Voting Errors

In 2000, widespread voting irregularities and problems caused confusion and errors in the Presidential Election, throwing its validity into doubt and sparking a call for election reform...which never happened. Ultimately, the Supreme Court stopped the vote count, no solutions were presented, Florida's vote remained screwed-up, and the broken American electoral system remained unfixed.

In 2004, problems persisted in highly contested states, such as Ohio, where outdated machines and understaffed precincts caused numerous reports of voting errors - including some precincts which recorded more votes than voters (I'll let you guess which candidate benefitted from those glitches). Yet, no revote, no electoral reform, no solution offered to fix the problems.

But Fox screws up the vote on American Idol and it's instantly corrected the next night with a complete revote! Yay! Democracy in action! The system works! It just makes me wonder - if an entertaining popularity contest of would-be celebrities garners more respect and faster, more decisive action than the American Presidency, why aren't we voting for the next American President on reality TV? I feel that that may be the only way to save democracy and insure a truly fair vote these days. Or, you know, we could implement true electoral reform where votes really count.

Making Our Case

Digby has a killer post about the larger picture surrounding this Schiavo case and what the Dems need to do to assert themselves. Check it out (emphasis mine, along with a little formatting adjustment):

"These people want to dictate how you live your private life. They want to tell you who you can marry, how to raise your kids, what religion to practice (and you must practice it) and what "values" you must hold. And they want to use the strong arm of the government to do it. Sure, there are problems in our society. Yes we are living in a fast paced society in which it is difficult to raise children and the world is changing so quickly that it's hard to keep your balance sometimes. But most Americans don't wish for others to make decisions for them about how to live their day to day lives, regardless of the challenges. It's just not the American character.

[snip]

"It's just this simple:

• The Republican party wants to tell you how to live your personal life while they systematically remove all government cooperation in ameliorating the risks this fast paced world creates.

• The Democrats want the government to leave you to make your own personal decisions while having it help you mitigate the social and economic risk our fast paced world creates.

It is a stark choice. There is no reason we cannot begin to make the affirmative case for ourselves on this basis."

We've got to start making our case.

"Crass," "shameful," "opportunistic," "cruel," and "dishonest"

Atrios over at Eschaton brilliantly revisits Bill Frist's October 2004 comments:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist attacked Sen. John Edwards on Tuesday over a comment the Democratic vice presidential candidate made regarding actor Christopher Reeve.

[snip]

Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, called Edwards' remark "crass" and "shameful," and said it gave false hope that new treatments were imminent.

[snip]

"I find it opportunistic to use the death of someone like Christopher Reeve -- I think it is shameful -- in order to mislead the American people," Frist said. "We should be offering people hope, but neither physicians, scientists, public servants or trial lawyers like John Edwards should be offering hype.

"It is cruel to people who have disabilities and chronic diseases, and, on top of that, it's dishonest. It's giving false hope to people, and I can tell you as a physician who's treated scores of thousands of patients that you don't give them false hope."

I think his hypocrisy speaks for itself.

General Clark

While the GOP is busy trampling on state's rights and individual tragedy in their ghoulish cirque macbre, I wanted to draw a little bit of attention to General Wes Clark's progressive website Securing America. I strongly believe that General Clark represents one of the greatest hopes for the future of the Democratic Party, and I would proudly support him in any of his future endeavors. He is man of integrity, compassion, strength, and wisdom.

I'll let the General speak for himself, as he offers his vision:

Looking ahead 100 years, the United States will be defined by our environment, both our physical environment and our legal, Constitutional environment. America needs to remain the most desirable country in the world, attracting talent and investment with the best physical and institutional environment in the world. But achieving our goals in these areas means we need to begin now. Environmentally, it means that we must do more to protect our natural resources, enabling us to extend their economic value indefinitely through wise natural resource extraction policies that protect the beauty and diversity of our American ecosystems -- our seacoasts, mountains, wetlands, rain forests, alpine meadows, original timberlands and open prairies. We must balance carefully the short-term needs for commercial exploitation with longer-term respect for the natural gifts our country has received. We may also have to assist market-driven adjustments in urban and rural populations, as we did in the 19th Century with the Homestead Act.

Institutionally, our Constitution remains the wellspring of American freedom and prosperity. We must retain a pluralistic democracy, with institutional checks and balances that reflect the will of the majority while safeguarding the rights of the minority. We must seek to maximize the opportunities for private gain, consistent with concern for the public good. And we must institute a culture of transparency and accountability, in which we set the world standard for good government.

