, and they had none of the unshakable confidence I saw among the Bush team. The result was that they goofed off a lot. And who could blame them? After spending half the night putting together address lists, they were met the next morning by bands of mostly untrained, uninformed canvassers.

No one bothered to brief the ground troops on how to be persuasive or to even get sufficient fact-sheets into their hands. And they didn't take it upon themselves to get educated. I routinely toured neighborhoods with canvassers who were struck dumb when a door opened and an undecided voter asked for specifics.

"But what does Kerry want to do about unemployment, exactly?"

"Um, ah, um..."

"How many people have lost their jobs in the last four years?"

"Ah, um, oh..."

Of course, there were answers to those questions. Kerry proposed tax credits for new jobs created by manufacturers. He wanted to introduce Buy American guidelines in the defense industry and penalize American companies outsourcing jobs overseas. Bush oversaw the loss of about 1.2 million private-sector jobs and allowed 4 million Americans to descend below the poverty line. These facts, which took about two minutes to find out, had the power to sway undecided voters -- I know, because I swayed many with them.

Perplexed, I approached a volunteer coordinator and expressed my concern. The party doesn't have the time or money to train callers or canvassers, is what I was told. But this clearly wasn't true. This particular office was awash in paid staffers who seemed to have nothing to do.

I admit that I was a lot like the campaign staffers described in the article:

No one could imagine a Bush win. The prospect was unthinkable. How could America reelect him? It couldn't. So it would elect Kerry. It must.

For a slightly different perspective, Howard Zinn asks liberals/progressives to 'Harness That Anger:'

What to do now? Harness those fierce emotions reacting to the election. In that anger, disappointment, grieving frustration there is enormous combustible energy, which, if mobilized, could reinvigorate an anti-war movement that had been slowed by the all-consuming election campaign.

It is in the nature of election campaigns to siphon off the vitality of people imbued with a heartfelt cause, dilute that cause, and pour it into the dubious endeavor to propel one somewhat better candidate into office. But with the election over, there is no more need to hold back, to do as too many well-meaning people did, which was to follow uncritically in the footsteps of a candidate who dodged and squirmed on almost every major issue.

Freed from the sordid confines of our undemocratic political process, we can now turn all our energies to do what is discouraged by the voting system--to speak boldly and clearly about what must be done to turn our country around.

And let's not worry about offending that 22 percent of the country (we don't know the exact number but it is certainly a minority) who are religious and political fundamentalists, who invoke God in the service of mass murder and imperial conquest, who ignore the Biblical injunctions to love one's neighbor, to beat swords into plowshares, to care for the poor and downtrodden.

Most Americans do not want war.

Most want the wealth of this country to be used for human needs-health, work, schools, children, decent housing, a clean environment--rather than for billion dollar nuclear submarines and four billion dollar aircraft carriers.

They can be deflected from their most human beliefs by a barrage of government propaganda, dutifully repeated by television and talk radio and the major newspapers. But this is a temporary phenomenon, and as people begin to sense what is happening, their natural instinct for empathy with other human beings emerges.

My resolution for 2005: I resolve to not let cobwebs accumulate at Ghost Town Orange in 2005. I must speak boldly and clearly about what needs to be done to turn our nation around. I am not as cheerful as Mr. Zinn about the 'natural instinct' of people for others, but we still must do what we can.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Islam is not a religion of peace

The next time you hear someone claim that Islam is a religion of peace, remember this:

"sixty-six out of the city's [Fallujah's] 133 mosques were discovered with significant amounts of weapons. During the battle, mosques often became battle zones, as U. S. forces exchanged rounds with snipers taking cover in minarets and inside the grounds."
--Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, November 30, 2004

and this:

"The amount of weapons was in no way just to protect a city," said Maj. James West, a Marine intelligence officer. "There was enough to mount an insurgency across the country."

One of the biggest finds was in the Saad Bin Abi Waqas Mosque, where fugitive insurgent leader Abdullah al-Janabi often preached. Documents found in the worship hall detailed interrogations of kidnap victims believed to have been held in Fallujah.
--Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY, November 29, 2004

Let us listen for the Islamic world's condemnation of this misuse of mosques...

[silence...]
(If you know of any, e-mail me at ghosttownorange@gmail.com)

Go look at what Dr Muhamad Ayash al-Kubaisi says. Dr al-Kubaisi, a university professor in Islamic Sharia from Fallujah, Iraq, represents Iraq's Association of Muslim Scholars:

The widespread resistance operations in Iraq prove the issue can no longer be consigned to a "restive city" or "rebellious region" - it is obviously a popular uprising by people refusing military occupation of their homeland.

This gives us confidence that the blood of our brothers in Falluja has not been shed in vain. Rather, it is the price paid for a noble aim: The liberation of Iraq.

Or here are the Lessons from Fallujah:

Amongst the death and destruction in Fallujah a new breed of Islamic heroes have emerged to become the vanguard of Islam and the resistance in Iraq. Indeed these brave Mujahideen have rekindled memories of past Islamic battles such as Ahzab, Hitten and Anjaloot. The previous encounter between the Mujahideen of Falluhjah and the American crusaders in April resulted in America’s retreat from the city. Despite all of her military might, America had to resort to political tactics to secure the withdrawal of her troops from the city. Today the situation in Fallujah is very similar to the battle of Azhab fought by the messenger (saw) of Allah and his righteous companions. Fallujah’s 3000 Mujahideen and its inhabitants are surrounded by 15000 allied soldiers, heavy armoured tanks, helicopter gunship and numerous artillery pieces. A curfew has been declared and the crusaders have cordoned off all exit routes from the city. Out manned and out gunned the Mujahideen and the brave inhabitants of Fallujah are putting up a ferocious resistance against America’s armed forces the likes of which has never been seen before. Whatever the outcome, the valour and fearlessness of the Mujahideen and the people of Fallujah have become a source of inspiration for Muslims through out the world. Furthermore, Fallujah has shattered the myth of America’s invincibility and exposed grave weaknesses in her ability to wage war.

