Mercury Rising

Yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld compared critics of George W. Bush's leadership to the people who appeased the Nazis. Today, George W. Bush has described his War on Terror as the successor to the war against the Nazis. The irony is that the Bush family's wealth and political influence are founded in Prescott Bush's business dealings with the Nazi government. Will some enterprising reporter ask Tony Snow whether, since George Bush deplores appeasing fascist regimes, he regrets his own family's support of Hitler's government? [Edited to add] I just remembered another reason it's ironic Rumsfeld is calling other people "appeasers".

Britt Robson over at City Pages has a very good article on Keith Ellison, the man who is going to be the first practicing Muslim to be elected to Congress, and the bizarre hatred he elicits from the well-funded Republican blogger and dead-tree media community. Read Robson's piece, then surf over to my most recent post on Ellison to see a few tidbits that Robson didn't mention -- such as the fact that Ellison's most publicly prominent Jewish attacker just happens to be a big donor to local Republicans. UPDATE: Well, now we know which of the Democrats running against Ellison in the primary was the one shoveling garbage into the eager maws of the local Republican noise machine. Take a bow, Paul Ostrow! Yeah, I know: His campaign manager, Jason Amundsen, is the guy who was actually feeding GOP blogger operative Michael "Minnesota Democrats Exposed" Brodkorb that scurrilous crapola. But does anyone doubt that Amundsen didn't do this without getting Ostrow's approval first? At a minimum, Ostrow needs to fire Amundsen and apologize to Ellison. As does Brodkorb, but we know that won't happen.

John Mark Karr to seek guilty charge as an independent, by MJS of CorrenteWire.

James Healey in USAToday, 8/29, accessed on AOL: Gasoline prices are falling fast and could keep dropping for months. "The only place they have to go is down," says Fred Rozell, gasoline analyst at the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS). "We'll be closer to $2 than $3 come Thanksgiving....The U.S. average for a gallon of regular peaked this year at $3.036 Aug. 10, according to OPIS/AAA daily surveys. " The factors he cites for gas prices falling: 1. The end of summer. Driving slows, reducing demand for gasoline [plus the end of those pesky summer clean air regulations]. 2. Sluggish demand. .. "Wholesalers are trying to get rid of product. The growth in demand for gasoline has really tapered off," he says. 3. Petroleum traders, worried that prices are too high to last, are selling their holdings. ... They also believe hurricanes won't disrupt Gulf of Mexico production... Which misses the biggie: 4. Republican incumbents in danger. Allies in oil companies willing to squander shareholder's money to retain control of Congress. The Founding Fathers were afraid that demagogues could buy votes using the public treasury. Little did they imagine that corporations would do that by buying politicians to do the looting for them.

Fox's sons, the Bribiesca boys, may be off the hook. Arturo González de Aragón, chief federal auditor categorically rejected that the transactions ascribed to the Bribiescas took place. Did Fox illegally serve as president, being the son of an American father? That's the extraordinary implication of the birth certificate of Fox's older brother in which José Luis Fox Pont declares himself to be an American, published in La Jornada. Of course, another explanation is that Vicente Fox is a bastard. A bizarre explanation of how the electoral court reached its verdict, from a program called Con Elisa in Mexico City: If a recount would not change the victor in a particular precinct, the precinct was not annulled. So, if Calderon had 250 votes in a precinct and Obrador had 100 votes and it was discovered that 100 votes were fraudulent, the precinct result would stand. The law would seem to require that the precinct be annulled. Another source, Garras de Paco Garrido seems to have confirmed that this bizarre logic was used. This purports to be an actual copy of the judicial ruling for the complaint for district 03 of Querétaro SUP-JIN-21/2006, and is said to be on the electoral court's website (www.trife.gob.mx), but I can't get the file to download. Garras says (paraphrase): in district 03, they recounted 59 precincts and only in 9 did they rectify the results. Despite the inconsistencies, the judges only annulled two precincts. Under the standards of the TEPFJ, 38 precincts had results that didn't square, butthe court said

In these precincts, there was some difference between the figures of the basic results, but the difference was smaller than that obtained between the candidates in first and second place in that precinct.

Garras continues They annulled precincts 416-1 and 537. In 416-1, the electoral institute gave them 734 ballots, 356 were surplus, 388 citizens voted, placing 361 ballots in the ballot box, from which were obtained 372 votes. Because the PRD won the precinct 137 to 119, the difference of 18 votes is less than the total vote discrepancy (which Garras, using math beyond my means, says is 24). That means the PRD would have won, so the precinct must be annulled. If true, and I suppose it probably is, the Court deserves to be laughed out of office.

Both USA Today and the New York Times shocked me today (as the NYT shocked me earlier this week) by putting up front-page above-the-fold stories on how the new Census data shows what my co-blogger Charles has aptly called the hollowing out of the American middle class. (The NYT even has a helpful graphic showing that even with the slight rise in incomes -- a rise that went mostly to the very rich or to people forced to take second or third jobs just to stay afloat -- as a whole we're still behind where we were in 1999, when Clinton was in office. What's more, the excuse that some right-wing Bush backers have been touting -- that incomes have dropped because employers are being forced to spend more on health-care bennies, which they argue have got more generous lately -- has been debunked, as USA Today also this morning spotlights an article on the rise in the numbers of uninsured Americans, a rise directly attributed to the fall in the number of employers offering health-care and other benefits. And in case the front-page positioning of the NYT's version of this news wasn't enough to show its importance, check out today's lead NYT editorial:

