Please, Please Report Election Problems Immediately

The number to call is 1-866-OUR-VOTE which dials as 1-866-687-8683.

Don't wait.

Predictions

Anyone care to offer some about what we'll see by this time tomorrow related to mid-term elections?

I've got a few predictions and not all of them make me happy. Love to hear some of yours, too.

1. It will be early morning Wednesday before we have any great wisdom about where Capitol Hill majority lands.
2. In fact, the last news you hear tonight about #1 will likely be contradicted when you wake up tomorrow.
3. There will be upsets - as in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 - which deliver totally inexplicable results in some areas; each time, it will favor the Republican candidate. For example, Ricky Santorum may win in Pennsylvania where no self-respecting dog (I mean, Ricky is obsessed with bestiality! I've never heard anyone but him go on about it so loudly, so often) would vote for him.
4. Nothing will be done to properly investigate the problems related to #2 and #3.
5. Locally, I do expect Douglas (ugh) to retain the Vermont gubernatorial race, Dubie (dubie doo) as try-to-find-him-I-dare-you lt. governor, Bernie Sanders to U.S. Senate, Peter Welch (please - I've prayed to every god I know including Gu, the God of science fiction) for U.S. House.

Well, Voting Day Is Off To a Rousing Start!

Although I kept my pledge not to blog any more last night, I happened to read until about 5 this morning which would have been slightly OK if not for the fact that before 7 am, dogs everywhere are barking and there was this really loud pounding on a downstairs door we never use.

I creep out of bed and look through my half moon picture window to see this honking huge official looking car with lights and accessories engaged. Now, my house sits back a half mile or so from the road along a winding private entrance to the driveway so it's kinda hard to just accidentally come here.

So I step up onto my window to see if I can see who's knocking.

Oh, goodie. It's a cop! A large one. Granted, some might find him attractive but - I dunno - uniforms do nothing for me.

Now I'm just awake enough to start going through my list of relative recent transgressions. But man, I haven't even been late returning my library books!

Was it what I said about Governor Douglas last night? Or about IP's tire burn?

That call I made to Rove's office? Or the slightly snarkier one to the RNC to denounce their miserable, misbegotten robo calls to infuriate independent and Dem voters?

Thankfully, there are only 20 stairs from the bedroom to the solarium so I didn't have time to work up a full head of paranoia before I answered the door (albeit in my pjs - I don't do robes).

And then? It wasn't even anything interesting.

In fact, all it did was give me a vague migraine yet got me to work a couple hours early. ::yawn::

Hope your voting day is even less interesting.

When Next We Meet...

I've besieged you with information - and sarcasm, sorry, it's encoded in me like DNA - and Blogger is struggling to stay afloat with heavy posting it appears.

So I'm going to stop blogging until Voting Day.

Yes, that means I'll check back sometime after midnight (whether it's 12:01 AM or PM, I leave you to guess).

I will not ask anyone to vote a certain way. I simply will not.

All I will say is, again:

Your vote IS your voice.

On Tuesday, speak loudly and speak clearly.

Speak for yourself, your loved ones, your communities, state, nation, and world.

What More Can American Citizens Do For President Bush?

Hey, JFK may have coined, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country?" but the Bush Administration seems to have a way to make this happen!

From Joe at Hard-Boiled Dreams of The World tells us all about The Civilian Inmate Labor Program (maybe a breaking and entering charge will automatically send you to Iraq as a cop?):

File this one under Sounding More and More Like Nazis. From the U.S. Army’s own website, this 2005 document, The Civilian Inmate Labor Program, provides how-to guidelines for using military bases to lock up US citizens and put ‘em to work!

This regulation provides guidance for establishing and managing civilian inmate labor programs on Army installations. It provides guidance on establishing prison camps on Army installations. It addresses record keeping and reporting incidents related to the Civilian Inmate Labor Program and/or prison camp Applicability. This regulation applies to the Active Army, the Army National Army management control process. Contents (Listed by paragraph and page number) Guard of the United States, and the U.S. Army Reserve unless otherwise stated.