He concludes:

To do this we will have to get the resources and responsibilities right. In the first place, this means allocating responsibilities properly between public and private entities. Neither government nor "the market" is a universal tool -- each must be used appropriately, whether the issues are in security, education, health or retirement. Then we must reexamine private versus public revenues and expenditures. We need to return to the aims of the 1990's when we sought to balance our federal budget and reduce the long-term public debt. Finally, it means properly allocating public responsibilities to regulate, outsource, or operate. This means retaining government regulation where necessary to meet public needs, and balancing the federal government's strengths of standardization and progressive financing with greater insights into the particular needs and challenges that State and local authorities bring.

As we work on education, health care, and retirement security we must also improve the business climate in the United States. This is not simply a matter of reducing interest rates and stimulating demand. Every year, this economy must create more than a million new jobs, just to maintain the same levels of employment, and to reduce unemployment to the levels achieved in the Clinton Administration, we must do much more immediately. This is in part a matter of smoothing the business cycle, with traditional monetary and fiscal tools, but as we improve communications and empower more international trade and finance, firms will naturally shift production and services to areas where the costs are lower. In the near term we should aim to create in America the best business environment in the world -- using a variety of positive incentives to keep American jobs and businesses here, attract business from abroad, and to encourage the creation of new jobs, principally through the efforts of small business. These are not new concerns, but they must be addressed and resourced with a new urgency in facing the increasing challenges of technology and free trade. And labor must assist, promoting the attitudes, skills, education and labor mobility to enable long overdue hikes in the minimum wage in this country.

Theocracy Now! (Updated)

Shorter MoDo:

"Holy shit! The Christian Mullahs have taken over."

Frank Rich, too:

"It is a full-scale jihad that our government signed onto last weekend, and what's most scary about it is how little was heard from the political opposition. The Harvard Law School constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe pointed out this week that even Joe McCarthy did not go so far as this Congress and president did in conspiring to "try to undo the processes of a state court." But faced with McCarthyism in God's name, most Democratic leaders went into hiding and stayed silent. Prayers are no more likely to revive their spines than poor Terri Schiavo's brain."

And Syd Blumenthal!

"The Schiavo case is unique among all medical cases, including some 35,000 others involving people in persistent vegetative states. It is the only one in which the parents, who are not legal custodians, have been granted by an act of Congress and the president a federal court review of state court rulings. Wresting jurisdiction from the state judiciary is an unprecedented usurpation, a travesty of the federal system, displacing the Constitution with an ill-defined faith-based "culture of life," enthroning by edict theology above the law, not to mention what ambulance-chasing personal injury attorneys call forum shopping in the courts.

Meanwhile

A high school student who went on a shooting rampage on an Indian reservation in northern Minnesota on Monday identified with Adolf Hitler, according to a report published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press today.

The newspaper said the suspect, Jeff Weise, wrote last year in an online forum used by neo-Nazis: "I guess I've always carried a natural admiration for Hitler and his ideals, and his courage to take on larger nations."

He killed his grandparents, five fellow students, a teacher and a security guard, as well as himself, the authorities have said.

Officials said that the barrage erupted at the 300-student Red Lake High School about 3 p.m. The grandparents were apparently killed at their home earlier in the day, and the authorities were investigating whether guns used in the shooting were taken from the grandfather, a veteran officer on the tribal police force.

Thankfully, this Republican controlled Congress has fought hard to protect life and keep guns out of the hands of children. Oh, wait. They haven't. And when they had the chance to extend the federal ban on assault weapons, they allowed it to lapse. I guess not all life is worth protecting to the GOP. We'll see. I'm sure Congress will act just as quickly as they have in the Schiavo case, moving swiftly to pass some sort of meaningful gun legislation that will help curb the rising tide of gun violence in this country. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

Stepping out of the mainstream

I mean, we always kind of knew that the GOP was really out of step with the mainstream, no matter what they said. But the facts continue to prove us right. Of course, we all know they don't care about facts, but Salon points them out anyway:

But the ABC poll laid everything bare: By the wide margin of 63 percent to 28 percent, Americans support removing the feeding tube. Even more telling, 70 percent thought congressional intervention was inappropriate, while 67 percent said that Congress acted "more for political advantage than out of concern for her or for the principles involved."

More facts:

At least the Washington Post finally ended its silence on the polling issue, with today’s A6 article, "Analysts: GOP May Be Out of Step With Public." Notice two things about that story, though. First, the Post reports in the lead that Americans are "divided" about the Schiavo case, suggesting some kind of public opinion tug-of-war. Not true. To date, every single poll commissioned has come back with the same result: Americans, by margins that range from 20 to 30 to even 40 percent, support Michael Schiavo's decision to remove his wife's feeding tube. How is that "divided?" Second, notice how the Post has to rely on "analysts" to read the polling data. The Post's reporters shouldn't need an analyst to tell them the obvious: When nearly 70 percent of the American public disagrees with you, you're out of step with the mainstream.