If you’re still harboring the notion that the economy is “good,” prepare to be disabused. Even the best number from yesterday’s Census Bureau report for 2005 is bad news for most Americans. It shows that median income rose 1.1 percent last year, to $46,326, the first increase since it peaked in 1999. But the entire increase is attributable to the 23 million households headed by someone over age 65. So the gain is likely from investment income and Social Security, not wages and salaries. For the other 91 million households, the median dropped, by half a percent, or $275. Incomes for the under-65 crowd were hurt by a decline in wages and salaries among full-time working men for the second year in a row, and among full-time working women for the third straight year. In all, median income for the under-65 group was $2,000 lower in 2005 than in 2001, when the last recession bottomed out. [...] The Census findings are yet another indication that growth alone is not the answer to the economic and social ills of poverty, income inequality and lack of insurance. Economic growth was strong in 2005, and productivity growth was impressive. What have been missing are government policies that help to ensure that the benefits of growth are broadly shared — like strong support for public education, a progressive income tax, affordable health care, a higher minimum wage and other labor protections. President Bush is unlikely to push for those changes, wed as he is to tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy. But the economic agenda for the next president couldn’t be clearer.

Indeed.

Bush hollows out the middle class: Americans' net worth falls, report says Tuesday, August 29, 2006Alison Grant Plain Dealer Reporter The net worth of many U.S. households has fallen as Americans cope with rising debt, flattening real estate values and stagnant wages, according to a report today from the Economic Policy Institute. The study says the accumulation of stocks, bonds, bank savings or other assets aside from equity in their homes has eluded many Americans. In fact, about 30 percent of households have a net worth of less than $10,000. The institute's report refutes the notion that most people have invested in the stock market through 401(k) retirement plans at work, mutual funds or other means. Less than half of households own stock in any form, and of those who own stock, just one-third have holdings in excess of $5,000. ... The study by the Washington-based liberal think tank also noted a racial divide almost unchanged from 20 years ago. The median wealth of white households was $118,300 in 2004. Black families' median wealth was one-tenth as much, $11,800. ... As the wealthiest Americans benefited from the market's recovery from its 2000-03 collapse, middle-class households treaded water. Average wealth for the middle 20 percent of households grew by just 0.8 percent annually between 2001 and 2004. This is with rapidly rising home prices. Without that, middle class net worth would, I assume, have fallen and with a 10-20% correction in the housing market, will fall. And all this during the Bush boom.

Well, at least the US is in control of one region infested by terrorists. The bad news is it's Kurdish Iraq. Just across the border in Turkey...

Turkey tightened security throughout its tourist areas yesterday as the group believed responsible for four of the weekend bomb attacks threatened to turn the country into "hell". Extra police detachments have been sent to tourist centres and identity checks set up on roads around resorts following the attacks that injured 21 people, including 10 Britons, in Marmaris and killed three people in a larger explosion in the southern city of Antalya. "We vow to turn the monstrous TC [Turkish republic] into hell ... with our warriors who have pledged revenge," the Kurdish Liberation Hawks (TAK) said in a statement on its website.... Separatist sentiment, once concentrated in Turkey's south-east, has spread across the country with decades of Kurdish migration, voluntary and enforced.

We also occupy a country responsible for a great deal of American suffering and death. The US. Naomi Klein:

The Red Cross has just announced a new disaster-response partnership with Wal-Mart. When the next hurricane hits, it will be a co-production of Big Aid and Big Box. This, apparently, is the lesson learned from the US government's calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina: businesses do disaster better. "It's all going to be private enterprise before it's over," Billy Wagner, emergency management chief for the Florida Keys, currently under hurricane watch for tropical storm Ernesto, said in April.... The first step was the government's abdication of its core responsibility to protect the population from disasters. Under the Bush administration, whole sectors of the government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security, have been turned into glorified temp agencies, with essential functions contracted out to private companies. The theory is that entrepreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are always more efficient (please suspend hysterical laughter). We saw the results in New Orleans one year ago: Washington was frighteningly weak and inept, in part because its emergency management experts had fled to the private sector and its technology and infrastructure had become positively retro. At least by comparison, the private sector looked modern and competent. But the honeymoon doesn't last long. "Where has all the money gone?" ask desperate people from Baghdad to New Orleans, from Kabul to tsunami-struck Sri Lanka. One place a great deal of it has gone is into major capital expenditure for these private contractors.

We have caught the leaders responsible for attempting to influence governmental decisions through violence or threats of violence. That would Bush, Cheney, Powell, and Rice:

The US government has been accused of trying to undermine the Chávez government in Venezuela by funding anonymous groups via its main international aid agency. Millions of dollars have been provided in a "pro-democracy programme" that Chávez supporters claim is a covert attempt to bankroll an opposition to defeat the government. The money is being provided by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) through its Office of Transition Initiatives. ... "What this indicates is that there is a great deal of money, a great deal of concern to oust or neutralise Chávez," said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (Coha) in Washington yesterday. "The US is waging diplomatic warfare against Venezuela." He said that while the US had accused Mr Chávez of destabilising Latin American countries, the term "destabilisation" more aptly applied to what the US was trying to do to Mr Chávez. "It's trying to implement regime change," Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer who wrote The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela, told AP. "There's no doubt about it. I think the US government tries to mask it by saying it's a noble mission." She added: "It's too suspicious to have such a high level of secrecy."

Check it out.