[snip]
This means that the ummah around the globe must work to sow seeds of distrust in three areas. Firstly, she should weaken the alliance between the Kafir states. Muslims in the west can play an invaluable role in using the growing anxiety between EU and the US to deter the EU countries from supporting America’s crusade in Iraq and the wider Muslim world. Secondly, the Muslims living in the Islamic world must put pressure on the rulers to desist from supporting America’s crusade against Islam. If the people in countries like Spain, Hungary, Poland, Thailand and other countries can pressurise their governments to withdraw troops from Iraq then what is preventing the Muslims from exerting similar pressure on the rulers to withdraw their support of America? Thirdly, and most importantly the ummah must work to sow seeds of doubt between the Generals of the Muslim armies and the evil rulers they support. This relationship must be severed at all costs and re-invested to re-establish the Khilafah Rashidda.

For only when the Khilafah Rashidda is established can the Muslim armies and the resources of the whole ummah be mobilised to not only win the battles in Fallujah, Gaza, Srinagar and Groznyy, but also liberate the occupied lands from the grip of the kuffar.--Khilafah.com [November 9, 2004]

I included this lengthy quote to illustrate that these people--the 'militant' Islamists--would never condemn the use of houses of [Islamic] worship as arsenals. Indeed, they welcome it. If this is not the common view on the 'Arab Street,' what is?

And do not forget this lovely detail about our enemies in Iraq:

An ice cream truck that had been converted into a mobile car-bomb factory, complete with all the parts and weaponry needed to turn any vehicle into a weapon on the spot.

"You got a ice cream truck, it's loaded with munitions, weapons, equipment to construct a car bomb," explained one senior U.S. military official, who declined to be identified. "It could potentially drive anywhere, stop, convert a car into a car bomb and drive away ... I don't think there was any ice cream."
--Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Fence-mending with Canada

Headline: Mr. Bush in Canada for fence-mending visit [WMTW-TV, Portland Maine]

Poem: Mending Wall by Robert Frost (from North of Boston, found at Project Gutenberg)

SOMETHING there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Ukraine: where stealing an election leads to demonstrations

(unlike some other places I could name...)


For more on what's happening in Ukraine, check out Neeka's Backlog by Ukrainian journalist Veronica Khokhlova. Here is a photo from Neeka's Backlog, apparently taken by Ms. Khokhlova:
"Two Ukrainians with differing views having a conversation across the street from the Cabinet of Ministers building; the guy on the left is pro-Yanukovych, the one on the right is pro-Yushchenko."  

And here's a link to the piece Ms. Khokhlova wrote for the New York Times.

I wonder how different colors come to stand for different political parties...Anyway, orange is my favorite color, so it's no surprise which side I favor here--the democrats!

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Happy Thanksgiving

I am thankful to receive real snail-mail. Check out these neat postmarks:

Mailed by mule at | the bottom | of the | Grand Canyon | Phantom Ranch 
Mailed by mule at | the bottom | of the | Grand Canyon | Phantom Ranch [postcard] Read more about mule mail at this US Postal Service web-page.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Iris Chang 1968-2004

From the New York Times obituary (no permanent link available):

Iris Chang, a journalist whose best-selling book, "The Rape of Nanking," a chronicle of the atrocities committed in that city by occupying Japanese forces, helped break a six-decade-long international silence on the subject, committed suicide on Tuesday near Los Gatos, Calif.

"I wanted to show the people that the Japanese soldiers were inculcated to commit violence. This is not a story that was an isolated incident." --Iris Chang on the Rape of Nanking.

Here is a link to the transcript of CSPAN's Booknotes interview with Iris Chang (January 11, 1998) about The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II:

What I learned was that the Japanese soldier really had to see the Chinese as subhuman before they could kill them. I mean, he--he depicted the--the Chinese in his diary as--you know, as like animals or as insects.

More links here:

• Iris Chang's website (currently a black screen with the legend "In Memory of Iris Chang /1968-2004")
• Google's cache of her website on November 11, 2004.
• BBC News report on death
• Interview with Robert Birnbaum at identitytheory.com

Apparently the Japanese would rather not know about their own history: the planned Japanese edition of The Rape of Nanking was never published due to 'conservative' pressure. Go here for an example of Japanese revisionism. According to Timothy M. Kelly, Ms. Chang was a sloppy historian [remember that she was not a historian, but a journalist by training--that may explain some of her errors].

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy

Go to Buzzflash for a link to a new research paper by Steven F. Freeman (University of Pennsylvania) on the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

What wasn't running in this election

--a progressive and prophetic vision of faith and politics.

Read Progressive faith did not lose this election by Jim Wallis (Sojourners). Here is an excerpt:

So in this election, one side talked about the number of unborn lives lost each year, while the other pointed to the 100,000 civilian casualties in Iraq. But both are life issues - according to the Pope, for example, who opposes both John Kerry's views on abortion and George Bush's war policy. Some church leaders challenged both candidates on whether just killing terrorists would really end terrorism and called for a deeper approach. And 200 theologians, many from leading evangelical institutions, warned that a "theology of war emanating from the highest circles of government is also seeping into our churches."

[snip]

It is now key to remember that our vision - a progressive and prophetic vision of faith and politics - was not running in this election. John Kerry was, and he lost. Kerry did not strongly champion the poor as a religious issue and "moral value," or make the war in Iraq a clearly religious matter. In his debates with George Bush, Kerry should have challenged the war in Iraq as an unjust war, as many religious leaders did - including Evangelicals and Catholics. And John Kerry certainly did not advocate a consistent ethic of human life as we do - opposing all the ways that life is threatened in our violent world.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

US Postal Service vs. Postal Service

Postal Service Tale: Indie Rock, Snail Mail and Trademark Law By BEN SISARIO [NYT]

About two and a half years ago, Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard began to make music together despite the distance between them. Mr. Tamborello, who makes electronica with a group called Dntel, lived in Los Angeles, while Mr. Gibbard, who sings in the emo band Death Cab for Cutie, lived in Seattle. They sent each other music through the mail, completing songs bit by bit, and after about five months, they had finished an album.

In honor of their working method they called themselves the Postal Service. Their album, "Give Up," was released by the Seattle-based Sub Pop Records in early 2003 and became an indie-rock hit, eventually selling almost 400,000 copies, the label's second biggest seller ever, after Nirvana's "Bleach."