The most disturbing part about this extreme case of government meddling is the fact that Dubya took quick and decisive action, as Salon notes:

On Aug. 6, 2001, George W. Bush was given a Presidential Daily Brief that carried the headline: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." The president went fishing. On Sept. 11, 2001, Andy Card told Bush: "America is under attack." The president continued to listen to a second-grade class read "The Pet Goat." On Dec. 26, 2004, Bush learned that a massive tsunami had caused unimaginable devastation all around the Indian Ocean. The president waited three days before making any public comment.

But let the record show, when important issues demand presidential action, George W. Bush is a man of action. The House of Representatives passed emergency legislation in the Terri Schiavo case just after midnight this morning, and the president was on it immediately.

I think we begin to see clearly the President's priorities, as well as what they really mean by "culture of life." And their "culture of life" has nothing to do with "quality of life."

And I thought Republicans were about keeping the Government OUT of our private lives. Hm. I guess they lie about that, too. I'm shocked.

Ayatollah Delay

Juan Cole on the Islamization of the Republican Party:

The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally, the tactics of Muslim fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and Pakistan. These tactics involve a disturbing tendency to make private, intimate decisions matters of public interest and then to bring the courts and the legislature to bear on them. President George W. Bush and Republican congressional leaders like Tom Delay have taken us one step closer to theocracy on the Muslim Brotherhood model.

[snip]

But the most frightening thing about the entire affair is that public figures like congressmen inserted themselves into the case in order to uphold religious strictures. The lawyer arguing against the husband let the cat out of the bag, as reported by the NYT: ' The lawyer, David Gibbs, also said Ms. Schiavo's religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and water. "We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to disobey her church and even jeopardize her eternal soul," Mr. Gibbs said. '

[snip]

Like many of his fundamentalist counterparts in the Middle East, Tom Delay is rather cynically using this issue to divert attention from his own corruption. Like the Muslim fundamentalist manipulators of Hisba, Delay represents himself as acting on behalf of a higher cause. He said of the case over the weekend, ' "This is not a political issue. This is life and death," '

Republican Hisba will have the same effect in the United States that it does in the Middle East. It will reduce the rights of the individual in favor of the rights of religious and political elites to control individuals. Ayatollah Delay isn't different from his counterparts in Iran.

Tom DeLay gives me the howling fantods.

I'm a Diehard Red Sox Fan, but...

Reading that a Gulfstream used to shuttle Tito Francona around may have also been used to render terror captives abroad kind of wierds me out.

Last June, the Boston Red Sox chartered an executive jet to help their manager make a quick visit home in the midst of the team's championship season.

But what was the very same Gulfstream--owned by one of the Red Sox's partners, but presumably without the team's logo on its fuselage--doing in Cairo on Feb. 18, 2003?

Perhaps by coincidence, Feb. 18, 2003, was the day an Islamic preacher known as Abu Omar, who had been abducted in Italy the previous day and forced aboard a small plane, also arrived at the Cairo airport.

Omar, whose given name is Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan, was imprisoned by the Egyptians and, he claims, brutally tortured. The public prosecutor in Milan, Armando Spataro, who is investigating Omar's apparent kidnapping, expects to file charges within a few days, according to an Italian official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Spataro made headlines last month when, attempting to identify the plane that transported Omar from Italy to Egypt, he served a warrant on the Italian commander of the air base at Aviano, Italy, which is home to the U.S. Air Force's 31st Fighter Wing.

Spataro declines to say whether the Gulfstream that landed in Cairo, which bore the tail number N85VM, departed from Aviano around the time of Omar's disappearance.

But Federal Aviation Administration records obtained by the Tribune show that Gulfstream N85VM has been many places around the world that the Red Sox have almost certainly never gone.

Between June 2002 and January of this year, the Gulfstream made 51 visits to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, site of the U.S. naval base where more than 500 terrorism suspects are behind bars.

During the same period, the plane recorded 82 visits to Washington's Dulles International Airport as well as landings at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., outside the capital and the U.S. air bases at Ramstein and Rhein-Main in Germany.

The plane's flight log also shows visits to Afghanistan, Morocco, Dubai, Jordan, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic.