A number of Mexican commentators have made the point that Mexico's legal system followed legal forms, but not the law in dealing with the Mexican election. One key element of genuine legal proceedings is that they deal with specific allegations, because it is in well-defined issues that truth or falsity can best be determined. What struck me in reading and listening to media is that exactly one paper, La Jornada, covered specific allegations of what had happened. Nor, as far as I can determine, has the electoral court given any detailed explanation of how it arrived at its conclusions. The specifics that I have seen are bizarre: The judges annulled 237,736 votes...The electoral court TEPJF removed 81,080 votes from Calderón Hinojosa and 76,897 votes from López Obrador. Now, some back of the envelope calculations are in order. To give a sense of the magnitude, 237,000 votes in a 9% recount would correspond to about 2.5 million votes if extrapolated over the nation. It's huge. Or, to provide scale, roughly 6-7% of the precincts were so corrupted that the results were impossible to accept. Who among us would not call this a deeply flawed election? But when one looks more closely at these details, there is clearly something very wrong. The challenged precincts were almost all Calderon strongholds. They were NOT overcounting ballots for Lopez Obrador. So, how did the relative change in votes come out so small? Small but, even so, too large. A 5,2004,200 vote shift is uncomfortably large on a recount of roughly 3.5 million votes. Perhaps the closest parallel we have is the Washington State governor's race of 2004. Out of 2.75 million ballots cast, a change of only 1,667 was found on recounting. But the net shift was miniscule: 171 votes, or about 6 votes in 100,000. This is reasonable. A shift of 5,200 votes on 3.5 million, by contrast, is a shift of 1.5 votes more than 1 vote per thousand. That is indicative of fraud. A cartoon from Helguera and Hernandez in Proceso says it all (via SdP): "Monkey sapiens. We need to protect our national symbols and defend and strengthen our national institutions. The Congress as a tank, the Supreme Court as a club, Televisa as riot police, and a cuspidor cannon to spit on the public are among the national symbols. Speaking of Proceso, Álvaro Delgado writes in that publication (my paraphrase) No longer is anything strange: not hypocrisy, not cynicism, nor even shamelessness. Why would one blush if all the immoral acts are committed under the cloak of legality? ... When one fails to understand history, it happens as if in a cartoon. The events of 1988, where the usurper Carlos Salinos was imposed, are being repeated almost two decades later.... One must admit that Televisa has been consistent in its servile attitude, though the employees on the screen have changed. But the tenacious fan of propaganda and obfuscation will recognize its faithful defense of the institutions "which we created at great cost." Televisa has even enjoyed the luxury of sacrificing earnings to give the ultra-right prime time slots. In 1988, they did sit-in strikes led by Manuel Clouthier to promoste openness. Now they enjoy and urge on closure.... The same happened to Fox and PAN, and its acolytes. They attempted to rectify the fraud of the PRI in 1988, and now they attempt to legalize Calderon the same way: by division of the spoils (i.e., sinecures). ...The very same Fox who in effect turned the presidency of the Republic into a joke opposed Salinas's fraud in 1991 when he closed highways, headed sit-ins, blocked the airport of Silao, and sabotaged the swearing in ceremony. ...In the end, the the Electoral Tribunal (TEPFJ) fell away from the principles of liberty, and took on again the hardshell conservatism in the worst expression of the end and abdication of its historical responsibility. All that remains is one step to consummate completely impunity and imposture: formalizing the new boss of the country. For its work in exposing the murderous acts of Echeverria and cohort, Proceso has earned a unique moral stature in Mexico. This OpEd stands, like Balaam's angel, athwart the road to total corruption that Mexico's elite are traveling. El Cid has a summary of English-language viewpoints. The New York Times, as usual, has sold out its editorial viewpoint in the interests of expediency. Gumby doesn't have that much editorial flexibility. _______________________________ Johnny Wendell, speaking about the upcoming US elections, says:

Mired in miserable poll numbers with a cratering housing market and wage depression swirling about his ankles like effluence in the streets of Fallujah, a Hail Mary move right before the midterms would not only be in the works as we speak, but very bloody (pun intended) likely....People say that I have a hyperactive and paranoiac imagination and they're right as rain. But I put nothing past these animales [who] have gone to any lengths and will continue to do so, to dominate and demolish our beloved land...

Think Progress is your one-stop source for blasting the right-wing myths about Katrina.

One year after Hurricane Katrina caused the devastating floods in New Orleans, the city still desperately needs help to recover. It won't get that help from Bush's government, that's for sure. So give what you can. Charles provided a list below of organizations that are supporting the rebuilding:

Katrina Action Common Ground, for which donations can be sent through: Community Futures Collective 221 Idora Ave Vallejo,CA 94591 People's Hurricane Fund 1418 N. Claiborne Ave. New Orleans LA 70116 ACORN ACORN Institute - Hurricane Recovery and Rebuilding Fund 1024 Elysian Fiekds Avenue New Orleans, LA 70117

To which I add Mercy Corps. By the way, whatever did happen to FEMA's "prepositioned assets"?

As the Category 4 the storm surged ashore just east of New Orleans on Monday, FEMA had medical teams, rescue squads and groups prepared to supply food and water poised in a semicircle around the city, its director, Michael Brown, said. Speaking from Baton Rouge, just upriver from New Orleans, Brown told NBC's Today show that his agency had "planned for this kind of disaster for many years because we've always known about New Orleans' situation."

