The A.P. is now reporting that Cheney's corpse has begun to rot.

According to Dr. Pradesh Varpayana of George Washington University Hospital, where Mr. Cheney was pronounced dead earlier, "Because the blood has ceased to circulate in the Vice President's blood vessels, his flesh has begun the natural process of decomposition. This condition is very common in corpses."

Again, our fondest prayers go out to Mr. Cheney's beautiful, talented wife Lynne, his lesbian daughter Mary, Mary's lesbian partner Heather Poe, and the other members of the Vice President's family.

From AmericaBlog:

Well now we're down to it. Fight Club has come alive on craigslist:

Straight male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight - m4m
Reply to: anon-47785163@craigslist.org
Date: Wed Nov 03 19:11:50 2004

I would like to fight a Bush supporter to vent my anger. If you are one, have a fiery streek, please contact me so we can meet and physically fight. I would like to beat the shit out of you.

I guess that we're not far from challenging people to duels. Oh, wait, that already happened.

It has come to our attention that Vice President Dick Cheney has passed away this afternoon, from being "cold" as a result of problems with his "heart."

Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Lynne, his (lesbian) daughter Mary, Mary's lesbian partner Heather Poe, and the other members of the Cheney family.

God bless!

After I calmed down, I realized that Giuseppe Abote is completely right about the wedge issue issue. Not only that, but he's apparently scooped that particular bit of punditoid insight ahead of everyone else.

More here.

New Group to Tout Democrats' Centrist Values
Third Way Plans to Focus On 'Moderate Majority'

What a fantastic idea! How can we not have thought of this before?! All the Democratic Party needs is a new centrist platform that can appeal to all those in the broad, broad middle of American politics! Hopefully, through the work of senators like Thomas Carper (DE), Mary Landrieu (LA), Blanche Lincoln (AR), and Evan Bayh (IN; presidential candidate in 2008), millions of voters in the Heartland, alienated by the elite, amoral Northeastern pinko homo cabal with its stranglehold on the Party, will come flooding back to the Dems!!

Onward to victory! Bayh in 2008!!!

From MoveOn:

Questions are swirling around whether the election was conducted honestly or not. We need to know -- was it or wasn't it?

If people were wrongly prevented from voting, or if legitimate votes were mis-counted or not counted at all, we need to know so the wrongdoers can be held accountable, and so we can prevent this from happening again.

Members of Congress are demanding an investigation to answer this question. The decision on whether or not there will be an investigation could come as soon as Monday. Join us in supporting the call for one now, at:

http://www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/

Then please invite your friends and colleagues to sign, as well. We need to show Congress that hundreds of thousands of Americans are serious about protecting the integrity of the vote.

We're all hearing the stories and wondering what's true and what isn't. But at least two cases of serious problems are accepted beyond doubt:

• In Broward County, Florida, electronic voting machines counted backwards: as more people voted, the official vote count went down. [1]

• In one Columbus, Ohio suburb, election officials have acknowledged that electronic voting machines credited Bush with winning 4,258 votes, even though only 638 people voted there. [2]

These are just cases where we know something went wrong. There were also lots of reports of people being denied ballots on Election Day. So far, these reports remain anecdotal, but they must be compiled and examined. And the Internet is abuzz with theories about why the official counts were so different from the exit polls.

Obviously there was a "conspiracy." Whether or not it made the difference in deciding the vote for Bush is not known. But at the very least we deserve to have it investigated.

There's a website with hundreds of photos like this.



Personally, I'm not yet done feeling sorry for myself and this godforsaken country.

They seem real freakin concerned that their country has gone to hell in a handbasket. Metempsychosis, anyone?



Note: cat on left may be larger than he appears.

A belated note of thanks to Dawkins, who worked his ass of in PA for the last two months winning the election for Kerry. I glimpsed first-hand the kind of psychotic hours those people put in. Never again will I think "Gosh, wouldn't it be cool to work for a campaign?"

