October 31
There has been a flap in the 6th district race over whether Michele Bachmann's church believes the pope is the antichrist. After it as mentioned to me that this was going around the blogs and that the 6th district has a lot of Catholics, I looked it up on the WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) web site. They have a page on the subject, the gist of which is that the papacy is the antichrist rather than an individual pope. There are other denominations which expect the antichrist to be an individual. I don't claim to know what Bachmann thinks about the antichrist. I also make no prediction about how Catholics will react to the controversy. I started writing some sentences speculating on the possibilities, but deleting seemed the better part of valor.
As long as we're on US House races, let's get back to the culture of corruption and a name known mostly to news junkies but maybe soon to join the horizontal stripes brigade. The Sacramento Bee explained exactly how one of the congressmen in the Sacramento area, John Doolittle, is tangled with Jack Abramoff and why is considered one of the most likely to be looking at indictment. One of the ways Doolittle allegedly sneaked money into his own pocket was by hiring his wife, Julie, as a fundraiser working on commission, so when donors gave money to Doolittle's campaign through her, Doolittle got to keep 15% personally. is wife was also hired directly by Abramoff for a job that appears to have been high on pay and light on work. Interestingly, a report on fundraising by Doolittle and his Democratic opponent, a former Air Force officer named Charlie Brown (yes, you read that right --- he was born before "Peanuts") mentioned Doolittle's campaign debts include fees to his wife's company, Sierra Dominion Financial Services. The reason this is more of a conflict of interest than having her salaried on the campaign payroll is special interests who want Doolittle's favor can make sure their donations go through Mrs. Doolittle, thereby letting Doolittle keep some of the money, whereas if she's salaried, she may do some work or may not, but that affects just the campaign expenses and not donors.
October 30
Yesterday my wife and I went to a fundraiser where one of the other guests peed on my shoe. Before you think Democrats are just an uncouth lot, though admittedly brie and champagne are usually out of our budgets, the other guest was a small dog about the size of the shoe. The Hatch/Dutcher campaign for Minnesota governor had an unusual fundraiser located at a doggie day care and donors were invited to bring their dogs and let them run around and socialize with other dogs. We don't have a dog, but we were planning to donate to Mike Hatch anyway, so we decided to attend this instead of sitting in the basement filling in a web site form. Judi Dutcher did her best to make a short speech in a bad echo with lots of dogs paying no attention. State Sen. Becky Lourey, who opposed Hatch in the primary, also was decent enough to support the winning candidate. This was a creative sort of fundraiser and if they govern as creatively, we'll be in good shape. It's worth getting dog wee on a shoe to get the roads fixed and the trust funds rebuilt.
There was a televised debate last night of the gubernatorial candidates. Tim Pawlenty did something interesting. He said several times in one of his pre-planned lines that Hatch keeps going beyond the facts and getting things wrong. In one of the answers, right before his line accusing Hatch of being misleading, he answered a question about calling his "Health Impact Fee" on cigarettes a "fee" instead of a "tax". He responded by saying a court had upheld calling it a fee. That was not at all what the court said. It didn't address the semantics of Pawlenty's attempt to keep up his no-tax pledge. The court ruled that regardless of what it was called, it didn't violate the 1998 settlement the state made with the cigarette industry. I don't know if that's a lie or playing around the edges of lying. Oddly, KSTP's own news story on the debate talks about Hatch dodging, but nothing about Pawlenty accusing Hatch of misleading while himself misleading.
October 29
There haven't been any public polls about Minnesota's 5th district race, but I think I got a notion of how it's going. In a debate yesterday, Alan Fine was his usual obnoxious self, turning a question on rolling back Bush's tax cuts into an attack on Keith Ellison. When Ellison defended himself by calling this remark a smear, Tammy Lee jumped in to repeat it. Her campaign has previously sent out an e-mail making personal attacks on Ellison, and apparently decided to come out from behind a surrogate and make an attack herself. I wonder if she'll keep running the cutie pie Brady Bunch ad? Anyway, what the attacks on Ellison tell me is Fine and Lee are behind. I figured Fine would be a non-factor in the race, except in whether he would pull away enough Republican voters to prevent Lee having a chance to overcome Ellison's presumed lead in a DFL leaning district. Her parroting of Fine is the tactic of somebody running behind. Since the Lee campaign is the only Independence Party campaign with a hope of winning, and with those hopes depending on tearing down Ellison, I'm guessing they must figure she's behind and not gaining. I don't know if they've taken a poll and discovered that. It may be just a sense of the situation, like my sense she's making a serious run. I recall hearing no polling during the primary, but the fact one candidate went negative first, and hit Ellison harder than other primary opponents, suggested the attacking candidate was running fourth, with Ellison ahead and the other two between. Thus it turned out. That's no great insight on my part, just a general rule of campaigns that whoever is behind goes negative first. Will it help? My guess is not. They've been hitting Ellison with the same attacks since the primary, and though I suspect the attacks worked to reduce Ellison's presumed early lead, I doubt they can do any more.
October 28
If you're reading this blog, you're probably already politically engaged and likely you know how you're going to vote for everything right down to the city referendum and the obscure judicial races. But just in case and in hope someone, even one person, reading this is undecided, or still isn't convinced the Republicans need to be thrown out of Congress, please look at Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone, The Worst Congress Ever. I put one quote from him over in the quotes on the right (if it's no longer there, it's in the corruption quotes archive), and I was seeing several more and they were a bit lengthy, so I decided I'd rather direct you away from this site and to the article itself. Even though I follow the issue of the culture of corruption quite closely, there were things I didn't know. To pick some salient things that were new to me, and to make you read it yourself and kick yourself for even thinking of voting Republican this year:
- The Republican majority issued subpoenas for White House documents over 1,000 times in six year of the Clinton administration. In the six years since the last elected president, they have issued zero.