After the hurricane passed through, we never heard about these supplies again. They certainly weren't brought into New Orleans, nor did we hear anything about them being diverted to other parts of the Gulf Coast. More to the point, why didn't the news media ever follow up on this story to ask what happened to these taxpayer-funded resources?

This summer, the pleasant, moneyed waters of Lake Minnetonka, where Minnesota's hyper-rich live and play (and the favorite place of Republican politicians to do some fundraising while in our fair state), saw the rise of a new political movement: Bass Fishermen Against Bush! Finny, vidi, vici!

The electoral court has dismissed all of the complaints filed in the recent election. Considering that some of those involved precincts where ballots were completely missing, precincts with massive miscounts, and a shift of roughly 0.25% of the vote just from the recount, I don't see how the PRD can view it as anything except a corrupt decision. The court will annul a few precincts, but it is chopping down a couple of trees while pretending there's no forest. I thought they would at least scold the PAN, to give some appearance of impartiality. The sorrow I feel for Mexico is difficult to express. "Too far from God and too close to the United States" is right.

Bob Geiger explains:

The membership in Senate committees is decided at the start of every Congress with a haggled-out thing called an "organizing resolution." The entire Senate votes on it and it usually passes by unanimous consent. Organizing resolutions can also happen when party shake-ups occur in the middle of a Congress, like when Vermont's Jim Jeffords bolted from the GOP in 2001.

To give Joe his well-deserved comeuppance by taking him off committees and effectively making him the most junior member of the Senate, Reid would have to formally propose an amendment to the current organizing resolution, manage to get it to a vote and then get every Democrat and a handful of Republicans to vote for a new committee organization sans Lieberman. If Majority Leader Bill Frist decided to filibuster Reid's action, 60 votes would be required to keep it alive.

Based on that procedural construct, Harry Reid can't just unilaterally, or even by a closed vote of the Democratic caucus, strip Lieberman of his committee assignments.

In short, it ain't gonna happen. Even if Reid were to go way out on a limb like this and even if he were to get all Senate Democrats to make such a big move, I stand a better chance of getting a hot date with Salma Hayek then there is of even one Republican voting with them to boot Joe.

Yeah, I can just see the Republicans voting to strip the power from their best friend in the Senate. NOT.

Sad but true. However, we have a few weeks to get out there and counter this nonsense with some truth. While Clinton since 1996 was doing his best to focus on getting Osama, the GOP/Media Complex was doing THEIR best to impeach and remove him from office -- not over anything like, say, wrongfully invading and occupying a country and killing over 100,000 people in the process á la Bush, but over an affair with a staffer. They were hollering "WAG THE DOG!" and calling Bin Laden just a little old innocent Saudi businessman. When Sandy Berger tried to warn Condi Rice that she would be needing to pay more attention to Al-Qaeda than anything else in her new job as NSA chief, she blew him off. Clinton's efforts at vigilance in the face of constant political/media attack compares well to Bush and his constant vacationings. Bush in fact was on vacation when the August 6, 2001 warning entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" hit his desk; not only did he not read, but none of his upper-echelon people did, or thought it worth disturbing his rest.

Money from the usual charities, notably The American Red Cross, did very little to help the people of New Orleans. Peter Rothberg of The Nation has provided some resources. He suggests starting with Katrina Action. If you don't have the time to put in to Spike Lee film parties, but you do have the change to help people, here are my suggestions: 1. Common Ground, for which donations can be sent through: Community Futures Collective 221 Idora Ave Vallejo,CA 94591 2. People's Hurricane Fund 1418 N. Claiborne Ave. New Orleans LA 70116 3. ACORN ACORN Institute - Hurricane Recovery and Rebuilding Fund 1024 Elysian Fiekds Avenue New Orleans, LA 70117 You may or may not get a tax deduction. A lot of the most effective organizations do advocacy as well as relief work, so they don't get the special IRS treatment. Remember: If every middle class American family gave $5 every week for a year, it would be enough to build a standard home for everyone displaced from New Orleans. What matters is how the money gets spent. Over this weekend, I saw a lot of talk about Katrina, but what has been conspicuously missing is effective action.

From Reuters

Sunday, August 27, 2006; 12:50 PMMEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's electoral court will hold a public session Monday to give its verdict on a partial recount of votes in the July 2 presidential election...It was not clear whether the court also would give the revised vote count for the overall election... The electoral court is widely expected to reject Lopez Obrador's demand for a full recount and most analysts expect it eventually will confirm pro-business former energy minister Calderon as president-elect. Lopez Obrador, a former Indian-rights activist who wants to overhaul Mexico's political and economic systems to favor the poor, has vowed to prevent Calderon taking office on Dec. 1. He says that if Calderon is named president without a full recount, he will continue protests.

Here are the possibilities and my handicapping. Court... 1. declares massive fraud and awards election to Lopez Obrador. Probability: hahaha! 2. declares no fraud and installs Calderon without further comment. Probability: 20% 3. makes lengthy, grave, but ultimately meaningless pronunciations about the election, then installs Calderon with a sound "TskTsk!" Probability: 80%. Here are the probabilities of Mexico not suffering extended civil disorder: hahaha! The reason I predict civil disorder isn't actually the election. Polls I have seen and anecdotal evidence suggests to me that (as it was in the US in 2000) only about 10% of the population is really upset about the election. Probably another 40 or 50% have reservations, but they figure that politics doesn't matter very much. This lasts until things go wrong. Then you have 50 or 60% of the population who thinks that the guy installed in office doesn't belong there. If things get bad enough that they start thinking that politics matters, you have the potential for instant instability. In the US, the transition has happened slowly and the concrete hasn't dried. But if there's a deep recession, that sentiment will crystallize over a short time period. Odds of a recession in the US are high. Odds that it will be deep are significant, maybe 30%. Odds that even a mild recession in the US will have catastrophic effects in Mexico: very high. Odds that Calderon has the skills to deal with a severe recession: You'd have to pay me to take that bet. So, when Mexico realizes it has the wrong guy in office, it will be too late. Anger will be boiling over and even harsh repression will not be able to stop it. I hope I am wrong. I hope the Court eases the country into seeing that Calderon didn't win the election. But the word I hear is that the decision is wired.

