Saturday, October 30, 2004

Fun for the obsessed

This site is really informative/obsessive. Move your cursor around the states to find out how they're presently leaning, and how their electoral votes line up, and you can drive yourself crazy or have a ball. Your choice.

Looks like Kerry has to keep hold of all states (including Florida) in which he's leading (by whatever small margin) plus hold onto New Jersey (which is likely) and win Ohio or Michigan.

This is gonna get ugly.

Amazing, truly amazing

How many falsehoods the Bushies and their fellow-traveling pundits can fashion about those missing explosives. They've blamed the Russians, they've claimed the explosives were disposed of by our troops, they've said Saddam moved them before the war, they've mixed up the dangerous powder with other explosives, they've blamed Kerry, the Army--even the media--for misdeeds. They must be relieved now that bin Laden's tape has taken over the airwaves so that the explosives story is pushed off the headlines. Poor Bushies, they must be exhausted.

Friday, October 29, 2004

What's the problem?

How hard is it to figure out what bin Laden's up to with the election-eve release of a video? Of course he's trying to guide our electorate to the re-election of Bush. He figures (probably rightly) that we dummies will be frightened into voting for Bush, and that's precisely the briarpatch he wants to be thrown into. Is there any doubt about this?

BTW--I'm not alone in my analysis. Billmon shares it.

For the viewpoint of someone who's lived under Bush's tyranny, and pleads with us to end it, check out Riverbend's letter to Americans about this election. It's a bitter, but heartrending plea from Iraq. I'm praying--actually on-my-knees praying-that we heed it.

October surprises

Missing weapons in Iraq, a lower-than-expected economic report on the GDP, a new study showing 100,000 Iraqis killed since our invasion, an emerging scandal over the awarding of the reconstruction contract to Halliburton. If Bush is re-elected in the face of all this news--all in the week before the election--we deserve him.

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Back from Nevada

I couldn't take any more Vegas, even in Kerry's cause. I drove a van for early voters a couple of days, did some phoning and was an usher at the Kerry rally on Tuesday afternoon, with Cheryl Crow as Kerry's warmup. It felt good making a contribution, but I'll tell you, that place is crawling with volunteers, some of whom had dropped down from Reno because it was crowded too. On my phonebank were volunteers from the Bay Area, LA, Aberdeen, Washington, Perth, Australia.

Good to be back.

On another note: Back on October 12, I blogged about a Christian Science Monitor piece about missing explosives in Iraq, wondering when it would explode into a campaign issue. Now, almost two weeks later, NYT picked up the story and it has become a monster issue in Kerry's favor, with Bush on the defensive, bigtime.

Here's my question: What name should we apply to those spaces in time, from a day to a month, between when a fact "happens" and when it's first reported (on the Internet, ususally) and when it's reported by the major media. These are important spaces and deserve a catch-phrase.

Suggestions?

Sunday, October 24, 2004

My last post

for awhile, about ten days. I'm off to Nevada to do some GOTV ("Get Out The Vote") work there. Don't know to which town, probably Reno or Carson City.

I had a really powerful, sweet dream last night, or maybe it was a waking fantasy. It was Wednesday morning, November 3, and the polls had authoritatively shown that Bush was voted out of office. I went out to the parking lot of the motel where I was staying, to start the drive back to California from Reno in my trusty Volvo, but before I left I re-painted the protest sign that I've been marching around with for 18 months. I erased the anti-Bush/Cheney slogans and painted on both sides, "Mission Accomplished."