CNN quick poll:

How will the bin Laden videotape affect the U.S. election?

You know how to vote.

To quote:

If the Kerry campaign falls for this it would be the height of foolishness. In itself the bin Laden video is not a matter of controversy. What the president's campaign is trying to do is either goad the Kerry campaign into three days of passivity in the run-up to the election or fuss up a debate about the supposed outrageousness of Kerry's faulting the president for allowing bin Laden to remain at large. The Kerry folks should not play into that trap. The answer is to keep to the game-plan and remain on the offensive.

The foreign policy focus of the Kerry campaign has long been the president's failure to maintain the focus on al Qaida, as evidenced by his failure to capture bin Laden and dismantle his network. To abandon that message now would be insanity.

If you're a Democrat and you notice your fellow Democrats dipping into these spasms of fecklessness and weak-kneedism, as I've described above, I strongly encourage you to slap them around a few times and tell them to get a hold of themselves. If you're experiencing such spasms, by all means, slap yourself a few times and tell yourself the same thing.

More than 95% of the electorate has already made up its mind. This is all about how those last few percentage points of the electorate break. And that will be determined by which campaign holds the initiative, stays on the offensive for the next three days and who can mobilize their forces to win this on the ground.

Kerry, the candidate, must be forward-looking in these final days. But his surrogates should be hammering the president for his failure to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora and pressing the factual case that his campaign has tried so hard to deny. On hitting the indisputable failures of the president there should be no let up.

More.

What else can you call it?

In Manchester, Mr. Bush refrained from his routine assault on Mr. Kerry's fitness to serve as commander in chief, neither mentioning the Democrat's name, nor referring, as he often does, to "my opponent." Instead, he argued that he and the nation, forever changed by Sept. 11, are bound together in an epic battle, and that he has earned the right to press on with it.

Rot in hell, you shriveled, whining, effete little Reichstag-burning fucker.

How many times can I possibly go through the looking glass? I've got Randi Rhodes on the radio now, and she's talking about the new bin Laden tape as though it's going to be some sort of coup for Bush, since it'll distract from every other issue.

Now, I have been under the impression for some time that one possible October surprise would be the capture of bin Laden. Having bin Laden captured or dead would, everyone can agree, be widely perceived in this country as a triumph.

Now, we have a video showing that Osama is not captured, is alive and well, and is on the loose.

And that's supposed to be good for Bush? Am I going out of my fucking mind?

Has the hermeneutic death-loop binding Bush and Osama in eternal holy warfare closed so airtight that the signifier "Osama," regardless of context or reference, now means "Bush can save us"? The fact of the physical body of Osama on this earth is supposed to prove that Bush should continue to be president?

Am I going nuts? Somebody tell me it's not true...

Check out the latest polling trends.

From Zogby:

10/26-28/04
47 Bush
47 Kerry

10/25-27/04
48 Bush
46 Kerry

From TIPP:

10/25-28/04
45 Bush
45 Kerry

10/24-27/04
46 Bush
43 Kerry

10/23-26/04
47 Bush
43 Kerry

10/22-25/04
47 Bush
42 Kerry

10/21-24/04
48 Bush
41 Kerry

10/27/00 CNN poll (thanks to the Angry Liberal):



The Votemaster has some charts comparing the Zogby polling on Gore/Bush and Kerry/Bush, from between 6 and 10 days prior to the respective elections. Long story short: Gore was generally polling a few more points behind Bush than Kerry is now. However, 6 days prior to the election in 2000, Zogby had Bush up by 3; he now has Bush up by 2. Take from it what you will.

And read this Daily Kos post for the latest on Republican criminality in Ohio. One tactic: sending official GOP materials to households by registered mail, then challenging the voting eligibility of anyone who refused to accept the registered mail. Fortunately, some court cases appear to be going our way.

Kerry, with Springsteen, draws 80,000 in Madison, WI.



Meanwhile, what does Bush have to say?

"A president cannot blow in the wind."

Indeed, sir.

OK. I'm feeling a bit paranoid and a bit schizophrenic right now. I'm trying to juggle these two thoughts simultaneously in my head:

1.) It is inevitable that Kerry will win the election.

