Four Updates

1. Tim Michels is putting on a brave face, keeping a stiff upper lip, whistling past the graveyard, whatever you want to call it. "I'm glad the NRSC isn't coming in. I want to be able to control this campaign," Michels said during a conference call with reporters. "I've said all along I will not lose this race because of money." [condescendingly pats Michels on the head] Of course, Timmy.
   
   
2. Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle has asked the state elections board to step in on the Milwaukee city/ county ballot dispute. County Executive and Bush re-election co-chair Scott Walker is not providing the city with all of the ballots that Milwaukee mayor and Kerry campaign co-chair Tom Barrett asked for:
   
   "Doyle said in a statement he's not in a position to say what is the right number of ballots. But he said the Elections Board is charged under state law with making sure counties comply with requirements to have enough ballots on Election Day so no one is disenfranchised. Doyle said the board should review Walker's decision."
   
   I repeat: Walker must be stupid if he thinks that doing anything even remotely smelling of voter disenfranchisement in this caustic election cycle is a good idea.
   
   
3. A few days ago I speculated on the possible identities of people who might have sabotaged transmission towers belonging to American Transmission Company. My vote was with people upset with ATC over their plans to build a power line through acres of pristine wilderness Up Nort. The FBI has startling new revelations:

   Four men were reported taking photos and shooting video outside the headquarters of a transmission company at the same time 17,000 customers lost power in what police have called an act of sabotage.
   
   An employee of American Transmission Company and a security officer from We Energies electric company both reported seeing the men at the side of a highway near ATC's Pewaukee headquarters Saturday night, according to a police report. [. . .]
   
   According to the police report, a system operator who was headed to the scene of the outage around 6:30 p.m. saw four men standing a few feet off the highway taking still and video pictures of the ATC headquarters. He notified someone at the office, who called police.
   
   The man at the office said he went to a window and saw three of the men still there. About an hour later, a We Energies security officer called Pewaukee police to report he had seen four men in the same spot at 6:10 p.m. as he made his nightly rounds. The officer, William Cerar, said two of the men had small, hand-held video cameras and appeared to be filming. Cerar said he had seen the men laughing as they came out of the woods nearby when he approached.

   My theory still makes sense. If I'm right, I get big props, and I'm not talking about Gallagher.
   
   
4. The Sinclair protests are working in Madison:

   One local business has decided to pull its ads from WMSN/Channel 47 in the wake of the station's decision to air an anti-John Kerry documentary next week.
   
   The owners of the Paisan's and Porta Bella restaurants said that after receiving about a dozen complaints about the program, "we just decided that we didn't want to jeopardize losing any customers over this," said owner Jerry Meier. [. . .] Meier said his restaurants began receiving calls on Tuesday and the volume picked up on Wednesday.
   
   "I took most of the calls, and the people were very polite and well-behaved," said Meier. "But most of them said they were long-time customers and they weren't going to come in as long as we continued to advertise on Channel 47."

   I haven't heard about Milwaukee--but you know what to do.

One more race in the bag

(I wrote this post this morning, and Blogger ate it. Stupid Blogger.)

Today we got news that the National Republican Senatorial Committee was pulling out of Wisconsin. Effectively, this is the Republicans' admitting that millionaire businessman and politcal novice Tim Michels cannot beat Everyone's Favorite Senator™, Russ Feingold.

I have been saying for some time now that

1. Feingold will outpoll Kerry
   
2. The far-right Michels will not have the support the moderate Republicans (there are a few) and Libertarians in the state
   
3. The Republicans are screwed this cycle by their own little Albatross: Bush. People like Russ Darrow here in Wisconsin--who was supposed to win--and Pete Coors in Colorado were supposed be able to finance their own campaigns. Michels has alread poured $1.6 million into his own campaign, for example. This is because it takes a lot more resources to elect this incumbent than by all rights it should.

Anyway, I've been wrong before, but Russ is going to waltz home now.

Why do Republicans hate Democracy?
or, #&$! you, Scott Walker

Our supposedly non-partisan--but former Republican legislative leader--County Executive Scott Walker doesn't want to ensure that there are ballots aplenty her in the Democratic city of Milwaukee. You'd think Republicans would try to be more subtle about disenfrachisement, wouldn't you? But I guess not. Here's the poop:

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, citing vote-fraud concerns, is publicly balking at a City of Milwaukee request for almost 260,000 additional ballots in anticipation of high turnout for the Nov. 2 presidential election.

Mayor Tom Barrett blasted Walker's stance, and Common Council President Willie Hines Jr. immediately joined in, saying it was an attempt to suppress the central-city vote.

"I'm going to lay this at the footsteps of the county if there aren't enough ballots in the city," said Barrett.

Barrett said that the 679,000 ballots the county had agreed to print were less than the amount prepared for the presidential election in 2000 as well as for the the gubernatorial race in 2002. He and the city's top election official said that the city requested 938,000 ballots from the county, which, by law, pays for and prints ballots.

Look, turnout will be astronomical this year, versus 2000, and if Walker thinks we'll need fewer ballots he's a bigger idiot than I thought he was. (And I was no fan before.)

Did I mention Walker is a co-chair of the Whopper™'s re-election campaign?

What's truly amazing is how some other Republican officials aren't even making pretend that encourageing people to vote is important:

More specifically, it involves central-city voters, most of them minorities, thousands of whom have been registered in recent months by voter-registration groups. Those efforts, though non-partisan, are widely viewed as helping the Democrats; Bush drew just 2% in 2000 in Milwaukee's predominantly African-American voting wards.

The chairman of the county commission, Doug Haag, who is also the Republican Party's chairman in Milwaukee County, went further.

Haag said Republican Party officials questioned why voter-registration groups seem to target only Milwaukee's central city and students on the city's east side. And he noted that Wisconsin has same-day registration.

"Why is there this need to get all these people registered?" Haag said. "If people want to vote, they will vote. If they want to stay in bed and not vote, they don't have to bother."

Yep, Doug, those Democrats can just stay in bed on November 2, sure. No skin off your nose, eh?

I doubt Walker's stupidity here is a part of what seems to be a nation-wide effort by Republicans and Republican sympathizers to stifle Democratic turnout (note what's going on in Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota (where Janklow claims it's national!), Florida . . .). But he's certainly not doing anything to help the image of Republicans in this cycle. It seems to me that anyone even remotely involved in the logistics of voting this year would want to do everything possible to avoid controversy and even the appearance of impropriety. We are too polarized an electorate for anyone with half a brain cell--Republican or Democrat--to think that even the merest whiff of scandal will not blow back.

Arrrgh. Anyway, you know what to do:

email: CountyExec@milwcnty.com 
Snail: 901 N. 9th Street
Courthouse, Room 306, Milwaukee, WI 53233-1458
Voice: 414-278-4211
Fax: 414-223-1375

Update: kos has a good list.

Sinclair/ "Stolen Honor" Update: Milwaukee

Milwaukee airtimes for "Stolen Honor" (see a couple of posts below or check the dKosopedia):
WVTV, Thu Oct 21 08:00pm CDT (WB-18)
WCGV, Fri Oct 22 08:00pm CDT (UPN-24)

And I do have some advertiser information now for those of you ready to do some calling and pressure-exerting.

As noted by WI Deadhead on dKos, the following advertisers have bought space in a Sinclair mailer:

• Stanek Windows: Local contact:
  2246 Bluemound Rd. Unit B
  Waukesha, WI 53186
  (262) 798-0500 (262) 798-0638 fax
  Corporate contact:
  4570 Willow Parkway
  Cuyahoga Heights, Ohio 44125
  (216) 341-7700 (216) 641-0895 fax
  
• Kesslers Jewelers: Several Milwaukee Locations
  
• Dr Wagner's Southridge Optical
  (414) 855-0469
  5300 S 76th St
  Greendale, WI 53129
  
• Miller & Miller: Attorneys James & Felicia Miller
  (414) 277-7742
  633 W Wisconsin Ave
  Milwaukee, WI 53203
  
• Planned Parenthood:  Wisconsin contacts:
  Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin Milwaukee  414-271-8045
  Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin Madison Phone 608-256-7549
  
• New to You Kids Two area stores:
  West/Brookfield/Wauwatosa
  3835 N. 124th Street
  Brookfield, WI 53005
  262-783-4778
  South/Greenfield
  5020 South 74th Street
  Greenfield, WI 53220
  414-325-7512
  
• JW Mortgage: 1 (800) 632 2410
  
• Milwaukee Wave:  Here's their contact page; click names for email addresses.
  
