telescreen.org

Man oh man, cluster ballooning looks like fun:

Wow, they're strict.

I am going to vote on Tuesday, and no one is going to stop me.

Not clumsy intimidation tactics, not long lines, not Republicans who rip up Democrats' voter registration forms.

(Incidentally, I am worried that they will try to prevent me -- I re-registered so I could change my address, but never got confirmation. However, I am still registered at my old precinct, so I will vote there.)

I am bringing photo ID, proof of my address, and a camera. I have the Election Protection card so I know who to call if someone interferes. I know where my polling place is. I know I can get time off from work to vote, if I need it.

Because if you fuck with my right to vote -- to fulfill my duty of expressing my opinions in a democracy -- you will be held accountable.

Whatever it takes, indeed.

Hey, I got a letter to the editor published today. For the first time since second grade. In a tabloid-y free-giveaway newspaper, but still.

(My burgeoning career as a professional crank is coming along nicely.)

The G. W. & Crew Autumn Flip-Flop Catalog. (via Xoverboard.)

George W. Bush, in an unguarded moment. I wonder...who was it directed at? Welfare mothers? The middle class? The United Nations? Anyone who isn't an Ivy League-educated, rich conservative with a President for a father and a Senator for a grandfather? Anyone who actually had to go to jail for their cocaine use or DUIs? Hans Blix? Mohamed el-Baradei? The 1000 US servicemembers who have died in Iraq? Their families? The people held without charge in Guantanamo? The adults and children tortured at Abu Ghraib? The list is endless.

Or maybe it's how he can entertain himself while waiting to go on camera. Video, via BoingBoing, here.

You've come a long way, baby.

Scott Frigging Stapp is singing "God Bless America" at the World Series?????

That's it, the Apocalypse is nigh.

Happy birthday, subway.

Correction in yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

"News Corp.'s Fox News was incorrectly described in a page-one article Monday as being sympathetic to the Bush cause."

(via Wonkette.)

ADDENDUM: Gawker has more, from this AFP article:

News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch denies his Fox News Channel is biased towards US President George W. Bush but says his newspapers will continue to back Republican foreign policy.
Fox is the subject of a documentary entitled "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's war on journalism" alleging the news service is slanted against Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry but Murdoch denied it had an agenda.

"We're not in the least bit biased, we're a fair and balanced company, our slogan is fair and balanced," he told reporters at News Corp's annual general meeting in the Australian city of Adelaide.

Murdoch said Fox News was redressing the imbalance of coverage by other US networks.

"It's full of Democrats and Republicans, the others only have Democrats," he said. "We don't take any position there at all."

"With our newspapers, we have indeed supported Bush's foreign policy and we remain that way."

(my emphasis above.)

Hmph. Fair and balanced indeed. (How exactly do you spell "Shhhyyyeahhh!"?)

Mafia Soldiers For Bush/Cheney.

This weekend, B. and I took Dana's suggestion and went to an open studio at Crane Street Studios in Long Island City. We saw lots of artists whose work we enjoyed, but we both really drooled over Robert Walden Jr.'s "ontological road maps."

I'd noticed the Crane Street Studios building from the 7 train several times before, and I always wanted to take a closer look at the great aerosol art that adorns its walls. (Courtesy of the 5 Points graffiti art collective, I learned.)

Some pictures from Saturday:

Nice headline:

Clinton Pumps Base From the Stump

I guess he's feeling better, then.

“I’m going out to let my real talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I’d never lip-synch. It’s just not me.”
--Ashlee Simpson, Lucky magazine

ADDENDUM: Oh, I get it now. It's not her fault. It's the acid-reflux disease.

So the Bush Administration's ill-thought-out occupation didn't think to secure the weapons base, where we (and the International Atomic Energy Agency) knew there were 380 tons of military-grade explosives. And those explosives are now gone. Actually, according to the NYT, they've been gone for more than a year...a fact which the White House is declining to address. (This amount includes large amounts of RDX, which the Wikipedia calls "the most powerful and brisant of the military explosives.")

That's more than enough for over seven hundred and fifty thousand individual bombings on the scale of Lockerbie. The mind reels.

Well, I guess now we know where the explosives that are used to attack and kill our troops come from. Because of our negligence, our own people are dying over there.

Don't forget that the IAEA knew exactly where these explosives were, and was making sure they didn't go anywhere. Until the US kicked them out of Iraq, and didn't bother to secure the explosives.

From Talking Points Memo, which is alluding to the Nelson Report, which broke this story:

One administration official told Nelson, "This is the stuff the bad guys have been using to kill our troops, so you can’t ignore the political implications of this, and you would be correct to suspect that politics, or the fear of politics, played a major role in delaying the release of this information."

