The Blog From Another Dimension: GOP & The Election Archives

Here They Go Again

Republicans are trying to steal elections again. They have proposed that California's electoral votes, instead of going all to the winner of the state like almost all other states, would be divided according to whomever wins each district.

While this sounds great and is, to a degree, in principle, it is vote-stealing because it is not a call for such democratic vote-distribution nationwide--only in the biggest electoral state in the union, which also happens to vote Democratic every election year nowadays.

If there was a proposal to do this nationwide--for every state to divide their electoral votes--I'd likely vote for it--though a better system would simply be to use the popular vote, a strict numerical proposition.

But that's not what the proposal is for. If you suggested doing this in the South, especially in Texas, then Republicans would fight it tooth and nail. Nor would they ever propose this in California if it voted conservatively. They don't want votes to be fairly and evenly counted--they just want to win elections, no matter how crookedly.

Not that this should be any surprise: Republicans tried this same tactic three years ago, and failed. (Though I am surprised that neither the AP writer not Kevin Drum seemed to remember this.) And I'm pretty sure that Californians are not so stupid that they'd let Republicans use Californians to steal yet another election.

Running Scared

Oh, this is too precious: Republican candidates are running scared from the YouTube debate! Yes, that's right, this is the same party that pilloried the Democratic candidates for being "afraid of journalists" because they did not allow the propaganda arm of the Republican Party to run a debate for them.

It wasn't enough for them to run scared from black people when all but one of them steered clear of the NAACP debate. Now they apparently are running scared from the actual people of this country, likely because it's a debate where citizens ask questions without having their Republican credentials assured before they can be allowed in.

But hey, how can you blame them? If you were Rudy Giuliani, would you want to open yourself up to having a NYFD firefighter come on live TV and expose you for being a complete fuckup?

Not that a YouTube debate would really help them that much, even if potentially damaging questions were weeded out beforehand. Giuliani is so easily uncovered as a corrupt fraud that he'd be easily beaten by virtually any of the top Democratic candidates. Mitt Romney isn't far behind, with massive flip-flopping and dissembling. John McCain's campaign is pretty much a walking corpse (which is probably why is is signing on, in hopes of reversing his fortunes), and even Fred Thompson, once seen as the savior of the GOP in 2008, is now falling apart (due to fundraising woes, his lobbyist past becoming more public, and other credibility issues).

So can you blame them for running like scaredy-cats from any audience that isn't pre-filtered for Republican bias? Well, actually, yes you can... but you can't claim any measure of surprise when doing so.

The GOP on Civil Rights

Here are the Democratic candidates at the NAACP presidential forum to discuss civil rights. All of the candidates showed up:

Ricardo Thomas / The Detroit News

And here's the Republican turnout, just a few hours before:

Carlos Osorio / AP

Notice anything different? Yep, that's right--Tom Tancredo was the only GOP candidate to appear. He made the best of it, throwing out quips such as, "Do you think we should wait a few minutes to see if these other guys show up?" and "This is my kind of debate. ... Do I know something they don't know?"

The Republicans don't even have the ability to say it was an unfriendly forum, after conservatives continuously slammed Democrats for not allowing Fox News, a propaganda arm of the Republican Party, to frame, host, moderate, and deliver a debate for them. You can't have it both ways; either candidates are "afraid" of a forum for not showing up, or they aren't. And the NAACP is less of a threat to Republicans than Fox is to Democrats; the NAACP is issue-oriented, and would lean to the right if the GOP addressed their concerns better. Fox, on the other hand, is unabashedly anti-left for the sake of being pro-right. And it's not as if the GOP doesn't want to attract voters from the minority community, either, nor has the NAACP shown open hostility to visiting conservatives before. Take this 2004 function when GOP head Ken Mehlman spoke to the NAACP; they were not antagonistic, there were no protesters. Hell, the NAACP sees the Democrats as taking them for granted, and would welcome Republicans to the table if for no other reason than to light a fire under the Democrats. The GOP candidates faced a far friendlier challenge with the GOP than the Democrats did with Fox.

Not that the right-wing press hasn't taken the opportunity to be hypocritical here; take this NewsBusters article, which slams a CNN commentator for saying that the GOP is "scared of black folks"--despite the right wing massively playing up the story that "Democrats are afraid of journalists" because they didn't agree to the Fox debate.

And this is not the first time their hypocrisy has been shown up, either; Republicans got all antsy when one debate, hosted by MSNBC, with mostly right-leaning journalists, included Keith Olbermann on the commentator front, even though he didn't even get close to the candidates.

So, is the media playing up this story? The image of Tancredo standing there among nine other empty lecterns is a money shot, to be sure. But instead, the media is apparently all gaga over David Beckham showing up in the U.S., so the story conveniently slides into obscurity.

McCain Continues Implosion by Publicly Acting Like Technology Idiot

John McCain showed himself to be pretty damned stupid when he claimed that the streets of Baghdad were safe to stroll through and then, to prove his point, went there with a hundred troops, five helicopters, and a flak jacket. Now that he's gotten that out of the way, he attended a conference on technology and quickly made an ass of himself there as well.

First of all, he came out against Network Neutrality. You know, the protocol that was probably one of the most responsible for making the Internet successful. The one that has kept the Telecoms from turning the Internet into their private piggy bank, making everyone pay for everything and throwing their weight around worse than Microsoft does.

McCain, a self-described "free trader" and "deregulator" apparently does not understand what the hell "Network Neutrality" is. To be against Network Neutrality is virtually the opposite of free trade on the Internet, allowing a few companies to have constrictive proprietary control over the system. And it's not "deregulating," because there's no tome of regulation or any bureaucracy involved--just a simple rule, that everyone is truly equal and free on the Internet. McCain's statements were virtually spot-on to the scripts written by the Telecom lobbyists.

But then McCain made an even bigger fool of himself, by saying that he would put Steve Ballmer on his cabinet to advise him on technology issues (apparently unaware that such a cabinet position does not exist), and said he'd consider Ballmer for an ambassadorial position, maybe in China. The latter has been noted as a "joke," but probably because no one in his or her right mind could believe that a person could be so monumentally stupid as to seriously suggest such a thing. But then, was McCain's statement about having Ballmer as a technology advisor also a joke? Nobody thinks so, though pretty much everyone sees the idea as ludicrous. Who knows, maybe McCain seriously promoted the idea of Ballmer on his cabinet, then either because of laughter from the audience or an internal realization of how stupid the idea was, then tried to turn it into a joke by mentioning the China spot.

Either way, McCain is poison to technology. The man is dropping like a dead weight--sorry to see after he seemed so enticing in 2000. Either it was a sham then too, or McCain realized that the only way to be taken seriously was to sell out, big time.

Hollywood Elitism

The right wing simply can't stop being enraged by Hollywood! The Hollywood Elite! Actors who try to get involved in politics! Just some of the buzz, all actual quotes: "the 'Hollywood elite' are openly hostile to the attitudes, opinions, and values of millions of Americans" ... "anti-Americanism and a rejection of traditional morality are positives in the glitter capital of the world" ... "The problem with celebrity elitism is not the idiocy of the ideas that are expressed by the stars... but the blindly arrogant expectation that somehow their views deserve to be taken seriously merely because they are famous" ... "creators of false images (i.e., movies, TV) live in their heads and their imaginations" ... "they can afford, socially and economically, to live like moral reprobates" ... "Hollywood should JUST SHUT UP" ....

Wait... Arnold Schwarzenegger could run for president if only we amended the constitution? Fred Thompson is thinking of running now? Really??

HOO-ray for HOL-LYwood!!!!

Giuliani: Taxing the Rich Would Be Unthinkable

Crooks and Liars has a take on this so good that I almost didn't make this into a blog post, as it would be superfluous. However, I thought that the quote by Giuliani is more than worth commenting on. Here's the source quote:

In a potential preview of next fall’s presidential contest, Mr. Giuliani, who is seen as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, directly attacked the leading Democratic candidate, Mrs. Clinton, over a speech she gave Tuesday in New Hampshire bemoaning the return of "robber barons" and promising to pursue "shared prosperity" by increasing taxes on Americans making more than $200,000 a year.

"This would be an astounding, staggering tax increase," Mr. Giuliani told reporters yesterday after a visit to a restaurant on the edge of California’s Silicon Valley. "She wants to go back to the 1990s…. It would hurt our economy. It would hurt this area dramatically. That kind of tax increase would see a decline in your venture capital. It would see a decline in your ability to focus on new technology."

As C&L rightly points out, this is the kind of tax increase that Bill Clinton executed near the start of his presidency... and we experienced a technology boom, even "irrational exuberance" from investors, which was so successful that we erased the federal budget deficit altogether, a task unthinkable before Clinton. Furthermore, the more level playing field saw to it that the rising tide raised all boats--unlike Reagan's boom, or Bush's anemic upswing--and most certainly it did nothing to discourage people from pouring money into research & development of new technologies. According to our experience, we have seen that the kind of tax hike that Hillary is touting is not only not destructive, it is perhaps even essential, as it boosts federal revenue in the least painful way, thus creating the most healthy form of market confidence.

The problem is, Giuliani might have the upper hand with the voters. Even the most constructive tax hike, even when only applied to the richest of the rich, is easily attacked in a way that makes it look like you're going to raise everyone's taxes. A corollary to this rule is that you can similarly make everyone believe that a tax cut aimed 99% or even 100% at the rich is something that everybody wants and needs, which is where Bush went and Giuliani will likely follow. It's the same appeal to fear that the NRA uses when they turn even the most reasonable gun control into a "gun ban." I hate to say it, but the American people are so easily duped by this kind of scare appeal that it is ludicrously sad.