Nancy Davies of Narconews reports that the site OaxacaEnPaz, with the collusion of the government, is posting the pictures and addresses of striking teachers for the purpose of soliciting their murder. What is going on on Oaxaca could not be happening unless the Bush Administration had approved it. Update: Mexican government attempts to claim terrorist ties to Oaxaca violence. An Undersecretary of Goverment, Lauro López, has said that the military wing of the Partido Democratico Popular Revolucionario, the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario may be active in Oaxaca. The Attorney General's office denies this. Doubtless Bushco would regard the EPR as terrorist, since they have attacked Mexican government facilities, killing 17. But it makes no sense. The people getting kidnapped and killed in Oaxaca are teachers and their supporters, not members of the police and military. El Universal is blaming the robbery of a store by masked men of 80 telephones, a DVD copier, and videogames on the citizens's movement occupying Oaxaca. But from what is said, the assailants could just as easily have been police or mercenaries. But the claim of the involvement of a terrorist group would allow the US to send in Special Forces. Not that anything would stop Bush if he wanted to. Additional comment: JP Morgan has the risk level of Mexico at 108, just 13 points above its historic low of 95, and down 3 points from last week. By contrast, Brazil is at 229. Either JPM is dreaming, or I am.

I'm so glad Avedon is on the case. I'd miss so much if it weren't for The Sideshow From Demian Bulwa of The San Francisco Chronicle, we learn that two US citizens from Lodi, California, a father and son, were barred from re-entering the country when they refused to agree to be interrogated by the FBI abroad without the presence of a lawyer or to take a lie detector test. The nephew of one of the father was a cherry packer convicted of terrorism not for any overt act but for having attended a training camp in Pakistan. So, basically, if you're related to someone who commits a crime, you're guilty, and if you refuse to be interrogated under conditions that are illegal in this country, you can be banished. This could pose a problem for George Bush traveling abroad, since his sister-in-law is a known smuggler, which would make him a smuggler, too, and since smugglers could be bringing in weapons of mass destruction, he is a self-evident risk to the security of the nation.

Thirty nine Presbyterians and priests of about 20 parishes religious leaders have called on the governor of Oaxaca to step down. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church as a whole remains comfortably ensconced with the campaign of police terror and murder chronicled on Mercury Rising. Caption: "Loooooser!" Cartoon by Hernandez in La Jornada PANista blogs are active in trashing the PRD. And they're no more inventive than our 'wingers: they label PRDists as "Indians" (the Mexican equivalent of the N-word) or "sheep. There are attacks on single mothers, a rarity in Mexico. One is portrayed as saying "Support Lopez Obrador because he promised me a real good husband." There's an obscene twist on Lopez Obrador's name, generically equivalent to calling him the "Kingf--k" instead of the "Kingfish." And then there's the Visit to Obrador-land (the sit-in occupying downtown Mexico), where they advertise the healthy outdoor living including a spa (the torrential rains). If it sounds lame, I am sure it barely conveys the half of it. The elections court, meanwhile, has been energetically avoiding the issue of whether the election was hopelessly corrupted, having chosen to focus first on determing how many fraudulent precincts they can successfully ignore. This strongly suggests that they are going to punt on the pre-election illegalities. A slide show showing, among other scenes, people who walked 1,700 miles from Tijuana to the capital to join the protests. Via La Jornada: according to the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal, the US embassy in Venezuela attempted to use the diplomatic pouch to smuggle into the country over 170 pounds of uninspected chicken, clothes, furniture, and toys intended for someone outside the embassy. Diplomatic protests by the US on the violation of the sanctity of diplomatic communications were met with snickers from the Venezuelan government. Update: Here's an English language version, which adds the following worrying point:

According to [Venezuelan Minister of Justice and the Interior] Chacón, however, while shipping documents indicated that the military shipment [made prior to the arms embargo imposed by the US] included ejection seat propulsion motors for Bronco airplanes that had been ordered by Venezuela’s military, there was also other material that it did not order, such as detonators, pliers, rocket motors, and other items. “What is this material coming for? This has us worried,” said Chacón. Also, none of this material has so far been received by Venezuela’s military.