Coupled with the massive detention camps Halliburton is building on US soil (contract worth $385 million—your tax dollars…) to prepare for martial law, and it looks like…well, draw your own conclussions.

"George Allen Put His Foot In His Mouth and Just Kept Sucking!"

This from Ana Marie Cox, now from Time online but formerly of Wonkette, on Scarborough Country. For a woman once so devoted to discussing ass fucking, she did manage to draw a laugh from me tonight.

Best Keith Olbermann Special Comment Yet: "Mr. Bush, Why Did You Take Us Into Iraq?"

[Ed: Yes, the formatting is fucked, but Blogger servers keep going down so... uh... in the words of Bush, "What the fuck you I care if you're inconvenienced as long as I'm havin' a good time!"]

"Sir, you have been making it up as you go along."

"Where are the checks and balances?"

Keith Olbermann just said, in his "Special Comment" at the end of MSNBC Countdown, what I think most Americans would like to say to Mr. Bush. This, particularly after Bush told us over the weekend that the Iraq war WAS about oil.

Go here for it all.

Sir, you have been making this up as you went along.

This country was founded to prevent anybody from making it up as they went along.

Those vaunted Founding Fathers of ours have been so quoted up, that they appear as marble statues: like the chiseled guards of China, or the faces on Mount Rushmore. But in fact they were practical people and the thing they obviously feared most was a government of men and not laws.

They provided the checks and balances for a reason.

No one man could run the government the way he saw fit -- unless he, at the least, took into consideration what those he governed saw.

A House of Representatives would be the people's eyes.

A Senate would be the corrective force on that House.

An executive would do the work, and hold the Constitution to his chest like his child.

A Supreme Court would oversee it all.

Checks and balances.

Where did that go, Mr. Bush?

And what price did we pay because we have let it go?

Saddam Hussein will get out of Iraq the same way 2,832 Americans have and thousands more.

He’ll get out faster than we will.

And if nothing changes tomorrow, you, sir, will be out of the White House long before the rest of us can say we are out of Iraq.

While Afghans Die, Fox News Staff Laughs At "Top Cock" Joke

When the bimbo reading news about how many cops of a region of Afghanistan, including the top cop, were killed, she slipped and said "top cock" which made all of Fox News laugh! In fact, viewers really did not hear the news of all those police deaths in Bush's Afghanistan because the bimbo was laughing with the "talent".

teehee

Bush Administration Can't Even Keep Nuclear Plans Safe At Los Alamos National Nuclear Lab

CBS News is describing the security breach at Los Alamos potentially devastating, including nuclear plans. These turned up in a drug raid.

Hell, the way the Bushies operate, they were the one selling the drugs to pay for nuclear material to plant in Iran. Yes, this is wild and wacky so I hardly state this as fact.

But what about Team Bush hasn't been lately?

As If They Didn't Foul Up Enough, Bush Administration Questions Scotland's Move Toward Indepence

Considering the Bush Administration has NO experience whatsoever in functioning in an independent nation (not given their raid on the U.S. Constitution and the Magna Carta where in the year 1215 the concept of habeas corpas came into being), I really don't think they should be giving advice to Scotland. Do you?

Remember all the happy horseshit about independence we got for Afghanistan and Iraq? Yet look what they do with Scotland:

THE US government has made a dramatic intervention into Scottish politics after a senior diplomat said the Bush administration would “probably” prefer independence not to happen.

Lisa Vickers, the new US consul in Scotland, questioned the effect of separation on American energy firms and criticised the SNP’s anti-Nato policy. She also speculated about whether an independent Scotland would become a member of the European Union.

The official’s comments are controversial because independence looks set to be one of the key issues during next year’s Holyrood election campaign.

An opinion poll last week found a majority of Scots favoured breaking up Britain and revealed the SNP was ahead in the popular vote.