• Cell U All: Multiple locations--it's one of those mall kiosk stores, I think.
  
• Pet World Warehouse Outlet:
  
• Assured Mortgage: Contact Info
  Phone (262)796-0662 or 1-800-LOW-RATE
  E-mail edebelack@assuredmortgage.com
  Fax (262)901-0119
  Assured Mortgage
  2525 N124th Street Suite 100
  Brookfield, WI 53005
  
• Elite Asphalt:
  Elite Asphalt Maintenance Inc
  (262) 251-3595
  W164N11526 Castle CT
  Germantown, WI 53022
  
• Stu's Flooring: Two Locations
  4820 W. Loomis Rd
  Greenfield WI 53220
  Ph: (414) 744-9400
  Fax: (414) 744-9237
  548 W. Sunset Drive
  Waukesha WI. 53189
  Ph: (262) 524-1455

I used the TiVo for the opposite of its intended purpose and noted the advertisers during WB18's 9:00 news hour as well:

• Verizon wireless broadband: Customer Service was the best I could find:
  (800) 922-0204 (or * 611 from your Verizon mobile phone
  Verizon Wireless
  Customer Service Department
  777 Big Timber Road
  Elgin, IL 60123-1488
  
• Ford: Board of Directors:
  Board of Directors
  Ford Motor Company
  c/o Compliance Office
  P.O. Box 685
  Dearborn, MI 48126-0685
  Send E-Mail to Our Directors bodmail@ford.com
  
• Empire Carpet:
  1 800 588 2300
  
• Hamburger Helper/Betty Crocker: "If you would like to speak with a customer service representative regarding General Mills food products, or recipes, please call 1-800-446-1898 weekdays from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm Central Time.  If you would like to send a fax, the fax number is 763-764-8330.
  
• Thermospas: Contact ThermoSpas
  ThermoSpas, Inc.
  155 East Street
  Wallingford, CT 06492
  (800) 876-0158
  
• Totino's pizza rolls/ Pillsbury/ General Mills:  If you prefer to contact us by telephone, please call us at 1-800-775-4777  between (7:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. CT, weekdays) . If you prefer to send us a fax, send your fax to 1-763-764-8330 . You could also write us a letter, our mailing address is:
  General Mills, Inc.
  P.O. Box 9452
  Minneapolis, MN 55440
  
• Arby's: Complaint form only
  
• Overhead Door of Greater Milwaukee, a Division of J.F. Cook Co., Inc: Contact
  7830 South 10th Street
  Oak Creek, WI 53154
  414-762-4000
  FAX 414-762-548
  Jule J. Belott Vice President
  Commercial Door Service Manager
  jbelott@jfcookco.com
  414-762-4000
  Thomas J. Druml, P.E. Vice President
  Commercial Window Sales Manager
  414-762-4000
  tdruml@jfcookco.com
  Cheryl F. Honeck President
  choneck@jfcookco.com
  414-762-4000
  
• America's Second Harvest of Wisconsin:
  1700 W. Fond Du Lac Avenue
  Milwaukee, WI 53205
  Phone: 414-931-7400
  Fax: 414-931-1996
  Executive Director: Bonnie Bellehumeur
  Web Site: www.secondharvestwi.org
  Media Contact: Gina Styer, Communications Manager
  Phone: 414-831-6334
  Email: gstyer@secondharvestwi.org
  
• Progressive Insurance: Corporate
  1-440-461-5000
  Corporate Headquarters
  The Progressive Corporation
  6300 Wilson Mills Road
  Mayfield Village, Ohio 44143
  Investor Relations
  The Progressive Corporation
  Investor Relations
  6300 Wilson Mills Road
  Box W33
  Mayfield Village, Ohio 44143
  
• Law offices of Gary S. Greenberg: Contact
  735 W. Wisconsin Ave, Suite 735
  Milwaukee, WI 53233
  1 800 734 4349
  inquiry@greenberglawoffices.com
  
• Yoplait: Contact
  1-(800)-967-5248 (7:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. CST, weekdays) Or write:
  General Mills, Inc.
  P.O. Box 1113
  Minneapolis, MN 55440
  
• Taco City: Multiple Locations
  
• Sleep Number Beds: Contact
  Select Comfort Corporation
  6105 Trenton Lane North
  Minneapolis, MN 55442
  Phone: 763-551-7000  Fax: 763-551-7826
  
• Cousins Subs: Contact
  General Info: info@cousinssubs.com
  Cousins Submarines, Inc.
  N83 W13400 Leon Rd.
  Menomonee Falls, WI 53051
  Phone: (262) 253-7700
  Toll-Free: (800) 238-9736
  Fax: (262) 253-7710
  
• GO Wireless: Multiple Locations
  
• Menard's Menard Inc: General Ofc
  (715) 876-5911
  4777 Menard Dr
  Eau Claire, WI 54703
  
• Milwaukee Bucks: Start with Bucks' President, Democratic Senator Herb Kohl:
  Milwaukee Office
  310 West Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 950
  Milwaukee, WI 53203
  Phone: (414) 297-4451 or
  1-800-247-5645 (toll free in Wisconsin)
  Fax: (414) 297-4455
  Also try these folks:
  Director of Community Relations  Skip Robinson
  Community Relations Assistant Jessie Vavera
  Director of Team Services Clark Hillery
  General Manager Larry Harris
  Vice President, Business Operations John Steinmiller
  Vice President, Alternate Governor Ron Walter
  Chief Financial Officer Mike Burr
  
• Covenant Health Care: Contact
  Covenant Healthcare
  400 W. River Woods Parkway
  Milwaukee, WI 53214
  Phone : 414-465-3000
  Email :Webmaster@covhealth.org
  The primary Covenant Healthcare media contact on system-wide issues, Covenant Medical Group, Outpatient Services, and all of our hospitals, nursing homes and clinics:
  Anne Ballentine (414) 465-3605 office
  (414) 331-5345 cell phone
  
• Time Warner Cable: Here's the people:
  Chairman and CEO Glenn A. Britt
  Vice Chairman and COO John K. Billock
  President Thomas G. Baxter
  Executive Vice President/Chief Financial Officer Landel C. Hobbs--Responsible for all financial functions and Information Technology.
  Executive Vice President/General Counsel and Secretary Marc J. Apfelbaum--In charge of all legal affairs.
  James D. Fellhauer--Executive Vice President--Responsible for cable operations serving 1.9 million customers in California, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska and in systems which are un-clustered around a single DMA that make up the company's National division (including Shreveport).
  Here's how to contact:
  Have a question? Search our knowledgebase of FAQs or Ask Us A Question .
  You can call us with any questions at our 24 hour support centers:
  To reach Customer Service, Call ...
  Local Customer Service:       (414) 277-4000
  Toll Free Customer Service:  (800) 627-2288
  Kenosha, Racine & Walworth Counties: (800) 933-4662
  
• Honda
  
• American home electronics: Corporate Offices
  2404 West Beltline Highway
  Madison, WI  53713
  Sales/Customer Support
  (608) 271-1000
  (608) 275-7339 (fax)

Finally, there's an online petition, signed already by about 40,000 of us.  That site also links to a database of national sponsors.

Get busy!

Cheese in your Pocket
or, brother can you spare a cheddar?

Today the first Wisconsin State sommemorative quarter was struck at the U.S. Mint in Denver. As you can see, it features a cow's head (but not in The Godfather sense), an ear of corn, and a round of cheese. Plus, it's got our state motto, "Forward." Yes, that is our state motto. Please don't make fun.

I was personally of the opinion that the quarter should have featured a badger, which is not only our state animal but one of my favorite comic books when I was a young'n. And I didn't even live in Wisconsin then!