From a cartoonist called El Fisgon at La Jornada Now, prove to me that the candidate with clean hands was harmed by the irregulaties. In the wake of the labeling of the Attorney General's office as pimp and coverup for torture and murder, Sendero del Peje asks whether Fox had human rights activist and lawyer Digna Ochoa murdered. Film is available covering this and other cases where the government of Vicente Fox may have stood to benefit: 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTkWIvVNLtQ 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlUfhs0wyRs 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwFFCIpiBXQ 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwsYUzD9fc Lopez Obrador has accused Calderon of planning a coup similar to what happened in the wake of the 1988 election. He claimed that Calderon met with directors and journalists of an unspecified radio chain and, when asked how he would govern in a climate of protest and claims of fraud, he replied that he could establish his credibility with "un Quinazo." This phrase refers to the 1989 detention of the oilman Joaquín Hernández Galicia, La Quina. Calderon is also planning a Nixon-style welfare program to calm down the poor. He will also use elements of the PRI and foreign governments to create an aura of legitimacy. And, finally, he will dominate the airwaves. The Electoral Court keeps SAYING that the public can find the results of its labors here. (And so they can. There's not one detail of the recount and the last press release is 12 day old). Proceso has organized a citizen recount and also petitioned the court to upload the documents. The Court has stalled, and Proceso says they hold the public in little regard. The National Security Archive has put up a page. There's the following great picture by Proceso showing the alacrity with which the IFE received its FOIA request: That hand. Is she a mutant? More on the grenade attack against Por Esto! from NarcoNews. A criminal investigation against the head of the electoral institute (IFE), Luis Carlos Ugalde, has been initiated by the Attorney General through the "Fepade" (Fiscalia Especializada para la Atencion de Delitos Electorales or The Special Office for Election Crimes). Basically, why did he order a review of the voter rolls covering only a tenth of the names. The plaintiff, Genaro Núñez Reyes Spíndola, said that Ugalde had lied in claiming that the National University had approved the methodology. As background, there is the matter that the IFE claimed there were 71.8 million voters, while Mexican equivalent of Census showed 65 million. Did Hildebrando's have any effect on the handling of the voter rolls? The software business Identics was used in reviewing the rolls. The IFE reviewed only 11 million voters and knocked a measly 2 thousand off.

Via Carl Pope at HuffPost, PEER reports that —The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is moving ahead this summer to shut down libraries, end public access to research materials and box up unique collections on the assumption that Congress will not reverse President Bush’s proposed budget reductions, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA’s own scientists are stepping up protests against closures on the grounds that it will make their work more difficult by impeding research, enforcement and emergency response capabilities. In an August 15, 2006 document entitled “EPA FY 2007 Library Plan,” agency management indicates that it will begin immediately implementing President Bush’s proposed budget cuts for the next fiscal year, which begins in October, without waiting for Congress to act. From Ray McGovern: Now suddenly appears a pseudo-estimate titled "Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States." To wit, the challenge set before the Intelligence Community is to get religion, climb aboard, and "recognize" Iran as a strategic threat. But alas, the community has not yet been fully purged of recalcitrant intelligence analysts who reject a "faith-based" approach to intelligence and hang back from the altar call to revealed truth. Hence, the statutory intelligence agencies cannot be counted on to come to politically correct conclusions regarding the strategic threat from Iran... Hoekstra to the Rescue ... The snub by the administration has not affected Hoekstra's zeal to do its bidding, even if further embarrassment waits in the wings. He has violated all precedent in consenting to have his committee author this faux-National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, making it out to be a strategic threat. Brian Ross, ABC State Farm Insurance supervisors systematically demanded that Hurricane Katrina damage reports be buried or replaced or changed so that the company would not have to pay policyholders' claims in Mississippi, two State Farm insiders tell ABC News. Kerri and Cori Rigsby, independent adjusters who had worked for State Farm exclusively for eight years, say they have turned over thousands of internal company documents and their own detailed statement to the FBI and Mississippi state investigators. In an exclusive interview with ABC news, to be broadcast on 20/20 -- Watch 20/20 tonight at 10 --and World News, the Rigsby sisters say they saw "widespread" fraud at the State Farm offices in Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss. "Katrina was devastating, but so was State Farm," says Cori Rigsby.

Government Secretary Carlos Abascal (left) and President Vicente Fox (right) under the PAN logo colors. Image by Jesús Villaseca from La Jornada. I am reminded of a certain infamous Time magazine cover involving Dubya, and somehow suspect this is a subtly failed knockoff, [added 8/26:]in which what were intended to be halos ended up looking like horns. [added, 8/26: Madrax in comments says that the image is of the Tourism Chamber of commerce.] Judges of the electoral court: "If we open all the ballot packets, it could produce a turnaround." ("volterete" means "somersault" or "trump.") Cartoon by Rochas of La Jornada The chairman of the Human Rights Commission says that the Attorney General's office is "the coverup and the pimp" for torture and extrajudicial killings. Mexico News, as usual, botches the story, but it's in English: The national ombudsman said Thursday that the federal Attorney General´s Office (PGR) engages in "torture and extrajudicial executions." José Luis Soberanes, who chairs the autonomous National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), also accused the PGR of resorting to threats and intimidation to obstruct his panel´s attempts to investigate alleged abuses by federal law-enforcement personnel. The CNDH held a news conference to highlight three cases involving purported torture or murder by PGR agents, allegations the panel said it probed despite a "lack of cooperation" from the PGR.PGR officials sought to prevent those cases from seeing the light, according to Soberanes aide Guillermo Ibarra, who noted that one of his office computers was stolen early this month. Um, the REASON that there was concern over the computer is that there were details of a torture case. So, like, maybe witnesses could be in danger? Maroon. _________________________________ And there are a bunch of new angels to report! Four on Daily Kos! El Cid Hugo Estrada Earthmissinglink ourobouros Please accept these wings with my compliments. [Added, 8/26: And, as thanks for Madrax's correction, 1,000 frequent flyer miles.]

