Fun in Florida...

So Kevin Drum discusses some recent voter fraud studies:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4139

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you were going to commit Fraud and then try to keep it under the radar, would you not focus on GOP leaning counties where a rise in the vote count would look more plausible?

Just asking....

Insert the vengeful, apocalyptic wrath of the space-God Jehovah-1 here.

Is There Anyone Here Paying Attention?

Here's a gruesome story that appears to be a classic case of a badly-executed home-remedy abortion. From the original reporting done by a local television station in Michigan:

Two teens may face charges after they allegedly used a baseball bat in an attempt to abort a fetus, according to Local 4 reports.

Police said a 16-year-old girl became pregnant and had a miscarriage in October at her home in the northern Macomb County town of Armada.

After an investigation, Michigan State Police determined that prior to the miscarriage, the girl and a 16-year-old boy -- the father of the unborn child -- may have attempted to abort the fetus.

"Without getting graphic, it involved a baseball bat and at some point the child was miscarried and that brings us to where we're at now," said Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith.

Smith said the male youth would hit the pregnant teen in the abdomen with a decorative-type wooden baseball bat every other day for three weeks.

"The length at which these two 16-year-olds went to abort this unborn child is just disturbing," said Smith.

[and it just gets more disturbing from there...]

First some background data:

• Michigan appears to have exactly one abortion provider, Summit Medical Center of Michigan. It's in Detroit, about an hour's drive away from the center of Armada Township, where all this happened.
  
  
• Michigan does not exactly have "abortion on demand" these days. Here's the policy: 24-hour waiting period (enforced), parental consent required (enforced), no state medicaid funding available.
  

Now have a look at the discussion they're having about this story in this thread over at everyone's favorite proto-fascism transmitter site, FreeRepublic.Com. If you can't bear to click through— and hey, I can't blame you— then here are some of the more choice quotes (found between all the confusion about the punctuation in the headline and the rending of garments about how they are disgusted and horrified beyond the capacity for reasonable comment):

I thought that the argument for abortion and against parental notification was to prevent stuff like this? Dems will probably say the teens couldn't afford an abortion and this will be another argument for government funded abortion, (no mention of abstinence).

9 posted on 11/16/2004 8:10:45 PM PST by JanetteS (My heart is as light as a song!)

And you just KNOW the liberals will use this as evidence that these sickos didn't have enough access to abortion clinics!

13 posted on 11/16/2004 8:11:17 PM PST by smcmike

This is what democrat leadership defense and promotion of abortion on demand has come to. Lay the blame squarely where it belongs (with the youths) but reserve a portion of the outrage for the promoters who use this to empower their disgusting selves.

16 posted on 11/16/2004 8:11:41 PM PST by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)

Disgusting. But how is it reasonable for the state to intervene in a woman's choice? Is it that she chose to murder her baby slowly rather than slicing it apart? Is it that the state failed to receive its share of tax money it might have otherwise received from an "authorized" abortion?

How is it there is such revulsion to what these kids did as opposed to the same procedure being performed by a "doctor' when he conducts the left's crucial sacrament?

17 posted on 11/16/2004 8:12:08 PM PST by Sgt_Schultze

She should have sat on a fire hydrant, perched her boyfriend on her lap,
had him reach down and turn the wrench, and they would have accomplished their goal...
AND launched themselves into space, ridding the rest of us of two sick people all in one stroke!

35 posted on 11/16/2004 8:18:24 PM PST by 45semi (Man has only those rights he can defend...)

Too bad abortion did not apply to these losers. I wish there was retroactive abortion for scum like them.

36 posted on 11/16/2004 8:18:43 PM PST by Ptarmigan (Proud rabbit hater and killer)

Both teens ought to be sterilized. They should never be given the chance to mistreat another child. We are raising animals, not human beings, and I shudder to think of growing old in such a godless society.

49 posted on 11/16/2004 8:26:58 PM PST by kittymyrib

Both teens ought to be sterilized.