"Terra" in my neighborhood

Well, not exactly in my neighborhood, but pretty close. And probably not terror, but maybe civil disobedience in very poor taste. It centers around some bolts:

A $10,000 reward has been offered for the arrest and conviction of those responsible for toppling two electrical transmission towers that knocked out power to Mitchell International Airport and 17,000 area residents over the weekend.

Investigators said someone with an ordinary wrench could have removed the 2-inch long bolts that led to the collapse, but still weren't sure exactly what caused the loosened tower to fall.

Our power flickered Saturday, but it didn't go out, so I guess we were lucky.

I'm willing to bet that the wrench-wielders were not intending to knock out power to the airport, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone was trying to make a statement. The transmission towers that were toppled were owned by American Transmission Company, based nearby in West Allis. ATC is the compant planning the Arrowhead-Weston transmission line project from Duluth, MN, to Wausau, WI, cutting through thousands of acres of pristine forest. And a number of groups just don't like the idea of that.

These include Wisconsin Stewardhip Network, Save Our Unique Lands (SOUL), and Clean Wisconsin (more here). What's wrong with power lines?, you may ask. Well, Clean Wisconsin notes,

The Wisconsin Public Service Corporation of Green Bay and Minnesota Power of Duluth are planning to run a 150 foot transmission line 250 miles from Duluth, Minnesota to Wausau, Wisconsin. In addition to cutting into Wisconsin's already diminishing farmland and wildlife habitat, the likely sources of power supplying the line are also of great concern.

One likely source of power is older, dirtier coal-fired power plants from Minnesota and the Dakotas. Increasing reliance on these upwind power plants will increase air pollution that causes breathing problems like asthma attacks and premature deaths. Coal power plants are responsible for 9340 asthma attacks and 448 premature deaths in Wisconsin every year. Coal plants are also the biggest source of mercury emissions in Wisconsin. According to the National Academy of Sciences, some 60,000 U.S. children are born every year whose health and school performance may be damaged by mercury poisoning.

Another likely source of energy for the transmission line is cheap Canadian hydro power. Many utilities claim that hydroelectric power is cleaner than coal plants and safer than nuclear plants. However, the experience in Cross Lake, Manitoba, home to the Jenpeg dam, is that dams destroy fisheries and hunting grounds. Dams have contaminated the remaining fish and wildlife with toxic mercury caused by flood erosion. Together these factors have destroyed the indigenous way of life in Cross Lake, Manitoba.

Tom Kreager, one of the founders of SOUL, goes further:

If it were built, the Arrowhead Weston transmission line would be the largest transmission project in the United States. The line is slated to run from Duluth to Wausau. Its real purpose is to allow the movement of electricity from the Dakotas and Canada to Chicago and beyond as part of the deregulated Enron-inspired plan visualized by the state’s utility companies. Our land would be used to house a transmission line that would mean big utility company profits from the sale of bulk electricity.

The utilities also planned to use eminent domain for fiber optics that would be leased to third parties. This would all mean big profits for some private companies, but would cost some landowners 10-50 percent in property depreciation. [. . . T]he project that the utility companies considered a “sure bet” in May 1999, and expected to be operational by 2002, is treading on thin ice. Its projected costs have soared from $165 million to more than $400 million.

That $400 million comes out of Wisconsinites' pockets through higher utility fees, so even those of us whose land isn't being Iminent-Domained are not exactly pleased. Most of us wouldn't bother taking a wrench to a transmission tower, though. But I'm betting somebody did.

Now, this is a connection that the local media haven't made yet, that I'm aware of, so if this turns out to be the case, I get props, 'kay?

Oh, and how long do you think until Ashcroft starts issuing subpenas to make Ace Hardware hand over their receipts for wrenches?

Vote, Dammit!

Here's a reminder of the struggles people, er, suffered to gain the right to vote, curtesy of Ani DiFranco. (Located via Ms. Frizzle.)

Milwaukeeans! Protest Sinclair!

The Sinclair Broadcast Group, which created controversy for itself some months back when it wouldn't let its ABC affiliates air the "Nightline" that had Ted Koppel reading the names of US Iraq War dead, is at it again. According to the LA Times,

The conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose television outlets reach nearly a quarter of the nation's homes with TV, is ordering its stations to preempt regular programming just days before the Nov. 2 election to air a film that attacks Sen. John F. Kerry's activism against the Vietnam War, network and station executives familiar with the plan said Friday.

Sinclair's programming plan, communicated to executives in recent days and coming in the thick of a close and intense presidential race, is highly unusual even in a political season that has been marked by media controversies.

Sinclair has told its stations--many of them in political swing states such as Ohio and Florida--to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," sources said. The film, funded by Pennsylvania veterans and produced by a veteran and former Washington Times reporter, features former POWs accusing Kerry--a decorated Navy veteran turned war protester--of worsening their ordeal by prolonging the war. Sinclair will preempt regular prime-time programming from the networks to show the film, which may be classified as news programming, according to TV executives familiar with the plan.

Sinclair owns both WB18 and UPN24 here in Milwaukee. You should write or call them to express your displeasure that such blatant politicking will be done under the guise of "news" so close to the election. I have checked the TiVo guide and I haven't seen "Stolen Honor" appearing yet, but the guide is only showing me up to October 22, while the story indicates it may air as late as October 24. So better not take chances. If I see it on the schedule for certain, I will update this.

I wouldn't be surprised if the film airs under the guise of WB18's "NewsCentral," which is part of Sinclair's ultra-conservative "news" division. This is not just a problem here in Milwaukee:

TV Barn's Mark Jeffries calls Sinclair the "Clear Channel of local news," a reference to the San Antonio, Texas, media giant that has grown from 40 to more than 1,200 stations today thanks to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which relaxed radio ownership rules. But the parallels extend beyond their growth strategies. Jeffries describes Sinclair as having a "fiercely right-wing approach that makes Fox News Channel look like a model of objectivity," while Clear Channel is best known for sponsoring pro-war "Rallies for America" during the Iraq conflict. And like Clear Channel's CEO Lowry Mays--a major Republican donor and onetime business associate of George W. Bush -- the Sinclair family, board, and executives ply the GOP with big money. Since 1997, they have donated well over $200,000 to Republican candidates.

Sinclair's news department also takes a page out of Clear Channel's book of non localized programming. According to Sinclair's website, NewsCentral is a "revolutionary news model" that introduces "local news in programming in markets that otherwise could not support news." Begun in 2002, it's being tested in five not so-small markets: Minneapolis, Flint (MI), Oklahoma City (OK), Raleigh (NC), and Rochester (NY). (Hyman's segment, "The Point," however, is aired on all 62 of its stations.) In these five cities, the hour-long newscast combines local broadcasting with prepackaged news. To maintain the appearance of local news, the Baltimore on-air staff is coached on the intricacies of correct local pronunciations. Or the weatherman, safely removed from the thunderstorms in, say, Minneapolis, will often engage in scripted banter with the local anchor to maintain the pretense: "Should I bring an umbrella tomorrow, Don?" "You bet, Hal, it looks pretty ugly out there..."

Journalists have been pondering the specter of centralized news operations for some time, both because it affects the quality of news and because it could put them out of a job. "We should all be conscious of the dangers that are present when you have one newsroom producing the news," says John Nichols, associate editor at The Capital Times in Madison and co-author with Robert McChesney of the books "Our Media, Not Theirs," and "It's the Media, Stupid." "That's a real possibility. It's a very dangerous future, but Sinclair is already living in the dangerous future." [. . .] While the debate rages over whether such journalists can consistently produce high quality news, the real fear is that only one voice will frame and tell a news story. It's a chilling thought when that lone perspective is shaped by a Sinclair or Fox worldview.

"Thomas Jefferson and James Madison believed that, in order to sustain democracy, media needed to be cacophonous and diverse," Nichols says. "Today we don't have that. Our range of debate is getting incredibly narrow: The mainstream discourse runs from right-wing to far right-wing."

It angers and saddens me that the local home of syndicated "The Simpsons" has become what it has. Let's get the phones and letters working, though, eh guys?

Winning the Peace: The Real Big Lie

Much is being made today about the exchange in last night's debate concerning Bush's insistence that he executed the war war exactly the way the generals advising him said to. Here's the relevant part of the transcript:

BUSH: I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying, "Do you have what you need in this war? Do you have what it takes?"