What Hillary needs to do is follow her husband's example: don't say you're going to raise taxes at all, even on the rich... then do it after you're elected. I remember in 1992, my conservative landlord in San Francisco (I was an SFSU student then) said that he didn't like Bill Clinton because he felt Clinton would raise his taxes after he got elected... but later voted for Clinton anyway because he felt that it was the right thing to do, and that a tax hike would help the economy. And he was right.

Brownback on Evolution

Sam Brownback, one of the Republican contenders for president in 2008, has an op-ed in the New York Times on the topic of evolution. Perhaps he wants to clarify his stand on the issue because he was one of the three Republican candidates who raised his hand when the question "who does not believe in evolution?" was asked. In the op-ed, he says this:

The question of evolution goes to the heart of this issue. If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.

The nod to "microevolution" is creationists' way of getting past a strong argument in favor of evolution. Creationists sometimes argue that if evolution is real, why don't we see it happening now? Well, that's exactly what "microevolution" is. So creationists will dodge, saying, oh, those are small changes. Why haven't we seen a horse change into an elephant in recorded history?

So they accept "microevolution" as a given, so long as it doesn't mean that they have to concede that life was formed via evolution. And that shows in the latter half of Brownback's paragraph, when he says that he accepts evolution only so long as it does not contradict his theology. Of course, he and many others ignore the view held by many religious people that evolution is God's way of creating life and it did not all have to happen within a six-day time span. That would satisfy Brownback's "place for a guiding intelligence," but it's pretty clear that Brownback is lying here and his real judge is either the six-day myth, or it is his right-wing Christian voter base that he feels it necessary to please. Either way, Brownback is guilty of an either-or fallacy here in rejecting what I suppose he would call "macroevolution."

But the distinction between "micro" and "macro" evolution is in itself no more than a disingenuous method of denying facts in evidence. Both "types" of evolution are in fact the same thing; one happens over small periods of time, the other over long periods. The distinction, however, allows creationists to dismiss the process as it happens before their eyes by claiming that it's not real because they don't see the process as it happens over millions of years. It's kind of like seeing a watermelon fall past your 30th-story window, then getting up and looking out the window to see it scattered over the sidewalk--and then postulating that the watermelon did not traverse the lower 29 floors, instead that god willed it into and out of existence just long enough to pass by your window, and then god magically created a squashed watermelon on the street below. When a person then shows you the video of the watermelon falling the intervening 29 floors (e.g., fossilized evidence of transitionary life forms), you claim that because the video consists of 1/30th-second frames and does not show every nanosecond of the fall, it is not valid evidence.

The reasonable middle ground in the fight between what the Bible literally says and what the world literally shows us is to believe that God created the universe, that the Bible tells us this in mythical terms, and that science reveals the technical details of god's achievement which were too complex and intricate to be chronicled in an ancient text written by a scientifically primitive people. But we can't have that crazy nonsense in our churches, now, can we?

But Brownback doesn't stop there:

There is no one single theory of evolution, as proponents of punctuated equilibrium and classical Darwinism continue to feud today. Many questions raised by evolutionary theory — like whether man has a unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations — go beyond empirical science and are better addressed in the realm of philosophy or theology.

These statements fall into the category of disingenuous wordplay, exercises in dishonest semantics. The grandaddy of this category is the claim that evolution is "only a theory," therefore it hasn't been proven yet. Which is baloney because evolution is a "theory" in the same way that gravity is a "theory." We know they both exist, the theories are about how they work. Brownback's argument here is simply a variation, dismissing evolution because the details haven't been worked out yet. Well, there are different theories of gravity as well, but I don't see Brownback flying off the ground yet.

Meanwhile, his statement about "whether man has a unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations" is the same either-or fallacy I demonstrated in the prior paragraph, little more than code for "whether man was created by god or not." Brownback also is either confused or lying here when he suggests that empirical science is posing the question. It is not. Science is not saying "god did or did not do this." Science is only saying, "this is what we see and here is how it could have worked in specific mechanical terms." It makes absolutely no statement about whether or not the observed processes were designed or simply came into being out of nowhere.

I could go on and on dissecting every statement in the piece, but I don't have time, so let me end with this choice quote:

Ultimately, on the question of the origins of the universe, I am happy to let the facts speak for themselves. There are aspects of evolutionary biology that reveal a great deal about the nature of the world, like the small changes that take place within a species. Yet I believe, as do many biologists and people of faith, that the process of creation — and indeed life today — is sustained by the hand of God in a manner known fully only to him.

Read that again, this time noting how Brownback transitions from letting "the facts speak for themselves" on how the universe was created, to saying that the universe and life are "sustained by the hand of God in a manner known fully only to him." And then explain to me how the "facts can speak for themselves" when they are known only to god? And, of course, what "empirical" facts support the existence of god in the first place? Exactly what facts are being spoken here?

In any case, Brownback is a bible-thumping creationist who, like most in that category, defies observation and reason, instead preferring to obfuscate enough so that a confused audience will settle down comfortably. In short, a strong Republican candidate.

Bush: Seven Years in Office = Blame for High Gas Prices

Texas Governor George W. Bush, June 23, 2000, blaming the Clinton administration for high gas prices because they were in office for seven years and gas prices were rising:

There seems to be an effort out of Washington to blame me for rising energy prices. And the American people don't buy that. It's the -- Clinton-Gore administration's been there for seven years, we're more dependent now than ever before on energy from foreign sources. And I am amazed that they're trying to shift the blame away from the people that are holding the office. And I resent that kind of politics, and so will the American people. ... And this is typical of an administration that refuses to accept responsibility. This is amazing. They've been in office for seven years, the price of gasoline has gone up during their period of time.

The price of gas that very week: $1.68 per gallon.

Now, the Bush administration has been in office for six and a half years. Prices at the pump have almost doubled since Bush blamed Clinton and Gore, reaching $3.10 a gallon (hitting over $4 in some areas). Well, under Bush 2000's logic, the president is to blame. Think that Bush 2007 would agree to that evaluation now? Think he would be willing to "accept responsibility"?

And it's not as if he's really been trying or anything, as if he's been on the case since day one. Only in the past year or so has Bush even made sounds about acting on high gas prices, and so far virtually nothing has materialized. Bush's biggest policy proposal, called "20-in-10," suggests that we cut fuel consumption by 20% over the next ten years. No relief for today or anytime within the remaining year and a half of this administration. Although refinery capacity was identified (PDF) from the start of the Bush administration as one of the biggest culprits of rising fuel prices, Bush has done absolutely nothing to remedy the problem, and today, the refinery shortage is worse than ever.

Bush 2007 says:

Our dependence on oil creates a risk for our economy, because a supply disruption anywhere in the world could drive up American gas prices to even more painful levels.

Boy, it's too bad that Bush didn't think about lessening dependency on foreign sources of crude oil back in 2000. Bush 2000, don't you agree?

I think we ought to make sure that we become less dependent on foreign sources of crude oil. I'll have an energy policy.

Oopsie! Too bad you let Cheney get the heads of the oil companies to write that policy!

You might expect that conservatives would argue that, after all, being in office for any amount of time does not equal culpability. But then, who expects conservatives to do anything but blame Democrats?

Fox News Headline: "Pain at the Pump: Gas Prices Rise on Democrats' Watch." Yes, apparently those damn Democrats have had a 51% majority in Congress for four months and gas prices have shot up during that time! Damn those Democrats! It's all their fault!

Color Blinders

There is a certain level of schizophrenia involved in conservative views about race, especially in light of the candidacy of Barack Obama. While he is delighting massive crowds of liberals and independents--and even some conservatives--the far right wing is going apoplectic over the whole affair. Wingnuts scramble to find racism in liberals' appreciation of Obama, at the same time that they strain to see disapproval from the mainstream African-American community.

For the Far Right, everything about Obama is about race. The same voices that claim they envision a color-blind society (by essentially ignoring the racism that exists and allowing it to run unchecked) are the same ones who see nothing but race where Obama is involved--but in classic projection, they claim that it's the liberals who are obsessed with race. Obama isn't white enough, he's not black enough, he's a way for liberals to assuage their racial guilt; apparently, Obama's popular only because he biracial, but at the same time, liberals don't like him because he's biracial. It's a confusing barrage of half-baked excuses to make Obama be all about race, while in the background, the standard-bearer for the Far Right, Rush Limbaugh, continues the "color blind" drumbeat by playing and re-playing the racist melody, "Barack the Magic Negro."

The real irony here is that people who like Obama are the actual ones who are color-blind. They're the ones who have listened to him speak, have appreciated his charisma and the appeal of his personality, the power of his speaking style and strong talent for communication. It's not because he's black, any more than it was because Bill Clinton was white. Obama appeals to people because of who he is.

But here's how bad things have become on the flipside: a major news network has been forced to completely disable comments from site visitors for stories about Barack Obama. The reason: persistent, voluminous racial epithets--so many, that CBS can't keep up with them and eliminate them on a one-by-one basis.

So, who is posting these comments? His liberal fans? Umm, not too likely. No, it is probably the "color blind" right-wingers, the ones who don't "see race," and who accuse the liberals of rampant racism where Obama is involved. The attacks and threats have become so bad that Obama has been given Secret Service protection earlier than any other candidate in history.