The Nationalists’ flagship policy is to hold a referendum on independence during their first four-year term in government. Their election hopes were boosted in recent weeks by a £100,000 donation from businessman Sir Tom Farmer and encouragement from the leader of Scotland’s Catholics, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who said he expected independence “before too long”.

But the independence debate has taken an unexpected turn in the light of the comments made by Vickers, the US government’s “voice” in Scotland.

In an interview with the Sunday Herald, she said the US would “probably” prefer the UK to remain united and insisted there were “various elements” of the SNP’s independence policy that had not been fully explained.

Gee, I wonder what "our senator from Scotland", Arlen Specter has to say. [Clinton impeachment reference here; Specter voted no on impeachment.]

So What Was The Rove - Republican October Surprise?

Myblood asks an excellent question, the answer to which I have a couple of possible yet hardly definitive choices.

What do YOU believe was the Rove - GOP October Surprise? Please answer in Comments; I'd love to see what people have to say.

We know they got surprised a few times in October. And strangely, it was on nothing that should have come as a surprise to them whatsoever.

For All Americans: The Best Answer For The GOP's Favorite "It's Not a Democracy, It's a Republic!" Diatribe

(Hey, I only pull out words like "diatribe" when I'm pissed.)

Ed Weissman at Green Mountain Daily does a bang-up job. I'll give you a big snip, but visit his diary at Green Mountain Daily for the whole thing:

This is a republic not a democracy. Of all the right wing claims, this is the most insipid and meaningless. It not only reveals the right's contempt for democracy, but their basic inability to reason.

For something to be A and not B, A and B must be mutually exclusive. One can say, in a silly example: this is an elephant not an ant. Democracies and republics are not mutually exclusive. Democracy refers answers the question: who governs? Republic refers to the question: how is the head of state chosen? The opposite of a republic is a monarchy. In a republic, the head of state is chosen by some mechanism of choice. In a monarchy, the head of state is determined by some form of the hereditary principle. Forms of government can range from democracies to constitutional non-democracies to the authoritarian and to the totalitarian. All these forms of government can be found in republics in monarchies. Fascist Italy was a totalitarian regime with a monarch as the figurehead; Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian regime that can also be called an absolute monarchy. In either a republic or a monarchy, the head of state may either be a figurehead or also the head of government. Monarchies that are constitutional democracies include the UK, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Australia etc. Republics that are constitutional democracies with a figure head as head of state include Germany, Israel, India. Republics with a head of state who is also head of government include the US, Costa Rica, and South Africa. Constitutional democracies may be based on the parliamentary model or the Presidential. Although the President of South Africa is both head of state and head of government, the system is parliamentary.

That Isn't Autumn In The Air In Vermont

No, it's the God-knows-how-harmful huge test tire burn in Ticonderoga (NY) for International Paper. Jim Hogue of Calais is correct: Vermont should NOT be used as the guinea pig of IP.

And what kills me even more than trying to breathe is the fact that Vermont voters will once again return Jim Douglas, a true Bushie, to the capitol dome in Montpelier as governor.

Please. If you want to write to say you disagree about Jim Douglas being a Bush toadie, please effing save your breath. I've kept a very close watch on Governor Automaton, his "interests" and his vetoes, and it's just not gonna fly with me.

A True Yankee In King George's Court: Don't Get Kerryed Away

I really hope John Kerry never tries to run again for anything else except to get re-elected as senator in Massachusetts.

Really. He screwed in 2004 (not even in the Bill Clinton sort of technical non-screw sorta way) both in softball against Bush, in not contesting a virtually certain steal in Ohio, and then last week when he ran home after the GOP got Karl Rove on his case.

With that said, however, I still do not know how in hell:

1. Kerry managed to mangle the joke even ad libbing, BUT
2. Then how it was so deliberately misconstrued by everyone (which means the mass media had to help (of course)
3. The Repugs, with so much crap they actually are responsible for, turned it into a multi-day feeding frenzy against Kerry
4. No one rode Rumsfeld for his "go to war with the army you have rather than the one you want"
5. No one even fucking noticed House majority criminal ... uh... majority leader John Boehner's remarks in the same time period.