I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort, looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, "Do we have the right plan with the right troop level?"

And they looked me in the eye and said, "Yes, sir, Mr. President." Of course, I listen to our generals. [. . .]

KERRY: You rely on good military people to execute the military component of the strategy, but winning the peace is larger than just the military component.

Gen. Shinseki had the wisdom to say, "You're going to need several hundred thousand troops to win the peace." The military's job is to win the war. A president's job is to win the peace.

I feel that this is an appropriate time to reprint a few paragraphs from my last Iron Blog Battle:

--
There was an utter lack of post-war planning--and a complete ignorance of thoughtful recommendations--before combat began. General Eric Shinseki was fired for daring to suggest that we'd need "several thousand" troops to keep the peace in post-war Iraq. Army Secretary Thomas White got the boot for the same reason. We should probably have had more troops for the beginning--and even now--but the administration's insistence that it knew what it was doing with so few troops has made it hard for commanders to ask for what they need.

Most disturbing is Anthony Zinni's story:

Four years ago, those who devised an Iraq war game called "Desert Crossing" concluded that a large force would be needed to subdue the country. "We were concerned about the ability to get in there right away, to flood the towns and villages," says retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and the surrounding region when he supervised "Desert Crossing." "We knew the initial problem would be security."

The 1999 exercise recommended a force of 400,000 troops to invade and stabilize Iraq. But at the insistence of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, ground forces in the March invasion were held to less than half that: about 130,000 U.S. combat troops and some 30,000 British troops.

--
The Washington Post which notes in s story tomorrow that, "In that 2002 White House meeting, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, whom Bush mentioned, said there were enough troops, but Shinseki told the president there were not. Other senior members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that they were concerned about troop levels."

That's right: For at least three years before the war, the people who know these things all said that securing the peace would require far more troops than Bush was politically willing to commit. And all the talk everyone--including Kerry--does about about Shinseki misses the point. It wasn't just him, it was commander after commander after commander, all of them willfully ignored by those who were convinced that we'd waltz into Iraq and be greeted with flowers.

That is a huge mistake.  It has cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars and the respect of the world.

That's the real Big Lie from last night. Period.

I was doing live DebateBlogging

Over at Open Source Politics.

By popular demand

I guess I'm not allowed to quit. Anyway . . .

Here's an education-related story for you. It's an axiom now that every time the Bush re-election effort starts losing steam, there's a terror alert soon to follow. This week, after Bush's dismal debate performance, Cheney's lies at his own debate, and the prospect of a dismal jobs report (which turns out to be true--listen to MaxSpeak), the terror alert was right on schedule. The target this time? The children.

Won't somebody please think of the children!

The alert was based on the school siege in Beslan a couple months back; terrorists, they say, could be planning the same thing here. And, though they say today's news is "not related" to that alert (an alert, again, "not based on specific intelligence"), the release of this new information just adds fuel to a fire.

Turns out that our guys in Iraq--that country which has not attacked us and which we know was growing less likely to attack us--found a CD-ROM "containing photographs, layouts and other material pertaining to American schools in six states." "Oh no," you might think, "the terrorists will infiltrate our schools and, Masterminds-style, commit horrendous acts of barbarity!"

Except for one thing: "A Department of Homeland Security official said the intelligence community determined there was no threat." So why the alert? Why the panic? Why the ruckus, if you will?

Security Moms, obviously. Bush needs to win women if he expects to have a chance of winning. More women vote than men, and they tend to vote Dem. In fact, data show that the again-safe lead Kerry has in New Jersey may be solely due to women.

Now, Security Moms may not actually exist:

"[I]f any security moms do exist, they seem to be picking Kerry over Bush. Nearly every poll shows that women are more likely than men to think that Kerry will do a better job of handling Iraq, the war on terror and foreign relations than will Bush. If anything, polls show that the gender gap is larger on security issues than domestic ones, suggesting that Kerry actually does better among women on these issues than does Bush.

Bush has to believe that these Securty Moms do exist, though; he even has Margaret Carlson and Frank Luntz pimping the idea for him. If they don't exist, they can't vote for him and he loses. But maybe, just maybe, if he can convince the moms of this country in the next few days that those scary dark-skinned people have blueprints to your child's school, he can pull out the squeaker.

Oh, but here's the funny part. This CD they've found with school plans? Belongs to a guy planning schools: "[I]t could not be established that this person had any ties to terrorism. He did have a connection to civic groups doing planning for schools in Iraq."

Where I Been At?

This isn't fun for me anymore. I'm sorry. Maybe it's burnout. Maybe it's work. Maybe it's the northern lights. I don't know. At any rate, I'm thinking of just shuttering this place until post-election.

Any objections?

The winning line

"I've had one position, one consistent position, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way. And the president chose the wrong way."

(I still think the vote was wrong, though. I stand by what I said way back when: You cannot give a lighter to an arsonist and expect him not to start a fire!)

But props to Big John for the good soundbite.

How to lie with headlines

When your headline says
Poll finds support for Bush handling of war

But your story says
Of 508 state residents polled Sept. 15-21, 43% said Bush was doing an excellent or good job dealing with Iraq, while 56% said his work was fair or poor. In June, 39% said Bush was doing an excellent or good job; 60% chose fair or poor. Since last October, those figures have not changed much.

I am being prodded by some correspondents to do more of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel-watch kind of thing because too often the news and editorial bias is just this bad. I'm just going to throw this out to all of my Milwaukee (or Wisconsin) readers and fellow bloggers: Would any of you be interested in helping out with a group-style MJS-watch blog?

How Ballsy is That?

With the TiVo, I barely get to see any commercials anymore. So I haven't seen any of the season's campaign ads. To an extent, I'm pleased. However, tonight, I happened to note that John Kerry is running ads during "Seventh Heaven." (Please allow me the one guilty pleasure.)

I have to wonder how, exactly, John Kerry expects to win by trying for the pre-teen Christian girl set, though. I suppose he has his reasons.

Oh, and go sing "Happy Birthday" to Stacie.

Just Something Else to Keep Me Busy

Hey, all. It's me again, your friendly neighborhood Iron Blogger Democrat. After a few weeks of relative inaction, the Iron Blog is back in business, and I'm taking on an old rival in Battle: Victory Iraq?

It's actually very appropriate given the news of this week. I've condensed my opponent's Opening Statement into one sentence, just so you can get a feel for what the Battle is like so far:

I want to [. . .] be held against [. . .] Saddam Hussein [. . .], thus paving the way for [. . .] a cheering crowd to[. . .] dollop [. . .] the lips of critics [with . . .] protest slogans [. . .] and [. . .] crystal meth.

But seriously, we're halfway through. Here are the links, in order, or just click through and scroll down a while, then read up.

• Call to Battle
• His Opening Statement
• My Opening Statement
• His First Rebuttal
• My First Rebuttal

The next couple of days see one more round of rebuttals and a round of closing statements. Check it out; I'm a little biased, but I think I may be winning.

I have my iBook back

But not the stuff that used to be on it.

Yes, folks, that's right. My iBook went in for a screen issue, caused by a faulty logic board, which they fixed just fine. But, after they replaced the logic board, they decided, just for kicks, I guess, to wipe my hard drive and re-install the system software.

I still love Apple and Macs; in fact, even after this most recent episode, I can still say that I have never, ever had any loss of data due to mechanical failure in fifteen years of Mac use. It's just the idiots at the Apple repair Depot who wiped my drive who are pissing me off.

So, anyway, I have also lost all my email. If you have ever had cause to email before about anything, or think I should just have your email address handy in case I need it, email me so I can have your address again.

The war keeps getting closer

A graduate of the high school where I teach was killed in Fallujah this week. I was here when he was here--he graduated in 2001--but I did not know him. Word is, though, that he was a Good Kid, and we don't have enough of those to spare here in Milwaukee. Now we have one less.

Thank Damn you, President Bush, for this war.

I need a third

I had a nice long post of election analysis going and the browser here on my back-up computer crashed. "Quit unexpectedly," as they say. In fact, I was most of the way through a draft of this very entry and it happened again. The Apple folks tell me my laptop is on its way home; it won't be too soon! And I will try to get that piece reconstructed sometime tomorrow.