Just look at the right wing's criticisms of Obama. Try to find one that isn't somehow connected to race, or act in some way to make his race or ethnicity an issue. You'll have a hard time doing so. This might be because there's just not that much about Obama that they can attack. But personally, I think it goes deeper than that. It's more about the far right's inability to handle the idea of a liberal man of color taking power, so they focus on that--in a similar fashion that they have always responded to Hillary Clinton's being a woman.

It's not pretty, but it is what's there.

They Were Saying...

Remember how Republicans were all criticizing Democrats for not taking part in a debate hosted by Fox News? Remember how Democrats were supposed to be "afraid of journalists," and were threatening the freedom of the press itself?

Get a load of this. When MSNBC--a network with a bevy of conservative pundit shows--hosted the Republican debate, and Keith Olbermann, a noted critic of the right wing, quarterbacked the coverage of that debate, it prompted protest from the Republican front-runner as well as other candidates:

The Giuliani campaign privately expressed its concern to NBC News about Olbermann’s role in the days leading up to last Thursday’s debate.

... MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said a Giuliani campaign representative had called NBC News to complain about Olbermann being part of the debate telecast following his commentary. Olbermann was not told about the protest until after he came off the air Thursday, he said.

Other GOP presidential campaigns have expressed concerns about Olbermann to NBC News, according to a New York political strategist who requested anonymity to protect his clients.

Isn't that just precious? Here you have the Republicans blasting Democrats for not wanting to have their entire debate, moderators and all, hosted by a rabid right-wing propaganda outfit, but when Republicans have to deal with a debate hosted by a network with someone not even on the debate floor being a left-wing pundit, they all start whining.

Every single ounce of criticism against Dems for not wanting Fox News propagandists in every corner of their own debate just melted into slag. After Republicans protested about a left-winger commenting on their debate, how could they possibly criticize Dems for not wanting something ten times stronger? Maybe that's why all the complaints made by the Republican campaigns were made privately.

I'd comment on the utter hypocrisy we're seeing from the right wing here, but since it's been established that such behavior is the status quo from that crowd, I guess it'd be pretty much redundant to do so.

Voter Fraud Fraud

This is something that I have touched on in the past, but Josh Marshall, as part of his coverage of the US Attorney scandal, has an excellent, must-read post on how rare cases of voter fraud have been exaggerated beyond sanity as a political tool by this Republican administration (you should also read this NY Times article). In essence, "voter fraud" is a non-issue, represented almost entirely by (a) people paid to register voters who fraudulently sign up non-existent people, something which results in zero fraudulent votes, or (b) people who filled out forms in error, most of whom never even attempted to vote.

But Republicans have pretended that it is an epidemic of untold proportions, and have used the now-politicized Justice Department and their US Attorney cronies to "crack down" on it. The real aim: to bring back new versions of Jim Crow laws at the national level, discouraging or preventing minorities and low-income citizens from voting. And as a fringe benefit, they can remove people's attention from their own widespread election fraud while making Democrats seem guilty.

What happened was that US Attorneys, acting as GOP attack dogs, specifically tried to make cases against Democrats (just as they lopsidedly prosecuted Democratic officials and left Republicans alone), but for all their effort, could only find 86 people to convict over 5 years (of which a third were for local elections, like sheriffs buying votes in small-town campaigns), barely more than one conviction per month nationwide--not enough in total even to swing the razor-sharp Bush-Gore deficit in Florida in 2000, even had all 86 been located there. Compare that to thousands of Democratic voters disenfranchised illegally by bogus "felon" lists, or Republicans signing up Democrats for voter registration and then destroying the forms--acts which, to the best of my knowledge, never ended in indictments or arrests, just like dozens of other well-documented cases of Republican election fraud. Meanwhile, the Republican effort to arrest Democrats for voter fraud wound up with people being deported or imprisoned for what amounted to clerical errors, while acquittals peppered a large number of the indictments.

Maybe they'd find more fraud if they stopped ignoring Republican offenders.

Yet another step towards a Brave New Conservative Country.

Progress

Breaking news: on 60 Minutes this week, John McCain will say that it is a "sign of progress" that he only needed three Blackhawk helicopters, two Apache gunships, 100 armed troops and a caravan of armored Humvees so he could go shopping in Baghdad. He calls this "progress" because he claims that they wouldn't have let him do this at all in times past.

Ironically, there was a time when you could go shopping there, or just strolling, completely unarmed and unprotected. It was when Saddam Hussein ran the place.

Now, that's irony.

When it gets safe enough to go shopping with only one Apache gunship and a twenty-troop escort, let me know.

Party of Family Values and Dignity, So We Are Told

So. John McCain (adulterer, divorced & remarried younger heiress) now looks like a fool on Iraq, has flip-flopped on half the issues in an attempt to suck up to the religious right, and is doing dismally at raising funds for his campaign. Oh, and it looks like he approached several Democrats over the years, inquiring about becoming a Democrat.

Rudy Giuliani (adulterer, twice divorced & twice remarried, annulled his marriage to his second cousin, announced second divorce to the press before telling his wife) is getting less and less of a rosy image as people see how tissue-thin his real rep as "America's 9/11 Mayor" is. His infidelity and dalliances, his associations with Bernard Kerik, his screwups in New York (like putting the emergency response center in the WTC after the WTC bombing), his history of backing the police on outrageously criminal violence cases, and his less-than-hardcore-conservative credentials (he supports public funding for abortions, as one example) are making him less and less appealing to Republicans.

And Newt Gingrich (adulterer, twice divorced & twice remarried, served divorce papers to his former wife when she was in a hospital bed suffering from cancer), aside from having past negatives far in excess of anything Hillary has to fight, is already botching up his chances before he even had had the opportunity to announce his intentions for running. His recent (and very belated) admission that he cheated on his wife and lied about it at the same time that he attacked Clinton for doing the same doesn't help much, of course. However, more recently, he spoke out against bilingual education, saying that it encouraged "the language of living in a ghetto." To clean up the mess, Gingrich denied that he meant Spanish (which is the obvious inference which he clearly did mean), and instead said that the word "ghetto" "historically had referred as [sic] a Jewish reference originally." Well. That's much better.

So far, Mitt Romney is the best candidate in the quickly-self-destructing GOP field, but his Mormon beliefs will likely keep the Christian right-wing core away from the polls.

But hey, Republicans seem to be forgiving of personal flaws. After all, they elected (kind of) a drug-snorting, drunk-driving, McCain-smearing, draft-dodging, hypocritical, cruel, bloodthirsty, perjuring, silver-spooned, and ultimately corrupt nitwit to the White House, at a time when "character" was supposed to be the most important thing in a president. So maybe there's hope for the Scarlet Letter candidates after all.

The GOP's shining hope? Actor Fred Thompson. Swell. Another actor.

The Next Florida Election Could Be Interesting... in a Good Way

After years of election-year crimes under the Jeb Bush administration, the air finally seems to be clearing. The new governor, also a Republican, is talking like a Democrat. He'll be addressing global climate change, lower property taxes, and better funding of education. But most importantly, he said that he'll insist on a paper trail for ballots, and will restore voting rights to felons who have served their time, with exceptions for rapists, murderers, and major drug traffickers. Why that pattern? Because most "felons" are minorities who are made felons not by their actions, but by racist disparities in the law. Whites use powder cocaine more (just ask the president), while minorities more often use crack cociane, and:

Current policy generates a 100 to 1 penalty ratio for crack-related offenses. For instance, possession of only 5 grams of crack-cocaine yields a 5 year mandatory minimum sentence, however it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to prompt the same sentence. Moreover, crack-cocaine is the only drug for which the first offense of simple possession can trigger a federal mandatory minimum sentence. Yet "simple possession of any quantity of any other substance by a first time offender - including powder cocaine - is a misdemeanor offense punishable by a maximum of one year in prison."

Which means that whites get to keep their right to vote while minorities get deprived of theirs, even if the whites get caught with far more drugs on them. That's what the reversal of the felon's voting rights issue really is all about--though you can positively expect that conservative pundits will paint this as a "Democrats love criminals" issue. The irony in that is palpable: the wingnuts want to block cocaine users from voting because of their politics and/or color, but on the pretense of their being "criminals" because they used cocaine--while they are more than happy to elect president someone who used a lot more cocaine.

Florida Republicans are not so enthusiastic about their new governor, however:

The result was an odd tableau in the packed House chamber as Democrats seated in the back recesses rose repeatedly to applaud Crist's speech as front row Republicans slowly joined them.

"It's great to have a Democratic governor,'' said Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, D-Sarasota. "You could see the standing ovations start in the back row and move forward. You could actually see some of the representatives in the front looking over their shoulders, feeling uncomfortable and then standing up.''

Yes, the return of honest vote-counting and letting minorities vote should be worrisome to Florida Republicans. Who knows, we might even have a major election in Florida where a bogus "felons list" will not be generated so as to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Democratic voters who never committed a crime. Wouldn't that be something?

Of course, this all depends on Crist keeping to his word, and Florida Republicans not going full-throttle to block it. So, we'll see.

The Moral Low Ground

Breaking news: Newt Gingrich, apparently setting up his 2008 presidential bid, has finally admitted that he was having an extramarital affair with a congressional aide 20 years younger than he was, and that this was going on in 1998, when he was ramming through impeachment hearings on Bill Clinton.

But he says that he should not be considered a hypocrite. Why not? Because Clinton committed the crime of perjury in his extramarital affair.