- In the last hearings before the invasion of Iraq, they asked Rumsfeld and the generals about spending that was spent in their districts, but asked nothing about plans for the occupation, thus failing to discover there weren't any plans for the occupation.
- During budget discussions in 2001, when Democrats were debating, Pete Domenici of New Mexico asked why they were bothering when they wouldn't be in on any decisions anyway.
- Not only are Democrats not in on conference committees anymore, the meetings are kept secret from them.
- The Republicans spent 140 hours investigating Clinton's alleged use of White House Christmas cards for political purposes. They spent 12 hours on the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib.
- One reason no one in the House had read the Patriot Act before voting on it was that after it was passed unanimously by the Judiciary Committee, it was completely rewritten by the Rules committee, which is only supposed to set rules for debate, not change bills.
- Continuing Resolutions, which are used to keep the government running when appropriations bills have yet to be passed, fund the government at the lowest level specified among the Senate bill, the House bill, and the prior year's funding, allowing Congress to slash spending without taking responsibility for it. And they almost never pass appropriations bills on time.
Something I saw while doing some lit dropping today for DFL (Democratic Farmer Labor Party) candidates was something hanging on a door knob making an attack on CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations). I left it alone, which seemed the most ethically sound decision, despite the temptation to take it out of its bag to read and/or remove, but from what I could see I have no doubt it was an attack on Keith Ellison for being Muslim. It looked like it was repeating misinformation about CAIR to link it to terrorism, and then trying to link Ellison to CAIR. If Ellison loses, though part of the problem will be parking tickets and late campaign finance reports, I have no doubt the central problem will be anti-Muslim bigotry. I say that as someone who has no problem giving my Take the Red Pill Awards to fundamentalist Muslims. I also admit I did a mental double-take when I first learned Ellison was Muslim. Being liberal doesn't mean not having prejudices. It means recognizing prejudices and being willing to confront them. My next thought after my mental double-take was to ask myself what this really changed. Did this eliminate any of the reasons I was backing him? Did this alter my impression from meeting him, or alter my agreement with his positions on issues? No. I dislike religious fundamentalism of any sort, but I think it bigotry to oppose someone purely on religious grounds and not take them as individuals. I thought Paul Wellstone was great before I learned he was Jewish, and I thought so after. Recently I saw campaign photos of 2nd district candidate Coleen Rowley and lieutenant governor candidate Judi Dutcher wearing crosses. Should every non-Christian oppose them? Nonetheless, even in this DFL leaning district, religion is an issue. Maybe people uncomfortable with voting for a Muslim are telling themselves they don't like someone being chronically late with parking tickets. If that's you, then that's your own conscience. I'm just asking readers to really ask if they would vote against Ellison for reasons they'd be ashamed to publicly admit.
October 27
By now, anyone who pays attention to campaign news has heard about the attack ads against Rep. Harold Ford, Democratic candidate for the open Senate seat in Tennessee. I won't bother with a description, just say that if you don't know what I referred to, here's the TV ad with the blonde floozy suggesting Ford is looking at the white women, and here is the radio ad with the drumbeat when Ford is talked about. I'm not repeating the widely made point that these ads are trying to play to racism. I'm actually wondering about black Republicans. Yes, I know, blacks vote Democratic about 90% of the time. The 90% is easy to understand when looking at ads like these. I don't get the 10%. I know not all white Republicans are racist, but obviously a bunch are, as least if racism is defined as being willing to play to the racist vote. So why back them? I don't get it, any more than I get homosexuals who support the party that hates them. Just like I ask gays if tax cuts are really that important, I ask black Republicans, do you really think you benefit from tax cuts that much, or do you hate gay marriage that much?
And no, I don't take the black vote for granted. Okay, I do assume the 90%, like I assume something like that for the gay vote, but that's assuming people vote. I don't assume that. If you don't take the gay vote or black vote or any vote for granted, go help with GOTV (Get Out The Vote). Unless you're Republican, in which case your party wants you to help with KDTV (Keep Down The Vote).
The chat at a gathering of my War of 1812 reenactment group earlier this week turned to the coming election, and the subject turned to why the general public wasn't up in arms over election theft. I rejected the theory that the public assumes nothing can be done about it in place of the theory the public doesn't know. I know grassroots liberals know. Democratic leaders knew in 2004 that Republicans would try intimidating and tricking voters though unreasonable challenges at polls, distributing flyers with disinformation and such, but they were clueless about the methods used in Ohio, and the touchscreen machines used in other states. There are still many people clueless that this is going on, and as evidence I offer a local conservative columnist who wrote about the subject. Joe Soucheray frequently shows an utter inability to grasp the concept this his limited personal experience isn't universal. In a recent column, he appeared to assume the controversy over vote counting is just a way to get more business for lawyers when he said, "I think what all these warnings are setting us up for is a new era of patience. The elections are not going to be over until the lawyers tell us they are." Because he trusts that his vote is accurately counted, and Minnesota has not had problems, it must be the same way everywhere. He says he has read up on the subject, yet is unable to grasp that while he might be trusting, there's good reason to verify. Is he unique? No. I expect he's common. Not even all Democrats are making auditable voting a high priority. They just can't believe this is happening in America. They might correctly point out that there is no definitive proof a touchscreen machine has changed a result. What they miss is that the people who control the proof won't let anyone else look. That alone should arouse sufficient suspicion to issue subpoenas if we can win either house of Congress. My request to readers is that you tell your members of Congress that this matters, and don't assume they've figured it out. Speak up also to your state and local election officials, since these are the people buying the touchscreens and believing the Diebold salesmen. Demand that state secretary of state candidates address this issue, and treat these races like they're important. They might be as important as Congress this year.