Then they heard from the real Postal Service, in the form of a cease-and-desist letter.

Fast forward to the happy ending:

The outcome was as unusual as the band itself: this week the United States Postal Service - the real one, as in stamps and letters - signed an agreement with Sub Pop granting a free license to use the name in exchange for working to promote using the mail. Future copies of the album and the group's follow-up work will have a notice about the trademark, while the federal Postal Service will sell the band's CD's on its Web site, potentially earning a profit. The band may do some television commercials for the post office.

The group also agreed to perform at the postmaster general's annual National Executive Conference in Washington on Nov. 17. The attendees might not realize what a rare treat they are in for since the Postal Service does not play many gigs....

I like what I've heard of the Postal Service's music. And they like to use snail-mail!

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

What about 'spoiled' votes?

Journalist Greg Palast claims that Kerry Won if all the votes had been counted:

I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.

Particularily if they are voting with black boxes in Ohio [Machine Error Gives Bush Thousands of Extra Ohio Votes] More on Ohio's problems here.

According to Mr. Palast, on average about 3% of ballots in American elections are not counted due to 'spoilage'. Most of the 'spoiled' ballots just happen to be from areas with higher numbers of Democrats. How convenient for the Republican Party. In New Mexico, it appears that much of the pro-Kerry Hispanic vote was diverted into uncounted 'provisional ballots':

Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.

I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.

Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of provisional ballots.

"They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque journalist Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots. About 20,000 were given out. Who got them?

Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provisional ballots, rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said, at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.

Of course, it would be difficult for the leaders of the Democratic Party to demand that all votes be counted before conceding. That would be too confrontational. They'd rather surrender; how typical.

Of course, if the Democrats had gone to the courts they would have been crucified by the SCLM and the Republican Party. We can only win if we have an overwhelming advantage in both the popular vote and the electoral college. Let's adapt the populist politics of William Jennings Bryan: economic populism with a healthy dose of respect for conservative Christian values. (Not a phony marketing campaign to simulate 'values' but an expansion of the discussion of ethics and morality to all aspects of politics and public policy.) If we don't change we will become a permanently out-of-power coalition of minorities (ethnic and social), and the Republican party will dominate American politics as its libertarian and theocratic wings battle each other for ultimate control.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Annihilationist Rhetoric, George W. Bush Re-election Style

Adam Yoshida translates George W. Bush's victory speech--To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.:

They [people that voted for John Kerry] mean nothing. They are worth nothing. There's no point in trying to reach out to them because they won't be reached out to. We've got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and our boot above their head. Now's the time to curb-stomp the bastards.

We may have seen the first black box stolen election

Grounds for further research--noticed on electoral-vote.com today [link.]

Various people sent me mail saying that it is awfully fishy that the exit polls and final results were substantially different in some places. I hope someone will follow this up and actually do a careful analysis. Does anyone know of a Website containing all the exit poll data? If we go to computerized voting without a paper trail and the machines can be set up to cheat, that is the end of our democracy. Switching 5 votes per machine is probably all it would take to throw an election and nobody would ever see it unless someone compares the computer totals and exit polls. I am still very concerned about the remark of Walden O'Dell a Republican fund raiser and CEO of Diebold, which makes voting machines saying he would deliver Ohio for President Bush. Someone (not me) should look into this carefully. The major newspapers actually recounted all the votes in Florida last time. Maybe this year's project should be looking at the exit polls. If there are descrepancies between the exit polls and the final results in touch-screen counties but not in paper-ballot counties, that would be a signal. At the very least it could be a good masters thesis for a political science student. The Open voting consortium is a group addressing the subject of verifiable voting.

Until proven otherwise, I have to assume that the election results do reflect the views of the American people. It does us no good to assume that the majority are with us when it is obvious that they are not. We may style ourselves the 'reality-based' community, but that means we really have to face the fact that we have a lot of work to do.

I am going to read over the Republican Party 2004 platform and see what a majority of Americans apparently want. I want to see how Republicans frame issues morally (if indeed they do.) I do not think that we Democrats will win by being imitation or pseudo-Republicans; but we certainly won't win be merely being anti-Republicans.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Today, the national Democratic Party really IS the minority party

A fellow Oklahoma blogger [Martin Jensen] has this analysis of where we liberal Democrats need to go from here:

"It's morality, stupid"- Citizens from both ends of the economic spectrum voted against their economic interest on 112.

- Democrats need to define their positions based on clearly stated principles*, rather than a grab bag of issues. These principles should be defined in moral terms more than in logical terms. Everybody has principles they think are worth fighting and even dying for, and people want to know what ours are. Until we can explain them, they will never trust us. Until we can prove to them that they share those principles, they will not vote for us.

Here is Mr. Jensen's proposed list of principles for Democrats:

* Principles (A List to be Modified)- Equal opportunity precedes equality of condition

- Fairness to all

- Free markets must be governed by fair competition

- Investing in success is smarter than spending on failure

- Focus on the best we have to offer

- We can be wise -- get the big picture before you start painting yourself into a corner

- Leverage applied in the right place is more effective than opposition applied just about anywhere else

- Programs that benefit society as a whole should be supported in proportion to an individual's benefit from that society

- Protection of individual liberties is the right and proper role of the judiciary

- The separation of church and state benefits religion more than removing those separations would benefit the state. (Evidence: check out the low rates of church attendance in all those European countries with state-sanctioned and -supported religions.)

- Corporations can survive without welfare programs from the government

And…any principle we don't think we can get a significant majority of the electorate to agree with should be revised -- or stricken from this list.

Mr. Jensen concludes his piece with this reminder that we have to work at winning the hearts and minds of our fellow Americans:

And how much easier would it be to "convert" others to our point of view if we emphasized our shared principles and helped them to see those issues from that perspective? Telling them they're wrong, they're stupid, they're bigoted and they're delusional clearly has not been effective so far.

I said recently that the (Oklahoma) Democratic Party was a majority party that acted like a minority party. Today, the national Democratic Party really IS the minority party. We have to quit trying to defeat them and start trying to win their hearts and minds. We're not going to change the world without changing those voters' consciousness. As well as our own.