Conservatives always bring this up to show how their own extramarital affairs are not as bad as Clinton's, but they always lack the depth of conviction necessary to give them the moral high ground. First off, the tests are very different: Gingrich, for example, was not sued and put under oath and then asked about his sexual dalliances, which, if answered truthfully, could end his career. Had he been in that situation and then answered truthfully in full public view, then he would have the moral high ground. But to press for a president to be impeached for lying about an affair when he was having an affair and lying about it himself is nothing but hypocritical; that Clinton lied under oath about it is not part of the equation because Gingrich never faced the same situation. Moreover, Gingrich had multiple affairs before that aide, one of whom reported that Gingrich preferred getting blow jobs so he could deny "having sex with that woman."

The second circumstance that sheds a different light on the matter is the nature of the legal case against Clinton. Put simply, the entire Paula Jones lawsuit was a sham, a major abuse of the legal system which was instigated for a single purpose: to politically assassinate the President's character, to attack him using the courts as a bludgeon.

The Paula Jones case began under the flimsiest of pretenses: some obscure, little-read right-wing rag published the initials "PJ" in speaking about one of Clinton's affairs, and Jones claimed that since she was then outed, she had no choice but to sue Clinton for sexual harassment. From the beginning, Jones' legal team consisted of and was financed by conservatives; one of the members of her team was none other than Ann Coulter. Right-wing fingerprints are all over the case from start to end.

While Democrats agreeably appoint Republicans to prosecute Republicans so as to maintain a sense of objectivity, Republicans gleefully appoint Republican attack dogs to prosecute cases against Democrats. Kenneth Starr was the worst sort, using all manner of illicit ways and means to take on the Clinton case, from using legal blackmail to elicit false accusations against Clinton (for which Susan McDougal went to prison because she refused to lie) to leaking embarrassing details all over the media in clear violation of legal ethics.

In the end, the incident where Clinton lied under oath was the ultimate "Gotcha" moment, the essence of entrapment. When the prosecution found proof that Clinton had an affair with Lewinski, they did not release it--instead, that proof quietly in hand, they set Clinton up for perjury. Seriously--if there is any sitting politician who is having an affair which they can still deny, where the admission would cause them great harm, is there any possibility that the politician will admit to it, even under oath? One can be certain that Gingrich would have lied about it. And in the entire legal proceedings after 9/11, Bush and Cheney adamantly refused to be put under oath because they knew they could get charged with perjury for the lies they planned to tell. Clinton's was simply forced to make the lie while under oath in a sham trial, a distinction that is entirely technical in nature, having nothing whatsoever to do with morality. Clinton was wrong for lying, but the mitigating circumstances were about as strong as one could possibly imagine, which is why so many people never saw it as a big deal.

So for Gingrich to admit to his affair a decade after the fact, for him never to have been under the pressure of being under oath, never having faced the choice of committing perjury or losing his career, to say he wasn't hypocritical... well, it's pretty damn shameless.

And let's not forget that that affair was not the only sin committed by this "family values" champion. He married his high school Math teacher, whom he would later ask for a divorce as she lay in a hospital bed with cancer. He had many extramarital affairs, and divorced his second wife by telephoning her on Mother's Day. And now he wants Christians to like him because he's an evangelical and should be forgiven his (multitudinous) sins.

In a way, I hope that Gingrich becomes the front-runner and wins the Republican nomination. Any candidate in the Democratic field would wipe the floor with him. And it's not such an impossibility, either--Gingrich is a favorite of the evangelic crowd, the Republican base; look what they did to McCain in 2000 in order to get their boy Bush in the lead.

It is also incredibly hypocritical for three Republican favorites--McCain, Giuliani, and Gingrich--to be vying for the family-values Christian vote when all three had extramarital affairs and divorces. But then, as we saw with all of the sins and crimes that George Bush committed before running for president, you can sin all you want so long as you praise Jesus and ask for forgiveness when you're finally caught.

And that's not hypocritical, is it?

Debunking Fox

Wow. Very rarely does the media go for actually defending a Democratic candidate rather than joining en masse to repeat the smear. Usually the media just gloms on to a lie like this and then goes silent when the truth is made clear.

This time it is a rumor that Barack Obama attended an Islamic Madrassa school, like those in Pakistan, which teach hardcore Islamic hatred of Christianity and the West. The rumor was released by a right-wing site (owned by the Washington Times), which in a double-whammy claimed that the rumor came directly from Hillary Clinton, despite naming no names and producing no documents to back that up. Fox News immediately jumped all over the story, gleefully broadcasting what amounted to a huge smear on both front-running Democratic candidates, and the deepest right-wing elements of the media and blogosphere began their swarm.

As for the Hillary part of the smear, Insight.com is standing by its story, saying that they had direct contact with "researchers connected to Senator Clinton" who said that:

"Ms. Clinton regards Mr. Obama as her most formidable opponent and the biggest obstacle to the Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential nomination. They said Ms. Clinton has been angered by Mr. Obama's efforts to tap her supporters for donations."

When you consider this, it comes across as the biggest load of crap ever heard. One of the things about Clinton is that she is a savvy political operator, and her campaign doesn't make completely idiotic newbie mistakes. So for her own researchers to go to a right-wing organization, and to say, "hey, tell everyone that Hillary hates Obama and wants to trash him!" is so stupidly and transparently a lie as to be laughable.

This is where organizations like CNN usually chime in with the popular smear, ignoring little details like the one I just mentioned and foregoing things like investigating the truth first. In a turnabout from their usual routine, however, CNN is now savaging the rumor, calling it, accurately for once, a right-wing smear. Wolf Blitzer is even making a big deal about it, saying that "CNN did what any responsible news organization should do," which is investigate the claim. Yeah, as if that's what they have always done. Instead, this time, they actually went to Indonesia, discovered that the school was not a madrassa but instead a normal school where Christianity was taught side-by-side with Islam (but only once a week for both), and that there's nothing subversive or dangerous about anything there--nor was there ever. But CNN didn't stop there, they also went to lengths to show where the smear was coming from; Blitzer repeatedly mentioned Fox and "right-wing" news organizations and blogs as being responsible for spreading the story, and pointed out the connection between the conservative Washington Times and the web site that began the rumor.

Well, better late than never.

McCain the Flip-flopper

If Republicans had a field day labeling John Kerry as a "flip-flopper," then Democrats should have a bonanza with John McCain. After having been smeared by Bush with the assistance of the far right, McCain realized that he'd have to kowtow before the extremists if he wanted to be president, and has been busily prostrating himself before them, abandoning his prior "maverick" status. The Carpetbagger Report lists 15 significant McCain flip-flops over the past few years.

McCain used to support reproductive rights, gay marriage, campaign finance reform, and grassroots lobbying reform; now he's against all those things. McCain used to be against torture, tax cuts for the rich, and ethanol subsides; now he's for all of them. McCain used to disapprove of people like Jerry Falwell, Sam and Charles Wyly, Henry Kissenger, and Grover Norquist, but now he's warming up to them for support. He has also flip-flopped on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as a holiday, state support for the Confederate flag, and politicians visiting Bob Jones University. And he now claims that he always thought that the Iraq War would probably be "long and hard and tough," even though he originally said that we would win the conflict easily.

Who knows, there might even be enough video material in there to make a good commercial. But one thing is for certain (and I've said this before), McCain is no longer someone who will appeal to Democrats or Independents like he did in 2000. He may now have the support of the far right and the religious extremists, but he has hobbled himself for the rest of us--and 2006 demonstrated that the extremist right is no longer what it used to be.

McCain 2.0: No More Straight Talk Express

John McCain ain't what he used to be. He used to be palatable to most people, an alluring face in the scary crowd of right-wingers. Back when he rode the Straight Talk Express, he was the kind of dream candidate we often imagined--willing to talk for as long as necessary, speaking freely even on controversial issues. Not hiding and creating a plastic facade, like Bush did, not giving the usual practiced political sound-bite double-talk-and-run-off garbage. He was the Republican candidate that most Democrats would have been comfortable with, a true uniter-not-a-divider.

But that John McCain died when Bush smeared him all the way to South Carolina and back, in particular pushing the suggestion that McCain's adopted daughter (a Bangladeshi girl from Mother Teresa's orphanage) was his own illegitimate black child. Other rumors spread by Bush and his far-right and fundie allies included that McCain was gay and his wife a drug addict, and that McCain was insane even possibly a traitor.

Since then, John McCain learned a valuable lesson: don't cross the extremists in the Republican Party. And he has been practicing that wisdom in his ongoing-though-unofficial campaign, no longer allowing for straight talk, and paying obeisance to the religious extremists he once criticized, and has reversed himself on a number of issues he gained political capital for opposing in 2000. The message he is sending is, "I learned my lesson and I'll be a good boy now."

Although McCain is hoping to hang on to some of the appeal he gained back in 2000--and indeed, many on the left still feel more comfortable with him because they remember those days--it is about as clear as it can get that McCain has shifted remarkably to the right, chumming up to Bush and the religious right, and backing that up with his voting record, suggesting that he would still stay bought by the right-wing extremists even after he would be elected president. And it certainly doesn't help with many on the left that McCain is new best buds with Joe Lieberman, with some even saying McCain might even consider Lieberman as a VP candidate.

There is no more Straight Talk Express, no more centrist McCain, just a compromised, politicized shell. Mind you, he would still be ten times better than Bush, and there is still the hope that enough of the old McCain remains to make a difference in office. But the old McCain is gone, and what remains is too Bushified to be all that appealing.

Addenda: then there is also McCain's latest weasel: McCain was the first to come up with the idea of escalation in Iraq, back in October. At the time, he said that 20,000 troops would be sufficient, though he did say for "long term" deployment. When Bush first came out with the "Surge™" plan, McCain did not object--not for quite some time; even a day ago, he said he was not sure what numbers would do the job.