The 16 year old male should at least be under some supervision for the rest of his life. If he's so willing to go after his girlfriend with bat...honestly the whole thing is just too appalling and complicated to think about.

The thought that these two people will someday be parents is horrifying.

59 posted on 11/16/2004 8:33:00 PM PST by JanetteS (My heart is as light as a song!)

Abortions are free and easy to get. What were these two thinking?

64 posted on 11/16/2004 8:37:06 PM PST by ladyinred (Congratulations President Bush! Four more years!)

"Both teens ought to be sterilized."

That's just another form of birth control, it's all evil, whether you get yourself 'fixed' like a cat or pay for the 'family planning' pills and devices.

68 posted on 11/16/2004 8:42:06 PM PST by TheCrusader ("the frenzy of the Mohammedans has devastated the Churches of God" - Pope Urban II, 1097 A.D.)

Are you beginning to understand just how long a row we have to hoe here?

I mentioned to someone in my family the other night that this whole episode about not confirming Arlen Specter to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee is basically a fight over whether and how soon to get a change in the U.S. Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision that found a constitutional right to abortion.

She looked at me like I was joking. She's known for some time that the Republicans favor a lot of policies she doesn't like, but it was not easy convincing her that they really, really DO want to make abortions illegal everywhere in the United States, and the reëlection of George W Bush has pretty much sealed the deal on that issue.

It was clear she didn't believe me that such a change in the court would also result in the eventual revisitation of Griswold v. Connecticut, the decision that struck down laws prohibiting married couples from using contraception. After reading the discussion above, I'm thinking: maybe I didn't go far enough— because it sure seems to me that our neighbors in RedState™ America are pretty enthusiastic about the idea of overturning Skinner v. Oklahoma, the decision that outlawed compulsory sterilization as a punishment for a crime.

Nobody wants to believe the Radical Right is really ready to do what they say they want to do. But, as you can see from the background information I provided above, we've already made abortion in much of the country more unsafe, more common, more difficult to obtain, and more difficult to afford than any time since Roe v. Wade. It's such a small step from here to a Supreme Court reversal and an outright Federal law against it. It'll happen. It's only a matter of time, ladies— time to get your War on and stand up for your rights— because it ought to be obvious by now that they won't stop with just banning abortion.

When you wake up a few years from now and you or your daughter have been sterilized because the government doesn't think you or she will ever make a good parent, I don't want to hear any whining from anybody that Nobody Told You It Could Happen. This is how it happens. Stop living in denial.

When Computer Security Experts Attack...

One of my heroes, Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and CTO of Counterpane Systems, and the editor of the excellent Crypto-Gram Newsletter, has lobbed another grenade downrange on the subject of The Problem With Electronic Voting Systems.

It should not surprise you that his recommendations are basically the same ones I've been blasting out for the last two years. Quoting from his concluding paragraphs (emphasis mine):

1. DRE [direct record electronic, e.g. touch-screen] machines must have a voter-verifiable paper audit trail (sometimes called a voter-verified paper ballot). This is a paper ballot printed out by the voting machine, which the voter is allowed to look at and verify. He doesn’t take it home with him. Either he looks at it on the machine behind a glass screen, or he takes the paper and puts it into a ballot box. The point of this is twofold. One, it allows the voter to confirm that his vote was recorded in the manner he intended. And two, it provides the mechanism for a recount if there are problems with the machine.

2. Software used on DRE machines must be open to public scrutiny. This also has two functions. One, it allows any interested party to examine the software and find bugs, which can then be corrected. This public analysis improves security. And two, it increases public confidence in the voting process. If the software is public, no one can insinuate that the voting system has unfairness built into the code. (Companies that make these machines regularly argue that they need to keep their software secret for security reasons. Don’t believe them. In this instance, secrecy has nothing to do with security.)

Lost in much of the ongoing kerfuffle about voting irregularities and exit poll discrepancies is that second point above. Schneier does a pretty good job of explaining in short easy words why people like me keep hammering on the fact that all these election computers are running proprietary trade-secret code. A lot of my liberal friends don't get why this is so important, and it drives me into shrill, unholy madness when they respond to this concern with a sense of total ambivalence about it.