For me, a problem with so many left-leaning blogs is the constant name-calling and a childish potty-mouth mentality. Let's leave that to the right wingers (freepers, Little Green Footballs, etc.). We aren't going to win over a majority of Americans by behaving like spiteful children.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Living Poor, Voting Rich

This time Nicholas Kristof has it right: Living Poor, Voting Rich (NYT)

In the aftermath of this civil war that our nation has just fought, one result is clear: the Democratic Party's first priority should be to reconnect with the American heartland.

I'm writing this on tenterhooks on Tuesday, without knowing the election results. But whether John Kerry's supporters are now celebrating or seeking asylum abroad, they should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting - utterly against their own interests - for Republican candidates.

One of the Republican Party's major successes over the last few decades has been to persuade many of the working poor to vote for tax breaks for billionaires. Democrats are still effective on bread-and-butter issues like health care, but they come across in much of America as arrogant and out of touch the moment the discussion shifts to values.

What we need to understand is that most Americans are not going to vote on pocketbook issues--even in self-interest. We cannot run campaigns knowing we're going to lose the entire South, Mountain West, and the Plains States. The majority of voters in these states perceive that the Democratic Party disdains their values and their faith.

Sometimes I think it would be enough for Democrats to expose the Republican Party's clay-feet regarding faith: the hypocritical acceptance of pro-death policys while claiming to be pro-life. Republicans mostly support the death penalty and have been consistently pro-war: not as a last resort but as the first choice in international relations. But criticizing these Republican policies does no good if Democrats are promoting the 'inviolable' right to abortion in almost all circumstances. No one believes politicians really value human life if they think abortion is acceptable.

The other issue that kills Democrats' chances: gay rights. At my sons' schools (I'm talking elementary and middle school-age kids here) President Bush was the overwhelming favorite. The common perception is that Senator Kerry supports gay marriage and might even be gay himself. It doesn't matter that this isn't true: if the perception is that widespread, we will lose every time. The question that needs to be asked: how does this perception get that widespread? The so-called liberal media aren't spreading lies about Kerry's sexuality; dastardly Republican party flyers are not circulating hinting that Kerry is 'light in his loafers'--so where does the perception come from? I leave it to you, dear reader, to jump to the only proper conclusion.

So some advice for the Democratic Party: in 2008, don't give us a Hilary or a Dean or a Kucinich. Give us someone consistently pro-life, an active church member that can openly talk about his or her faith--not just the 'do good works' stuff, but how Jesus changes lives, or be prepared to lose again.

And just think, I was planning on getting my American flag out and flying it on Inauguration Day...

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

I Voted for Kerry

and my son Tim helped me.

A song for today: Democracy by Leonard Cohen

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Some advice to Democrats this Election Day

Nicholas von Hoffman discusses the history of election shenanigans and the American tendency to wink at cheating. As he notes, "if baseball is our national pastime, then isn't it interesting how large a part cheating plays in the game?" He concludes his post at the Liberty and Power group blog with this advice for Democrats: Dump the polite wimpy charges of 'unfairness.' Do not let the So-called Liberal Media tell you to 'get over it' when the Republicans attempt to steal the election this time:

In recent times the standard Republican tactic has not been to bring in illegal voters but to try to knock out legal Democratic ones, usually by kicking them off the registration lists or, later, challenging them at the polls, a ploy which holds up lines, makes people wait and forces many, especially those who have to go to work or look after children, to give up the idea of casting a ballot. For such maneuvers the modern Democrats seem to have few answers except bringing in the lawyers, but you can't win the lawyer game against Republicans. With their money and connections they can outlawyer the D's two to one. If that doesn’t work, they can fix the judge. If today were like earlier eras, Democratic campaign workers would buy a bunch of disposable, non-traceable cell phones and distribute them to carefully selected partisans who would call in bomb scares and false fire alarms to disrupt the voting in heavily Republican precincts. You stop our vote, we stop yours.

The modern Democrat doesn't do things like that. He or she is more inclined to find a microphone and complain it is "unfair." Unfair is the most used word in the Democratic political lexicon, even though it simply irritates most people to hear it. Let us hope that on Tuesday and beyond Democrats will not react to Republican shenanigans by shouting "Unfair!" If Democrats want to protect their votes and their rights, they should hit the streets in very large numbers to demonstrate near the polling places and election commission offices where the Republicans do their mischief. The crowds should chant, shout, scream, generally misbehave and absolutely refuse to go away. Intimidation must be met with counter-intimidation, threat with threat, force with force. One of the things that has happened to the Democrats these past years as they have become the sissy soft party of empathy is that the Republicans no longer fear them. In politics, where there is no fear, there is no respect.

So to the barricades, ladies and gentlemen, and don't mind your manners.

Remember the 'Republican riot' to stop the vote counting in Florida? We will not let them get away with it this time!

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Pundit Blogger. Indeed.

I answered seven questions, and found out that I am a pundit blogger:

You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read. Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few.

What kind of blogger are you?

I wouldn't say I'm appreciated by many; I really only do this for my own amusement. But I was tickled to find a mini-review of Ghost Town Orange by green boy at needlenose.

Here are some more reviews of this usually humble site:

Ghost Town Orange is a perfect beauty, and good as beautiful.--Moralist.

Ghost Town Orange is a most suitable companion for our walks and meditations.--Casuist.

Ghost Town Orange--its wisdom and learning are equally remarkable.--College Club.

Ghost Town Orange--read it, try to parse it, and then set it to music and sing it.--Yankee Teacher.

Ghost Town Orange--the thing we dreamed of, longed for, sighed for, and paid for.--Public at Large.

Actually, I climbed into my time machine and stole these reviews from the first American issue of Punchinello.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Envy

For the first time in my life, I am envious of rock stars.
I ran across Elizabeth D's Daily Kos diary about the rally at Madison, Wisconsin on October 28, 2004. Bruce Springsteen and the Foo Fighters were there! [actually, just Dave Grohl and Chris Shiflett were performing, more below]

Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters, Kerry Rally, Madison, WI October 28, 2004
According to Barbara D, Dave Grohl said "that the Bush/Cheney campaign had played their music at rallies, and finding they had no good legal way to stop them doing so, they decided to play at Kerry rallies to make their allegiance very clear."
Here is a photo (apparently by Sharon Farmer) I found at the John Kerry Photo Gallery:
John Kerry with the Foo Fighters after 3rd debate in Arizona
My cousin Chris is a member of the band. I haven't seen him for close to 20 years; he was too shy to play his guitar for me back then! [I'll let you in on a secret: The oldest Shiflett brother, Mike, is probably the best musician in the family. A little more info here.] I asked my sons to identify which member of the band was related to us; of course they picked the 2 guys with beards. Wrong answers! Chris is the good-looking guy just to the right of Senator Kerry.