But now, he is now coming out and distancing himself from the whole idea--saying, in effect, that his idea was for 30,000 troops to be "sustained," not 20,000 troops for a season or two. This is pretty clearly a weasel, not just because McCain previously said that 20,000 troops would be enough, but because it was clear what Bush has been thinking for a week, maybe two, but McCain only now is saying his plan was different--only after pretty nearly universal opposition to Bush's plan has made itself evident, with no one believing that it will make a difference, except to possibly escalate the violence. And certainly, McCain has brought forth no evidence as to how an extra ten thousand or so troops for a few more seasons could achieve that would make the difference.

But McCain is still trying to have it both ways: though he has made it clear that "his" surge would need more troops for longer, and therefore if Bush's surge doesn't work it's not a "McCain" surge--he still is supporting Bush's surge. Probably for the same reason he came out for an escalation in the first place: because he wants to look like Bush wants to look, like he could do the job, but without the responsibility or the liability if the plan doesn't work.

So it's hard to see his new stance being anything but a weasel.

Minority Bill of Rights

Just when you think that Republican lawmakers can't become any more like whiny, hypocritical, infantile brats than they already are:

The ranking Republicans on two committees complained to the incoming Democratic chairmen Tuesday that the plans for the first 100 hours restrict their ability to participate. Several more Republicans are planning a news conference today to introduce a "minority bill of rights" they say is based directly on a plan that Pelosi proposed in 2004 while Democratic minority leader.

Not only are Republicans, who virtually shut out Democrats from making any laws over the past six years, whining now that they will be shut out for four days, they are demanding that the Democratic leadership pass a "minority bill of rights" which Republicans refused to pass when they were in the majority.

The depths to which they plumb are so breathtaking as to leave me speechless.

The Difference a Word, or a Piece of Paper, Can Make

It's interesting how things change when you see history from two different perspectives. See below two recountings of the 1984 election results from Indiana's 8th District. It has come up because of the situation in Florida's 13th District and the close vote there, and the options the Democrats have of simply not seating the Republican, who seems to have won by malfunctioning fiat of the paperless voting machines.

Here is the first telling of the '84 tale:

[In 1984, there was] a vicious dispute [in the House] over a contested election, this time in Indiana. After a recount, Republican Richard McIntyre was declared the winner by 34 votes over Democratic incumbent Frank McCloskey. The Indiana secretary of state, a Republican, certified the McIntyre victory, but the Democratic House refused to seat him and left the seat vacant for four months while a special task force recounted all the ballots. The task force decided--and the full House agreed along party lines--that the Democrat had won by four votes. Republicans charged that the Democrats had recounted the ballots until their man was ahead and then promptly shut down the count. Newt Gingrich, the future House speaker, labeled the refusal to seat the certified winner "the Watergate of the House," and led a walkout of GOP members from the chamber.

And here is the second:

In the 1984 election, Rep. McCloskey faced conservative state senator Rick McIntyre. Buoyed by President Reagan's strong coattails, McIntyre trailed McCloskey by only 72 votes after the initial vote count. A tabulation error, however, resulted in an overcounting of McCloskey votes and the Republican Indiana Secretary of State certified McIntyre as the winner by 34 votes, ignoring other recounted tallies that actually showed McCloskey was in the lead. The Democratic-controlled House refused to seat either McIntyre or McCloskey and conducted their own recount. In the end, the House seated McCloskey after declaring him the winner by just four votes (116,645 to 116,641). The vote was largely along partisan lines and in response every Republican House member marched out of the chamber in protest.

This is what makes it so hard to judge from the sidelines: which story is true? Are both? That's possible. The first story was told in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, and the slant is obviously that the Democrats overturned a valid vote. The second is the Wikipedia telling, which adds elements that make the Republican Secretary of State sound crooked. So how are we to take this story?

One disturbing thing is that were you to read just one of the two stories above, you would come out with the impression that one side played fair and the other did not. Another disturbing fact is that the full story is not easily findable; I know it must be out there, but probably not on a web page anywhere. But with the casual leaving out of a single fact (that the Indiana Secretary of State ignored other recounts, that there was a charge that Congressional Democrats stopped counting once their man won), the story takes on considerably different tacks.

However, there is something striking about this story: what the Republicans howled over in 1984, what Newt Gingrich later built his leadership upon ten years later, what they called an unacceptable injustice--pales in comparison to what that same party did in 2000. The Floridian Secretary of State using a ginned-up "felons" list, and then prematurely--and repeatedly--calling the race for the candidate of her own party. Ironically, this echoes not just what Republicans claimed the Democrats did in 1984, it echoes even more closely what the Indiana Secretary of State--a Republican--did to precipitate the crisis in the first place.

And now we come to the same impasse: in Florida's 13th, the seat vacated by Katherine Harris, by ironic coincidence, the election is in serious question. Voting machines (which left no paper trail) were reported by a large number of people to have left out the House race, or not recorded the vote; these reports took place in Sarasota County, where the majority of affected voters were Democrats; and in those same areas, impossibly large undervotes were recorded. All point to the conclusion that the voting machines malfunctioned (I only reluctantly restrain myself from using scare quotes around the word "malfunctioned"), and the clear winner was the Democrat. However, the Republican state government "verified" the undervote and certified the Republican candidate to be the winner.

This leaves House Democrats in a difficult position: do they repeat 1984 and refuse to seat the Republican? If the Wikipedia telling is to be trusted, the situations are closely similar, in that Republicans in the state government ignored valid evidence and instead certified their party's candidate to be the winner--but the Democrats stand to be tagged as the bad guys if they essentially do the exact same thing--even though they have far greater justification.

But Republicans have learned that in situations like this, possession is 9/10ths of the law; by having done their crookery first, they get to slag the Democrats for doing it later.

Hopefully, the courts will intervene and demand a special election--the only solution that is really viable. Here is a PDF file which lays out the argument very well. After all, the undervote was clearly not legitimate, and a special election (which Republicans thought was fine and dandy when the duly and legally elected California governorship was not to their liking) will serve to clarify the issue.

This time, without paperless voting machines, thank you very much.

Republican Values Roundup: Hypocrisy, Corruption, Terror, Fraud, and Violence

Bush opposes Democratic plans to allow Medicare to negotiate for drug prices so seniors will not be gouged for medication costs. The rationale: "What [Democrats] really want is government-run health care." Because private industry is doing such a great job. Democrats want to enable Medicare to have pharmaceutical companies duke it out for contracts, driving down the prices. Bush says that's bad.

At the exact same time, Bush is pressuring the British to open up their own government-run health care system to more American pharmaceutical firms. Why? Because "Allowing all new drugs to be used in the NHS would result in the companies 'fighting it out' on price," says a Bush administration official.

Somehow those two stories don't mesh right, but I can't quite put my finger on why that is....

Who's the person who likely sent white powder to liberal politicians and left-leaning media personalities? Who might act like a terrorist? One of those liberal al Qaeda lovers, perhaps? Nope. A right-wing Freeper, that's who. Wingnut Chad Castagana has been arrested on suspicion of having mailed the powder. I can only imagine the talk on the Free Republic: "Let's face it, David Letterman had it coming!"

Pennsylvania Republicans knowingly scammed minority voters, hiring 300 African-Americans to hand out bogus fliers to voters in mostly-black districts which identified the top Republican candidates as Democrats. This was not an isolated abuse, it was "calculated strategy," and an official one.

A sterling example of Republican's choice for representation: freshly re-elected Republican Congressman Mark Olson. Now arrested for beating his wife.

USA Today confirms Newsweek's poll: Bush fell 5% in their new poll to 33%. Expect other polls to mirror these results.

Though for the life of me, I can't imagine why his numbers are going down.

A Little Reminder

As part of their campaigning, Republicans warned America that if Democrats won the election, they would use their control of the Congress to investigate the Bush administration, and even try to impeach him. They painted this as an unacceptable outcome.

Crooks & Liars reminds us that twelve years ago, Newt Gingrich promised that if Republicans took control of Congress, that is exactly what they would do: investigate Clinton to death. And that is one promise he kept, right up to the impeachment.

Funny. A 15-year-old real estate deal and an extramarital affair justified massive investigations and a culture of abusing oversight for partisan political purposes; conservatives felt righteous in campaigning on that, and even more justified in carrying out innumerable investigations. But, a dozen years later, endless lies to start a war, endless corruption with big business and lobbyists, and endless violations of the Constitution are not cause to investigate a Republican president--and conservatives warn Democrats they'd better not even think of investigating Bush, or they'll smear them as partisan attack dogs.

Like I said, funny.

Plummet

The first post-election poll results are out, and Newsweek has Bush at (for them) an all-time low of 31%. It will bear watching for more results; Newsweek, while no a total outlier, is usually on the low end of results. Bush, having rated 35-41% in the week before the election, may not get a score higher than 36% this week, if the previous range of figures holds. No one is missing the fact that the poor showing in the midterm elections and the Rumsfeld resignation are mostly responsible for scoring palpable hits on his popularity (what little of it he has left). Both of these are bound to hit Bush hard, as both are things that will upset his base as much as, if not more than, anyone else.

Moonbats at Midnight

Some conservative pundits are acting even more bizarrely than usual, which is to say that they are meeting my expectations of them. Rush Limbaugh out-and-out admitted that he was lying to his audience about the Republican candidates (Olbermann video here), and that in fact, he hated the Republicans he was supporting (he calls what he did "support"?), but that he lied to everyone because "the stakes were high."

Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg wrote a concise narrative on what Bush should do. The final scene: Bush stands in front of the press corps dressed in nothing but a loincloth, his face bloody and his torso bearing the claw marks off a bear he just killed, as he throws the bear skin over Helen Thomas. And, no, I am not making that up.

Ann Coulter, meanwhile, shows no change from normal as she criticizes the Democrats for not assailing the Diebold company after their "paltry" win. Apparently, she's not paying attention to what we're saying, though she never does anyway. She then uses the "sixth year" of Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford's tenures to show how the pickups by the Democratic Party were "the death throes of a dying party." Seriously, you can't make stuff like this up.

Michelle Malkin backs up Coulter's assertion that just because the Democrats won control of both houses, that means Democrats don't think that Diebold machines are objectionable. What neither she nor co-moonbat Coulter realize is that Democratic candidates won these races despite all the election fraud, not because of it. What, they actually believe that Diebold machines are solid and unimpeachable, or somehow actually helped the Democrats this year? Yeah, right.

Among most conservatives, however, the party line is that Republicans deserved to be taken out to the woodshed and maybe this will beat some sense into them, that this is cathartic and will be a rebuilding term for them, while the Democrats really didn't win, they just benefitted from the Republicans' loss. Not entirely inaccurate, but it's also not much more than the best attempt to put a shine on the turd Republicans laid this year.

More Irregularities

Already there have been more than enough reports from more than enough places to raise serious suspicions about electronic voting machines. Machines switching people's votes to Republican candidates have been reported so far in Colorado, Arkansas, Missouri, Broward and Miami Counties in Florida, and in three places in Texas including San Antonio and Dallas.

Obviously, vote-hopping is not happening on every touch-screen voting machine, and it's not happening to every voter on machines that are affected. So, what is happening?

Jamie Holly on Crooks and Liars gives a clue when reporting on her own voting experience. On her county's ballot, there is a referendum ("State Issue 1") that was disqualified but was too late to remove from the ballot. However, an odd thing happened:

I just got back from voting and we suffered from a "glitch". As I was voting, my ballot started off with governor and then worked down through the list. After voting for all the politicians, up next were the issues. My first issue was State issue 1, an issue dealing with Ohio's Worker Compensation. I was expecting to see this, but knew my vote didn't count on it...

So after my voting experience went smoothly, the person I went down with had her turn to cast her ballot. She had the same ballot, the same ballot (iso) card, and the same machine, but her ballot did not appear the same. Instead her ballot started out with a blank blue screen and then went onto the candidates and the state issues, but issue 1 was not on her ballot. She called the poll worker over who said that "this has been happening on some machines". Well our polling place only has three machines and she was on the same machine as I just got done voting on, and this problem did not happen for me. ...

The most interesting thing I kept thinking of was Ken Blackwell on CNN this past weekend saying the machines do not have any problems, it was the poll workers. Well this poll worker did everything the same as she did with me (programmed the card for ballot 84), yet our ballots appeared differently. This machine was a Diebold touch screen machine, and as a programmer I can tell you that it is a definite software glitch. The poll worker did the exact same thing she did for me and all the end user variables were the same.

If the same machine, programmed in the same way, using identical ballots, one right after the other, acts in two different ways, that's an indication that someone has been dicking around with the programming.

One machine acting the same way with all voters will get shut down or fixed. But have the machines switch things around at random, and it can be explained away as a transient glitch. If it is reported more than once, poll workers are trained to identify it as some mere mechanical problem and follow a handbook set of instructions to "repair" the machine.

The reported vote-hopping incidents may indeed be a glitch, but not because of the vote-hopping. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I don't believe that the confirmation screens always show what is really being recorded on the machine--a machine which leaves no paper trail. Maybe when the vote-hopping is shown on the confirmation screen, the glitch is that the vote hopping should have been recorded and not shown to the voter for confirmation.

There is no hard evidence for this. Nothing except massive irregularities. Poll workers taking home voting machines. Voting machines being consistently proven to be wide open to hacking. Nationwide instances of voting machines acting in ways they have no business acting. The voting machines made by a company run by politically involved Republicans dedicated to delivering votes to the Republican Party--a company that fights tooth and nail to keep their machines from issuing a paper trail which can be compared to the electronic vote count. And a political party which has demonstrated an open contempt for election laws: sabotaging Democratic phone banks, illegal fake robocalls that masquerade as Democratic politicians but harass voters, illegally telling Democratic voters they will be arrested/deported if they vote, handing out bogus instructions to lead Democratic voters to the wrong polling place and on wrong dates, illegally impersonating election officials and calling Democratic voters to tell them they are not registered, "mistakenly" striking legitimate Democratic voters from voter rolls by claiming they are "felons," the list goes on and on and on.

Yep. No hard evidence, none at all. Call me wacko paranoid conspiracy theorist. I got nothin'.

Here We Go Again

Remember how Republicans wanted "every vote to be counted"? Well, there's a difference between saying it, and doing it.

The standard Republican policy in any election is simple: keep Democrats from voting. Get police (or people pretending to be police) to knock on doors and patrol streets in minority neighborhoods and intimidate people on election day. Send out mailers telling minorities and immigrants that they'll be jailed, deported, or otherwise penalized if they vote. If possible, create "felon lists" (filled with non-felon Democrats) and revoke their voting rights without informing them (in Florida, of course, they kept Hispanics off the list to protect Cubans who vote Republican). Rig the voting machines across the country to switch votes for other candidates over to Republicans (and never the other way around; keep track of these stories here), and call it a fluke. Undersupply voting machines in strongly Democratic districts to cause long lines and delays to discourage voters. And on election day, send armies of Republican operatives to polling places, demand that all voters be asked for restrictive IDs (while at the same time, hypocritically opposing voter-motor registration laws), and challenge as many Democrats as possible to scare people off and create logjams in the lines of voters. And more. One Republican in 2004 even talked openly about suppressing the vote in mostly black neighborhoods.

It has become so open, so blatant, and so common that it defies belief that nothing is done about it.

Republicans then have the gall to accuse Democrats of cheating--but what it comes down to is unsubstantiated claims, mostly based on bogus Republican challenges to suppress votes, a very small number of individuals or small groups with only the most tenuous connection to the Democratic Party committing fraud that only affects a handful of votes, and "signs" of voter fraud, like more people registering to vote in Democratic districts. Virtually no hard evidence, never systematic, and never claims about police, voting machines, or other officials or equipment directly involved in election matters.

Look, when one voting machine switches votes from one candidate to another, it's likely an error. When voting machines across the country consistently switch votes exclusively from non-Republican to Republican candidates, that's no coincidence. If one election official is found to be doing something fishy, it's an isolated incident; but when police, election officials, and candidates themselves are caught in illicit activities that overwhelmingly favor Republican candidates, it's a pattern. And sorry, but Democrats registering to vote is not "election fraud."

There is a massive amount of evidence of election fraud committed nationwide to win elections for Republicans, but it seems that people are unwilling to prosecute or even believe it because of what it would mean to the legitimacy of our Democracy. This attitude came forth in the 2000 elections, when we were willing to overlook egregious election fraud in order to maintain stability and avoid a constitutional crisis--and Republicans have been running with it ever since, using that fear of chaos as a tool to rig elections.

There is a point where "maintaining stability" costs far too much.

Just Like Professional Soccer

Remember that blogger who was violently grabbed, dragged, and thrown and pinned to the ground after he asked Senator Allen a question? The men who assaulted him were, to the best of my knowledge, even asked anything by the police, much less arrested or charged.

Well, it seems that the blogger (Mike Stark) tried to see Allen again, and Allen's supporters formed a human chain to stop him. When the blogger tried to get past, he "brushed" the side of one of the people, who, apparently just like those soccer players who feign torturous pain at every contact from an opposing player, promptly fell to the ground. Several sheriff's deputies immediately handcuffed and dragged away the blogger.

Not hard to see who the local constabulary backs. Unfortunately, this might even work for Allen; had the blogger not tried to do anything again, the one violent incident may have made people see Allen as surrounded by thugs. For the blogger to do something like this again will paint him, in the eyes of most people, as the one responsible for any trouble.

Success Has a Thousand Parents But a Political Liability Is an Orphan

Remember how Enron's Ken Lay was George Bush's best pal and biggest contributor in Texas, until the Enron scandal, and the Bush had never heard of him? Remember how Abramoff was the kingpin of Republican lobbyists, until he was indicted, and then no one in the Republican Party, especially the White House, ever recalled meeting him? (In fact, some Republicans whispered that he was actually serving Democrats.)

Now Merle Ted Haggard, an evangelical leader, has been implicated in a drug and sex scandal. (Haggard is credited with rallying conservative Christians behind Bush in get-out-the-vote rallies, and is said to be included in weekly phone conversations with Bush.) So far, Haggard has admitted only that he bought crystal meth but didn't use it and never had sex with that gay prostitute. Which probably won't go over well with conservatives, who have practically made a mantra out of criticizing Bill Clinton for his statements that he smoked pot but never inhaled, and never had sex with that woman.

But here's the inevitable reaction from the White House, which has close connections with Haggard:

He had been on a couple of calls, but was not a weekly participant in those calls. I believe he's been to the White House one or two times. . . . But there have been a lot of people who come to the White House.

Who would like to take the side of any bet that Haggard was part of only 2 or 3 calls and not more?

I know that it's a natural political reaction to distance yourself from a political liability, but how many times can you claim that you had never heard of a close friend, ally, or advisor who has fallen from grace before people start to wonder?