October 26
It's the world turned upside down. I was reminded of the story of the British musicians playing a tune by that name as they marched out of Yorktown and surrendered to George Washington (by the way, historians doubt the story is accurate, as it appears they just beat their drums) when I heard that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist advised Republicans to get off foreign policy and stick to domestic issues. I have heard politicians receiving this advice my whole adult life. Those politicians were always Democrats being advised to concede national security to the Republicans. Now granted, Frist is an idiot, so listening to his advice is not well-advised. Nonetheless, when that line comes from a Republican who is Senate majority leader and and considered a top contender for president, it means something. It means there is a chance for Democrats to make national security our issue. Keep repeating it: Republicans can't be trusted with national security.
While we're on the subject of the Republicans losing national security as an issue, let me recommend a couple programs that help explain why. Both can be viewed at the web sites. Frontline did a program on how Afghanistan is being lost, Return of the Taliban. Tonight as part of its Broken Government series, CNN had a documentary on Bush's use of terrorism, Power Play. It included an interview with Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, the Navy lawyer who won his case before the Supreme Court after being appointed defense counsel for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, and was punished for properly humiliating the acting president by being passed over for promotion two weeks later, which effectively means he was fired. Another interviewee is Moazzam Begg, who was detained without charge or trial and tortured for years at Bagram and Guantanamo. He described his experience, including this part:
"Tied with my hands behind my back, being then shackled to my legs. So, I was almost hog-tied, like an animal, being kicked and punched and beaten, threatened with further torture in a place in Egypt, if I didn't cooperate, and hearing the sound of a woman screaming next door to the interrogation room, which I was led to believe was my wife.Oh that's right, as Bush apologists keep saying, it's not like anybody's been killed.If there's anything worse than that, it's watching the abuse, humiliation, and murder of other people. I watched two people getting beaten to death in front of me, and was unable to do anything about it."
October 25
I rarely encourage Rush Limbaugh to keep talking. In fact, safe to say I never have. The nicest thing to be said about the lying jerk is he's able to fit quite large cigars in his mouth. This time though, keep talking Limbaugh. Please. Because if the news continues to include prominent mention of Limbaugh going after Michael J. Fox, this is great fodder for Democratic candidates. Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle is using it on the campaign trail, and the commercial Fox made for Claire McCaskill is getting played all over TV. So if Limbaugh is nutty enough to help them in their tight races, fine, and I'm willing to bet the time it's taking to write this that other Democrats might be helped too. Longer term, maybe a few more people have woken up to what sort of man Limbaugh us. The bulk of dittoheads are too thick to figure out that the liar who stokes their prejudices is wrong about pretty much everything, but some listeners have to be reachable, and that affects future elections. The conservative disintegration continues.
Speaking of conservatives being exposed, CNN is running a documentary series called "Broken Government." A Republican strategist and former US representative from Minnesota, Vin Weber, was interviewed about the disgust the public has developed for Congress and the mishandling of issues like terrorism. He said something very telling about Republican strategy, in case you've noticed Republicans doing this consistently and wondering if they do it on purpose, they do. Weber said, "There's an element of fear that properly ought to be instilled in people, and that has been in every previous world." He's admitting the Republican strategy is to scare people, not make them feel secure, even as they keep talking about being better on security. There's an element of conservatism that I can't respect, that people have to be controlled by the elite that knows better, even if they have to be deceived and their emotions played with. That's a core difference between conservatives and liberals. They want to control how people think, and we're trying to get them to think for themselves. We may be wrong in thinking that if people can think for themselves and get accurate information, then they come to agree with liberals. But we'll take that chance. The conservatives won't take that chance. They deceive and mislead to ensure that the elite that knows best --- them --- continues in power. That's what the cynical manipulation of fundamentalist Christians is about. That's what the campaign smears are about. That's what the chronic lying is about. That's what the election fraud is about.
How about a more specific, less philosophical reason to vote the rascals out this year? How about monumental ignorance of facts basic to their job? Jeff Stein asked members of Congress a seemingly simple question, "Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?" If you're bothering to read this, I bet you already know. If you're past puberty and pay attention to current events at all, I bet you know, at a minimum, that they are the two main sects of Islam, that they're rivals, that they're murdering each other in Iraq, and that Iraq and Iran are the only two majority Shiite countries, with all other Muslim countries being majority Sunni. At least at this point you can pretend you knew. You are luckier then than Representative Terry Everett and Representative Jo Ann Davis, Republicans who sit on the House Intelligence Committee and chair subcommittees. They have oversight of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the attempts to root out Al Qaida. You would rightly expect them to be able to answer that simple question. Recently, as in a few months ago, over three years after invading Iraq, they had no idea. The Republicans with considerable responsibility for our war on terror and wars in Muslim countries didn't know one of the most basic things about Muslims. Why would anyone vote to reelect people this ignorant of the basics of their jobs?
And no, it isn't just Congress. In his book "The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End ", Peter Galbraith tells a story of the acting president having never heard the terms "Shiite" and "Sunni" just a couple months before invading Iraq. That would be like invading a Christian country having never heard of Protestants and Catholics. Wouldn't you think, before deciding to invade a country, you'd learn something about it first? Doesn't this say everything about why things have gone so badly with everything the Republicans have touched? On November 7, there's a chance to throw the fools out of Congress and get some oversight of the Bush administration.
October 24
The second paragraph of this ABC analysis of the midterm elections mentions that the good economy isn't helping Republicans. I also recall hearing Rush Limbaugh asking the acting vice president in an interview why the economy wasn't helping more. Apparently the answer isn't obvious, so let me state it. The Republicans chose to make the campaign about war and national security. That's no shock, because they've done that forever. This year though, their record on war and national security is particularly bad, and Democrats are finally willing to go after them on it. I'm not so naive as to think many Democratic candidates wouldn't try the usual tactic of trying to move the debate to domestic issues, even though it rarely works, if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were going better and terrorism were less frequent. But as a member of the base that wants them to take on the GOP on those issues, I'll take it. So it's a simple formula. When you make the election about an issue that doesn't work for you, you lose. So may I be the first to spot a sea change in American politics. Just as Vietnam destroyed national security as an issue for Democrats even to the present day, Iraq is having the same effect on Republicans. Congress is limited in what it can do with wars and national security, but if a Democratic president takes office and does better, then national security becomes our issue. If that happens, this conservative era, already endangered, is over. We will be able to date it's life from the rebuilding after Watergate to the Bush disintegration.
