Looks like Kerry may be on to the wedge strategy with his new plan to Protect Every Child. Since I haven't read the plan myself, but signed the petition anyway, I can only comment on the symbolism. I too, am a non-rational actor.

The title of the Kerry plan is clearly a Lakoffian attempt to reframe the debate, playing squarely into the "nurturant parent" frame. I'm not sure whether this is helpful or not. I can't remember if the Dems are supposed to get out of that frame or just make it look really good. Post-modern politics is so confusing. Maybe they should have made it the "Your Children Really Are Special" plan in nurturant parent mode, or tried strict fathering with "The Walk-It-Off Act".

Regardless of the symbolic value, I think its a good idea, or at least a gesture at a good idea, for a variety of reasons. Please consider signing.

Next on the agenda: The Defense of Kittens Amendment.

Only after such important legislation is voted on will we have a definitive answer to the question, "Do Republicans secretly hate kittens?".

From Buzzflash:

A research team at UC Berkeley reported Thursday morning that irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or more in excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study showed an unexplained discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods.

Developing...

And if you haven't read the story about the escapades of Bev Harris (of blackboxvoting.org) and her attempts to salvage polling tapes from mysterious garbage bags in nutty Volusia County, FL, you should.

"Eat shit, America."

OK, it's good that the mainstream media is paying attention to the recounts going on in Ohio. I guess they kind of have to at this point. Crazy conspiracy theorists (and their respected-statistician-at-major-research-university allies) seem to have a point after all.

But what I love is shit like this (from the AP):

Election officials in one Ohio county found that about 2,600 ballots were double-counted, and two other counties have discovered possible cases of people voting twice in the presidential election.

Prosecutors were trying to determine Wednesday whether charges should be filed against a couple in Madison County accused of voting twice.

In the media, as we know, every fraudulence and lie must have two equal and opposing sides. Sure enough, here we have the equally nefarious instances of:

a) 2,600 ballots being double-counted

b) "a couple in Madison County accused of voting twice."

And guess which of these cases is being pursued by the prosecutors? The couple!

Ha! No doubt the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of miscounted ballots in Ohio (ballots which, I believe we will find, tend to be "miscounted" in favor of Bush) will be counterbalanced by the "possible cases of people voting twice"--Democrats, no doubt.

When will the media call this red herring for what it is, and drop this fucking charade?

Media figures are still giving credence to the GOP line that the reason they placed ballot-challengers in every fucking precinct in Ohio was to prevent "fraud" (on the part of Democrats)--rather than systematically supressing the vote, which is what actually happened?

Does the media think that forcing thousands to wait for hours in lines and discounting thousands of legitimate ballots is an acceptable prophylactic against "possible cases of people voting twice"?

I love how stories of these old Democratic Machine tricks--paying the bum a dollar to go vote under the name of an old guy who died, etc.--are still being bandied about, in an age when almost all ballots are counted by machines widely known to have systemic flaws, and hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of votes can be manipulated by hacking a bit of simplistic software?

"Hey buddy, wanna free candy bar? Just go innat pollin' booth and tell 'em you're Mr. Jones, from 23 Maple Street. Then check off the Democrat line, and pull the old lever! Haha!"

I'm nauseous.

From Common Cause:

First, we need to make sure that any recount process in Ohio is totally free of the taint of partisanship. Partisan supervision of elections has undermined voter confidence in our electoral process. Therefore we are calling on Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who led President Bush's re-election efforts in Ohio, and whose partisanship in this election drew comparisons to Katherine Harris in Florida, to remove himself from the recount process. We are asking you to join us in signing our nationwide petition requesting that Secretary of State Blackwell remove himself from any and all recount-related procedures. We must ensure any recount is pure and not left open to accusations of partisanship, which tainted the process in Florida in 2000.

Sign the petition:
www.commoncause.org/DemandPureOhioRecount

From Sour Bob:

Picture the American electorate as a woman, leaning against the frame of her duplex's screen door in a star-spangled halter top, paunchy midriff hanging out over her low-rise jeans. She has two black eyes and a busted lip.

"He didn't mean no harm, officers. He loves me. He just has trouble showing it is all."