Anyway, with Tim Carpenter's loss yesterday, I need a third for the folkbum 3. (I won't add Gwen Moore, not because I don't like her, but because against Gerald Boyle she'll probably hit 70% even without your hard-earned money.)

I wish ActBlue would let me add state races, as Dave Cullen and Jennifer Morales need your help. (Neither has a website I can find yet.) But, since we're only talking federal, who do you suggest? I'd like it to be midwestern, if not in Wisconsin (and I don't think any other federal Wisconsin races will be close enough to bother). I'm toying with Cegalis (sp?) and Bean in Illinois, for example, or Fingerhut in Ohio (at least in part for sentimental reasons). This site is not and never will be a democracy, but I'd appreciate your input!

Me vs. Reality

Results here.

20th Senate District
Me: "Mary Panzer is going to walk away with it. I predict she gets at least 60% of the vote, if not more."
Reality: Grothman 79%, Panzer 21% (with 93% reporting)
WRONG!
(No word yet on Elysse.)

5th Congressional District
Me: "I'm predicting Kennedy by at least 10% over challenger Gary Kohlenberg."
Reality: Kennedy 72%, Kohlenberg 28%
CORRECT!

4th Congressional District, Democrat
Me: "I will predict no more than a mere 12 or 15-point spread between the three, but I can't say who'll come out on top."
Reality: Moore 65%, Flynn 25%, Carpenter 10%
WRONG!

4th Congressional District, Republican
Me: "Corey Hoze will beat Gerald Boyle easy in the Republican primary."
Reality: Boyle 53%, Hoze 47%
WRONG!

Republican Senate Primary
Me: " My prediction: Michels 35%, Darrow 33%, Welch 24%, and Lorge 8%."
Reality: Michels 43% Darrow 30% Welch 23% Lorge 4%
CORRECT!

Two for five isn't great, but I beat Owen on the Senate prediction, and that makes my day.

I voted

There was a bit of a problem at my polling place: A couple of people ahead of me the machine stopped sucking in ballots (we use the connect-the-arrows paper ballots read by a machine like a Scantron®). So we just slipped our ballots into the slot at the bottom to be handcounted. Can a Diebold do that?

Anyway, results will be here when they start coming in. (As of 8:30, nothing so far. It's a little gratifying to see that no one has voted for the Republicans in the Senate primary. He he!)

Tomorrow is Primary Day

I'm sneaking some time on the old computer here to get my predictions and punditry down in pixels before election day rolls aound. There are, by all accounts, only three interesting races in Wisconsin's primaries this year, and I shall weigh in on all three, and a couple of other special ones.

One interesting primary is the Republican battle to be the guy who loses to America's Favorite Senator™, Russ Feingold. There are technically four candidates, but the least objectionable of the bunch, Robert "my brother thinks he's Elvis" Lorge, has basically no money and no support from the lunatic fringe of Republican primary voters. That leaves Russ "used car dealer" Darrow, Tim "I'm a veteran!" Michels, and Bob "statewide loser since 1994!" Welch. In my travels around the state last month, and in driving around Milwaukee and suburbs more recently, I can say that it will come down to Darrow or Michels. I suppose Welch could sneak in if Darrow and Michels split the bulk of the ballots, but Welch just doesn't seem to have any (visible) support. My prediction: Michels 35%, Darrow 33%, Welch 24%, and Lorge 8%.

The Mary "I'm conservative!" Panzer versus Glenn "you're not conservative enough" Grothman battle in the 20th Senate district has also been a good fight. Trouble is, Mary Panzer is going to walk away with it. I predict she gets at least 60% of the vote, if not more. I also want to send some love to Elysse Chay, who is a Dem hoping for enough write-in signatures to get her on the November ballot. If, for some reason, Grothman pulls it off, Elysse will be able to stake out some of the old Panzer terriory and may turn that seat D for the first time in like forever.

The 4th Congressional district primary here in Milwaukee is also tight. An open 4th CD seat is more rare than a Brewer's title, so three prominent local Dems are taking their best (and, in some cases, dirtiest) shots. Tim Carpenter is my guy in this race, but I am not confident enough to make a prediction one way or another. It will all be about turnout: A strong turnout from the South Side and GLBT community can push it to Tim; Attorney Matt Flynn and State Senator Gwen Moore will also be counting on turnout. I think Gwen will be helped by hard-fought primaries in her old Senate district and a couple of central-city Assembley districts, though, and Flynn has a fine field operation. I will predict no more than a mere 12 or 15-point spread between the three, but I can't say who'll come out on top.

The 5th CD race is also of interest to me, because Bryan Kennedy actually has a chance to beat Jim "PATRIOT ACT" Sensenbrenner. Libertarian-leaning Republicans are not happy with how F. Jim has "gone DC" and there will be a libertarian on the November ballot. Kennedy has out-raised any other former Dem opponent to F. Jim, and has landed moderate Republican support in addition to key labor union and other lefty endorsements. I'm predicting Kennedy by at least 10% over challenger Gary Kohlenberg.

As for me, I'm seeing the doctor tomorrow afternoon to go over the MRI of my back. I'm hopeful at least I can get treatment, even if my iBook is still away for repairs.

Is it just me . . .

Or is all this talk about TANG making anyone else thirsty?

My beloved iBook, by the way, is in the Apple infirmary for a display issue. They're telling me three weeks, but I'm holding out for something faster. Sigh. Mostly that just means posting will continue to be light for a little while.

Solidarity!

So Milwaukee has moved one step closer to requiring pre-payment at gas stations, to stop drive-offs and the many hours of precious police time they soak up. But wait! The business community is up in arms over this unwarranted intrusion into the rights of small business owners. And, of course, the conservative bloggers are fuming, too.

And how is the right half of Milwaukee's blogging community showing their sympathy and solidarity for these put-upon Milwaukee business owners? By refusing to buy gas from them, of course.

This is the kind of thing that makes my head explode.

Creeping Malaise

Well, not so much creeping malaise, really, as a sharp, stabbing pain in my back accompanied by the pressure of a particularly greuling opening of the school year, the weight of unfinished household projects delayed by my back, the recognition that the best candidate for the job has waged the worst campaign, and the realization that my 30s look a lot like my 20s, only with less hair.

Ergo, the dearth of new posts. I'm sorry to disappoint. Someday soon that switch will flip again and I'll have the passion and fire to rage, rage against the lying of the right, but for now, I'll mostly just be whining.

Go volunteer at the Iron Blog with the time you would have spent here. They need you more than I.

Lying Liars

This one's worth the day pass. Or you can read about George W. Fraud for free. Or read both.

And an update on my back: The doctor is now pretty well convinced it's a bulging disk or worse; he's got me doing a course of steroids (because, yeah, I need to gain more weight!) and if that doesn't work we'll try something more agressive. I don't know if he means Zell Miller agressive or Dick Cheney agressive, though.

Time

It's running out on the folkbum three matching challenge. We're up to $250 for Bryan Kennedy (before the matching), though we're still waiting for some contributions to the others.

Step up, people.

I'm on

Sarah and I got back into town late yesterday. I'm trying like mad to make up for the time I've lost getting ready for the start to the school year, so unless you want a lecture about Hamlet, I don't have a lot for you tonight. Just this:

The Chairman over at the Iron Blog is facing some tough times. Click the PayPal link at the top of the page over there and send the nice man some turkee.

I did finish reading Blogging America, and it's worth the $12, even if you're not in it. I will try to get a review up before next week.

Don't forget the matching I've offered through my ActBlue list!

Oh, and Scott went to the rally with John Edwards that I missed, less than a mile from my house.

I'm off

I'm heading to St. Paul on the Amtrak tomorrow (my back is not well enough for me to drive). So there.

Some Miscellaney

Depending on how much real work I do yet tonight, and how I feel, I may have another post tonight.

• I'm liking the Emerald Nuts commercials. I so seldom see commercials, because of the TiVo, but I'm watching a lot of Olympics live. So I see some. And the Emerald Nuts, I like.

• I don't like the prime time Olympic coverage. Watching the live stuff in the mornings is pretty cool, though, and you can really see how bad they butcher things for prime time.