A side note on the affair: it seems like the media has finally gotten a juicy story (read: sex and/or drugs involved) to replace the Kerry non-story. Strange, I would have thought that the Bush administration publishing how-to documents on building a nuclear weapon on the Internet and keeping them there for weeks for terrorists, rogue states and dictators to read would maybe have qualified--but then, I'm not a news editor, so what do I know?

When Will Bush and Congressional Republicans Apologize for Spilling Nuclear Secrets?

Last week, Kerry misspoke and unintentionally said something that could be interpreted as a slight on the soldiers. After protesting that his intent was clearly and provably different, within a day or two, he apologized to the soldiers and the country, yet the media still makes a huge deal out of this.

Now it seems that the Bush White House, in a political election-year effort to make the Iraq War seem legitimate, released documents on the Internet from around the first Gulf War when Iraq was actually engaged in nuclear research, as well as more recent documents given to the U.N. in 2002 to ensure that Iraq was not building an atomic bomb then. The documents were not so relevant to Bush's war as they were to the first war; it is a common Bush tactic to try to confuse the two, as Hussein was a much more legitimate target back then.

The problem? The new documents publicly released on the Internet contain information on how to build a nuclear weapon.

According to the New York Times article:

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

These documents contained sections in the clear which had actually been redacted when given to the U.N.!

One can be assured that these documents have been downloaded by any number of rogue nations, aspiring nuclear dictators, and terrorist groups, putting them that much closer to developing an atomic weapon.

And yet, this story is not stirring the media nearly as much as the bogus Kerry non-story.

Nevertheless, we have the president making public dangerous nuclear secrets, at the urging of Republicans in Congress. Yes, it was an error, but then so was Kerry's statement; the difference is that Kerry's statement only bruised some feelings, and then only because the president, the GOP, and the media whipped up a frenzy about it.

So, when are President Bush and the Republicans in Congress going to apologize to the whole world for putting it into mortal danger?

I don't see Wolf Blitzer asking that question three dozen times a day.

"You've" Got to Be Kidding Me

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

The GOP is trying to avert some attention away from their multiple scandals and massive mismanagement by trying to turn the spotlight on Kerry. the above remark was included in a session where Kerry was joking about how bad things are under the Bush administration.

Actually, Kerry mangled the line. According to his script, he was supposed to say, "I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq." In other words, it was supposed to refer to Bush himself, not the troops.

But Kerry did mangle the line--it came out as something else. But let's consider for the moment as if Kerry had actually intended to say what he said.

The criticism is that, the GOP is claiming, Kerry was essentially saying "all soldiers are stupid." Which, of course, is an intentional misreading of even the misstatement, for maximum negative play. And once again, the GOP is using the honor of the soldiers as cover for their own sorry political asses--as if Republicans weren't knifing soldiers in the back while using them as political props.

The fact is, in "you get stuck in Iraq," the "you" does not even apply to soldiers: it applies to Bush. Bush gets stuck in Iraq. But hey, let's run with what the conservatives have played the line into, and assume Kerry was talking about the troops.

It is fact that the military is discarding virtually all qualifications for recruiting, and that they commonly target people who have no good options after they graduate from high school; it is similarly accepted that if you have no good options, the military might be one of the only ways out for you. None of this means "all soldiers are stupid," nor does it even mean that people who fail in school are poor soldiers--the military trains you well, and gives you ample motivation to become a lot more than what you were. The "uneducated" part applies only before the military trains you, not to active soldiers in the field, which is what the GOP is hoping to play this into.

So, the conservative misreading of what Kerry was misspeaking in jest was about having so few options that the military--previously a good alternative--is now a terrible one because you're likely to be jammed into the streets of Baghdad. And if that were such an attractive option, then why are so few MIT and Harvard grads signing up for duty?

What Kerry is made out to have said has real applications in practice--and the irony is, it's because of Bush's stretching the military beyond its limits that this is true.

The Republicans are excellent at taking remarks out of context and vilifying them. Look at Al Gore's "inventing the Internet" comment. He never said that, but did that stop conservatives? The guys credited for actually inventing the Internet said Gore's statement was accurate, and he deserves lots of credit. Gore's political contributions were in a large part even responsible for the multi-trillion-dollar Internet boom of the 90's; Republicans rewarded his efforts by taking a single statement, misquoting it, re-interpreting it, and then ridiculing him for it.

And if the Republicans have to take an intentional misinterpretation of an unintended misstatement by someone who's not running for office nor is a party leader, in order to try to smear the whole party in an election, you know they're low on ammo. That the press is running with this non-story (damn that liberal media!) is simply testament to their attraction to flash and not substance.

Short version: Kerry was right, in every interpretation of what he said. Doing poorly in school can leave you fewer options, one of the least favorable is to get sucked into the Iraq conflict. If that offends conservatives, they should consider why it is true.

Diebold and Broward: Stealing the Election Starts Early

If you hear the two names "Diebold" (the voting machine company) and "Broward" (the county in Florida) together in a news story, then you know it's going to be about election fraud.

And so it is--even a week before election day.

Diebold, of course, is run by a fervent Republican and Bush supporter who promised to deliver Ohio for Bush (and he probably did), whose voting machine company is not only incredibly reluctant to leave paper trails, but their machines are dead easy to hack and are infamous for "mistakes" in tabulation which "coincidentally" always favor Republicans.

Broward County was one of the two in Florida in 2000 which illegally allowed Republican Party operatives to take home invalid Republican absentee ballot forms and, again illegally, alter them to qualify. In 2004, the county went gung-ho in following an order to invalidate voter registrations over technicalities (PDF file) which would weigh against legitimate voters who were less literate (e.g., immigrants), which disproportionately disqualified Democrats.

So, seeing both these names in a news story today, what could possibly be going wrong?

Well, it seems that Diebold machines in Broward County are mysteriously switching votes from one candidate to another candidate. And again, coincidentally, it is switching votes for Democrats into votes for Republicans. What a shock!

Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

It took the man three attempts, with the help of a poll worker, to get the vote correct.

But this was not an isolated incident:

Mauricio Raponi wanted to vote for Democrats across the board at the Lemon City Library in Miami on Thursday. But each time he hit the button next to the candidate, the Republican choice showed up. Raponi, 53, persevered until the machine worked. Then he alerted a poll worker.

All the incidents reported were, coincidentally, people trying to vote Democratic and instead being recorded as voting Republican. And frankly, I would not trust that even the final "corrected" vote was recorded in the machine's records accurately, just because the confirmation screen said so.

And what was the lame-ass explanation? According to Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney, the "screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync," leading to the wrong vote being recorded.

How the hell can a screen "slip out of sync"? These machines rely on the same technology used on ATMs, which are used in similarly heavy fashion; have you ever heard of the screens on ATM machines "slipping out of sync"? Have you ever asked for $40 and gotten $80 instead? Not to mention that, even if your machines are of such crappy quality that "slipping" occurs, you would naturally space the virtual buttons apart widely enough so that a vote for one candidate would never register as for another--that it would, instead, not register at all, or register as an error, immediately alerting the voter, and not waiting for the voter to hopefully catch the slip-up at the end of the process. Bad engineering on top of bad engineering--unless, of course, it is deliberate engineering.

But not to worry: the easy-to-follow "15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual."

Also, Cooney said that it's all OK because "It is resolved right there at the early-voting site."

Yeah, all the slip-ups that are noticed and corrected. The others, however, go on record as votes for Republicans by Democrats.

Coincidentally.

The Saddam Verdict and Political Timing

Karl Rove is probably crapping his pants in rage over this news: the chief prosecutor in the trial of Saddam Hussein says that the court is encountering difficulties and may have to delay the announcement of the verdict. The original date set for the verdict was November 5th, a date clearly influenced (despite all the fervent denials) by the Bush administration, as it would turn the American news cycle pro-Bush and perhaps pro-Republican for two days just before the midterm elections.

In a perfect world, the verdict should not benefit Bush. It should remind people that Iraq is a disaster, that Saddam Hussein, even as the butcher that he was, was less bloody a despot in Iraq than Bush is turning out to be. And let's face it, does anyone doubt what the verdict will be? It's practically as formulaic as any Hollywood script could be, the mother of all anti-climaxes. But it's a PR show piece, just as fake as the now-legendary toppling of Hussein's statue, but also just as illogically influential on public opinion.

One has to wonder at the possible delay in the verdict: are the Iraqis responding to the criticisms that they are political puppets of the Bush administration and holding back the verdict as a way of showing that they run the show? Or is it simply yet another case of events in Iraq not running as the administration planned? It would certainly serve them right--if the Bush administration can't make Iraq function correctly, why should they expect their political machinations there to work any more smoothly?

Meanwhile, the "liberal" media, instead of investigating the timing of the event, and instead of reporting on legitimate domestic concerns about the Bush administration's hand in the timing of the verdict's scheduled release, and instead of noting how time and again, the Bush White House has timed and orchestrated event after event in Iraq on a political calendar--instead of any of that, the press is highlighting a complaint by Saddam's attorney that the timing of the verdict is political. Instead of paying attention to the compelling facts which lead one to the obvious conclusion that this is indeed all timed politically, the "liberal" media is branding that idea as one held prominently by Saddam Hussein--a decision that could not be better designed to make people disbelieve in what is clearly the truth.

Gay Marriage--Will It Work for the GOP Again?