Because I'm too lazy to make separate posts right now: -- The Beeb on why the new anti-Pluto ruling stinks to high heaven. What's even worse is that, in order to allow Neptune and not Pluto under their new cockeyed definition of a planet, they invented an exception for "classical planets" to the area-clearing rule -- and redefined the term "classical planet" to include Neptune. The whole reason the term "classical planet" exists in the first place is as a way to set apart those planets we've known about pre-telescope from those discovered post-telescope (Uranus, Neptune, et al). This is like suddenly declaring that the word "black" now represents the color white, its polar opposite. -- In other news, it's obvious to me that the Hogwarts Express was re-routed in the 1990s due to the "Voldemort problem" and now runs through Watford Junction. Disillusionment Charms are used to give the appearance of a run-down and disused junction, but two times a year it opens for pupil traffic to and from the renowned British wizarding school. And from our friends at the UK Independent: -- John Bolton and his acolytes are acting like firebugs at a dynamite factory, and dragging the GOP with them. Situation normal for them. -- Oh, and engineers warned BP two years ago of problems with the Alaskan pipeline. -- The head of the IDF admits to "logistical errors" in attacking Lebanon. Um, right.

For two days in a row, unidentified persons violently attacked the journalists at the daily Por Esto! on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. On Tuesday, August 22, in Mérida, a Molotov cocktail thrown at a reporter’s wife as she was exiting a car engulfed her 1980 Volkswagen beetle instantly in flames. She escaped unharmed.... Among those most exposed by Por Esto!’s reports have been politicians and businessmen that are key players in the Fox administration: Yucatán Governor Patricio Patrón Laviada, Citigroup-Banamex board member Roberto Hernández Ramírez, and, most recently, Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE). Since the July 2 presidential election in Mexico, Por Esto! has reported the details of election fraud, while also publishing the entire texts of protest speeches delivered in Mexico City by candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. ...The government of President Vicente Fox has attempted to close the newspaper for six years now by withholding more than three million dollars of rebates owed on taxes already paid, and has charged Menéndez and others at the daily with an unending series of spurious accusations that, each time the courts have dismissed the charges, new ones were invented. ... The Tuesday morning violence in the Yucatán capital city of Mérida was the second Molotov attack against the home of investigative reporter Jaime Vargas Chablé, who has led many journalistic investigations publishing facts about criminal activity by state and federal officials. Ten months ago, at four in the morning, the family awoke to a loud noise on their home’s roof – the impact of a Molotov explosion – and had to evacuate, with their children, from the burning house. The newspaper has reported that a narcotrafficker was behind the attacks. It certainly looks as if the Vicente Fox Administration is behind the narcotrafficker. And behind Vicente Fox would be...? Please, do take a guess. This is not a trick question. Meanwhile, in Chiapas, where there has been a serenely peaceful election, El Universal reports that the ballot box for precinct 1612-2 has serenely and peacefully disappeared from the premises of the electoral institute. The PRD's coalition happened to retain a copy of the precinct tally. Meanwhile, PRI claims there were a mere 2,400 irregularities in the 4,760 precincts. Strange anomalies of weight of the ballot box, unregistered voters, and voters without proper credentials. But, they say, they will win by 3,750 votes the election they lost. (Via SenderodelPeje) Here's a good backgrounder on the Mexican economy from the Center for Economic Policy Research. Also, a blindingly clear explanation by CEPR of why the dead-of-night, no--PRD-witnesses-present recount by the election institute was so deficient.

As Jane Hamsher and others have reported, Joe Lieberman took part in a Republican photo-op today that benefitted two GOP congressional candidates. If the Groton photo-op is "just a non-partisan effort to save the sub base", as pro-Lieberman Kossacks like to say, then how is the following explained? 1) No mention of Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, State AG Richard Blumenthal, or any of the Democrats in Connecticut's Congressional delegation, so they must not have been invited when Lieberman, Rell and Simmons planned this shindig -- and Blumenthal in particular has close ties to the Groton submarine base. (Dodd allegedly was 'unable to attend', though what he was doing instead is unknown at this time. And no other member of Connecticut's Democratic Congressional delegation was present. Unless you count Lieberman.) 2) If the Groton base is allegedly in dire danger of being closed -- the supposed reason for this photo-op of Joe's -- then how come the Navy just started building a $600 million housing complex there last year?

Groton — The Navy and a contractor broke ground on a housing complex Wednesday that represents the first step in developing more than $600 million of new and renovated units in the Northeast that officials predicted will be popular with sailors. ... GMH will spend more than $600 million over the next six years in Navy communities stretching from Lakehurst, N.J., to Brunswick, Maine. In Groton, it will build 122 new three- and four-bedroom townhouses on the former Nautilus III North, replacing 124 three-bedroom units; 119 homes for senior enlisted people and officers in Dolphin Gardens; and 44 three- and four-bedroom townhouses on the former Cherry Circle mobile home park. All the projects are slated to be finished by next spring. In addition, 427 units in Nautilus Park, Conning Towers and Polaris Park will be renovated, with new kitchens, bathrooms and laundry rooms, as well as new lighting, flooring, paint and carpets.

In fact, even though Groton did get on the BRAC list for possible closing last year, it easily survived the BRAC vote by a 7-1 margin. Some "danger".

In what can only be seen as part of the GOP's standard election-year feint to the center, Bush has allowed the FDA to finally approve Plan B for over-the-counter use.