Okay, to be fair, there is another theory on why the economy doesn't work for the GOP. This theory says the problem is that the economy isn't nearly as good as they claim and that the spin isn't working. The economy is indeed growing, but Bush's best months and quarters are merely mediocre by Clinton standards. The Republicans are right that they were in the congressional majority for Clinton's last six years, but those were years remembered for partisan gridlock, and the economy of the 90's starts with the economic policies put in place during the first two years, when Democrats had the majority and passed Clinton's plan with no Republican votes. What that all means is they don't get much credit for the 90's, and they can't dodge blame for this decade. Moreover, the gains in income have been confined to the top while most Americans have made no gains, but all of us have a massive federal debt to pay, and it gets bigger from the annual deficits. The unemployment rate is low, but it's accuracy is arguable. The 2001 recession was short and shallow, yet it took until 2005 for all the lost jobs to be recovered. Essentially, the Republicans problem in trying to use the economy as an issue is big structural problems have been built in, growth is just keeping up with growth in the labor force, and the benefits have been only at the top. The economy doesn't necessarily work against the Republicans since without a recession and rapid increases in unemployment, economics is largely arguing from statistics and local circumstances. Call it a wash.
So the upshot is Republicans not only downplayed other issues by choosing national security as their issue, but that and 3G (God, gays, guns) are still their best issues, even though they're losing on those. They're just losing my less than other issues. This is the Democrats opportunity in both cases. Republicans have a point when they say we're using stem cell research and the minimum wage as wedge issues, but think about it: we have wedge issues! Hoist by their own petard. While I'm using the warlike analogy, the failure in Iraq combined with the failure to break Al Qaida and the possible loss of Afghanistan, are our chance to make defense our issue. Say this over and over again: Republicans can't be trusted with national security.
No, I'm not commenting on Barack Obama saying he's pondering a presidential run. Not only have we not yet had the 2006 election, but with only two weeks left, why do any of the media bother themselves with the 2008 presidential race? At tonight's DFL Links for my state senate district, the conversation turned something we've noticed when doorknocking and talking to coworkers, that a large minority of the population still doesn't know an election is imminent. Or maybe they know, but they have yet to consider their votes. Some voters, and I have no idea of the numbers because this is anecdotal, don't even know that elections are held between presidential years. The news media don't help by going on already about 2008. So that is why I refuse to be drawn into speculation on 2008, other than my recent exchange with Republican blogger RebukeTheWorld. Oh all right, I will reiterate that my preference is Russ Feingold.
October 23
I can see the commercial in my mind's eye, and I hope the DNC (Democratic National COmmittee), DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee), or somebody like that would steal the idea. Show the acting president saying, "Well, hey, listen, we've never been "stay the course," George." Then show some of the many times he's "been" stay the course, and as he continues saying "stay the course", and the end of the commercial the words come up saying "Had Enough? Change the course. Vote Democratic."
While I'm suggesting commercials, I suggest (again, though the first time was in an e-mail) to the Mike Hatch campaign that they make a commercial of the parking lot we call the Crosstown Commons Hwy. 62 and I-35W meet. Back in July the use of this and Hwy. 53 in northern Minnesota seemed great icons for Republican mismanagement of the state. I heard on Minnesota Matters today that some clever people had a banner over 62 saying something like, "If Hatch was governor you'd be home by now." I would juxtapose clips of 62 traffic jams and dangerous parts of 53 with Tim Pawlenty and Carol Molnau talking about how well they managed things. The debacle of the 62 reconstruction is bound to be an effective issue with much of the metro area, including many suburbs.
When Nancy Pelosi was asked by Lesley Stahl about whether as Speaker of the House she would pursue impeachment, I had one of those "Stop talking. Stop talking. Please stop NOOOOOO!" moments as I realized what she was in the process of saying. It might be the politically smart maneuver to reassure the tremulous middle that there would be no impeachment, but now impeachment will happen only against the speaker rather than with the speaker at least staying out of the way. As tough as impeachment was, it just got a whole lot harder. I didn't want her or any Democrat to promise impeachment. What I want them to say, and his willingness to say this is a reason I support Keith Ellison for my own district, is that they'll investigate the many things that have gone without or with only cursory congressional investigations and if the findings lead to impeachment, so be it. Maybe if Bush really believed the nonsense that came from his administration to trick us into the invasion of Iraq, then he's not impeachable. Maybe he's just grotesquely incompetent and hasn't technically broken the Constitution and his oath of office. Maybe impeachment takes a tape of the president authorizing a coverup. But for crying out loud, don't rule it out. The likely consequence of investigating corruption with proper seriousness is some corrupt people might be rousted out of their offices. Why does this extend to CEOs, lobbyists, congressmen, aides, and White House staff, but somehow stops at the Oval Office?
This refusal to impeach is partly the state of current politics, partly the prospect of trying to remove a president when the country is at war, but also of scandals going back to Richard Nixon. I wonder if when Nixon resigned and was spared impeachment thereby, he created a presumption that presidents wouldn't need to be impeached because they would leave.
The big mistakes came later though. When Democrats agreed not top pursue impeachment of Ronald Reagan in exchange for a thorough housecleaning of the executive branch, they created a couple unfortunate unintended consequences. One is that they seriously raised the bar for how much corruption is needed to remove the president. Apparently selling arms to our enemies to finance war crimes in an illegal war wasn't enough. They also, but letting Reagan off, allowed the Republicans to deify him, and even more level headed people tend to think this man who came perilously close to being removed was a highly successful president. That spin wouldn't be possible if he was gone.
The Republican mistake was setting the bar so low for impeaching Clinton. They tried to use a tawdry scandal and highly doubtful charges in a partisan power grab. In failing to remove Clinton, they protected his successor, because now when many think of impeachment they assume it's just partisanship, and dread the fight more than the consequences.