2.) There is no way in fucking hell that the Bush crime family is going to relinquish power peacefully.

Just how far will they go? And what are the actual limitations on their power--limitations which allow the public to see what they are doing to hold on to power?

Your thoughts in the Comment box, please.

Damnit! After contributing hundreds of dollars to the "Yes Bush Can" organization in order to help re-elect what le chien calls "our great leader," these bastards have gone and switched allegiances!

A week ago, we sent you an email asking for help debunking anti-Bush documents. After receiving hundreds of responses, it become clear that all the documents were actually real: the Bush/Cheney DUIs, the Ken Lay letters, and even the bin Laden memo. For more information visit the documents page: http://www.yesbushcan.com/falsedocs.shtml

We also received hundreds of emails from concerned bloggers that eloquently expressed the problems with the Bush administration. And as we traveled across America campaigning for Bush, we learned more than we wanted to know about Bush's policies. We came to see that this
administration is a catastrophe for most people.

As a result, we are abandoning our support of Bush and officially endorsing John Kerry for President. You can read more at the Yes Bush Can web site: http://www.yesbushcan.com/

We deeply regret our misguided support and apologize for our previous email. This will be the last email we will send directly to bloggers.

If you want to join us in supporting Kerry, you can find out more here: http://www.yesbushcan.com/act.shtml

Thank you for your understanding,

Yes Bush Can

Screw that! I want my money back!

And here's the NYT article on it. (AmCop's not mentioned, strangely, since we clearly have the best cats in the 'sphere.)

Giuseppe Abote writes:

This from the AP. Can you believe the headline?

Gore Urges Angry Black Floridians To Vote

Who will the Dems roll out to address the scary and flamboyant black Floridians? (I'm presuming they've already got the low-key ones in the bag.)

And of course it won't be long before the AP reports from Western PA: Bush Urges Angry White Evangelicals To Vote.

??!!??

Blicero adds: Not surpisingly, it looks like they've since changed the headline.

Of the campaign season's low-budget independent anti-Bush spots, this has got to be the best.

The King George Inn is a local establishment in Allentown, PA, near the Kerry field office. The proprietor is an enthusiastic Kerry supporter, as you can see. However, he didn't initially plan to put up a sign this large. He started out with a small sign--but Republican thugs stole it in the night. So he put up a bigger sign. They stole that too. You get the picture. This one's chained to the facade.

Well, I kicked off my first day of canvassing in Allentown on Saturday morning the way any enthusiastic Kerry supporter would: with a little Christian television in my room at HoJo's, while I ate my Raisin Bran from a small styrofoam bowl. (While partaking of the "continental breakfast" in the lobby I had spied a middle-aged man peering into his iBook at the Electoral Vote Predictor; although in retrospect the EVP + the Mac should have pegged him as a Dem; still who knows these days; but yes, it turned out he and his wife were in town canvassing with ACT. We mutually celebrated our presences.)

Anyway, I was watching the "Imperial Christ Network" or whatever, and the program was called "Janice's Attic," an ostensibly "scientific" children's program whose stated mission is to promote wonder of all God's works.

Unfortunately, "Janice" promotes nothing but stupidity and disgust at her own sweetly smirking condescension and thinly-veiled dislike of children. First "Janice" conducted an"experiment" in which she set out to "make" a banana, by combining ingredients such as flour (evidently processed white baking flour is a universal equivalent of "carbohydrate," which bananas contain), sugar, phosphorous, and crushed vitamins (bananas contain vitamins, it turns out) in a bowl, mixing up the crap, and pouring it in a yellow cylinder of cardboard. An African-American "doctor" then appeared onscreen to "taste" the "banana." Of course the "doctor" finds it disgusting--which proves, as both the "doctor" and "Janice" chant in sing-song unison, that "Only God can make a banana!"