The fact is the second requirement is even more important than the first. Without public analysis of the source code, any public confidence placed in the integrity of the voting process is completely and utterly false confidence. Why, oh why, is this such a hard concept for my liberal friends to comprehend? If liberals were in control of all three branches of federal government and a majority of the state governments as well, you better believe the conservatives would be shouting about this from the rooftops. It wouldn't be just a few lone computer security experts.

UPDATE 2004-11-17: I have still not heard a word of comment from any of my liberal friends about why they are not very exercised about the proprietary trade-secret source code problem. Some of them are starting to get it about the voter-verified paper ballots— but the source code thing is going completely over their heads.

I am now in the depths of another bout of shrill, unholy madness.

Well, that didn't take long did it...

It would appear that this chase is hotly followed, friends!

It would appear that the Conservative hivebrain has finally decided to peel off the thin human veneer and finally make common cause with the wingnut faction of the movement!

This from Human Events:

For many decades, conservative citizens and like-minded political leaders (starting with President Calvin Coolidge) have been denigrated by the vilest of lies and characterizations from hordes of liberals who now won't even admit that they are liberals--because the word connotes such moral stink and political silliness. As a class, liberals no longer are merely the vigorous opponents of the Right; they are spiteful enemies of civilization's core decency and traditions.

Defamation, never envisioned by our Founding Fathers as being protected by the First Amendment, flourishes and passes today for acceptable political discourse. Movies, magazines, newspapers, radio/TV programs, plays, concerts, public schools, colleges, and most other public vehicles openly traffic in slander and libel. Hollywood salivated over the idea of placing another golden Oscar into Michael Moore'sfat hands, for his Fahrenheit 9/11 jeremiad, the most bogus, deceitful film documentary since Herr Hitler and Herr Goebbels gave propaganda a bad name.

When they tire of showering conservative victims with ideological mud, liberals promote the only other subjects with which they feel conversationally comfortable: Obscenity and sexual perversion. It's as if the genes of liberals have rendered them immune to all forms of filth.

As a final insult, liberal lawyers and judges have become locusts of the Left, conspiring to destroy democracy itself by excreting statutes and courtroom tactics that fertilize electoral fraud and sprout fields of vandals who will cast undeserved and copious ballots on Election Day.

The truth is, America is not just broken--it is becoming irreparable. If you believe that recent years of uncivil behavior are burdensome, imagine the likelihood of a future in which all bizarre acts are the norm, and a government-booted foot stands permanently on your face.

That is why the unthinkable must become thinkable. If the so-called "Red States" (those that voted for George W. Bush) cannot be respected or at least tolerated by the "Blue States" (those that voted for Al Gore and John Kerry), then the most disparate of them must live apart--not by secession of the former (a majority), but by expulsion of the latter. Here is how to do it.

Having been amended only 17 times since 10 vital amendments (the Bill of Rights) were added at the republic's inception, the U.S. Constitution is not easily changed, primarily because so many states (75%, now 38 of 50) must agree. Yet, there are 38 states today that may be inclined to adopt, let us call it, a "Declaration of Expulsion," that is, a specific constitutional amendment to kick out the systemically troublesome states and those trending rapidly toward anti-American, if not outright subversive, behavior. The 12 states that must go: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware. Only the remaining 38 states would retain the name, "United States of America." The 12 expelled mobs could call themselves the "Dirty Dozen," or individually keep their identity and go their separate ways, probably straight to Hell.

The thing is... I would not normally glitch at something like this if I had seen it on Liitle Green Shitheads or one of the other neo-facist blogs spewing electrons over the bandwidth...

But coming from Human Events, (even half joking, as they claim to be) this represents a shift in the overall approach of the conservatives in power. They are in essence starting a drumbeat for the disenfranchisement and expatriation of those who are not on board with our Glorious Maximum Leader.

Human Events is one of those publications that delineate propaganda from policy and is one of the semi-official house organs of the conservative hive brain. That is why seeing something like this article in the pages of that rag make me more than a little concerned.