Egypt, Afghanistan, Jordan and Morocco are among the countries to which the U.S. is known to have "rendered" terrorism suspects. Under the increasingly controversial practice of "rendition," terrorism suspects arrested abroad have been forcibly returned to their native countries for interrogation, sometimes with methods that are barred by U.S. law.

Pretty safe to say that plane wasn't in Azerbaijan on Sox business...

Ha-ha

The Republican National Committee announced that the Republican Party is changing its emblem from an elephant to a condom. The National Chairman explained that the condom more clearly reflects the party's stance today because a condom accepts inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you are actually being screwed. - Karl-Thomas Musselman

Support the Troops

If it's a choice between supporting the war and supporting the warriors, isn't it more important to pump money into supporting the warriors?

Not according to the Bush administration which plans to cut Veterans' benefits.

You can read about some of the negative effects right here to just get an idea of how damaging this is to the brave men and women who have fought for this country. They deserve more than lip service. They deserve more than what they've gotten. They deserve more than excuses and ineffectual responses like "we're doing all we can." American veterans deserve the best this country has to offer.

Proponents of the Bush budget say that VA spending has increased - and while that's technically true, the VA budget has always been historically underfunded and the "increase" in spending in no way keeps up with the massive increase in veterans that we have recently created, nor does it keep up with the increasing needs of the aging veterans' community. And even Republicans acknowledge that veterans are getting screwed:

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, described the proposed budget as "lean" and acknowledged the funding levels would "not be sufficient to allow the VA to continue to operate as it has."

What's worse: the cuts would only save a few hundred million dollars - pocket change compared to the billions of dollars in the budget. From the Winston-Salem Journal:

Cuts to the 119 state veterans homes across the nation would save nearly $300 million, according to documents provided by the VA. They are part of a plan to shift the VA's health-care focus to veterans who need help the most, specifically those with service-related health problems or low incomes, said Terry Jemison, a VA spokesman in Washington.

The effects on the homes would be devastating, said Donald Mooney, a Washington spokesman for the American Legion, the nation's largest veterans group. "It would just put a lot of state veterans homes out of business," he said.

In some states, he said, the cuts would affect more than 80 percent of the veterans population.

don't you think we could save those same millions of dollars from elsewhere in the budget? Maybe, instead of saving money by hurting veterans' homes, MAYBE we could save some money by NOT charging tax payers millions of dollars for state-sponsored propaganda.

Veterans across the country are outraged, and rightfully so. When Americans sign up to serve this country, this country made a promise: you take care of us, we will take care of you. It's not a conditional promise, like "we'll take care of you...but only if your right knee is shot in combat." It's a promise made to reward selfless service. And at a time when average Americans are being told NOT to make sacrifices during time of war, it is unconscionable to ask our nation's veterans to make yet another sacrifice.

Support the troops and demand that the VA receives the money it needs to treat ALL of our nation's veterans.

Universal Healthcare, GOP style...

From AmericaBlog (just quoting wholesale here, as I'm short on time):

The GOP just guaranteed every American universal health coverage - Hillary would be proud
by John in DC - 3/21/2005 10:27:00 AM

Robert, a reader over at DailyKos, recently wrote a comment over there regarding Schiavo that is actually quite brilliant (I can't find the link to his post, but will summarize it below).

If the Republicans believe their "culture of life" requires the federal government to intervene and assure adequate medical care any time an American is at risk of bodily harm, then we can assume this "culture of life" applies to other Americans when they too need critical medical care yet something stands in their way.

For example:

- poor people, the homeless, the underemployed, illegal immigrants who can't afford to pay for their medical help
- the elderly who don't have enough money to pay for the kind of expensive medical attention they may need later in life
- parents of newborns facing catastrophic illness
- regular Americans who can't afford health insurance, have no health insurance for any other reason, or who have health insurance that doesn't cover their current major or catastrophic illness.
- any American who ends up facing any kind of major illness or threat to their health and who can't afford to pay for adequate treatment. STRIKE THAT, money is irrelevant, this is the Culture of Life we're talking about. That should read "any American facing any kind of major illness or health threat, period - regardless of ability to pay" - in Schiavo's case, money isn't the issue, yet they're still guaranteeing federal help. And after all, isn't the Culture of Life more important than dollars anyway?

In other words, the GOP just guaranteed every American universal health coverage. And if that's not what they're guaranteeing, ask them why not? Is the Terri Schiavo case about the "culture of life" - or is it simply about Tom DeLay and the radical right grandstanding when they don't really give a damn about anybody's life?

Some enterprising Democrat should write up the Culture of Life Act (Terri's bill) immediately and introduce it, guaranteeing universal health coverage to ensure that every American is guaranteed their "culture of life."

It's a great strategic idea...