But just like with Reagan, what will it take to remove Bush? If he can start a war on false pretenses and kill tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent people, just what does it take? If he can stay in office after stealing two elections, practicing torture, breaking the Bill of Rights' restrictions on searches and protections for suspects, just what will it take?
October 22
There's a warning from journalist Greg Palast, one of the journalists who has done the most to investigate election fraud. In an article on the fraud the appears to have given New Mexico to the acting president in 2004, he says the hacking of voting machines wasn't the main source of fraud, but rather the problem was spoilage. That means votes were cast but for some reason were disqualified. Ballots might have been left blank, too many candidates were picked for an office, or the ballot wasn't properly marked --- the hanging chad problem. According to the Census Bureau, 3.4 million ballots were spoiled for the presidential election. In New Mexico specifically, the spoilage was overwhelmingly in non-white districts, just like in Ohio. So do blacks in Ohio and Navajo in New Mexico stand in line for maybe hours only to not vote for president? Yet that's what we were asked to believe, that in some precincts fewer than one in ten chose a presidential candidate. I recall New Mexico being one of the places with reports of extensive fraud in 2004, but the lack of sufficient electoral votes to change the national result denied it Ohio's spotlight. Those who followed election results closely may recall that New Mexico was very narrow, 5,988 votes, which is less than a third of the blank ballots, 21,084, of which 89% were cast in minority precincts which voted heavily for Kerry when their votes were counted. New Mexico wasn't the only close state Bush won where this problem occurred. Moreover, that's before counting the provisional ballots which tended to be cast in minority precincts and were rarely counted, and also before counting people wrongly turned away from the polls because they were wrongly purged from registration rolls or couldn't wait in artificially long lines.
Palast reports that voters in New Mexico didn't ignore it and have succeeded in doing something about it. An effort organized by Voter Action succeeded in making paper trails mandatory. That's the good news. The bad news is that the secretary of state, Rebecca Vigil-Giron, ordered the voting machines wiped which destroyed the evidence, and was done before the state supreme court ruled the wiping and the denial of a recount was illegal. I personally want to know why the Democratic governor, Bill Richardson, didn't support the recount. He backed the reforms passed earlier this year, but why was he late on this? Did he not get it, or was he jumping in front of the parade? He's considered a presidential contender but without a good answer, he's low on my list. That's a key question for Democratic candidates, besides when they realized Iraq was a mistake. Do they get how serious a problem we have with election fraud? Getting specific, will they support replacing provisional ballots with election day registration, which a few states have and which works infinitely better? Will they support bans on unauditable machines? And will they support mandatory random audits even if elections aren't close, and full recounts when problems are found?
If you want to know how thoroughly corrupt contracting has gotten in Iraq, read this article by Willem Marx, who was an intern in Baghdad for Lincoln Group. That name may be familiar because they got caught planting stories in the Iraqi news media favorable to the occupation and the Iraqi government. Marx was one of the people doing the planting. Essentially, they were laundering disinformation like Tom DeLay launders money. The US military sent articles which were favorable --- being accurate was another question --- and Marx picked out a few to hand to Iraqis who then paid newspapers to run stories. So first the military lied, and then Lincoln Group charged insane amounts of money for its services, and then after Marx noticed the charges for placement had risen exponentially, it turned out the Iraqis were ripping off Lincoln Group. Marx was assigned to hunt down the fraud he uncovered, and ended up interrogating terrified Iraqi employees who were under suspicion of stealing a few thousand dollars from this company that was stealing millions. It's like a morality tale of how corruption spreads.
Some good news on corruption. Richard Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange who got the treasury awarded to him personally when he retired, will have to give back a bunch. The NYSE was a non-profit at the time, and the New York State Supreme Court decided he broke the law by using a combination of cronyism and deception to award himself $187.5 million. He might have to give back $100 million under this ruling, and there's another trial to come. You may not care that he ripped off the NYSE, except that you might guess that these crooks aren't worried about the ethics of the companies that trade on the NYSE. In terms of your own money being stolen, if you have any money in a pension fund, mutual fund, or individual stock account, then you probably traded on the NYSE and paid a fee for doing so. No individual lost much money by this, but come on, that's theft on an epic scale. In political terms, the beneficiary is state Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, who exposed Grasso and brought the suit. Since Wall Street is in New York, Spitzer has been able to do the rooting out of corruption the SEC used to do before Bush and the culture of corruption took over. This ought to help in his bid to get elected governor, and I hope all readers realize that state attorneys general are at least as important as the federal government is protecting investors, consumers, and workers. Just like esecretaries of state, these are down ballot races that are vital this year. Maybe as vital as winning Congress.
Oh yes, Jeffrey Skilling gets sentenced tomorrow. Though the executives who haven't died are going to prison, don't forget that the president from Enron is still in the White House.
October 21
Yesterday, Minnesota Public Radio's Midday program hosted a debate of 5th district congressional candidates. However, Alan Fine wasn't the only candidate I expected to hear engaging in attacks on Keith Ellison. I saw an e-mail sent out by the Tammy Lee campaign to its mailing list, and it was nothing but an attack on Ellison. The only reason to vote for Lee was that Ellison was so terrible. Other than the gentler tone, and leaving out the Nation of Islam charge, it could have come from the Fine campaign. In the debate both Lee and and Fine held off on the attacks until the closing statements. They went in alphabetical order so Ellison went first. Then Fine held off on the venom this time, and made an oblique attack by bringing up character in general, but I can't imagine any listeners didn't know the context. Then Lee made the exact same attack, lightly bringing up character. Ellison, for the record, has defended himself but has yet to attack an opponent. Lee also mentioned being endorsed by Kathleen Anderson, District Director for Congressman Martin Sabo. Anderson, coincidentally, is the signatory of the attack e-mail. She condescendingly said, "To be kind, perhaps he is simply disorganized when it comes to these matters," but in a subsequent paragraph said, "Accordingly, we should be rightly concerned that these ethical mis-steps will continue into the future. Clearly, the best way to prevent unethical behavior by politicians once in office is to seek the truth about their character now—before the election. And it is on this ground—on his character—that I find Keith Ellison unfit to represent Minnesota's Fifth District in Congress." Bear in mind she's talking about chronically late payment of tickets and lateness in filing tax and campaign finance reports. That's the best the Lee campaign has?