We have been living with the eliminationist rhetoric for four years, and we have been pondering the powers given to the administration in declaring people enemies of the state! And now, the intellectual elite -- or what passes for an intellectual elite in conservative circles these days -- have started the official push to purge the undesirables from their midst, even as their rhetoric accuses their enemies of the same thing...

The point of this distended diatribe, is that even as recriminations are starting, and are even possibly appropriate, there is something to be said for the fact that we will only be doing their job for them, or at least making it easier, if we eat ourselves in a fit of pique! I am reminded of the words of Ben Franklin, who told his feuding colleagues "we must all hang together, or we will all surely hang apart!"

mojo sends

Paging the Anti-War Voter...

The Doctor in his post below attempts to determine the impact of the voter whose primary motivation was the war in Iraq. I remain, so far, unconvinced of his conclusion that failure to motivate the antiwar voter specifically cost him the election, if I am paraphrasing his view correctly. Here are my doubts for consideration:

• Suppose Kerry adopts an "Anti-war" stance, which presumably would mean that he states unequivacally the war is wrong and some kind of withdrawal timetable will be a priority. Does he lose any other voter? The answer is likely yes. It seems to me in order to argue that his alleged failure to motivate the antiwar vote by taking a position that would energize them more cost him the election, you must assume all other things being equal. But they are not. As strictly a matter of political calculus, every position you take firmly alienates a bloc of voters of various sizes. I think you can credibly argue that an antiwar stance could have cost him more votes than he would have gained. That is not a value judgement of whether the stance is right or wrong, but it certainly could have, and likely would have cost him votes, particularly in the BG states where perhaps the antiwar vote was not nearly as strong as Ca.
  
  
• If I understand the major premiss here, turnout of potential Kerry voters was depressed by his stance on the war. Yet voter turnout was the highest in 36 years. Since, well, the height of the Vietnam War. You are analyzing voter data of people who actually voted. How do we know who stayed home based on data of who actually voted? I would argue that to make this argument more credible, we need to build a more complete profile of this voter, based on gender, income level and what they consider their values (I'm really trying not to abuse this word, I'm open to suggestions.) And then determine if that voter failed to show up. In light of the high voter turnout, I am sceptical
  

I think the Doctor is right on the money though, that Kerry's better manager argument, and the general incoherence on the war on Iraq and incoherence on his candidacy in general cost him the election. The Kerry campaign seemed to regard the war in Iraq as wrong, but was afraid to admit it in fear of alienating the more conservative (seemingly) voters in the BG states. I don't believe the data makes the case that a bloc of dispirited anti-war voters were the culprits. Rather, I think the crucial blocs were married women, voters in the middle of the income range, and voters whose economic interests are clearly threatened by the gruesome policies of the GOP. I doubt that those are antiwar voters, in the way I think you mean them. Rather, they are voters who had doubts about the President in general, but lacked a convincing reason to vote for John Kerry, or Democrats in general. Those convincing reasons exist, but they have been exiled to the lands of Academia and lefty policy wonkage because hyper-cyncial consultants and party bag men beholden to big money donors have exiled them there, and condemned the rest of us to perdition.

I have not seen really any fingers pointed at antiwar voters or hardcore liberals as the cause of Kerry's defeat. Rather, I am getting the sense that DNC leadership instead is being handed the bag. Hopefully they are a mere few months away from the guilliotine.

It is my contention that we got the turnout we needed. We had enough "energy". The Democratic base, and the most liberal section of voters turned out for Kerry in an inspiring act of faith and unity. We failed on message, a coherent narrative that gives undecided and/or flexible voters a sense of what you believe and what you will do if you get their trust. I examined Senator Kerry's record, and was and still am convinced that he was a capable, decent and intelligent man who was likely to grasp the extent of the desperate failure Iraq is, the betrayal of American values it represents, and the grievous threat its continuing chaos poses to the nation. Yet he and the party failed to convince other voters of that , some of whom were disposed to give him the benefit of the doubt, and those voters were looking for a more general and comprehensive reason to vote for him, beyond policy proposals or arguments that he could run the trains on time.