Elizabeth D has posted quite a few good pictures in her diary. Here's one I like:

Get Out The Vote!

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Living stones

Today the hymn Built on the Rock the Church doth Stand really spoke to me. Here are the 3rd and 4th verses:

3. We are God's house of living stones,
Builded for His habitation;
He through baptismal grace us owns
Heirs of His wondrous salvation.
Were we but two His name to tell,
Yet He would deign with us to dwell,
With all His grace and His favor.

4. Now we may gather with our King
E'en in the lowliest dwelling;
Praises to Him we there may bring,
His wondrous mercy forthtelling.
Jesus his grace to us accords;
Spirit and life are all His Words;
His truth does hallow the temple.

(based on Ephesians 2: 19-22)

words by Nicolai F. S. Gruntvig, 1837
translated by Carl Doeving, 1909, alt.
The Lutheran Hymnal, 1941.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

The Long Shadow of Jim Crow

Read The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America [PDF]by the PFAW Foundation and the NAACP.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Guilty Pleasures

Ah, I'm not alone: The Rude Pundit also sees the real heroism of Senator Kerry. [Caution: the Rude Pundit has a potty-mouth.]

And I also enjoy the frequently profane "My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable -- Get Your War On" series...

Click cartoons for larger, more readable versions 

UPDATE

10:18 pm CDT
Alas, the readable cartoons are too wide for Ghost Town Orange...

UPDATE 2

10:49 pm CDT [Blogger is running like iced molasses tonight...]
While I'm posting links to obscenities, how about this one?

October 14, 2004: Three Medford-area schoolteachers Janet Voorhees, Candice Julian, and Tania Tong were ejected from a Bush rally in Central Point, Oregon for wearing these shirts, which Bush event staff called "obscene." 
More from Oregon:

When Vice President Dick Cheney visited Eugene, Oregon on Sept. 17, a 54-Year old woman named Perry Patterson was charged with criminal trespass for blurting the word "No" when Cheney said that George W. Bush has made the world safer.

One day before, Sue Niederer, 55, the mother of a slain American soldier in Iraq was cuffed and arrested for criminal trespass when she interrupted a Laura Bush speech in New Jersey. Both women had tickets to the event.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Conflicted evangelicals

Finally, someone in the SCLM notices that evangelicals aren't all happy with Mr. Bush. Read Conflicted Evangelicals Could Cost Bush Votes by Peter Wallsten (Los Angeles Times)

An excerpt:

Some of these targeted voters remain conflicted -- torn between their religious convictions on so-called values issues, and concerns typical of suburban moms and dads, such as jobs, healthcare, the Iraq war and the environment.

Some, such as Wendy Skroch, a 51-year-old mother of three who prays regularly at the evangelical Elmbrook Church in this heavily Republican Milwaukee suburb, blame Bush for failing to fix a "broken" healthcare system and for "selling off the environment to the highest bidder."

Others are like Joe Urcavich, pastor of the nondenominational evangelical Green Bay Community Church, where more than 2,000 people worship each Sunday. He is undecided, troubled by the bloodshed in the Middle East.

"It's hard for me to say that Christians should be marching against abortion and carrying signs, and then turn around and giving a pep rally for the war in Iraq without even contemplating that hundreds and hundreds of people are being killed on a regular basis over there," Urcavich said.

"I'm very antiabortion, but the reality is the right to life encompasses a much broader field than just abortion," he added. "If I'm a proponent of life, I have to think about the consequences of not providing prescription drugs to seniors or sending young men off to war."

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

A couple of Bush links

Somehow I don't think George W. Bush would prepare his resume this candidly.

Here is The Nation's 100 Facts and 1 Opinion: The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration (by Judd Legum)

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Senator Kerry's long history against terrorists

Senator Kerry has always been my first choice for President this election. I remember his efforts in the 1980s exposing the Nicaraguan contra/US government/cocaine connection, and his efforts to expose the terrorist dealings of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Senator Kerry has already had more success fighting terrorists than President Bush ever will.

[Note the failure of Mr. Bush to dispatch enough troops in Iraq to secure the known weapon's caches but placing a higher priority on protecting Iraq's oil fields--Scott McClellan confesses at the White House Press gaggle, October 25, 2004:

At the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom there were a number of priorities. It was a priority to make sure that the oil fields were secure, so that there wasn't massive destruction of the oil fields, which we thought would occur.

But it didn't occur to the Bush Administration to secure explosives [Salon.com: subscribe now or get a free day pass!] which terrorists would love to get their evil hands on?]
Iraq's letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about the missing explosives: 'theft and looting of governmental installations due to lack of security'
Image from the New York Times, click for a larger view.

Here is a recent article by Robert Parry about Mr. Kerry's courageous role in the Contra/Cocaine investigation [Salon.com: subscribe now or get a free day pass!] including the craven attempts by the SCLM and the Republican Party to sweep the scandal under the carpet.

Read the links!

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Questioning Mr. Bush's Faith?

Ayelish McGarvey, a writer at the American Prospect, questions Mr. Bush's faith in this online article--As God Is His Witness

Is Mr. Bush even a Christian? If you listen carefully, you can hear all the pundits scurrying away, muttering 'Who am I to judge the sincerity of President Bush's faith?' while Mr. Bush uses the Christian faith as political propaganda:

Ironically for a man who once famously named Jesus as his favorite political philosopher during a campaign debate, it is remarkably difficult to pinpoint a single instance wherein Christian teaching has won out over partisan politics in the Bush White House. Though Bush easily weaves Christian language and themes into his political communication, empty religious jargon is no substitute for a bedrock faith. Even little children in Sunday school know that Jesus taught his disciples to live according to his commandments, not simply to talk about them a lot. In Bush's case, faith without works is not just dead faith -- it's evangelical agitprop.