"Ma'am, you don't have to take this you know, we could throw him out right now. Just say the word."

From behind her, we hear a beer bottle shatter. A drunken Texas drawl calls out from the living room inside.

"You'll take it and you'll like it, bitch."

"He didn't mean nothing, officers. He's a good man, I swear it."

I highly recommend the Mike Malloy show (10pm-midnight EST) for those of you who get Air America or listen to it online.

His rants against the Christ-Killers (aka Christianists, aka fundies) are priceless. He's sharp. Great insults, lots of despairing laughter. I find him far more pleasurable to listen to than Randi Rhodes (3-7pm), who repeats herself endlessly, shouts down her guests whether they agree with her or not, and sometimes just doesn't make sense. (Don't get me wrong, Rhodes does an admirable job; she just gives me a headache.)

Hi-lar-o-teee (via AmericaBlog).

The Spurger, Texas school district has nixed its annual TWIRP ("The Woman Is Required To Pay") spirit week day, on which boys dress like girls and, you know, vice versa. This cross-dressing event has (had) a charmingly chivalrous Southern vibe to it:

for years Spurger schools hosted the day during Homecoming Week to give boys and girls a chance to reverse social roles and let older girls invite boys on dates, open doors and pay for sodas.

Charming? Maybe a bit too charming. Like Jimanji, TWIRP is fun for some but not for all:

Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute issued a news release Tuesday reporting that it "came to the aid of a concerned parent requesting an excused absence for her children on official cross-dressing day in her children's elementary school."

"It is outrageous that a school in a small town in East Texas would encourage their 4-year-olds to be cross-dressers," Liberty Legal Institute attorney Hiram Sasser said in the release.

...

Delana Davies, a 33-year-old mother of three, said she contacted Superintendent Angela Matterson on Tuesday after reading a school notice about "TWIRP Day."

Davies, whose 9-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter attend Spurger Elementary, said she viewed the day not a silly Homecoming Week activity, but as an effort to push a homosexual agenda in a public school.

"It's like experimenting with drugs," said Davies, who also has a 2-year-old daughter. "You just keep playing with it and it becomes customary. ... If it's OK to dress like a girl today, then why is it not OK in the future?"

At last, after years and years of subtle gay infiltration in Spurger, the homosexual agenda's all-too-"pretty" face has finally been unmasked. And the solution? Something everybody can agree with:

After speaking with the Liberty attorney, Matterson agreed to exempt Davies' son and older daughter from attending school on Wednesday. However, district officials later decided to scrap "TWIRP Day" altogether and replace it with "Camo Day," where students will wear camouflage clothing.

That's right--"Camo Day"! When the heterosexual value of killing people, rather than the homosexual agenda of wearing silly clothes, will be celebrated! Some parental responses:

"I don't think it was a liberal agenda," said Stanley, a 35-year-old mother of eight biological and foster children. "I think it was just foolishness, just being funny, being silly, but it opens the door for other things to happen."

"Other things" indeed! However, doesn't "Camo Day" present a similar type of problem?

In Spurger, Davies said she will dress her son in camouflaged overalls and her daughter in a camouflaged T-shirt and denim skirt for "Camo Day."

So, butching up the girls a bit? How safe can this be? One day your daughter's wearing camo, the next day...

In the words of Tom Coburn--um, the junior Senator-elect from Oklahoma--"lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us?"

Now isn't the butching-up of Spurger's young girls only going to perpetuate the lesbianism already so rampant in our nation's gradeschools?

Cross-dressing, or Camo? Folks, I think we've got a paradox on our hands.

Oy.

House Republicans proposed changing their rules last night to allow members indicted by state grand juries to remain in a leadership post, a move that would benefit Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in case he is charged by a Texas grand jury that has indicted three of his political associates, according to GOP leaders.

The cover of Marvel's latest title "Combat Zone: True Tales of GI's in Iraq". Penned by Karl Zinsmeister, editor-in-chief of The American Enterprise.

The first issue is scheduled for release in January. Just in time for the Iraqi Elections! Or is it Bush's inauguration? According to Comics Consortium the GI's are training in Kuwait when...

War arrives in deadly fashion on their doorstep -- in the shape of ballistic missiles.