Did The Antiwar Vote Matter?

In my first post after the early election results were mostly counted, I lashed out with this bit of poison:

[...] Still feeling happy about alienating the anti-war voter? I thought so. [...]

...and, ever the faithful Democratic partisan, our own Sean pushed back with this:

Anti-war voter showed up at the polls, James. At least as far as I can tell. [...]

Well, now there are more exit poll numbers, conveniently collected into readily analyzable form. And guess what? It looks to me like the antiwar voter was not very well energized this election. She probably voted for Kerry, if she bothered to vote. But there's little evidence that she worked very hard at all to get other people out to vote.

That's completely consistent with my observations: the antiwar voter was deeply turned off by Kerry's answer to the "if I had known then when I know now" question, and I think it mattered that a lot of them weren't talking his campaign up when they talked to their friends. Most of us held our nose and voted for him anyway, but a lot more of us would have been highly motivated to help get out the antiwar vote if there had been a real antiwar candidate.

What are the exit poll numbers that make me think this is true? Percentage of voters whose most important issue was Iraq: 15%. Of those, a quarter voted for Bush, and I suppose very few of them were "antiwar" voters. (Hard to imagine that many antiwar voters were willing to believe like I did that Bush might be quicker to make a unilateral withdrawal than Kerry.) The rest, I assume, are the serious antiwar voters, whom I said were alienated by the Kerry position on the IraqWar™. So, that means the antiwar vote was probably somewhere between 10 to 12 percent of the turnout.

That's just not very big. At the height of popularity for the IraqWar™, polls were showing antiwar sentiment running at about 15%. In this election campaign that number could not have fallen much, and I would have expected heavier turnout among antiwar voters, not lighter. I think a larger turnout for Kerry would have been possible his campaign had taken an objectively antiwar stance on Iraq. They didn't, and I think they paid for it at the polls. And yes, I think the antiwar voter is paying along with all the rest of us on the losing side— but the difference is: the antiwar voter had already resigned herself to being on the losing side of the argument, no matter who won the election.

Worse, let's look at how well the "I will be better at waging the war in Iraq" message actually played for Kerry. First off, about 45% of the turnout said they thought the IraqWar™ was going well for the U.S.— and these people voted Bush at like 9 to 1 ratios. This means the Kerry message was aimed at only 55% of the turnout. How well did he do with those people? Well, 33% thought the war was going very badly, and they voted like 9 to 1 for Kerry. I bet almost all of these people would have still voted for Kerry if he had embraced an antiwar position on Iraq. The other 20% who thought the war was only going "somewhat badly" went for Kerry by only a 2 to 1 margin— but 36% of them went for Bush. So that's like, if my arithmetic is good, about 7% of the turnout who said, "Yeah, the war is going badly, but I think Bush is the better choice overall." The remaining 13% of the turnout said, "Okay, the war isn't going so well," and "Yeah, Kerry is the man." Many of these people were not voting on Iraq as their primary issue— which you can tell because they only went Kerry by 2 to 1, where the Iraq issue voters went for Kerry by 3 to 1. Probably most of them were not Iraq issue voters. Kerry's pathetic attempt to reach these people by telling them that his Vietnam experience made him a better CIC was a doomed effort from the get-go if you ask me, and the exit polls confirm it.

So, yeah— I think the antiwar voter mostly showed up at the polls and voted Kerry. But the exit polls do not show the highly energized and motivated antiwar vote that it would be reasonable to expect. And they also do not show that Kerry shaved off any significant percentage with his "I'm a better manager" message. The Kerry campaign alienated the antiwar vote, and it cost them more than it bought them at the polls. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

(No, I don't expect the D's to learn a valuable lesson here. I expect them to seek out and destroy the antiwar faction within the party, and blame them for their loss in the 2004 elections.)

UPDATE: In a post above, Sean says...