Richard Land directs the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination and a group that enjoys a close relationship with the Bush administration. In an interview for Frontline earlier this year, Land denounced the scriptural cherry-picking on the part of contemporary American Christians. "It's only been in the last half-century when you've had the rise of groups [in] modern Christendom who believe in what I call 'Dalmatian theology,'" he explained. "The Bible's inspired in spots, and . . . [t]hey think they can reject large chunks of Christian Scripture and biblical revelation that they don't agree with . . . ."

But while Land's censure was probably intended for liberals, so, too, does it apply to the president. For George W. Bush does not live or govern under the complete authority of the Bible -- just the parts that work to his political advantage. And evangelical leaders like Land who blindly bless the Bush White House don't just muddy the division of church and state; worse, they completely violate Scripture.

Contrast Mr. Bush with Mr. Carter:

But sin is crucial to Christianity. To be born again, a seeker must painfully acknowledge his or her innate sinfulness, and then turn away from it completely. And though today Bush is sober, he does not live and govern like a man who "walks" with God, using the Bible as a moral compass for his decision making. Twice in the past year -- once during an April press conference and most recently at a presidential debate -- the president was unable to name any mistake he has made during his term. His steadfast unwillingness to fess up to a single error betrays a strikingly un-Christian lack of attention to the importance of self-criticism, the pervasiveness of sin, and the centrality of humility, repentance, and redemption. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine George W. Bush delivering an address like Jimmy Carter's legendary "malaise" speech (in which he did not actually say the word "malaise") in 1979. Carter sermonized to a dispirited nation in the language of confession, sacrifice, and spiritual restoration. Though it didn't do him a lick of good politically, it was consonant with a Christian theology of atonement: Carter admitted his mistakes to make right with God and the American people, politics be damned. Bush, for whom politics is everything, can't even admit that he's done anything wrong.

Save for a few standout reporters, the press has done a dismal job of covering the president's very public religiosity. Overwhelmingly lacking personal familiarity with conservative Christianity, political reporters have either avoided the topic or resorted to shopworn cliches and lazy stereotypes. Over and over, news stories align Bush with evangelical theology while loosely dropping terms like fundamentalist to describe his beliefs.

Once and for all: George W. Bush is neither born again nor evangelical. As Alan Cooperman reported in The Washington Post last month, the president has been careful never to use either term to describe his faith. Unlike millions of evangelicals, Bush did not have a single born-again experience; instead, he slowly came to Christianity over the course of several years, beginning with a deep conversation with the Reverend Billy Graham in the mid-1980s. And there is virtually no evidence that Bush places any emphasis on evangelizing -- or spreading the gospel -- in either his personal or professional life. Contrast this to Carter, who notoriously told every foreign dignitary he encountered about the good news of Jesus Christ.

Many evangelicals will vote for Mr. Bush because they think he is one of them. They are mistaken.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

A Light Bulb Joke

Found at William Gibson's blog:

How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?

None. There's nothing wrong with that light bulb. There is no need to change anything. We made the right decision and nothing has happened to change our minds. People who criticize this light bulb now, just because it doesn't work anymore, supported us when we first screwed it in, and when these flip-floppers insist on saying that it is burned out, they are merely giving aid and encouragement to the Forces of Darkness.

-- John Cleese

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Inside Mr. Bush's Brain, January Surprise Version

Mark A. R. Kleiman noticed something in the Ron Suskind article in NYT Magazine that I missed:

Meanwhile, the Kerry campaign has decided that none of the truly horrifying quotes in the Susskind article have the political potency of Bush's promise to a group of his rich supporters to privatize Social Security in a second term.

I love the phrase "January surprise." The Bush spokesman who pointed out that Bush never says "privatization" in public leaves himself open to the riposte that Bush did use the word when talking his fundraisers.

Here is the relevant piece of the Suskind piece--notice that Mr. Bush does not use this in his stump speeches, just when raising fund from his true base, the ultra-rich:

''I'm going to come out strong after my swearing in,'' Bush said, ''with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatizing of Social Security.'' The victories he expects in November, he said, will give us ''two years, at least, until the next midterm. We have to move quickly, because after that I'll be quacking like a duck.''

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Tinkering

I have been tinkering with Ghost Town Orange's template; you may notice a few new bells and whistles, and some old ones repaired. In particular, I restored the Weather and Upcoming News Sources pages--find the links to the right.

Ghost Town Orange is over a year old. I need to clean up the archives--remove dead links, restore pictures that are no longer hosted, and eliminate some obsolete information about prior versions of Ghost Town Orange. Developing...

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

More on Republican attempts to steal the election

Blogger Markos Moulitsas [Daily Kos] has a good article in the UK Guardian which summarizes the Republican Party's attempt to suppress Democratic votes. After summarizing problems in several states, Mr. Moulitsas sums up:

There is more, lots more. There are several clearing houses of voter suppression and fraud online, like the Voter Registration Fraud Clearinghouse and Vote Watch 2004.

These efforts are not isolated incidents, but part of the Republican Party's "Victory" programme. While ostensibly a voter registration and "get out the vote" operation, the programme includes a concerted nationwide effort by Republicans to lock in their electoral gains by any and all means necessary. Sounds like partisan rhetoric, sure, until you hear it from the source. Alluding to the fraud committed by his party in his home state of South Dakota, former Republican governor and congressman Bill Janklow told the Associated Press last week that the entire Victory programme is rife with electoral fraud: "These people are cheating. When you tamper with it, you cheat the system. And cheating in elections is the worst form of cancer because it's uncontrollable."

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Inside Mr. Bush's Brain, Orwellian version

Needlenose remembers a certain similarity between the Bush White House and George Orwell's 1984:

Ron Suskind's chilling article in the New York Times Magazine on Dubya's "faith-based presidency" has plenty of people sitting up and taking notice. Joshua Marshall quotes this remark by former Environmental Protection Administration chief Christie Whitman:

In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!

