June 15
I saw America's next war on page A23. At least that's where it was in the Star Tribune. I'm referring to the story about Islamic militias in Somalia having gone beyond Mogadishu and now they control southern Somalia. As much as I have said over and over that the acting president screwed up in Iraq, and I haven't been a fan of how Afghanistan has been handled other than the initial invasion, Bush has at least at some point realized those countries needed governments that have enough backing to survive while they're weak, even if we're not confident of their permanent survival. Yet somehow, despite international criticism (or knowing Bush, maybe because of it) Bush hasn't offered support to the Somali government in Baidoia. It needs all the help it can get, having no army, and it has usually been unable to function within Somalia at all, yet it's all there is for anything resembling a legitimate government. At least this government wasn't formed by invading foreigners, but by Somalis. Instead of helping the government, Bush has armed the non-Islamist warlords. You know, the ones who lost. So the Islamic fundamentalists have a coherent fighting force, control of the capital and lots of territory which is growing in size, the start of a government, a friendliness towards Al Qaida, and a dedication to establishing Islamic law. Any of this sound familiar? Ten years ago I would have written that sentence about the Taliban. You remember the Taliban? They took over most of Afghanistan and gave Al Qaida free run of the country. What's Al Qaida been missing since the Taliban fell? A country with a friendly government.

Liberals don't object to the War on Terror (badly named as it is: "terror" is a tactic; this is the War on Al Qaida). We just object to it being run so badly.

June 10
I quoted a Dear Abby column in the quotes on the right. I haven't looked at her column for years, but a link on the Pioneer Press home page caught my eye. For anyone to be as ignorant as Grandmother in Missouri in the 21st century is frightening but also informative, or at least it supports my case to fellow liberals that we need to change our strategy in regard to 3G (God, Gays, Guns) issues.

This woman willing to contemplate circumcision for her grandson to cure his suspected homosexuality may strike us as remarkably separated from the modern world, yet nonetheless she illustrates how important homosexuality is to social conservatives. People like her constitute a substantial minority of Americans, and provide the base that makes gay marriage bans an effective wedge issue. Yes, I know, they're ignorant of what's being done to them economically, and that they suffer the effects of environmental damage, and send their sons to die in wars while the rich stay home, and probably joined because the educational opportunities aren't there. You know what else I know? That trying to argue these points has never worked. We've lost many of the working class and middle class which economically should be the liberal constituency because as far as this large minority is concerned, we're on the wrong side of 3G issues. Our response has consistently been to question the importance of these issues. Both Democratic leaders and grassroots activists adopt this strategy even though, election after election, this strategy fails. We scratch our heads in wonder at how the GOP always finds some issue to drive the base to the polls, even though the issue is unimportant and nothing gets done about it anyway.

I suggest that when we keep telling people their issues don't matter, we're more patronizing than persuasive. That fact is that in a democracy, when a large number of people think an issue is important, then it's important. I'm more concerned about burning fossil fuels than burning flags, but I've come to believe if we won't address flag burning, they won't listen when we address global warming.

My own strategy, which I've employed in this little blog of mine, is to argue my position on these issues rather than aregue their low priority. I wouldn't suggest we'll make all the social conservatives see the light, but I do suggest that when we refuse to take on these issues we blow any chance of cutting into this part of the GOP base. They don't just get the impression liberals disagree with them, but that liberals look down on them. Nobody likes that, or keeps a terribly open mind under the circumstances. That's why we need to take on these issues, not avoid them.