... I remain, so far, unconvinced of his conclusion that failure to motivate the antiwar voter specifically cost him the election, if I am paraphrasing his view correctly. ...

My conclusion is actually a little bit more nuanced, and I'm sorry I didn't convey it more clearly.

I conclude that one of the factors that could have made the difference was the alienation of the antiwar voter. I contend that if Kerry had been a real antiwar candidate, then he would have won. That is not to say that he lost for no other reason than this.

Sean spends a few column-inches whacking on Kerry and the Democratic Party "bag men" for not producing a coherent message, but he isn't really saying how the CoherentMessage™ he would have preferred would have been more successful than the one that was actually sent.

He and I are probably not going to see eye-to-eye about what the exit poll numbers show about antiwar motivation at the polls this last election without me delving even further into numbers wonkery. I shall resist the temptation.

Well, you can just ROCK ME right to sleep!

Our favorite economist, Comrade Max Sawicky, has been watching zombie movies again. Why am I unnerved by an economist who likes zombie movies?

He throws this little grenade over the wall, just for grins.

The inevitable post-election analogy: we're trapped in a shopping mall, not starving. There is recreation but in a confined setting. Nobody can really relax. Can't stay and can't leave. Outside, they gather.

...and there isn't enough ammunition for all of them.

Want to know a key distinction between Blue and Red States? From Daniel Gross at Slate:

In decades past, increasing Republican dominance of the House and Senate would have meant more fiscal discipline. But Republicans increasingly dominate the states that are net drains on Federal taxes—the Southern and Great Plains states—while fading in the coastal states that produce a disproportionate share of federal revenue. (It's Republicans, not Democrats, who are sucking on the federal teat.) What Amity Shlaes quaintly identified in today's Financial Times as the "southern culture of tax cutting" has been married to the southern culture of failing to generate wealth and the southern culture of depending on federal largesse. The offspring is an unsightly deficit monster..

"Southern Culture of failing to generate wealth" can be translated as "Fiscal Morons fail to invest enough capital in Public Infrastructure to attract investment or educate enough of the locals to innovate". Mississipi is a classic example. Behind in almost every economic indicator? The worst schools in the nation? Don't raise taxes to invest. Just erode the public infrastructure by deferrment and keep the schools at the bottom. Now they've exported that can do spirit to Washington! Boo YA!

Think about this Red State. The President and his anti-abortion whack jobs have for all practical purposes ended Federal investment in stem cells. Normally, a promising technology in a growth sector like BioTech would end up largely in the districts of the majority, in this case, Red States. But since Uncle Sam has gone hillbilly, States have to put up the capital themselves. A Blue state like CA, or New Jersey, can do that. So when CA drops 3 billion on Stem Cell Research, that means it will have no competition with Federal Gov supported research in Austin, or N.C. ,or Atlanta. Ca will be able to brain drain the rest of the country of all the best and the brightest and if the gamble pays off, startups and venture capital follow. High paying jobs in the nations most promising growth sector. I hope that moraly purel low tax fiscal plan of the GOP pays off suckers. NOT! Thanks for the virtual Monopoly on a new technology.

Jeebus! Are you people even walking upright? If you don't invest, you don't stay productive against your competitors and you sink like a rock to the bottom of a very slimy pond. Racing to the bottom to try to compete with low wage labor in the Pacific Rim only means you will hit the bottom harder, chimps. You break the poverty cycle by improving productivity, Remember? Did that skip that in Bible Study at Oliver Cranks reformed church of the sexually repressive Armageddon Church? Yeah..thought so...

Red state pukes...
Insert the vengeful, apocalyptic wrath of the space-God Jehovah-1 here.

For the love of the Unnamed Mover...

To continue on with the theme of s9's previous post, does Kevin, (and Professor Kleiman, who I normally have enormous respect for) really believe this kakaa about liberal hectoring? Guys, it's a key ingredient of the right wing kool-aid. Creating a sense of victimization among fundi-christians is a core component of the movement. It is completely manufactured. Political constituencies "hector" fella's, it's how you get your point across.