Even with the crushing disappointment, it must have been nice to see voting tallies that actually squared with the exit polling.



Alas, King George was right: they could not steal the vote in Pennsylvania.

Goes to show the benefit of having a Democratic governor, I think.

Just what Rove wanted, I'm sure: first a stolen election, then a huge in-fight on the left over whether or not the election was stolen, whether it can ever be proven, whether it's better to make noise about it or just shut up and organize for the future, etc.

This comment from an Eschaton reader sums up pretty well where we are right now:

So what do we know?

We do know there was opportunity for the election to be rigged out of sight of the many monitors on the ground, because the internal workings of the black box voting machines were out of sight of the many monitors on the ground.

We don't know the election was rigged.

We do know that there have been computer glitches reported.

We don't know if they represent fraud.

We do know that statistically improbable figures were produced in exit polls and votes-against-registered-voter counts.

We don't know if there is more information out there that would explain those improbable figures but not point to fraud.

We do know that allegations have been made about the susceptibility of the voting process to malicious hacking.

We don't know that any malicious outside hacking was done (and absent 1 million votes for Mickey Mouse in Dade County, I suspect little or no malicious hacking by disinterested outsiders was done).

All in all, we certainly don't KNOW that the election was a fraud. But right now it sure smells fishy.

One thing that I definitely don't like are comments such as Al Franken has been making about "being careful" not to "fan the flames" of conspiracy. If people have reasonable evidence that a conspiracy may exist, how else to draw attention to it than flame-fanning? I understand there may be something to be said for lying a bit low rhetorically while evidence is amassed and investigations proceed--but that's assuming you have any faith in the investigating, and whether the people investigating have enough power (doesn't seem likely) to bring any shit to light. In other words, if you believe the extant evidence from the election points to something "fishy," you can either sit back and put your faith in an eventual, down-the-road exposure (as in Watergate)--or you can make as much noise as you can right now, before everyone forgets the whole thing.

Source.

Oh, and just for "fun," here's an excerpt from the "concession speech" of a fictitious congressional candidate:

We in blue states produce the vast majority of the wealth in this country and pay the most taxes, and you in the red states receive the majority of the money from those taxes while complaining about 'em. We in the blue states are the only ones who've been attacked by foreign terrorists, yet you in the red states are gung ho to fight a war in our name. We in the blue states produce the entertainment that you consume so greedily each day, while you in the red states show open disdain for us and our values. Blue state civilians are the actual victims and targets of the war on terror, while red state civilians are the ones standing behind us and yelling "Oh, yeah!? Bring it on!"

More than 40% of you Bush voters still believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. I'm impressed by that, truly I am. Your sons and daughters who might die in this war know it's not true, the people in the urban centers where al Qaeda wants to attack know it's not true, but those of you who are at practically no risk believe this easy lie because you can. As part of my concession speech, let me say that I really envy that luxury. I concede that.

Healing? We, the people at risk from terrorists, the people who subsidize you, the people who speak in glowing and respectful terms about the heartland of America while that heartland insults and excoriates us... we wanted some healing. We spoke loud and clear. And you refused to give it to us, largely because of your high moral values. You knew better: America doesn't need its allies, doesn't need to share the burden, doesn't need to unite the world, doesn't need to provide for its future. Hell no. Not when it's got a human shield of pointy-headed, atheistic, unconfrontational breadwinners who are willing to pay the bills and play nice in the vain hope of winning a vote that we can never have. Because we're "morally inferior," I suppose, we are supposed to respect your values while you insult ours. And the big joke here is that for 20 years, we've done just that.

Thom Hartmann, writing in Common Dreams:

Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report.

But then the computers reported something different.

Different indeed. Dick Morris has said that exit polls can't be wrong. Therefore it must have been an exit-pollster conspiracy to bring down Bush. Right.

Or the software programs in central vote-tabulating computers were hacked. It is apparently very easy to do.