• Bryan Kennedy is trying to raise $25,000 in web dollars by the 9/14 primary. If you donate to Bryan through my ActBlue link, I will match you fifty cents on the dollar up to $250 total through the end of August. So, guys, I'd like to see you get on that, because though $750 is only 3%, it's a start!

• The ActBlue deal counts for the other folkbum 3 candidates as well, so I will match your contributions to Russ Feingold and Tim Carpenter, too.

• Iron Blog is hot again this week--it's about guns. And they still need judges and challengers!

• Seen on Hotmail's home page today:

How to get Gwen Stefani's look!
What not to tell the boss!

I think not telling your boss that you want Gwen Stefani's look is step number one.

Endings

I've had my suspicions for a little while now, but it's been confirmed: The Wisconsinite has closed up shop. I have to say that I am very proud of having been even a small part of that effort (I had two op-eds published in its pages), as it was a fine paper; I always learned something new. I hope that many of the great people involved in the effort will land on their feet in other, equally stellar publications.

At some point, I'll go ahead and put the second of those two op-eds up here, since that issue never made it up on their website.

But posting will be light again for the rest of this week, as there has been illness in Sarah's family, and I'll likely be off to St. Paul for a few days.

Wanted: Judges

Not wasting enough time on blogs right now? Well . . .

Some of you know this, but I participate in a debate forum known as Iron Blog, based roughly on that camp Food TV show "Iron Chef." I'm Iron Blogger Democrat, and every three or four weeks or so, I get to beat the blogophrorical snot out of some Challenger on some hot topic chosen by the Chairman.

But I'm not up this week; instead I'm pitching IB because one of the key elements of the Iron Blog is that it has judges from around the blogosphere scoring the debates. Trouble is, even though it really only takes about an hour or two for any Battle you're judging, there aren't enough volunteers from either the right or the left to judge right now. If you think you might be able to help out judging once a month, please email the Chairman and volunteer.

Thanks much!

Aha!

One curiosity settled: Theresa Nielson Hayden explains why the colors are the way they are.

I’ve known people who think official color reassignments are a conspiracy theory. The short answer is that they are a conspiracy, but they aren’t theoretical. [. . .]

Who does this to us? An outfit, founded in 1962, called the Color Marketing Group. These are the people who wished avocado green and harvest gold kitchen appliances on America, and put the 1980s into those mauve-pink shades that looked so peculiarly horrible on so many of us.

Basically, the CMG is a trade organization, with 1,500 members drawn from a bunch of different industries. Twice a year they get together in Alexandria, VA, to come up with long-term and short-term color predictions. The long-term prediction is a set of sixteen colors that will be profitably marketable two years hence. That is, the 2003 palette was distributed to manufacturers in 2001. The short-term prediction is a palette of colors declared to be currently the thing.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody’s obliged to follow CMG’s lead; but a manufacturer who ignores them is likely to find that all his competitors’ products are in fashionably compatible colors, while his own clash.

What I want to know now: Where do they meet, and where can I get enough hand grenades?

Big Shoes

Via Ms. Frizzle, I found MyFootprint.org. My ecological footprint is an embarrassing 22 acres. They say that globally, there exists only four and a half biologocally productive acres on the planet per person; if everyone lived as I do, we'd need 4.9 earths.

On the other hand, the United States average is 24 acres, so I'm doing a little better. Less driving would help, and less reliance on supermarket food versus local suppliers. And apparently my single-family home is dragging me down, too.

What's yours?

And on a completely unrelated subject, doubles table tennis just doesn't seem Olympic to me. But this handball thing is interesting . . .

Maybe it's Olympic Fever

Or maybe it's the painkillers. But I just ain't posting like I should be.

And, given how the painkillers are making everything fuzzy, that's probably a good thing.

I got mine

My copies of Barbara O'Brien's Blogging America got here. I've read the first few dozen pages, and it seems very well done so far. I hope to have it finished and reviewed in the next week or so.

Don't you think you need one? (I get no royalties or kickbacks, by the way.)

Folk the vote

As you may or may not know (or can guess from my blogonym), I am an amateur singer-songwriter. But I do have plenty of friends and acquaintances in the "professional" world of folk music, and one of my favorite labels, Waterbug Records, has scrabbled together a great new collection for the accoustically-minded anti-Bush crowd: Election 2004 Anti-Theft Device, featuring 15 songs from some of my friends and favorites: Sons of the Never Wrong, Andrew Calhoun, Kate McDonnell, Dan Bern, and more.

There are MP3s to sample at the link (for a voluntary MoveOn donation), as well as ordering info. The CDs are just $5 each, so for the price of one regular CD you can get one for yourself and a few to pass around. They'll even negotiate bulk rates for you if you want more than 20.

Waterbug is an excellent, independent label, one of the few small folk-music labels that hasn't been eaten up by the Rounder group or other conglommerates. They're very good to their artists and deserve your support even if you don't want to buy this CD (and, I mean, for $5, how could you not?). Via Sarah.

And don't forget the folkbum 3!

Open Thread

Posting will be light if not non-existent until, oh, say, Tuesday. Discuss amongst yourselves. Suggested topics:
• The Revolutionary War was neither revolutionary nor a war
• The best ways to bring in the noise and/or the funk
• The rumored mafia ties to Folkbum's Rambles and Rants: true or not?
• To be or not to be?

And don't forget the folkbum 3. Grand total raised so far? ZERO. ZILCH. NADA. Come on, everybody, step up to the plate here . . .

It must have been my vote for Carl


You are Jimmy Carter. You are very smart and
decent, but your need to know everything causes
you to concentrate on the little things while
missing the big picture.


Which Recent President Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Via Mustang Bobby.

Help Me Get on TV!

Yesterday, I spent much of the afternoon standing around while they filmed a campaign commercial for Tim Carpenter, waiting for my call and trying very hard not to eat the donuts (I'm back on the diet) on the snack table.

And then, after about two hours, I got my four minutes in front of the camera. Yay!

The trouble now, of course, is scraping up the cash to put the thing on the air. Unlike some other candidates I could name, Tim is not flush with party-connection cash. So he needs your help, and, by extension, so do I. Tim needs $100,000 to put the commercial on the air here in the moderately expensive Milwaukee market. What can you do to help? Well, $100,000 would be great, but, sadly, that's illegal.

But if you believe in Tim, or, hell, if you just believe in your humble folkbum and want to see him on TV, head on over to ActBlue and donate to Tim through my list. Remember to add $.29 so they know it's from me. Well, I mean, it's from you. But it's through my list. To Tim. Wait, I'm confused. Just click and give.

Emailing this to Big Dan would be cheating

But if he just happens to swing by while working on his next Iron Blog post, well, that's not cheating, is it?

Juan Cole says exactly what needs to be said:

Although it may be true that al-Qaeda is as determined to destroy the US as the Axis Powers were in World War II, this observation is a Himalayan exaggeration if it is meant to suggest a parallel. Al-Qaeda is a few thousand fanatics mainly distributed in a handful of countries. If Zacharias Moussaoui and Richard Reid are any indication, a lot of them are one step away from from collecting old soda cans on the street in their grocery carts while mumbling about the radios the government implanted in their asses.

So while their determination may be impressive (or just creepy), they are not comparable to the might of three industrialized dictatorships with populations in the tens of millions. Some 13 million men served in the German army (Heer) alone between 1935 and 1945. (And WW II killed 55 million persons, not 3 thousand).

I repeat, al-Qaeda proper only has a few hundred fighters, those who pledged allegiance personally to Bin Laden, and a few thousand if you count other Afghan Arabs and their ideological soul mates. Most of them are not wealthy or trained or competent, and a lot are just crackpots.

Well, Duh


You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every book ever published. You are a fountain of endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any question people ask, and have thus been nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their grammar and insult their paperbacks.

What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Although, really, I could have been any of them, except food and wine. I'm one of the damned liberal elite, hands-down. Via Ms. Frizzle.

By the way

The roof is all better now. We had a good crew who got the job done well last week.