In the wacky alternate comic world THEY attacked US! Whoa! And so, a new generation of cannon-fodder is born... Thanks Karl!

A bit more here.

America: Fuck Yeah! Break out the aviators and the epaulettes! It's time for a big snog of hooker-tit blow after that long refreshing piss all over democracy:

Tucked within the House's 497-page version of the "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act" is a provision to repeal the requirement that senior-level officials report their personal financial assets valued at more than $2.5 million. It also would end the practice of disclosing the dates of stock transactions.

Fascism? We don' need no steenking FASCISM! You working for us now bitches! Eeets our due! Hahaha!

What is wrong with...most people, said Byrne, is that they do not spend sufficient time in bed. When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body. Put it to sleep, that is a better way. Let it serve only to turn the sleeping soul over, to change the blood-stream and thus make possible a deeper and more refined sleep....

We must invert our conception of repose and activity, he continued. We should not sleep to recover the energy expended when awake but rather wake occasionally to defecate the unwanted energy that sleep engenders. This might be done quickly--a five mile race at full tilt around the town and then back to bed and the kingdom of the shadows.

--Flann O'Brien, "At Swim Two Birds"

Matt Taibbi provides some insight into the Other in his latest Rolling Stone piece. For those of you unfamiliar with the writer some believe may be Jesus, his NYPress column is worth checking regularly.

A sample:

[Critics] do a terrific job of mocking his mental deficiencies and dismissing his supporters as hapless morons, but they do not do a very good job of explaining the nature of his support. The few dissident commentators who bother trying to explain the Bush phenomenon seldom do more than reach for the nearest Marx-inspired academic cliche. They will tell you, for instance, that Republicans are a vast intellectual underclass cynically manipulated by the rich through a mesmerizing cocktail of yahoo enthusiasms, xenophobic fears and ancient superstitions -- and those same people will insist, if forced to offer an opinion on the subject, that one should feel sorry for most of them.


This is the wrong approach. As a professional misanthrope, I believe that if you are going to hate a person, you ought to do it properly. You should go and live in his shoes for a while and see at the end of it how much you hate yourself.

During the next few days, as it becomes clear that Rice will assume the position of Secretary of State, you may want to remember that she actually said, concerning the August 6, 2001 P.D.B. titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States," that the memo "did not warn of attacks inside the United States."

Just to be clear:

Title of memo: "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

Rice: the memo "did not warn of attacks inside the United States."

Also that "there was nothing actionable in this."

"Nothing actionable." Here's the video of the testimony, with Richard Ben-Veniste questioning. Refresh your memory.

These fucking people let 9/11 happen.

They lied about it.

They were publicly exposed for letting 9/11 happen, and lying about it.

They fucked up two wars.

And they "won" the "election."

The recount is on. All praise to David Cobb and the Greens.

If you're still angry about the fraud in Ohio and/or are interested in ever knowing whether there was fraud, and if so exactly what the fuck happened, go to RecountOhio.org, where you can donate money to the effort to demand recounts and/or sign the petition.

Stand Up and Holla! writes:

This is another story I just came across -- a high school band gets invistigated by the Secret Service for playing Dylan's "Masters of War" at a talent show in Colorado!

I assume they were playing it Pearl Jam style, which includes the last verse about "hoping" the masters of war "die," since Dylan himself stopped singing that last line live after his creepy conversion to Christianity in the '80s. Anyway, yeah -- pretty amazing little story --

This is really pretty incredible. Ken Mehlman, Bush campaign chairman and Rove "protege," has been named the new RNC chair.

But the thing is, according to very credible sources, Mehlman is, in the words of James McGreevey, "a gay American."

John Aravosis is asking us to write to Falwell, Robertson and others and ask why Bush has been so quick to abandon his pro-family agenda. Ha!

According to Aravosis, "Mehlman has said publicly that he believes the gay issue is fair game in politics, and he has defended the president's decision to add anti-gay bigotry to the US Constitution."

I can't wait till this blows up in their faces. If the story goes mainstream, look for the usual shills to hilariously scream about the Democrats' hatred, intolerance, and dirty politicking. Thing is, that's not going to satisfy the crucifix-sucking crowd.