Others such as Matt Yglesias and Daily Kos, cite this disturbing passage:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

It didn't take long for me to realize what this reminded me of:

You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. . . . Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.

Yes, you guessed right about the source -- George Orwell's 1984, the Bushites' instruction manual. And if they get four more years in power ...

I had always feared that the distopia of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was more likely than Orwell's 1984; now I'm not so sure.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Kerry supporter threatened with snipers

From the Des Moines Register: "Campaign event security spurs arrests, removals"

One of the latest incidents came when John Sachs, 18, a Johnston High School senior and Democrat, went to see Bush in Clive last week. Sachs got a ticket to the event from school and wanted to ask the president about whether there would be a draft, about the war in Iraq, Social Security and Medicare.

But when he got there, a campaign staffer pulled him aside and made him remove his button that said, "Bush-Cheney '04: Leave No Billionaire Behind." The staffer quizzed him about whether he was a Bush supporter, asked him why he was there and what questions he would be asking the president.

"Then he came back and said, 'If you protest, it won't be me taking you out. It will be a sniper,' " Sachs said. "He said it in such a serious tone it scared the crap out of me."

Perhaps the Hippie Chick Pie Wagon has volunteered her services to the Bush campaign.  

Sachs stayed at the event, but he was escorted to a section of the 7 Flags Events Center where he was surrounded by Secret Service and told he couldn't ask questions. "I was just in a state of fear," he said. "I was looking at the ceiling and I didn't know what to expect, I was so scared."

Ronayne said he wasn't aware of what happened to Sachs and declined to comment further. "To the best of my knowledge, no one's lives have been threatened at an event," he said.

Sachs' situation is the latest in a string of stories in which Iowans attending Bush campaign events said they've been made to feel unwelcome.

Other incidents include five protesters arrested outside an event in Cedar Rapids; black and Hispanic students frisked in Davenport; and two people denied admission in Dubuque because they either didn't support Bush or were affiliated with someone who didn't.

Iowa's stories are similar to those being told around the country. According to media reports, Missouri students were in tears after they were removed from a Bush rally because they were wearing Kerry buttons. Others in Minnesota and Wisconsin were asked to leave Bush rallies because they had Kerry T-shirts or stickers.

Thursday night, police wearing riot gear fired pepperballs at protesters gathered at a hotel in Jacksonville, Ore., where Bush was scheduled to eat and sleep after a campaign speech. No one was injured, but two were arrested on charges of failure to disperse. Participants questioned the police intervention because they said they weren't violent or disrupting traffic.

Seriously, the Secret Service needs to be investigated for co-operating with the Bush/Cheney campaign's methods of stifling dissent. Senator Kerry will have some house-cleaning to do when he gets into the White House.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Inside Mr. Bush's Brain

Ron Suskind in the New York Times Magazine: Without a Doubt. On Bush's lack of curiosity:

Some officials, elected or otherwise, with whom I have spoken with left meetings in the Oval Office concerned that the president was struggling with the demands of the job. Others focused on Bush's substantial interpersonal gifts as a compensation for his perceived lack of broader capabilities. Still others, like Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a Democrat, are worried about something other than his native intelligence. ''He's plenty smart enough to do the job,'' Levin said. ''It's his lack of curiosity about complex issues which troubles me.'' But more than anything else, I heard expressions of awe at the president's preternatural certainty and wonderment about its source.

And here is a bit about how Bush's education actually stifles his ability to be intellectually flexible:

[Senator Joseph]Biden, who early on became disenchanted with Bush's grasp of foreign-policy issues and is among John Kerry's closest Senate friends, has spent a lot of time trying to size up the president. ''Most successful people are good at identifying, very early, their strengths and weaknesses, at knowing themselves,'' he told me not long ago. ''For most of us average Joes, that meant we've relied on strengths but had to work on our weakness -- to lift them to adequacy -- otherwise they might bring us down. I don't think the president really had to do that, because he always had someone there -- his family or friends -- to bail him out. I don't think, on balance, that has served him well for the moment he's in now as president. He never seems to have worked on his weaknesses.''

Bush has been called the C.E.O. president, but that's just a catch phrase -- he never ran anything of consequence in the private sector. The M.B.A. president would be more accurate: he did, after all, graduate from Harvard Business School. And some who have worked under him in the White House and know about business have spotted a strange business-school time warp. It's as if a 1975 graduate from H.B.S. -- one who had little chance to season theory with practice during the past few decades of change in corporate America -- has simply been dropped into the most challenging management job in the world.

One aspect of the H.B.S. method, with its emphasis on problems of actual corporations, is sometimes referred to as the ''case cracker'' problem. The case studies are static, generally a snapshot of a troubled company, frozen in time; the various ''solutions'' students proffer, and then defend in class against tough questioning, tend to have very short shelf lives. They promote rigidity, inappropriate surety. This is something H.B.S. graduates, most of whom land at large or midsize firms, learn in their first few years in business. They discover, often to their surprise, that the world is dynamic, it flows and changes, often for no good reason. The key is flexibility, rather than sticking to your guns in a debate, and constant reassessment of shifting realities. In short, thoughtful second-guessing.

And when Mr. Bush

was elected leader of the free world and began ''case cracking'' on a dizzying array of subjects, proffering his various solutions, in both foreign and domestic affairs. But the pointed ''defend your position'' queries -- so central to the H.B.S. method and rigorous analysis of all kinds -- were infrequent. Questioning a regional supervisor or V.P. for planning is one thing. Questioning the president of the United States is another.

Still, some couldn't resist. As I reported in ''The Price of Loyalty,'' at the Bush administration's first National Security Council meeting, Bush asked if anyone had ever met Ariel Sharon. Some were uncertain if it was a joke. It wasn't: Bush launched into a riff about briefly meeting Sharon two years before, how he wouldn't ''go by past reputations when it comes to Sharon. . . . I'm going to take him at face value,'' and how the United States should pull out of the Arab-Israeli conflict because ''I don't see much we can do over there at this point.'' Colin Powell, for one, seemed startled. This would reverse 30 years of policy -- since the Nixon administration -- of American engagement. Such a move would unleash Sharon, Powell countered, and tear the delicate fabric of the Mideast in ways that might be irreparable. Bush brushed aside Powell's concerns impatiently. ''Sometimes a show of force by one side can really clarify things.''