The Rally I Didn't Go To

Kerry Rocked the Park. I didn't go. Why? Well, I'm still tepid-y on Kerry. I will vote for him, maybe even canvass for him, but I have no plans, for example, to put a Kerry-Edwards sticker on my car.

And besides that, I hate people. Especially thousands of sweaty people in a crowd.

But Owen (my sworn nemesis, you remember him) wishes he could have been there to watch this exchange between THK and the crowd:

The high-stakes intensity of the campaign could also be seen Monday in noisy confrontations between Kerry and Bush supporters and the use of bullhorns and air horns by a small group of Bush supporters to try to disrupt the speeches, prompting Kerry and his wife to respond to what the candidate termed "goons."

While she was introducing her husband, Teresa Heinz Kerry referred to the group's audible call for "Four more years."

Said Heinz Kerry, "They want four more years of hell."

The Kerry crowd followed with chants of "Three more months."

Kerry also responded to the pro-Bush chanters, saying they wanted to "drown people out" with their megaphones.

"We don't want to be drowned out," Kerry said. "I want to thank George Bush for sending the goons here tonight to excite us to do a little more work! Thank you!"

How can we prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future?

Clearly, the solution is to demand that Kerry rally ticket-holders sign loyalty oaths and kick out or arrest dissenters in the audience.

No, wait. That would be unAmerican.

Update on Yesterday's post

Yesterday, I mentioned that Michael Moore might not be our best spokesman, based on his O'Reilly interview and his insistence on calling Bush a liar. My strategy, on the other hand, would be to call on Bush to take responsibilty for the demonstrable errors on his watch rather than to keep blaming others.

Of course, I didn't mean to imply that Bush isn't a liar. He is.

[N]o matter how much defensive spin spews from the White House, the Bush administration cannot escape the documented fact that it was clearly warned before the war that its rationale for invading Iraq was weak.

Top administration officials repeatedly ignored warnings that their assertions about Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and connections to al Qaeda were overstated. In some cases, they were told their claims were wholly without merit, yet they went ahead and made them anyway. Even the Senate report admits that the White House “misrepresented” classified intelligence by eliminating references to contradictory assertions.

In short, they knew they were misleading America.

And they did not care.

Just to make that clear.

Why Michael Moore isn't the Left's best spokesman

So I finally got around to watching the bbig Michael Moore-Bill O'Reilly matchup from last week, recorded at the DNC in Boston. I've said it before and I'll say it again--Michael Moore is not the best spokesman we can find. First of all, he wilted against O'Reilly (a transcript is here), resorting to cheap theatrics rather than making salient points. For one, Moore's "would you sacrifice your children" stunt fell completely flat--both in the transcript and on TV.

For two, there's a very simple and very telling point to be made about the whole "Bush Lied" business that O'Reilly went after Moore about:

Now, one of the issues is you because you’ve been calling Bush a liar on weapons of mass destruction, the Senate Intelligence Committee, Lord Butler’s investigation in Britain and now the 9/11 Commission have all come out and said there was no lying on the part of President Bush. Plus, Vladimir Putin has said his intelligence told Bush there were weapons of mass destruction. Wanna apologize to the president now or later?

MOORE: He didn’t tell the truth, he said there were weapons of mass destruction.

O'REILLY: Yeah, but he didn’t lie, he was misinformed by — all of those investigations come to the same conclusion. That’s not a lie.

MOORE: Uh huh. So, in other words, if I told you right now that nothing was going on down here on the stage…

O'REILLY: That would be a lie because we could see that wasn’t the truth.

MOORE: [. . . A]ctually it’s President Bush that needs to apologize to the nation for telling an entire country that there were weapons of mass destruction, that they had evidence of this and that there was some sort of connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11th, and he used that as a-- [. . .]

O'REILLY: Just the issues. You’ve got three separate investigations plus the president of Russia all saying… British intelligence, U.S. intelligence, Russian intelligence, told the president there were weapons of mass destruction; you say he lied. This is not a lie if you believe it to be true, now he may have made a mistake, which is obvious…

MOORE: Well, that’s almost pathological. I mean, many criminals believe what they say is true; they could pass a lie detector test…

O'REILLY: All right, now you’re dancing around a question…

MOORE: No, I’m not. There’s no dancing.

O'REILLY: He didn’t lie.

MOORE: He said something that wasn’t true.

O'REILLY: Based upon bad information given to him by legitimate sources.

There's a simple fact about the Bush administration that needs to be spread far and wide: This administration refuses to take responsibility. The recession? Not our fault. September 11? It's Clinton's fault. The leak of a covert CIA operative's name? Not really illegal! (Shades of "no controlling legal authority" there?) Job numbers suck? It's not our economic policy, it's factors beyond our control! Vice President Cheney dropped an F-Bomb on the floor of the Senate? He was just trying to feel better.

Leaving aside for a moment that the administration ignored initial intelligence warnings that the case for war was weak, pressuring intel agencies to up the ante, if you will, there's an easy answer to idiots like Bill O'Reilly: He doesn't have to admit that he lied. We just want to hear somebody in the administration take responsibility for the mistakes that were made. And, if Bush really is the CEO president that he claims to be, then he should be sending heads rolling over all of this. A good CEO might even step down over so many serious errors on his watch.

So, that's your new task. Whenever somebody tries to say it isn't Bush's fault--tell them it's time for him to take responsibility for all the things that "aren't his fault."

I'm breathing again

You may or may not have noticed that I was busy over at the Iron Blog this week. I was up against the Cool Blue Blog guy, and he's the most challenging opponent I've had so far (no offense intended, Owen). Well, I'm proud to say that I have won my third Battle without a loss. This was a tight one, one I was quite panicked about waiting for the verdict. But I pulled it out in the end. Whew.

Go read the whole thing:

Opening the Battle.
His opening.
My opening.
His first rebuttal.
My first rebuttal.
His second rebuttal.
My second rebuttal.
His Closing.
My Closing.
Judges' comments and verdict.

There's a song here . . . something about "Ding Dong," maybe?

TABOR is dead. Again.

At some point they'll figure it out. At least some Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate--the less wingnutty of the two Wisconsin houses-- recognize that a straightjacket like TABOR is a bad idea. There are ways to bring about both tax fairness and reduced spending without draconian measures that don't actually fix the root causes of of our ballooning budget problems. Another plus is that there now seems to be real animosity brewing between the relatively good and moderate Republicans in the Senate (up to and maybe including Mary Panzer) and the really hard-core Republican nuts in the Assembly. They've been in power too long and are starting to eat their own now, embodied in the primary challenge Panzer's facing. This is the sort of thing that's driving good-government conservatives to retire--they can't stand the partisan rancor and infighting.

I won't go into all the TABOR nonesense again now; scroll down a bit and you can find everything you need to know. But right now, do a little dance. Maybe get something from the Lollipop Guild.

And, hey, sorry I didn't get to this sooner, but I've been busy this week.

Oops!

I've said before that I'm not really sure how many hits I've had since I started this blog last May, as GoStats has lost my info not once but twice (the current count is from some time in early January).

But I was still planning to say something nice about whoever it was who turned the counter down there at the bottom right over to 10,000. But, as luck would have it, it was me.

Sorry about that.

So congrats to #9,999, another poor soul (from dsl.sfldmi.ameritech.net) doing a Yahoo! search for Elizabeth Edwards fat. And congrats also to #10,001, a local (dsl.milwwi.ameritech.net) who has me bookmarked. Thanks all for your visits!

Know What I Hate?

Yeah, I know, it's a long list. But one thing that gets my goat is the practice--most notably on Fox and its sister F/X cable channel--of advertising upcoming shows during the show that's on.

Lately, because of the summer re-run doldrums, Sarah and I have been TiVoing "The Practice." Whenever the show comes back from commercial, F/X advertises its new fire department show with Dennis Leary; I can't even recall what its title is, though the theme is Queen's "Under Pressure" ("Ice, Ice, Baby," for those of you under 20), so you can see how well the advertising works. They way they do it is by appropriating the bottom half of the screen (and a good chunk of the right side, too) with moving graphics and a sound effect of sizzling fire that drowns out the audio of the show I'm trying to watch. This goes on for probably five or eight seconds.