Dear President Bush,

I have been troubled by the recent news coverage of your mother, Barbara Bush, and feel she may not be receiving fair treatment from the press. Just because your mother looks like a dog, barks guttural nonsense like a dog, ruts in the street and in alleyways with mongrels like a dog, sniffs at and sometimes eats her own shit like a dog, then licks her own nether parts like a dog, then tongue-kisses you after having eaten her shit and licked her nether parts like a dog; in other words, just because she eats shit and garbage, whimpers when beaten with a stick, pants rotten-breathed while smiling mindlessly, and eagerly allows anything on four legs to mount her and spend its exertions upon her, doesn't mean she is a dog. It just means she is your mother, Barbara Bush. Do you see my point?

Thank you for your time and attention, and please pass along my regards.

Your faithful subject,

Blicero

I can't believe I'm actually reading this in an AP news story:

Col. Gary Brandl voiced his troops' determination:

"The enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He's in Fallujah and we're going to destroy him."

OK scratch that. I can believe it.

Oh, and this too:

Marines turn to God ahead of anticipated Fallujah battle

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - With US forces massing outside Fallujah, 35 marines swayed to Christian rock music and asked Jesus Christ to protect them in what could be the biggest battle since American troops invaded Iraq (news - web sites) last year.

Men with buzzcuts and clad in their camouflage waved their hands in the air, M-16 assault rifles laying beside them, and chanted heavy metal-flavoured lyrics in praise of Christ late Friday in a yellow-brick chapel.

They counted among thousands of troops surrounding the city of Fallujah, seeking solace as they awaited Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's decision on whether or not to invade Fallujah.

"You are the sovereign. You're name is holy. You are the pure spotless lamb," a female voice cried out on the loudspeakers as the marines clapped their hands and closed their eyes, reflecting on what lay ahead for them.
...

Between the service's electric guitar religious tunes, marines stepped up on the chapel's small stage and recited a verse of scripture, meant to fortify them for war.

One spoke of their Old Testament hero, a shepherd who would become Israel's king, battling the Philistines some 3,000 years ago.

"Thus David prevailed over the Philistines," the marine said, reading from scripture, and the marines shouted back "Hoorah, King David," using their signature grunt of approval.

The marines drew parallels from the verse with their present situation, where they perceive themselves as warriors fighting barbaric men opposed to all that is good in the world.

"Victory belongs to the Lord," another young marine read.

Their chaplain, named Horne, told the worshippers they were stationed outside Fallujah to bring the Iraqis "freedom from oppression, rape, torture and murder ... We ask you God to bless us in that effort."

The marines then lined up and their chaplain blessed them with holy oil to protect them.

"God's people would be annointed with oil," the chaplain said, as he lightly dabbed oil on the marines' foreheads.

The crowd then followed him outside their small auditorium for a baptism of about a half-dozen marines who had just found Christ.

The young men lined up and at least three of them stripped down to their shorts.

The three laid down in a rubber dinghy filled with water and the chaplain's assistant, Navy corpsman Richard Vaughn, plunged their heads beneath the surface.

Smiling, Vaughn baptised them "in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."

Dripping wet, Corporal Keith Arguelles beamed after his baptism.

"I just wanted to make sure I did this before I headed into the fight," he said on the military base not far from the city of Fallujah.

We need to start paying closer attention to stuff like this.

Dog asks for its supper

A talking dog has reportedly been discovered in Russia.

Yula, a two-year-old Staffordshire terrier, can apparently say its owners' names and ask for its dinner.

Owner Vladimir Lyubaev told Russian daily newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that Yula started calling his wife 'mama' a year ago.

"He would say 'food mama' when he was hungry and my wife was there, and 'food Roma' when my son Roma was there," said Mr Lyubaev.

"She started saying mama when she was a year old - who knows what she will be able to manage when she is older still.

"Even Russian kids have trouble with the letter 'r', but Yula managed to learn to pronounce it. And she is still very young."

Sceptical journalists dispatched to the village of Kushnarenkovo, in the republic of Bashkiria, confirmed the dog did appear to talk.