Now, I don't care whether you believe in the Deity or not--what the fuck is this "experiment" supposed to be teaching children? That the best efforts of "science" consist of deliberately half-assed attempts to mix up a bunch of shit in a bowl? What could the response of small child possibly be to the efforts of "Janice," other than, "No shit it tastes shitty, you dumb whore--if you wanted to make something worth eating, couldn't you at least read and follow a recipe? My mom buys me banana-tasting fruit gummies or whateverthefuck the in the grocery store all the time, and in fact they taste even more banana-y than real bananas, I'd far rather eat banana-flavored crap than an actual, boring-ass banana, so don't attempt to tell me that the full force of science brought to bear on a project like this (combined with a fat commercial budget) couldn't produce something a great deal better"? What is "Janice" teaching our children about the entrepreneurial spirit? Don't even try it? Does "Janice" want all our kids to be stupid and poor, and on evil welfare?

The next segment on "Janice's Attic" features Janice, an elderly woman gardener, and a small girl tending a flower garden together. The elderly woman posits that unlike every other plant and animal in our ecosystem, flowers were put on this earth by God for no other purpose than our own aesthetic enjoyment.

What sort of blasphemous, satanic argument is this? Has no one heard of bees? Of fucking pollination? I almost thought I heard the little girl say, "What's wrong with you, you hedonistic old whore? How solipsistic and selfish can you be? have you never heard of fucking insects? Do you know what an ecosystem is?"

What the hell is wrong with these people? Of all the possible ways to promote a message of wonder toward God's creation, this is the best they can come up with? Adult silliness, willful incompetence, and the assertion of obliviously counterfactual information?

But anyway--the canvassing! Here's me at the Allentown field office with a stack of lawn signs I had assembled the previous night:



Saturday we canvassed in a neighborhood west of Bethlehem, not far from Lehigh University. Canvassing is basically going door-to-door with clipboards, culling information on who is and who isn't a strong Kerry supporter and likely voter; urging people to go to the polls on Election Day; making sure they know where their polling place is, have a ride if they need one, etc. Although we are briefly trained in the arts of brief "persuasion," you actually meet relatively few undecided voters on the canvassing route, since this phase of the GOTV campaign is aimed at making sure "the base" gets to the polls. The neighborhood was almost entirely Spanish-speaking. This might have been a problem, since neither I nor my canvassing partner spoke Spanish; but aside from a woman in her thirties who mumbled something about "killing babies...and lesbians..." and an elderly woman who told us (through a "translator"--a teenage kid in a do-rag who happened to be around) that she was waiting for her Pentecostal, evangelical church to advise her on her voting decision (the pastor of that church also happening to be her son), almost everyone indicated in one way or another that they were going to vote, enthusiastically, for John Kerry on election day.

This isn't the aforementioned Hispanic neighborhood--it's a presumably academic community on the hillside near Lehigh U--but it's what I took pictures of:



Here are some views of the abandoned Bethlehem Steel mill, looming above the river banks like a dark monstrosity, a sublime sight:







Sunday we canvassed in a working-class neighborhood across the river from Bethlehem in an area called Freemansburg. It was mostly white, a good deal elderly. We encountered a few more people who were either "undecided" or refused to talk to us about who they were voting for; but again, almost everyone was happy to take our Kerry/Edwards buttons, and one woman was thrilled when we offered her a Kerry window sign. She's been meaning to get one, since her next door neighbor had a Bush/Cheney sign with an appended, handwritten "Stand Firm."

Kerry's going to take PA, no doubt. The thing is it's got a Democratic governor, and the neofascist GOP thugs just don't have their dirty hooks of corruption and fraud as deep into the voting machinery as they do in FL and OH.

Hey folks--I haven't been able to post because my laptop can't seem to connect to any of the wireless networks here in the Kerry field office in Allentown, and to my disappointment HoJo's wasn't offering WiFi. In fact, I'm (perhaps inappropriately) writing this from the computer of a field organizer who happens to be away from her desk. I'll have plenty of updates about the GOTV operation in the Lehigh Valley and photos on Tuesday night. (Things are going well here--Kerry's 8 points up in the latest PA poll, and just today, the regional Daily Mail, which endorsed Bush in 2000, published a slamming endorsement of Kerry. It seems to be a nationwide trend.) Perhaps speakingcorpse will treat us to one of his always-enjoyable screeds in the meantime. If not, let's just enjoy the Kerry momentum clearly being reflected in the national polls.