Fox does this on its broadcast shows, too. I imagine F/X does it most of the rest of the time as well. How is this even remotely a good idea? It just pisses me off and makes me want to just not watch.

Bastards.

Training Wheels for Bush

[UPDATE, 7/26: Once again, Bush needs these!]

[UPDATE, 5/22: Bush really does need these!]

Did you all catch this?

President Bush sought to rally Republican lawmakers around his Iraq plan Thursday, saying Iraqis are ready to "take the training wheels off" by assuming some political power. [. . .] "He talked about 'time to take the training wheels off,'" said Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio. "The Iraqi people have been in training, and now it's time for them to take the bike and go forward."

So here's the plan: Go buy some training wheels (the $10 kind--don't want to have to spend too much!). But don't ship them to yourself. Instead, ship them here::

The Honorable George W. Bush
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Then spread the idea to your friends!

Man, if I don't get an FBI file for this, I don't know what else to try.

This is what playing politics looks like

The outrage fatigue is hitting again, just as I was starting to get over it, as now it looks the Wisconsin state legislature will be coming back for a special session on the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights (TABOR) and the tax freeze bill next week.

The session was called by Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer, in a flip-flop of monumental proportions. Earlier this summer she did the right thing, a rarity among Republicans these days, especially here in Wisconsin. She realized that there was no chance of there being agreement on any kind of TABOR language (and uncertainty about a tax-freeze majority that can withstand the governor's veto), and declared that there would be no vote, no special session. In fact, as of Friday when she called the session, there was no draft of a TABOR amendment available at all.

But now, under pressure from the wingnut wing of the party--and a serious primary challenge from Glenn Grothman, who is challenging the very conservative Panzer from the right!--she has changed her mind.

They're facing an August 3 deadline for the amendment part of the agenda; if they get it passed by then (it needs a 2/3 vote, which I doubt they have), they can vote again in January and have it on the ballot for a referendum in April. That's their plan for the anti-gay marriage amendment passed last March. If they can't get it done now, the referendum will be pushed back to 2007 at the earliest.

Trouble is, in the next couple of days, they have to whip up language that the Republicans can agree on--no simple task--schedule, announce, and hold public hearings, plus have the vote. Many Democratic lawmakers will be in Boston next week for the Democratic National Convention. (Republicans in Texas have tried the same special-session crap to keep Texas Dems from convention going.)

Even other Republicans can see that this is bull. I like what Mike Ellis had to say:

"It's total politics," Doyle said at a campaign rally in Milwaukee. "Nobody even knows what the proposal is. Just a couple of weeks ago, even Mary Panzer was saying this needed thorough discussion and thought. Obviously, whatever is going on in the Republican Party these days, they're in a lot of political turmoil." [. . .]

Republican Sen. Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) also criticized his party's leaders for their new emphasis on trying to recast the constitution. "Oh my God, they're panicking," Ellis said Friday.

"Furthering somebody's political ambitions or extending somebody's political career ought not be the dictum by which the public policy is formulated," Ellis said, referring to Panzer's challenge by Grothman.

What's really cheneyed-up is the tax-freeze business, if it passes. This late, everyone everywhere has already set their budgets based on the numbers they thought they had. School districts, for example, are all way past the date that they can do any layoffs of unionized workers; they'd have to start the year with no secretaries or something. Maybe end school early, around spring break. The assessment on my house has already been done--up $9000 over last year, thank you very much--so I don't know how the city'll get by. Cripes.

I'll be interested to hear what my arch-nemesis Owen has to say about this. For more on why both TABOR and the tax freeze are bad ideas, check my old posts here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Believe it or not

I posted something to OSP tonight. First time in more than a month. Doesn't fully absolve my guilt for not posting, of course. But it helps.

If you've blown out your back and are spending the weekend horizontally, too

Then you'll find this as engrossing as I did.

Why isn't Whoopi hosting?

I don't know if this is funny or just scary, but check out "Right Wing Squares." (Via Barking Lunatics.)

Bottom of the Barrel

Here's something for you all to chew on while I'm working on getting over the outrage fatigue: another in the occasional series, "Bottom of the Barrel."

Funny Today, number 12966, is the actual bottom of the barrel over to the Ecosystem right now. But with only two posts up (one a request for other posters, one about the Tron guy that Matt Stoller is in love with), I feel I ought to move up to something with more substance.

Number 12965 was British, and I just didn't have the patience for sorting out the intracacies of problems in the English government, too. Sitting at number 12964 is The World According to Wayne. I had some hope since I enjoy John Irving. Sadly, it's a typo-ridden blog about the banal--car troubles, moving, and so on.

One up from there, at 12963, is Top of My Head. The first post was promising--an "ER"-style story of a late night as a nurse. But, scrolling down, I found some cheap shots--not even legitimate policy disagreements--with Kerry. Seems pretty reactionary.

Anyway, hoping not to go 0-5, I tried number 12962, urti blog. Again, right-wing pap, but more interesting. For example, the very topmost post links to this Weekly Standard piece about "intellectual elites and wannabes," with this insightful commentary from urti: "Wonderful commentary on how liberals value intelligence above all else, even moral character. Does intelligence give us any hope of a moral culture?" He then snarks about Linda Ronstadt, sounds hopeful about the House of Representatives violating the separation of powers, and more. But, as luck would have it, that's all there is, since he's as new to this blogging thing as the Funny Today guy.

So what's a barrel troller to do? I think I'll just go back to hiding under the covers.

Folkbum Loves ActBlue

Now I can track your donations to the folkbum three.

And it's Kerry by three lengths

Or so says mindgeek, who puts Kerry at between 270-322 electoral votes--98 out of 100 times with a 95% probability. All the meta-poll data and methodology (for the smarty pantses among you), as well as a variation on the old johnedwards.com EV map, is here.

The thing is, mindgeek's analysis matches pretty much everybody else's analysis--even that of some prominent Republicans who do that sort of thing.

So, now, complacency. Let's all take the rest of the summer off. (Not really.)

Multiple Choice Test

Who is the war profiteer? Choose only one answer:

A. A man who makes a movie, the majority of whose profits are going to Disney's favorite charities.
B. A sitting vice president, who influences defense policy and military contract awards and who is receiving deferred compensation as the former CEO of a company awarded billions of dollars of those contracts.

Please consider your answer carefully. This test is take-home, and due on November 2.

(Inspired by the Queen.)

Outrage Fatigue

In case you are wondering why I'm not posting this week, the Onion (another great Wisconsin creation) explains it so well. It would be funny except it's true. There's so much to be pissed off about, I don't have enough to go around.

It's also too hot. The roof still leaks and now we have to sell our souls to some banking conglommerate (or, more likely, our credit union) so we can fix it. Anyone know any good Milwaukee-area plasterers?

But this is funny (though not work safe!).

UPDATE: Fixed the second link.

Pretty, pretty

Tim Carpenter's new website is live now and it is awesome. E-mail sign-ups, on-line contributions, good and growing issues pages. Needs a blog, though, eh? Anyway, go tool around over there--I'm finally able to send you there without apology!

I'll get over it

I'm deciding to be okay about, once again, being passed over as the vice-presidential nominee. I mean, I should be used to it by now, given that every four years since Carter asked Fritz Mondale to pop out of the cake at the 1976 convention, I have been ignored.

One of these days, it'll happen, though. I just know it will. But still, it did kind of put a pall over my celebrations of Bush Nativity Day, despite the good soup for dinner.

On the upside, I am once again getting a fair number of hits for searches on Elizabeth Edwards and variations on the word fat.

As to the roof (because I know you all care so much), the company that did the original repairs sent out a guy to do more for free. The new one who came out first thing this morning, though, wanted $2800. I don't have $2800. I may not even have $28. So we'll see how the new "repair" holds up during the rain tonight. As it is, the buckets are in place ready to go.

Happy Bush Nativity Day

I'm baking apple pie and watching some baseball. How about you?

Still Sucking

So we spent the day waiting at the house for the roofer to call back. And waited. And waited. So eventually I call around and I got a live person at a different roofer who will be here at 8 AM tomorrow. So we'll have to see how much it rains overnight.

On a happier note, I finally made it into a book--bringing up the rear, even. Guess what everybody's getting for Christmas?