Stand Up and Holla! writes:

This link brings you to the story of a young couple who brought their young son to church in the hopes that they could literally sacrifice him at the altar.

Blicero adds: Do you imagine the "young son" is for or against the war on terror?

So Safliar is ending his political column.

Well, that's nice. I wish him speedy terminations of all kinds. What's not so nice is that the fucking bullshit New York Times doesn't once, in this article, attempt to characterize the substance of Safliar's "commentary." It mentiones only that the "commentary" was "provocative and insightful," "delightful, informed and engaging"--and in Safliar's own estimation, "opinionated."

What it doesn't mention is that Safliar's "commentary" was filled with abject lying; and that although he may have once been respected as an "independent" conservative voice, he devolved into the nastiest form of craven Bush administration shill. He disgraced himself, conservatives, and the Times.

Question: will he choke on his own shit now that he has nowhere to publicly force it down the throats of others?

I hereby nominate Raymond Jackson for President in 2008. He is the ideal Republican, the quintessential compassionate conservative and defender of the family.

Those of you in NY may remember this crazy ass story from about a year ago:

New Jersey Couple Held in Abuse; One Son, 19, Weighed 45 Pounds

Published: October 27, 2003
COLLINGSWOOD, N.J., Oct. 26 — The parents of four boys adopted from New Jersey's troubled foster care system were arrested Friday, two weeks after the police found that the children, ages 9 to 19, had been starved to the point that none of them weighed more than 50 pounds, according to the Camden County prosecutor.

The boys were so badly malnourished that their shriveled bodies gave no hint of their ages, investigators said. At 19, the oldest was 4 feet tall and weighed 45 pounds. The police initially thought he was just 10 years old. The boys' condition was discovered when a neighbor called the police because the 19-year-old, Bruce, was looking for food in the neighbor's trash at 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 10, according to the county prosecutor, Vincent P. Sarubbi. The boys were removed from the home later that day.

Well, this zany bunch is back in the news again,because the parents have "broken their silence" and decided to "speak out":

Couple Accused of Starving Sons Speak Out

NEW YORK (AP) -- A couple charged with starving their four adopted sons contends the boys starved themselves, telling a magazine the oldest boy lied to authorities about conditions in the family's home.

Raymond and Vanessa Jackson broke their 13-month silence to talk with a reporter from New York magazine about the case. They are awaiting trial on charges of aggravated assault and child endangerment.
...

Raymond Jackson, 51, said the teen misled investigators.

``I know Bruce loves us,'' Raymond Jackson, 51, told the magazine for this week's issue. ``I know he does. But sometimes I think about how my life is completely turned around. And it's because he told a lie. He told a lie on me. He told a lie on us.''

Indeed.

The least surprising thing about this story, however, can be found in the earlier article:

The evangelical church attended by the Jacksons, who are born-again Christians, is in Medford, about 20 miles away. Congregation members said they could not imagine that the Jacksons had starved their sons.

"There is no way on God's green earth that this happened," said Frank Jacobs, 50, a member of the Medford congregation, the Come Alive New Testament Church, who said he has known the family for 15 years. He said the children were lively and active members of the church, attending Sunday school, acting in pageants and singing.

That's right: the Jacksons are "born-again Christians"! And one of the perks of being an evangelical is that you are free to simply deny reality when reality contradicts your beliefs!

Well, the thing is, when the kids weren't "acting and pageants and singing" their lifestyle wasn't, so to speak, "lively":

Authorities said the couple kept the boys from eating, and at points the children subsisted on pancake batter and gnawed on wallboard.

Can I get a Amen?

One boy, a 14-year-old identified only by his initials, K. J., weighed 38 pounds when the Jacksons adopted him in 1996. When he was removed from their home on Oct. 10, he was 4 feet tall and weighed just 40 pounds, Mr. Sarubbi said.

Praise Jesus! Praise Him!

My only question: was it the gays, the abortionists, the feminists, the ACLU, or the wine-sipping eastern elites who have so degraded our venerable tradition of family-based moral values that young Bruce was driven to "tell a lie on us"?

My only other question: will Bruce repent for his lies?