Is the gay bashing and abortion rhetoric of the right NOT hectoring? They want to impose a multi-trillion dollar debt on me and my kid, do I get to "hector" about that? The Administration wants to poison my water and air, do I get to disturb the meth-amp bender of Mr. and Mrs. Red State about that? Cthulhu forbid I should disturb the reality show induced trance of flyover America while their cherished moral leadership in the White House puts me and the rest of Blue State America at risk because of their demented national security policies.

You know what, I'll stop being contemptuous of flyover America's religious and secular hillbillies when they stop acting like freakin hillbillies. I don't want their flippin vote. I want to frame our values to get the voters who are at least trying not to be shmucks, there really is enough of them to make a difference. The others won't EVER vote for a candidate you can stomach. Kevin is indulging in the classic liberal blame ourselves game. I don't blame liberals or liberalism, I blame the christian facism that has usurped the faith of my youth and replaced it with a theology of hatred and fear. I blame the intellectual elite on the right that colloborates with these assholes to pimp their 19th century capitalism of greed. And I blame ma and pa red state for eating it up. We're right, they are facist scum. It really is that easy. Kevin and Prof Kleiman, stop the mea culpas and pick back your rhetorical juevos. We need every bayonet.

Jesus! sack up!...




Insert the vengeful, apocalyptic wrath of the space-God Jehovah-1 here.

Pin A Medal On That One

Adam Felber. He's our boy.

[...]

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.

[...]

What he said. (The whole thing is pretty good, so click through the link and give him some love.)

Kevin Drum Is A Capitulationist Appeaser!

Here he goes explaining to us how RedStateAmerica™ needs to be coddled into thinking we liberals aren't so bad once you get to know us. We can be really quite friendly and sensible, if you give us a chance.

[...] And the best part is that it doesn't infringe on our core values at all. We don't all have to start quoting scripture, we just have to dial down the mockery a notch. Why give the Republicans bulletin board material, after all? [...]

"Oh please, Mr. RedState Honkey-Trek Torture-and-Atrocity-Apologist, PLEASE don't resent it when we here at MojoWire call you out for harboring, approving and probably engaging in the wretched, feculent rough-trade of pseudo-fascism. And we must absolutely dial back on the mockery setting, now mustn't we? Unilateral disarmament is such a winning strategy when the conflict is a political one."

Fsck you, Kevin— fsck you twice, and you're welcome to do it both times with the LandDominator™ you drive.

How To Begin The Healing...

Over at RedState.Org, they're showing us all how the GOP plans to spend all that political capital they earned from that blowout landslide rallying-of-the-American-people behind le nouveau ancien régime.

For those of you who are outraged at Sen. Arlen Specter's latest outburst, which insults conservatives and questions the President's right to appoint Supreme Court justices as he sees fit, there is good news: the word on the hill is that there is a realistic possibility that Specter's presumed chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee could actually be stopped.

It can be done. But you must stab deep if you would kill a king...

The "stab deep" thing is a reference to an earlier related post with the delightful subject line Unsheathing The Long Knives.

PLUS: Here's the Policy Director of the Democratic Leadership Council explaining to the class that "It's time, finally, for Democrats to understand that we have to walk and chew gum at the same time." Would somebody PLEASE thank this guy for the help and cut him a severance check already?

Clicks and hisses

Kos is heading in the direction I want us to go:

It wasn't the war or the economy that killed us. It was the notion of "values". Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the nation, yet Kerry was bad because he had "Massachusetts values" or other such nonesense. We need to retake the language. We need to reframe the notion of "value". That's why Obama's speech below is so brilliant. He speaks of God in a way that not just fails to offend this atheist, but inspires me. It's faith used for the purpose of living a good life, rather than faith wielded as a weapon against a whole class of people. The wedges: gays, abortion, and guns. Democrats have abandoned guns as an issue, and over the next three or four cycles it will prove an increasingly ineffective wedge. The NRA won. Good for them. That leaves the two "faith based" wedges -- gays and abortion. And with great skill, the Republicans have equated those two issues with the word "value". That's going to have to change.

