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Archives for October 2004
Exactly, Bob
Here’s George W. Bush’s problem. How does a president win re-election when all the news the voters are seeing is bad?
Polls show the president running even or slightly ahead of Senator John Kerry. But bad news is piling up like mounds of trash in a garbage strike, and that’s never good for an incumbent.
The war in Iraq is a mind-numbing tragedy with no end in sight. Dozens of Iraqi army recruits were slaughtered Saturday in one of the deadliest attacks yet against the Iraqi security forces. Yesterday an American diplomat was killed in a mortar attack near the Baghdad airport.
The latest horrific video to come out of the war zone shows the kidnapped British-Iraqi aid worker, Margaret Hassan, trembling, weeping and begging for her life. “Please help me,” she says. “This might be my last hours.”
American troops have fought valiantly, but cracks in their resolve are beginning to show. “This is Vietnam,” said Daniel Planalp, a 21-year-old Marine corporal from San Diego who was quoted in yesterday’s New York Times. “I don’t even know why we’re over here fighting.”
Here at home the stock market has tanked, in part because of record-high oil prices. The Dow Jones industrial average closed at its low for the year on Friday as world oil prices streaked ever higher. The cost of oil has jumped more than 75 percent in the past year. With the weather turning colder, the attention of homeowners – many of them voters – is being drawn to the price of home heating oil. What they’re seeing is not pretty.
Gee- I wonder who is responsible for the news? Why is it the unemployment rate is not mentioned more often. Why no mention of the tremendous gains in the economy over the past two years depsite what the country has been through (recession, 9/11, etc.). Travel and tourism still have not recovered, yet the economy grows. What about housing starts and durable goods orders? Consumer confidence? On and on and on.
Likewise, today we are greeted with two stories in Iraq, both of which I comment about below, but you have to almost google good news such as what Arthur Chrenkoff provides.
How much time will the talking heads spend today discussing the recent elections in Afghanistan, the outcome of which is now legitimate? Or the upcoming elections in Iraq?
John Stewart is right- the media is failing us. But it isn’t just Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala who should be blamed, and this is why, despite the daily fare from the media, that the election is as close as it is. What people are experiencing on a daily basis simply is not reflected in the headlines of our media. If things were as bad as they want us to believe, I would be voting for Kerry.
Liar
John Kerry has repeatedly made the following claim:
Thanks to some friends in New York, I was invited to come up and meet with the Security Council in the week prior to the vote, and I wanted to do that, because I valued my vote. And I wanted to know what the real readiness and willingness of our partners was to take this seriously.
So I sat with the French and British, Germans, with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein.
he says so to legitimize himself and to attack the President. Except, of course, despite repeating this statement hundreds of times, it is a flat-out LIE. More here.
No Excuse
I spent three hours last night trying to think of an acceptable excuse from the Bush administration about this, and I came up with nothing. Try to come up with an excuse for this and tell me how you do:
The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives – used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons – are missing from one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations.
The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man’s land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
You didn’t misread that. That is 380 tons. Let’s put this in persepctive. THis wasn’t just a big mound of c-4 sitting in the middle of the desert. For each pound of explosive, you can probably at least double the weight when you factor in crating. The logistics alone of carting off this amount of explosives is so daunting as to make it inexcusable.
Put it this way. This is akin to over the past two years, someone systematically dismantled every house on your block and carried it away, and when the NY Times asked you what happened, your response is: “Gee, I am not sure what happened.”
PS- I don’t care if we are looking into this and the explosives may be with appropriate authorities. Every niht that I was in the field as a soldier, my platoon sergeant and butterbar conducted a sensitive items check, and each person made sure that he has his weapon, protective mask, an/pvs-7’s, and other items. Every night. Business stopped if one boresight device or one set of night vision goggles was missing. In peacetime, if someone lost a weapon, the base closed.
We can’t check nightly on 380 frigging tons of explosives? Jeebus.
*** Update ***
I got the vapors because I actually believed the assholes at the NY Times. I don’t believe the Times story anymore, so read the rest of this post with that in mind.
*** Update #2 ***
Commenters have left some links that lead me to believe my initial reaction was correct.
I will have to check on this later, but my reaction now is that I was right the first go around. Regardless of what happened, not being able to provide a coherent response RIGHT NOW to the question “Where are the 380 tons of explosives?” seems to me to be inexcusable.
More Breaking News
Matt Yglesias endorses John Kerry for President.
In other news, scientists have found that pigs, chicken, and cattle are all edible, and dubbed them “Tasty when cooked.”
Meanwhile, In the Fever Swamps
Oliver is convinced the election is being stolen, and links to this dyspeptic update of right-wing shenanigans. Like this right-wing hijink:
A friend in the Dallas suburbs voted yesterday. They had him fill out his ballot WITH A PENCIL! He let them get away with it, but I told him this morning he needs to call both the local paper and the Dallas Morning News news desks to let them know this. Another Kerry vote stolen, I’d bet on it.
This is a breaking story – I’ve requested more information from Butch on it. If he and his friend come forward with details, I’m going to forward it on to the election protection legal team in Texas!
NO- not the old lead pencil #2 trick!! Why on earth would they force them to fill out their ballot with a #2 lead pencil? Anyone attend elementary or high school in the United states reading who might have a smidgeon of an idea why someone may be required to fill out a ballot in #2 lead pencil? Wait a minute, I think our intrepid scandalmongerer has an update:
*Update* False alarm. Butch dug into this and discovered that the precinct in question was using scanning technology that required a #2 pencil – so no fraud there!
No screaming eagle shit. Let’s check in on the next right wing attempt to suppres the vote:
Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, and member of the Bush-Cheney national campaign steering committee, decided that Ohio voters who show up at the wrong voting precinct will be turned away rather than be allowed to cast provisional ballots (as in most other states). The Democrats immediately sued the state over this issue, which will mostly effect the turnout of Kerry-leaning newly registered voters, and won a U.S. district court ruling allowing registered people to vote in the wrong precinct with a provisional ballot. Blackwell appealed; suppressing the liberal voter turnout is so critical to a reactionary win in Ohio that the misAdministration has submitted a friend-of-the-court brief attacking the lawsuit! Ken Blackwell earlier invoked an obscure law requiring that registrations be turned in only on 80-lb. paper stock, resulting in the destruction of thousands of presumably progressive voters!
My god! You mean voters are going to have to actually vote in the precinct in which they reside? The horror of it all. I hear in some states, you even have to prove you are who you say you are- the nefarious hijinks just don’t stop!
Idiots. This election can’t end soon enough.
Blow Me!
You know what, Sully? Go fuck yourself. You have now devolved into nothing more than Atrios with a vocabulary when you equate some silly commerical to the mainstream of conservative thought.
I can understand your angst- it must be pretty distressing going through life having your sexuality as the only salient feature of your existence.