In response to questions about whether the material might have been smuggled out of Iraq, another source told Nelson, "It’s still in Iraq, and this is the most likely primary source of the explosives which have been used to blow up Humvees and in all the deadly car bomb attacks since the Occupation began.”

"Mission Accomplished", indeed. (My emphasis above.)

Once again, because of the Bush Administration's bottomless perfidy and unrelenting incompetence, US troops and innocent civilians are dead.

(But go ahead and vote for Bush -- he makes us safer! Because he says so, it must be true!)

ADDENDUM: Josh Marshall is doing some particularly fine work on this story, chronicling the Administration's assorted zigzags, lies, and disingenuity as they scramble to try to minimize this mess.

Case in point: this TPM post:

From McSweeney's:

Bands and Musicians Whose Careers Would Be Quite Different Had They Initially Misspelled Their
Own Names.

SomethingAwful takes on misinterpreted movie posters. (via Czeltic Girl.)

"I voted for Kerry, and a check mark for Bush appeared."

Some discouraging news out of New Mexico. (via Looka.)

So tell me again...why is it that verified voting is a bad idea?

No, this story isn't out of the Onion, and no, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Three Oregon schoolteachers were threatened with arrest and thrown out of a Bush rally last Thursday. Campaign officials told them their shirts were "obscene."

Here is a picture of the three teachers in their T-shirts. Judge for yourself:

The picture's a little small, so here's what their T-shirts say:

"PROTECT OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES"

*boggle*

Yep, definitely obscene.

Obscene, that is, to people who think that free speech and dissent is criminal, treasonous behavior. Obscene to people who don't care about truth or democracy. Obscene to people for whom power -- and enriching one's buddies -- is an end in itself. Obscene to people who talk an awful lot about freedom, but don't seem to be doing much to actually ensure its survival.

But I forgot. They're teachers, so they must all be terrorists anyway.

Forget this Commission on Presidential Debates shiznit...I present to you the Hip-Hop Debate.

Aw, poop.

So, congratulations to the Red Sox. The Yankees are obnoxious, and so are a great many of their fans. So it's fun to see them choke. Especially at home.

Schadenfreude, y'know?

I've long held that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Microsoft. They're huge, implacable, steamroller their way over everyone else by dint of money and size. It's always easy to pull for a team that always wins.

I don't really have any Astros/Cards loyalties, but I guess I'd have to pull for the Astros. I've been to a bunch of games in the Astrodome (lo these many years ago) and none in St. Louis.

Besides, a Houston-Boston World Series would just be too perfect. It'd be just like the election. Think about it...Karl Rove could be the first-base coach, scattering tacks along the base paths. Fox News and Matt Drudge could call the game ("Bottom of the ninth, two outs, Boston is up by seven runs. Looks like they're in trouble!"), and Scalia could be the umpire.

This seems strange:

NBC is turning Rockefeller Center into a giant television studio on Election Night, covering the landmark skating rink with a jigsaw puzzle map of the United States and turning the side of the General Electric building into an electronic bar graph. . .

The whiz-bang plans _ one competitor has already dubbed the set "democracy on ice" _ are meant to evoke a time when Election Night was a celebration of how Americans come together to make a decision on their future, Brokaw said Wednesday.

"People felt included on Election Night," he said. "I worry that in the past 10, 15 years or so the American political process has been more about exclusion."

A stadium-sized TV screen will be visible behind the anchors. The skating surface will be transformed into a huge map, with puzzle pieces of each state colored red or blue for President Bush or John Kerry put in place when results are clear.

"I think it will take three people to carry Texas," said Mark Lukasiewicz, executive producer of that night's coverage.

Red and blue lights will be superimposed on the GE building, for a graphic signifying how many electoral votes Bush or Kerry have earned.

NBC has also built a "Democracy Plaza" display at Rockefeller Center that has a replica of the Oval Office and will show a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Bank of America helped pay for that display, but wasn't involved in building the Election Night studio, an NBC spokeswoman said.

A couple weeks ago, I was walking up to the Ditmars Blvd. subway stop, when I noticed a table with Lyndon LaRouche literature on the sidewalk. A LaRouche supporter approached me.

LaRouche supporter: "Hey, do you want to get a wackjob out of the White House?"
Me, pointing at his "LaRouche For President" sign: "I sure don't want to put another one in there!"
Him, grinning: "He's not a fascist anymore!"
Me: "Well, that would be an improvement..."

Odd, yet good-natured exchange.