Let me explain to them the difference between sloppiness in some personal matters, and actual ethical problems. Racking up unpaid parking tickets is sloppiness. A character issue would be if he got them fixed. Being late in reporting campaign finance forms is sloppy. A character issue would be if he was hiding illegal contributions. Or making cheesy attacks on political opponents while acting like sweetness and light in TV ads, that's an "ethical misstep" too. Ellison hasn't tried to cover up or blame anyone else. He was late paying fines, but he paid them. His driver's license was suspended, but that doesn't affect the public. He was late with campaign finance reports, but owned up and paid a fine that was 1/300 what Tim Pawlenty was fined in 2002, and it seems that's forgotten. Can Lee or Fine show inattention to public business? No. If you don't believe that, go find where they had something. Can they say he violated any campaign finance laws beyond missing reporting deadlines? No. Can they find where he pulled strings to get out of tickets? No. All they have are attacks, piano recitals, and Brady Bunch ads.
Moving over to the 2nd district, while writing the paragraphs above, I was listening to the podcast of Minnesota Matters from Thursday (October 19th), and they said something that didn't sound right so I checked it out. They said there's almost nothing at Republican incumbent John Kline's web site. Turned out they were right. There is nothing about news, campaign events, and even nothing on his positions except a bit about opposing taxes and deficits on his About page. He's against going into debt, and against paying for the government. How handy. Oh, he did mention getting a "Hero of the Taxpayer" award from Americans for Tax Reform. If that sounds familiar, it's because that's Grover Norquist's organization. If Grover Norquist sounds familiar, that's because he's a crony of Jack Abramoff, who helped fund Norquist by fooling lobbying clients into thinking they needed to fund Norquist to get access to Bush and congressional Republicans. Quite the character reference Kline has there. Unfortunate when his opponent, Coleen Rowley, is well known for being a whistleblower on bungling that helped 911 happen, and ethics is a strong issue for her. Also, compare Kline's web site to Rowley's. At least with Rowley, she's backed by more and better characters than Norquist.
I also checked out something a Rowley spokesman said on that same Minnesota Matters which sounded outrageous, but it checked out. Kline sent out a mailing saying Rowley has a senior advisor who wants to legalize methamphetamine. The "senior advisor" is David Bailey, and the reason I put "senior advisor" in quotes is that he's an unpaid volunteer and those words are Kline's. The charge stems from something Bailey wrote on his personal web site about decriminalizing drugs. According to Bailey, he wrote that years ago, and called for decriminalization, not legalization, by which he means going after manufacturers instead of users. Bailey also denied being coauthor of Rowley's position papers. He says he works on her blog, evident from the link, and he has helped her with op-ed pieces. Unless Bailey and Rowley are lying about the authorship of the position papers and Bailey's position on methamphetamine, and Kline offers nothing to back up his position, then I don't know how much closer Kline can veer towards a lie without actually lying. You can look on his web site for evidence --- but there's nothing there!
October 20
There are a few reasons I'm not giddy with anticipation of Democratic victories on election day. I wish I could be. Just looking at the polls and the number of competitive races that used to be safely Republican, maybe I should be. However, the single biggest reason I suspect the acting president and his brain have reason to be confident is the touchscreen machines. According to this article from the New York Times, about half of the 45 most competitive House districts will be using touchscreen machines without paper trails. These unauditable machines will be more widespread than ever this year. So do I suspect the Republicans plan to steal a congressional majority? Yes, just like they stole the last two presidential elections and appear to have stolen at least Georgia in 2002. That doesn't mean we shouldn't vote. Let's have such an overwhelming winning margin that they'll have to work hard and be blatant to pull off the theft. If your local election will be on touchscreens, put in an absentee ballot. If you have punchcards and suspect either machine failures or mysterious use of whiteout behind closed doors, you too should vote absentee. Then you have a paper trail. When the elections officials who foist these fraud machines on us have to spend a lot of time and money dealing with paper absentee ballots, they'll figure it out.
Speaking of paper ballots, notice in the linked article how some officials are worried their optical scanners will be so overwhelmed they'll have to resort to a ballot box. May I mention that at least they can use a ballot box. If touchscreens have a problem, whether hacking or honest error, whether with printout or not, then those voters can wait for hours, try to come back and hope they work, or not vote. If the scanners are working, the voter can feed in their own ballot and find out immediately if they have a problem like overvotes. I've witnessed voters with spoiled ballots find out before they leave the polls and get another ballot. Even if they have to drop the ballot in a box for later scanning, the scanning is a pretty quick process. In Minnesota at least, the absentee ballots are the same as the election day ballots and get fed in by election judges after the polls close. If the machine gets hacked, there's the paper trail. If the machines aren't connected to the Internet or a network, hacking requires physical access to the machine. If we would just standardize the whole country on optical scanners without remote connections, almost our entire concern about election fraud would be resolved. There would still be concerns about fraud through absentee ballots, and voter suppression like Mr. Nguyen's attempt to keep out Latinos.