What A Baghdad, Iraq Blogger Says About Saddam Hussein Verdict

Check out Baghdad Burning.

MUST READ Before You Vote

Find out what you need to know to be sure your vote counts (gets counted) tomorrow.

White House Pissing Itself Over The Army Times' (and every other branch) Call For Rumsfeld's Removal

Gee, it's amazing how these great Christians in the White House can call for the worst things possible only to whine, cry, and piss all over everyone when anyone criticizes any aspect of the Bush Administration.

However, the Army Times (as with the other branches) serves almost exclusively military families. Do they not have a right to an opinion? Especially given their men and women are fighting for that right?

The Times: Will Endorse NO Republican Candidates For Tuesday Vote

This is a big deal, and something the Ann Coulter and the Bill O'Reillys will scream about as "proof" that The New York Times is hopelessly liberal.

Talk to liberals - and even to many centrist Democrats - and we'll happily tell you how frequently The Times has happily toked on the tailpipe of the Repugs in Washington.

The name Judith Miller and "Look, There's WMD Everywhere!" comes to mind. Then there's their writer hopelessly in love with the Rove-Cheney-Bush White House.

Need more examples? I've got thousands.

More On Suicide of Army Soldier Alyssa Peterson Disturbed Over Nature of Iraqi Interrogations

I mentioned the case of this soldier, a young woman from Utah, last week after hearing about it on Democracy Now. I noted the article written in Editor&Publisher magazine by Greg Mitchell, who has been a stalwart, No-Koolaid journalist throughout the Bush wars (Afghanistan, Terror, Iraq, on public schools and health care, on the Middle Class, on anyone with a brain... I could go on).

At the time, I mentioned my concern that Peterson's death was not a suicide. After Pat Tillman, et al, how do we trust anything Rumsfeld's Pentagon releases? But concern is not overwhelming evidence.

Greg follows up this week with more details about Ms. Peterson's death that I believe is an important read.

Paul Krugman: "Limiting The Damage"

Krugman discusses the issues surrounding us before tomorrow's mid-term elections. Snip-snip here with more there.

President Bush isn’t on the ballot tomorrow. But this election is, nonetheless, all about him. The question is whether voters will pry his fingers loose from at least some of the levers of power, thereby limiting the damage he can inflict in his two remaining years in office.

There are still some people urging Mr. Bush to change course. For example, a scathing editorial published today by The Military Times, which calls on Mr. Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld, declares that “this is not about the midterm elections.” But the editorial’s authors surely know better than that. Mr. Bush won’t fire Mr. Rumsfeld; he won’t change strategy in Iraq; he won’t change course at all, unless Congress forces him to.

At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush’s character. To put it bluntly, he’s an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood — and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself “pleased with the progress we’re making” in Iraq.

In other words, he’s the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media.

The results have been predictably disastrous. The nightmare in Iraq is only part of the story. In time, the degradation of the federal government by rampant cronyism — almost every part of the executive branch I know anything about, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been FEMAfied — may come to be seen as an equally serious blow to America’s future.

And it should be a matter of intense national shame that Mr. Bush has quietly abandoned his fine promises to New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast.The public, which rallied around Mr. Bush after 9/11 and was still prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt two years ago, seems to have figured most of this out. It’s too late to vote Mr. Bush out of office, but most Americans seem prepared to punish Mr. Bush’s party for his personal failings. This is in spite of a vicious campaign in which Mr. Bush has gone further than any previous president — even Richard Nixon — in attacking the patriotism of anyone who criticizes him or his policies.

That said, it’s still possible that the Republicans will hold on to both houses of Congress. The feeding frenzy over John Kerry’s botched joke showed that many people in the news media are still willing to be played like a fiddle. And if you think the timing of the Saddam verdict was coincidental, I’ve got a terrorist plot against the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you.

Emphasis mine.