With that said, let me do as I suggest in regard to the flag burning amendment, and raise an alarm that the flag burning amendment not only will come before the Senate soon in a blatant move to reenergize the GOP base when the election looks so ominous (though they do this every election regardless of how it looks), but it might pass this time. My own senator, Mark Dayton, has expressed support, and he's looking at it simplistically. He believes the sacrifices made for what the flag represents should be sanctified. The problem is that opposing flag burning and opposing the amendment aren't the same thing. An amendment is necessary for a ban because burning is protected as free speech. This amendment would make the first exception to the First Amendment. Let me indulge a slippery slope argument because while maybe nothing really bad will happen --- maybe no stupid laws will be passed or penalties enforced --- maybe the first exception to the First Amendment will make other exceptions thinkable. The first thing that comes to mind, given the patriotic fervor we've experienced since 911, the lies that led us into Iraq, and the aggrandizement of presidential power under claims of national security, is that a ban might be imposed on criticizing the president during wartime. Sounds like a stretch? Even though I think Bush stole the election, he was close. Based admittedly on anecdotal evidence, I believe the cultural attitude that made it close, even more than bigotry against homosexuals, was the attitude that we have to support the president in wartime no matter what. Even when he started the war and screwed it up, many Americans thought it wrong to challenge the honesty of the reasons for the war when the war was still in progress, and that means they wouldn't consider turning out the incumbent, nor has an incumbent president ever lost a general election with the country at war, even when he started it and the war went badly. Is it a stretch to go from that to banning criticism in a constitutional amendment? Of course, but banning one form of political speech makes it less of a stretch.

June 5
Though it's late at night, I can't let tomorrow come without noting how many people are making a big deal out of tomorrow being 666. Wow, who knew the 62nd anniversary of D-Day was such a big deal? Okay, I know it has more to do with The Omen than Omaha Beach. Therefore, this is the time to award a Take the Red Pill Award to the people who take 666 seriously (that does alliterate when spoken though). Yes, some people believe those involved in witchcraft may use the supernatural to create mischief. Tim Lahaye is using the date to get the gullible to take his newest novel seriously. Ronald Reagan changed his house number from 666 to 668. If he wanted to avoid devilish acts, he might have refrained from supporting death squads in Central America. It makes one suspect there's less to fear from the mythical devil than the literal believers.

June 4
I'm currently working my way through Robert Kennedy Jr.'s article on the election fraud of 2004 in the current Rolling Stone. I've already added a couple quotes to the column on the right. It's a lengthy article, but the evidence is also lengthy, and while I've heard most of it, Kennedy has put it together on one place which is why I recommend it to anyone unconvinced the acting president, who I give that term because he is illegitimate in the office he holds, stole 2004 even more surely than 2000.

Something I wish to share with my readers is a term that was new to me, though I'd heard of the practice and written about it when the story broke just before the 2004 election. "Caging" is the word for sending registered letters to registered voters and when the letters come back without signatures, accusing the voters of fraud in order to get them struck from the voter rolls. The reasons for not signing, besides the fraud Republicans allege, include Democrats refusing letters from the Republican party, voters being away for military service, or being away for college. The Republicans violated court orders in order to do this, but got Ohio's corrupt government to remove democratic voters from the rolls.

There is a remedy to this, besides making voters go to court and appeal: same day registration. We do this in Minnesota, and I believe it's also done in Wisconsin and Maine, which compete with Minnesota for the highest turnout each election. This is the practice of allowing voters to register at the polls and vote immediately. Republicans have always reacted with horror, assuming Democrats will go precinct to precinct registering to vote. There has never been any evidence this has happened and we've been doing this since the 70's. That might be because the requirements for identification are the same when registering at the polls as pre-registration. Someone going precinct to precinct would have to get a identification for each of those precincts, not an inconsiderable amount of trouble just to cast an extra vote while risking the penalties for not just the extra vote, but whatever was done to get the false ID. The consequence of same day registration is voters who are eligible but run into an issue can still vote, whereas the provisional ballot foisted on voters in Ohio and other states are almost surely not counted. Think about it: if an election judge says you aren't on the rolls, you're name won't magically appear after you hand in provisional ballot. These ballots might have saved a few ballots, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear they saved none. By contrast, when I was a poll watcher in 2004, there were voters who claimed they should have been on the rolls. They registered, or registered again, on the spot and still got to vote. Since HAVA (Help America Vote Act) was able to mandate provisional ballots, I don't see why it can't mandate same-day registration. Oh right, the Republicans might have a harder time stealing elections. I guess that's a good reason not to do it.