Such challenges -- from either Powell or his opposite number as the top official in domestic policy, Paul O'Neill -- were trials that Bush had less and less patience for as the months passed. He made that clear to his top lieutenants. Gradually, Bush lost what Richard Perle, who would later head a largely private-sector group under Bush called the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had described as his open posture during foreign-policy tutorials prior to the 2000 campaign. (''He had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much,'' Perle said.) By midyear 2001, a stand-and-deliver rhythm was established. Meetings, large and small, started to take on a scripted quality. Even then, the circle around Bush was tightening. Top officials, from cabinet members on down, were often told when they would speak in Bush's presence, for how long and on what topic. The president would listen without betraying any reaction. Sometimes there would be cross-discussions -- Powell and Rumsfeld, for instance, briefly parrying on an issue -- but the president would rarely prod anyone with direct, informed questions.

We all see the results of Mr. Bush surrounding himself with yes-men--the befuddled and angry performances at the debates and press conferences, the stubborn insistence that he is right, and the perverse fear that any change of mind is a sign of weakness. He is a man that cannot admit he makes mistakes. He is unfit to be the President of the United States. We must vote him out of office on November 3.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Funniest obituary ever

In the London Times, on Jacques Derrida.

Can there be any certainty in the death of Jacques Derrida? The obituarists' objective attempts to place his life in a finite context are, necessarily, subject to epistemic relativism, the idea that all such scientific theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions. Surely, a postmodernist deconstruction of their import would inevitably question the foundational conceptual categories of prior science -- among them, Derrida's own existence -- which become problematised and relativised. . . .

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Osama been forgotten

"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations."
-- George W. Bush, 10/13/04

"I don't know where he is and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
-- George W. Bush, 5/13/02

UPDATE 7:35 PM CDT

And to think, this is a man that accuses Senator Kerry of flip-flopping.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Neither Compassionate nor Conservative

Amy Sullivan has an interesting article in the Washinton Monthly about President Bush's faith based policies: Faith Without Works.

Read the whole thing, but here is the concluding two paragraphs:

On the third night of the Republican convention, one of the many gauzy "W." video-mercials that appeared on giant screens in the middle of Madison Square Garden during slow stretches featured images of Bush surrounded by people of color, while in a voiceover the president reminded viewers, "I rallied the armies of compassion." More than with any other piece of his domestic policy agenda, Bush has linked himself personally to the faith-based initiative. During a campaign stop in March, he told a crowd of religious leaders that he--and he alone--was responsible for the changes that have taken place. "Congress wouldn't act," Bush said, "so I signed an executive order--that means I did it on my own."

And so he did. Bush alone is responsible for supporting the distribution of taxpayer dollars without requiring proof that the funding produces results, for establishing a new government bureaucracy to give special help to a "discriminated" community that has always been on equal footing with everyone else, and for encouraging religious organizations to rely on government funding instead of encouraging private donations. It turns out that a "compassionate conservative" is a different kind of Republican after all. Just not the kind we expected.

And here is an opposing view: Ira J. Hadnot interviews Jim Towey, a pro-life Democrat who runs the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

The Annual Columbus Day Post

A post from last year revisited--
Let's remember what Christopher Columbus was really like:

Landing of Columbus stamp, 1893 
On his second voyage, at Hispaniola (the large island that is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) Columbus and his men devised a system to extract gold from the native population:

Every man and woman, every boy or girl of fourteen or older, in the province of Cibao (of the imaginary gold fields) had to collect gold for the Spaniards. As their measure, the Spaniards used those same miserable hawk's bells, the little trinkets they had given away so freely when they first came 'as if from Heaven.' Every 3 months, every Indian had to bring to one of the forts a hawk's bell filled with gold dust. The chiefs had to bring in about ten times that amount. In the other provinces of Hispaniola, twenty-five pounds of spun cotton took the place of gold.

Copper tokens were manufactured, and when an Indian had brought his or her tribute to an armed post, he or she received such a token, stamped with the month, to be hung around the neck. With that they were safe for another three months while collecting more gold.

Whoever was caught without a token was killed by having his or her hands cut off. There are old Dutch prints (I saw them in the collection of Bishop Voegeli of Haiti) that show this being done: the Indians stumble away, staring with surprise at their arm stumps pulsing out blood.

There were no gold fields, and thus, once the Indians had handed in whatever they still had in gold ornaments, their only hope was to work all day in the streams, washing out gold dust from the pebbles. It was an impossible task, but those Indians who tried to flee into the mountains were systematically hunted down with dogs and killed, to set an example for the others to keep trying.

Resistance was futile: "It was at this time that the mass suicides began: the Arawaks killed themselves with cassava poison." --from Columbus: his Enterprise; Exploding the Myth by Hans Koning, based on the reports by Bartolome de las Casas.

Perhaps you think we should not judge Columbus by the standards of today--surely in the light of the 15th century he was a great and noble hero!

Apparently there were plenty of men of that distant and benighted age that criticized Columbus and the Spanish misbehavior in the Americas; among them are Bartolome de las Casas, Antonio de Montesino, Fray Buil, Pedro Margarit, and the Dutch etcher DeBry. So do not believe the lie that plundering, raping and massacring people was somehow considered acceptable behavior in the past. It wasn't.

Even Samuel Eliot Morison, in Christopher Columbus, Mariner an otherwise quite positive portrayal of the hero Columbus admits that "the cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide."

I have recently been reading A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution; in Thirteen Discourses, Preached in North America between the Years 1763 and 1775: with an historical preface by Jonathan Boucher, apparently an Anglican minister that returned to England after the outbreak of the American Revolution. The first sermon, "On the Peace in 1763" includes this reminder of what true greatness is:

True greatness deserves all the honour that the world can pay to it: but, fields dyed with blood are not the scenes in which true greatness is most likely to be found. He who simplifies a mechanical process, who supplies us with a new convenience or comfort, or even he who contrives an elegant superfluity, is, in every proper sense of the phrase, a more useful man than any of those masters in the art of destruction, who, to the shame of the world, have hitherto monopolized almost all its honours.

Amen.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)