Not to play down voter suppression efforts, but more important than fooling or intimidating voters with misinformation is kicking them off the registration roles, which was the core component of the Florida 2000 fraud, and again referring back to the linked article, is going to be a problem in states that have changed their procedures. Notice how Republicans consistently interpret the rules to kick people off given any excuse. When there is any mismatch between voter rolls and other records like driver's license records, the voter gets kicked off. This removed an unknown number of people in Ohio and few provisional ballots get accepted, which isn't surprising since the voter wasn't likely to magically appear on the registration roll and get the problem resolved in their favor. A simple solution is the same day registration we do in Minnesota instead of provisional ballots. We can register at the polling place, and the requirements are the same as pre-registration. My wife and I found our registrations on our driver's license forms didn't get processed when we voted at the primary. Was it a coincidence both the secretary of state and transportation commissioner, who is also the lieutenant governor, are conservative Republicans? Probably. Still, in most states we would not have been allowed to vote.
Also watch the voter ID laws. Other than Indiana, they've been struck down in all states, yet elections officials in Georgia at least sent out notices saying the law was in force. Be prepared to assert your right to vote even if you don't have a photo ID, because it looks like a lot of poll workers are going to be confused about the law and might have GOP challengers trying to get the laws enforced.
Readers may correctly infer from the space I gave election fraud that I consider that by far the biggest reason to avoid getting too excited about a big win, but that's not all. Most House districts have been gerrymandered. It was most blatant in Texas, where districts were redrawn mid-decade in an openly partisan way, but all over the country redistricting was partisan and drawn to protect incumbents, which is why both parties accepted it before Tom DeLay's redrawing of Texas. You can't change that on election day, but be aware that the when the Supreme Court allowed the Texas plan, it said that redistricting is acceptable any time, not just after the census, and that it was OK to gerrymander for partisan purposes. This means any time the same party has the governor and state legislature, districts could be redrawn, and therefore these state legislative races are vital. They aren't throw away. You can't skip them because you don't know who the candidates are. Vote Democratic in these too, or you might undo any victory in the US House election. Likewise don't skip secretary of state races, because the Republicans have found these offices to be vital in committing fraud. In fact, without the secretaries of state in Florida and Ohio, Bush would never have gotten into the White House. Minnesotans, read this about ours.
But don't think I've forgotten the GOP in GOTV (Get Out The Vote), which is likely more important than their KDTV effort (Keep Down The Vote). Liberals just have to match them. Likewise financing. We'll never match the money the wealthy elite throws behind the GOP, but our small donations can make the gap smaller. It's rare for candidates to win when they get outspent, but victory gets more likely if we can close the gap, even just enough money to pay for yard signs or one radio ad.
What about the October Surprise we all assume Rove has waiting? I personally think it's a November surprise with fixed elections, but he might hedge his bets. My guess is some big terrorist story or scary international incident the week before the election. But it won't be enough to make a big swing, not a Foley scandal size swing. It's actually what I'm least concerned with. In fact, it seems when Bush and the congressional Republicans tried security month in September, that was it. That was most of what they had to throw at us, and so much other stuff went wrong that it wasn't enough. If something more does happen, all we can do is realize and repeat that they're making it up, or at least timing it. Ideally we can debunk it, but we likely won't have time, and we know debunking doesn't stop people predisposed to believe the bunk (see "swift boating").
October 19
Will Alan Fine still complain that the Star Tribune is trying to fix the election after this story? Keith Ellison appears to have stalker though I doubt it will be spun that way. "Stalker" is my characterization. The story is about Ellison's accusations that a woman is trying to blackmail him, basically, asking $10,000 from the campaign fund in order to go away. I doubt he would have said this if is wasn't true, because that would come out. It's also much smarter to fight the blackmail and accusations rather than paying, because the accusations would still come out and the payment would amount to admitting to them. Just to provide some context, Amy Alexander blames Ellison for preventing her from being hired for a job in May 2005. Ellison got a restraining order against her after claiming harassment. She has recently sought a restraining order against him, which was denied, but she gets to have a hearing. She claimed verbal abuse and physical assault, but waited 16 months after the alleged incident to seek the restraining order. Ellison's campaign manager, Dave Colling, said they'd received multiple phone calls from Mesa Kincaid, identified as a freelance writer, demanding $10,000 for her and Alexander to go away. Reading through the whole article, Alexander's story isn't holding up to scrutiny, which is fortunate for Ellison because otherwise it's just he said/she said, and readers will believe what they want. The article said Alexander consented to an interview and later said the paper harassed her. There's no record of a police visit to her house, and her witnesses aren't backing her story. I'll throw a kudo at the conservative blog Powerline, where I went to see the conservative spin. They mentioned that Ellison's accuser has no credibility, even if they then threw in a defense of Alan Fine who was the subject of a similar article. Though as I noted, that one did actually question the accuser's credibility and personally I disregard the accusation as unproven. I've gone after Fine only for his public statements while campaigning.
Maybe conservatives sense the same thing I do, that Fine is coming in third.
Good news on the culture of corruption: polls show corruption is coming in third as the most important issue, after only terrorism and Iraq. Also, Air America Minnesota reported in it's hourly news update that Tim Pawlenty has returned a $6,000 contribution William Backdate McGuire. Smart move politically, but not good for McGuire's character references.
And just to show a new facet of this corruption, it isn't just incumbent Republicans getting caught up in it. A couple challengers have problems too now, one financial and one election fraud. The election fraud charge is being aimed at Tan D. Nguyen, running for the US House against incumbent Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez. He is thought to be behind a letter sent to naturalized citizens registered as Democrats telling them it's a felony for immigrants to vote. Wouldn't someone with a name suggesting recent Vietnamese origin know that immigrants can vote once they become citizens? I'd bet he does, because the letter was in Spanish, not Vietnamese, or English. Maybe he thought non-Spanish speakers would ever know.
The financial scandal comes from a US House race in North Carolina, where Danny Mansell is challenging Democratic incumbent Rep. Bob Etheridge. Mansell opposes federal income taxes, and appears to think opposition to taxes means not having to pay them. He owes the feds $220,000 and the state $50,000. He says he neglected taxes when his mother was dying and his wife had cancer. The problem is these tax problems go back to 1999. What's worse, dodging taxes, or using a sick wife and mother as fake excuses?