Insert the vengeful, apocalyptic wrath of the space-God Jehovah-1 here.

UPDATE from S9: I adjusted the formatting of this post. It sure would be nice if Sean learned to use the tools properly...

Anti-war voter showed up at the polls, James. At least as far as I can tell. And he contributed, and walked precints and called fat red state nascar assholes on the phone to get them to vote their own interests. C+ Augustus turned them out in droves. The Kerry campaingn did not suffer from lack of funding, manpower, or energy on the part of its supporters.
This was not about the antiwar voter. God knows that voter shouldn't get any of the blame.

A coherent message why the War a) is a failure b)why withdrawal sooner rather than later is a better choice to protect the nation c)The present residents in the monkey cage are dangerously stupid and incomptentent and cannot be trusted with anything, seemed to be made by a host of people and sources, at times by John Kerry. But neither you nor I speak redstate very well. Neither does John Kerry. Which is one of the things I liked about him.

What 50+% voters wanted was not reasons why the war sucked or why to leave it like a burned out Chevy by the side of the road. They wanted to hear something else. And that is the dilemna we need to solve.


Votes being sucked into the blackbox hole of Shub-Niggurth I can get my head around. I WANT to believe that is the reason I see the results I do. It's proof we need..and yeah, I will contribute to the folks at Blackbox .



Insert the vengeful, apocalyptic wrath of the space-God Jehovah-1 here.

The Fuses Have Been Lit

Alright people... This Is The Day... This Is The Hour... This Is This! And The Fuses Have Been Lit!

BREAKING NEWS: The nice people at Black Box Voting need real dollars if they want to make headway with their FOIA requests for the audit logs on the electronic voting counting systems. This isn't something else, this is this. Now is not the time to clutch your head like a stunned monkey and pray for divine intervention to stop the hurting. Now is the time to send lawyers, guns and money.

Let The Recriminations Begin!

Yeah, the Electoral College is technically still in play, but the popular vote looks pretty seriously in the tank for Maximum Leader. Longtime readers will recall that I have always been a fierce opponent of the Electoral College— so, as far as I'm concerned, the vote count that matters the most has already called a winner: George W Bush. If the upcoming festival of recounts and litigation manages to flip Bush out of the White House, then I will be 1) very surprised; 2) still a fierce opponent of the Electoral College; and 3) vastly amused by the sudden GOP concern about the meaning of the popular vote.

Say what you want about the Electoral College— the Democrats have lost the popular vote. Let the recriminations begin!

UPDATE: Okay, the wires are reporting Kerry has conceded. (And look— all those overseas military ballots are still uncounted! I wonder who would have had the edge there?) So. Now. Democrats: your bandwagon looks pretty damned busted. I won't say I told you so— even though, I fscking told you so— okay, forget that. I will say it. So. Democrats: what are you going to do now? Try to get the Senate back? The House? The White House in 2008? It must be a dark, dark day for you people. Still feeling happy about alienating the anti-war voter? I thought so. And yeah— save your cries of Greenshirt! because I voted your guy, even if I hated his war policy. But I could have worked harder for him, if you hadn't decided to spend all your money trying to swing the pinhead vote— voters who ultimately were swayed by the smear tactics of your opponents yesterday.

You people are such roobs. (And don't even get me started on the "black box voting" problem. I have given up hope trying to make that point clear to you.)

Stand men of the west...

"Stand men of the west...stand, the hour of doom is at hand"

Gandalf the Gray/White

Now is the hour of our salvation? Possibly, the gang over at MyDD the scoop of the morning (pacific time, anyway) with the news that:

AZ CO LA PA OH FL MI NM MN WI IA NH
Kerry 45 48 42 60 52 51 51 50 58 52 49 57
Bush 55 51 57 40 48 48 47 48 40 43 49 41

And in case that doesn't come out right on the screen, suffice it to say that the normally Republican leaning early exit polling show Kerry wacking Maximum Leader in the BG states...

Keep up the fire, lads; make it hot, pour it into 'em...

mojo sends