Running out of options and heading for the doghouse but fast, the GOP was heartened by a New Jersey Supreme Court judgment the other day which said that while gay couples are not entitled to marriages, they are entitled to equal benefits. The GOP was not heartened by the denial of marriage, they were filled with joy that a high court gave any union rights at all to gay couples--that gives the GOP ammunition to scare the evangelicals with. While the ruling was not in favor of gay marriage, it was close enough for a desperate Republican Party to grab it and run with it. Gay marriage having worked so well to their advantage in the past, they're hoping it will work the same way again.

There may be a problem with that, however. In light of David Kuo's new book which uncovered the contempt that Republicans have for the religious right, tied together with the fact that while gay marriage is trotted out every election year to scare people, after the election the GOP abandons the issue (having gay marriage even be possible is too valuable for them to actually outlaw it), evangelical voters might actually be catching on, finally, to the scam.

And, as it has been pointed out, gay marriage has been legal in Massachusetts for two years now, and there has been no sign of heterosexuals abandoning the ceremony because gays can marry. The stats for marriage (PDF file) in Massachusetts in 2003-2005 tell the story. In total, 36,225 couples were married in 2003, 41,549 in 2004, and 39,074 in 2005. In 2004, 6200 gay and lesbian couples got married as soon as it was legalized there; 1900 gay and lesbian couples married there in 2005. Subtract those numbers from the totals, and you have:

2003: 36,225 heterosexual marriages
2004: 35,349 heterosexual marriages
2005: 37,174 heterosexual marriages

Average out the numbers for 2004 and 2005, and it equals 2003 almost exactly (36,261.5). So far, the stats bear out the notion that gay marriage has zero effect on heterosexual marriage. None whatsoever. You might argue that the effects could be long term--but you would have no evidence to back you up. The only data out there so far points in the opposite direction.

Not that Republicans ever had any problem with using a good scare tactic that was completely unsubstantiated by fact.

Stay the Course

Check out the latest Democratic ad, which nails Bush for denying he ever said "stay the course" about Iraq. The ad compiles no fewer than 15 times Bush, Cheney, and Snow said that we must "stay the course" in Iraq--11 of those times Bush himself said it. Were it not for the ominous music, it would play like a Daily Show segment, because right after seeing Bush repeat "stay the course" so many times, the ad shows Bush saying, "look, we've never been 'stay the course.'" Outstanding.

One critique--the ad should have changed the music and looming titles at the end when it says to vote Democratic. But that's a small nit. Otherwise, the ad is perfect; it not only points out the failed strategy in Iraq, a resonating theme among voters this Fall, but it also shows Bush up as the liar he is. Not so much a criticism of congressional candidates, but as a criticism of the party--which has followed Bush's lead almost slavishly--it should work quite well.

Update: apparently, the ad only had limited time to show Bush saying "stay the course" 11 times. Keith Olbermann (via C&L) showed Bush saying it 29 times, after Tony Snow claimed he could only find eight such instances--all this after Bush claimed he never said it. A Google search of the White House press release directory found 160 hits for the term.

Republicans Use the Troops, but Clearly Hate Them

I pointed out here, here, here, and here, Republicans disrespect and work against the interests of Americans serving in the armed forces. While they use them shamelessly as campaign props and human shields, Republicans then turn around and cut their pay and their benefits, whilst doing little or nothing to get them sufficient body armor or other supplies (no shortage of resources sent to Halliburton), not to mention giving a crap about any strategy in Iraq or Afghanistan beyond their own self-serving political agenda.

But now there's new startling, hard, cold evidence beyond the newspaper reports and uncovered scandals: a non-partisan veteran's organization took a list of bills presented in the Senate which would impact troops and veterans (veterans' benefits, healthcare, medical research dedicated to injured soldiers, etc.), and rated senators based upon how they voted on these matters. Although the veteran's group did not show the rankings by grade, Bob Geiger published an ordered list sorted by how each senator performed--and the results are striking:

As you can see, the top of the list is dominated by Democrats--with only independent Jim Jeffords breaking up the monopoly--and Republicans exclusively fill up the bottom of the list. No Democrat scored worse than "B-," and no Republican scored better than "C." The strongest veterans' advocate among the GOP faithful scored worse then the lowliest Democrat. (This list is strikingly similar to one showing how Republican and Democratic presidents performed in job creation--with the worst Democrat outperforming the best Republican, with Republicans populating only the bottom half of the list.)

There's your proof, right there. Republicans will use the troops for their selfish political manipulations, but they won't lift a finger to actually support veterans who have served our country.

This leaves no doubt: if you want to support the troops, vote Democratic. If you want the troops to get shafted, vote Republican.

Hat tip to DKos.

Are the Republicans Planning an October Page Surprise?

Republicans are self-destructing over the Foley page scandal, and have desperately, crazily been trying to find some way, any way at all, to smear the Democrats with this so they can say, "See? It's not Republicans, it's the Congress as a whole!" This way, voters will not be turned away from Republicans at the polls any more than they'll be turned away from Democrats.

This technique worked like a charm with the Jack Abramoff scandal. Abramoff worked exclusively for Republicans, and because the GOP runs both houses of Congress, almost all the graft was Republican. But there is always graft on both sides, no matter how lopsided, and so Republicans didn't have much trouble portraying the whole thing as a problem the Democrats somehow shared in equally. Since the media is always afraid to be tagged as "liberal," whenever a conservative scandal breaks they are more than willing to trump up any Democratic involvement, no matter how minor, as somehow being equal; this they did in the Abramoff scandal, and the public bought into it.

The Foley scandal is different: a Republican committed the initial offense, Republicans leaked the story, Republicans accused each other, and Republicans covered it up--Republicans were the only ones involved in the commission and publication of the scandal, from beginning to end. Conspiracy theories blaming Democrats failed for lack of any evidence whatsoever. Attempts to smear Democrats with the same Bush sounded lame, as you had to go back decades to find a Democrat guilty of the same offense as Foley--and the main charge against Republicans is not just the emails and IMs, but that the Republicans knew and covered it up.

But recently, there are hints that Republicans might try to accuse a Democratic politician of having his own page scandal. So far, the hints have been nebulous, and do not even mention party affiliations--only that the congressman is male and the page is female. It started less than two weeks ago when Tucker Carlson leaked that a new scandal may be breaking: "Foley's not the only one who behaved in an inappropriate way with pages - there is at least one other, a heterosexual, and his name, I believe, will come out."

And now, today, Republican congressman Jerry Weller of Illinois is saying that he has information on inappropriate actions by a fellow congressman with a page. Again, no party affiliations are mentioned.

This might not be the same thing Carlson was talking about, and Carlson may have just been repeating a wild rumor without foundation. But seeing as how Republicans have been trying every conceivable sham to smear some of their own excrement onto their Democratic colleagues, I would not be in the least bit surprised if this were building up to something. And the fact that this is coming only from Republicans also smells suspicious. When they accuse their own, they blurt it out, they don't build up to it for weeks.

The fact that it is taking so long to be revealed makes sense, especially if it's a bogus charge; it would benefit Republicans to wait until the last week before elections to spring this, so they could go full-force with a campaign to say, "See? Democrats are just as bad!" without giving enough time for the truth about the allegations to come to light.

Hopefully, I'm just being paranoid. But when it comes to Republican election tactics, being paranoid is usually a pretty safe way of seeing things.

That Damned Liberal Media!

A conservative "watchdog" group has a new twist on the Foley scandal: smear the Democrats and the media at the same time:

The establishment media has a double standard when reporting the sexual proclivities of Republicans versus Democrats, a media watchdog group found in a report on the Mark Foley scandal.

Over the past 12 days, more than 150 stories on Foley aired on morning and evening news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC, the Media Research Center, parent company of Cybercast News Service, found. Compare that to 19 stories over one year in the scandal involving Mel Reynolds - a Democratic congressman from Illinois convicted in 1995 of having sex with a 16-year-old campaign worker.

"The numbers are clear and shocking: 152 stories on Mark Foley over 12 days, yet only 19 stories on Mel Reynolds over an entire year. This double standard reeks of political partisanship and proves how far the liberal media will go to downplay the sexual degeneracy of a liberal Democrat and trumpet the sexual degeneracy of a Republican," said MRC President Brent Bozell in a statement.

The biggest difference between the two cases that these clowns are intentionally ignoring is that in the Foley case, virtually the entire Republican Party leadership was indicted as knowing about Foley and yet doing nothing. That element was missing from the Reynolds case. The "Media Research Center" conveniently glosses over the fact that this difference puts a wide chasm between the two stories. Had the Foley scandal been just about Foley, it would have gotten, at most, the same play as the Reynolds story. The story would have died out within days.

It's the complicity of major House players which is the real story, and that's why it has legs.

Tempting Faith: It Just Keeps on Coming

More good news for the Republicans: now their core is revolting. Rather, I should say, it probably will in the next series of revelations coming out about the Republican Party. And like the Foley scandal, the shots are coming from the right, not the left, making the charges that much more significant.

If you read the political blogs, you'll have heard about Tempting Faith, a book written by former Bush White House staffer David Kuo. Kuo used to be a "special assistant to the president," and was the number-two man in Bush's "Office of Faith-Based Initiatives." Kuo's primary charge is that while the Bush White House claimed to be loyal to the evangelicals, behind closed doors they ridiculed them, and continued to make promises they knew they would never back up.

“Tempting Faith’s” author is David Kuo, who served as special assistant to the president from 2001 to 2003. A self-described conservative Christian, Kuo’s previous experience includes work for prominent conservatives including former Education Secretary and federal drug czar Bill Bennett and former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Kuo, who has complained