Broadening the topic, the only reason I'm not optimistic about the Democrats chances of getting a house of Congress this year is that the problems encountered in recent elections have been little addressed. I'm glad James Tobin went to jail for the denial of service attack in New Hampshire in 2002, and while most of the public is still naiive, the fraud in Ohio has been revealed to a large minority. Reformers have made sales tougher for touchscreen machines. Still, the reforms we need have so far been successfully blocked by the Republicans who have the subpoena power and won't investigate. So to fix our elections, here is what we need to do:

• Abolish touchscreens. Paperless voting was used almost everywhere there were discrepancies between exit polls and vote counts. It's a shame Republicans value winning over legitimacy, because when recounts are impossible, even accurate counts won't be believed by losers, and they shouldn't believe them.
• Same day registration, to foil one of the main forms of voting fraud, purging voters who are eligible to vote. Even if the purge is appealable, voters likely won't know until election day when it's too late. We'll also include people who don't get engaged until after registration closes, and people who move into their precinct too late to register but early enough to be eligible to vote.
• Abolish the Electoral College. The president represents all Americans, not the states. In practice, campaigning won't be confined to swing states, nor confined to states with enough electoral votes to make a difference. Since our main subject is fraud, I'll mention that it won't be practical to steal an election by stealing a few hundred votes here and there, though that works on a state level.
• Enforce penalties for intimidation and fraud. Like I mentioned above, the GOP ignored court orders when it engaged in caging, but it faced no penalties. People who told voters to go to the wrong precincts or threatened arrest faced no penalties. These practices are illegal, but nothing happens to those who try them.
• Shorten the waits. Maybe on hour wait to vote is just a citizen's duty, but four hours? Or the all day waits in Florida and Ohio, conveniently in Democratic precincts? We need longer poll hours, voting methods that don't require a few working machines (that's why I support scanners -- paper ballots can be filled out anywhere) and signage showing people in line which precinct they're in just in case they're in the wrong place.

June 1
I normally save quotes for the quotes column on the right, but I had trouble cutting this one down, so at some length this is what Knight-Ridder war correspondent Joe Galloway told Rumsfeld's spokesman Laurence DiRita in an e-mail exchange where he explained why he is so critical of DiRita's boss:

"there are many things we all could wish had happened. i can wish that your boss had surrounded himself with close advisers who had, once at least, held a dying boy in their arms and watched the life run out of his eyes while they lied to him and told him, over and over, 'You are going to be all right. Hang on! Help is coming. Don't quit now...' Such men in place of those who had never known service or combat or the true cost of war, and who pays that price, and had never sent their children off to do that hard and unending duty.

"i could wish for so much. i could wish that in january of this year i had not stood in a garbage-strewn pit, in deep mud, and watched soldiers tear apart the wreckage of a kiowa warrior shot down just minutes before and tenderly remove the barely alive body of WO Kyle Jackson and the lifeless body of his fellow pilot. they died flying overhead cover for a little three-vehicle Stryker patrol with which i was riding at the time. i could wish that Jackson's widow Betsy had not found, among the possessions of her late husband, a copy of my book, carefully earmarked at a chapter titled Brave Aviators, which Kyle was reading at the time of his death. That she had not enclosed a photo of her husband, herself and a 3 year old baby girl.

"those things i received in the mail yesterday and they brought back the tears that i wept standing there in that pit, feeling the same shards in my heart that i felt the first time i looked into the face of a fallen american soldier 41 years ago on a barren hill in Quang Ngai Province in another time, another war. someone once asked me if i had learned anything from going to war so many times. my reply: yes, i learned how to cry."

Galloway has been covering wars since Vietnam. Presumably he's been in danger at some times, especially in Iraq which has been a particularly dangerous war for journalists, which makes this a good time to mention the CBS crew that were hit by a car bomb Monday. The cameraman and soundman were killed and the reporter is critically injured. Each had spent a long time in Iraq, three years in the case of Kimberly Dozier. The reason I mention them and all together in the same paragraph is to ask readers to keep them in mind next time you hear conservatives complaining about the press reporting just the bad news. Remember their long time in the war zone next time a talk radio jaw-wagger takes the conservative propagandist VIP tour of safe bases for a few days and pronounces that what the "liberal" media report is wrong.