The point here is the Republican corruption has run so deep that just getting new Republicans won't fix it. They need to be removed from power.
October 18
This Take the Red Pill Award needs to come with some polio vaccine as well. This time, the winners are the fundamentalist Islamic clerics in the majority Muslim parts of Nigeria, who stopped polio inoculations by telling their credulous followers that the vaccine was really a plot to sterilize Muslims. As a consequence of their blocking the nearly complete effort to wipe out polio globally, 26 countries have had a reoccurrence and the latest is Kenya. Thanks to these delusional religious leaders, a three year old Somali refugee girl will either die or be crippled by this preventable disease. I guess those Somali refugee toddlers have just had it too good.
I suppose this next Take the Red Pill Award was inevitable given the heat of the campaign season and my residence in Minnesota. State senator and 6th congressional district candidate Michele Bachmann appears to seriously believe God called her to run for the state senate and for Congress. She said this in an address at Living Word Christian Center, the same church that's now in danger of losing its tax exemption for endorsing a candidate, namely Bachmann (though I'll believe a conservative church getting in serious trouble with the IRS when I see it). She also said God called her to be a tax attorney (she was a collector of delinquent taxes, though she rarely mentions that). Here's the video on You Tube. It sounds like she's just delivering the nonsense to pious people who'll believe any crap handed to them with the "God" brand on it, which is why the Take the Red Pill Award is usually given to the believers, not to the people using them. Bachmann, however, seems to believe it herself, and other clips on You Tube show her saying that Terry Schiavo was healthy a year and a half after the autopsy showed her brain had shrunk in half, and saying that we shouldn't believe in global warming until there's some science on the subject.
In fact, in addition to her Take the Red Pill Award, let's give Bachmann another trophy to console her after polls show she's fallen behind Patty Wetterling, and give her this Dead Polar Bear Award too. At a candidate forum, she raised the conservative talking point about news media in the 1970's saying there might be another ice age (not the science media mind you, the news media, which still pretends there's a scientific debate on global warming) and then said, in all seriousness, "One thing we need to do is look at the science." For looking at the science only when it's found in the church bulletin, Bachmann gets a Dead Polar Bear Award.
My wife and I attended a 5th district debate yesterday, and there was a more interesting debate later in the evening, at least judging by the Minnesota Public radio report. Republican candidate Alan Fine wasn't present at the debate we saw, but did make the evening debate at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park, a Minneapolis suburb. In his opening statement he attacked the Star Tribune for a report on his domestic violence arrest which he claimed was false and exaggerated, and then he moved from that into a false and exaggerated attack on the DFL candidate, State Representative Keith Ellison. And no, he didn't seem to catch the irony of this. Conservatives don't get irony. Maybe it's a personality thing. You can hear in Ellison's voice his weariness with having to explain at every forum how Fine's charges are wrong. Fine has heard this many times by now, has no more substantiation than he ever did, but keeps repeating them. And no, he doesn't get why his denials of charges against him aren't taken at face value.
The Independence Party candidate, Tammy Lee, used the opening Fine left her to say that both major parties have too much baggage. A third party candidate can make that argument in general and have valid points, but it didn't fit in that instance. That was one candidate throwing mud at another, which is nothing to do with the baggage of their parties.
The debate I attended was hosted by Rossi's Steakhouse in downtown Minneapolis and organized by Air America Minnesota, 950 AM, which also broadcast it live. Fine was absent, and no I won't say "declined to show up" because I don't know why he didn't attend. Maybe he knew both the live and radio audience would be highly unlikely to support him and I don't blame him for that. The third candidate was the Green Party candidate, Jay Pond. At both debates, Lee mentioned her experience in Washington as Sen. Byron Dorgan's press secretary. That's legitimate, but not an advantage over Ellison's actual legislative experience. Iraq was otherwise the only substantial source of disagreement, though really only on how to get out. There was minor disagreement over electrical deregulation, with Lee being more open than Ellison or Pond to deregulation and market solutions. Tangentially, let me explain electrical deregulation real briefly: Ken Lay, Enron. Can it be more clear? Pond had a legitimate point about not being included in most debates, including the later debate last night. The Green Party is no longer officially a major party, but candidates who poll well enough normally get included. However, as far as he knows or I know, there have been no polls on the 5th district, so that does seem an unfair reason for keeping him out.
October 17
I harbor no illusions that a protest by me in my little blog will the acting president from taking advantage of the new power conferred by the military commission bill he signed today. Like Russ Feingold, I believe, "We will look back on this day as a stain on our nation's history." Maybe I'm just salving my conscience preemptively for when Bush imprisons without charge or trial, allows coerced confessions, and allows secret evidence. Maybe I just want it on the historical record that one more contemporary American spoke up. So be it. Even if too few contemporary Americans will listen, even if the usurpers of power can't be moved by appeals either to conscience, tradition, or legality, I will still denounce this new law as the most serious violation of the Constitution in my lifetime so far. I hope Bush's power will only temporarily protect him from the fair trial he would deny others, whether the trial is for human rights abuses at home or war crimes abroad.
Want more Republican corruption? Of course you do. This one was in the short bits in the print version of today's newspaper, and other than a mention last night by Rachel Maddow, has gone unremarked to my knowledge. Former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford pleaded guilty to corruption charges. He held stock in a company he regulated, which is a conflict of interest, and he lied about it on his forms. If his name seems familiar, that's because there was a long fight over his nomination, and then he resigned suddenly two months after getting confirmed. His nomination was controversial because of his opposition to over the counter sales of emergency contraception.
The key question on the culture of corruption is of course who will be indicted first, Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA, or William McGuire, CEO-UnitedHealth. To respond to questions these cases are raising: first, the FBI is run by the Justice Department which is run by Republicans, so no, the Democrats aren't behind the timing of the FBI raids; two, McGuire appears to have stolen hundreds of millions, so his philanthropy of tens of millions is not a good trade.
It's already the wee hours as I write this. There is too damn much corruption.