As I've mentioned in the past, the Bush family has a long history of burying favorable news about public education in America. It turns out that they're doing it again:

Students at charter schools performed significantly worse than students at traditional public schools, according to a study released yesterday by the Department of Education. The research was based on results from the "nation's report card" - the National Assessment of Educational Progress test. "After adjusting for student characteristics, charter school mean scores in reading and mathematics were lower, on average, than those for public noncharter schools," the study concluded. Republicans have been strong proponents of charter schools, which they made sure to promote through the ironically titled No Child Left Behind Act. Sure enough, the Bush Administration was quick to criticize its own study in a statement yesterday, in which Education Secretary Margaret Spellings continued to express her support for the now debunked theory that charter schools are better than public schools.

Sounds all too familiar, doesn't it?

...and, should it fall into the hands of those who can't, is taken from them by the state. Image of damage at public station Cortv, Oaxaca via SenderodelPeje A lot of the firepower of the plainclothesmen or mercenaries that fired on public station Cortv was directed at the broadcast equipment. Um, Mexico News? That would explain why the protestors then occupied other broadcast stations. Also via SdP, Palast on YouTube Law v. Law. Procurator General Lizbeth Caña Cadeza declared that a state of guerrilla war exists in Oaxaca. Four hundred agents were directed against Radio Ley (Literally, "Radio Law"). Police arrived at 12:20 AM, and fired on the guards. Lorenzo San Pablo Cervantes, head of the Department of Educational Spaces of the Secretariat of Public Works was wounded. Police shot at reporters Luis Alberto Cruz, Jorge Luis Plata and Patricia Domínguez. Local reporters Carlos Leyva Castellanos y Miguel Luna López were beaten by masked men, presumably police agents. And in the mother-in-law/Cadillac/cliff category, TV Azteca reporter Edgar Galicia was fired on and his crew's equipment confiscated. One wonders if TV Azteca will now, at last, describe what's going on in Oaxaca as a police riot. ____________________ ADDED. Freelance journalist, John Gibler on DemocracyNow: Between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. on August 22, groups of police riding in pickup trucks, armed with machine guns and pistols, some dressed as civilians and others in uniform, made rounds throughout Oaxaca City, firing at radio stations that had been occupied by the Oaxaca People's Assembly protesters. Police shot in the back Lorenzo San Pablo Cervantes, an architect, who died 45 minutes later in the hospital. The roaming police also fired on two photographers from the national newspapers, Milenio and Reforma, though no one was injured. And they threw a Molotov cocktail into the car of two teachers traveling to one of the different encampments, both of whom suffered second-degree burns. Last night, rumors ran through the city that the big raid was coming, and businesses closed several hours early in the evening, and the people from the Oaxaca’s Assembly all prepared. But then, rumors have it that after an 11:00 p.m. national television show, showing the police making rounds the night before, that the operation was canceled. The mood throughout the city throughout the night has been very tense. Bonfires kept in the street and the streets blocked off. There have been no reports of shootouts throughout the night.

Even some rich Republicans like Ohio's Joy Padgett -- the GOP pick to replace Bob "Abramoff" Ney -- are feeling the pinch:

It turns out that Joy Padgett, the Republican candidate widely endorsed to succeed Congressman Bob Ney, is more than $1 million in personal and business debt, along with her husband. And the federal government may have to pick up some of that because of a Small Business Administation loan guarantee.

Ooops. Not coincidentally, she's one of the few Republicans out there willing to admit that the economy -- at least in Ohio -- really isn't doing all that well.

USA Today reports that Judicial Watch (remember them?) claims Judge Anna Diggs Taylor had a conflict of interest when she presided over the warrantless wiretapping lawsuit; specifically, her "apparent membership in a local foundation that gave $45,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan in recent grants." The organization is the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan; Judge Taylor is on the the board of trustees. Since its founding in 1984, the Foundation has distributed "more than $163 million to support thousands of charitable activities". According to USA Today, the $45,000 (0.00276% of the total donations) to the Michigan ACLU was used for programs serving gay men and lesbians. Is Judge Taylor involved in deciding where the Community Foundation donates its funds? The article doesn't say. Does the board of trustees review the donations, line by line, so they should be expected to know who all the recipients are? The article doesn't say. Were any of the unknown number of people who have benefited from these programs parties to the lawsuit? The article doesn't say. Did Judge Taylor personally benefit from the donation? Probably not. Is this donation, one of thousands, a clear indication that Judge Taylor had such a close association with the Michigan ACLU that she was predisposed to favor its side in a judicial ruling? Will Judge Taylor personally benefit from her ruling, because of this association with the Michigan ACLU? Oh, please. But Judge Taylor does have this connection with the Michigan ACLU, and even that tenuous connection is (if we are to believe Judicial Watch) a Conflict Of Interest. And it is a Bad Thing for a judge to have a Conflict Of Interest. Unless, of course, the judge is Bush's Supreme Court appointee Samuel Alito, who presided over a case involving the Vanguard Group where he had large amounts of his own money invested. Or Bush's Supreme Court appointee John Roberts, who was presiding over "a terrorism case of significant importance to President Bush" while he was being interviewed by Bush officials for his Supreme Court nomination. Or Bush's Circuit Court nominee Terrence Boyle, who "ruled in multiple cases involving corporations in which he held investments." Or Bush's Circuit Court nominee James H. Payne, who owned stock in corporations involved in lawsuits brought before him." Or Clarence Thomas, whose wife was hard at work at the Heritage Foundation, sifting through resumés from potential Bush appointees while the Supreme Court was hearing Bush v. Gore. Or Antonin Scalia, whose son got a high-ranking job with the Bush Administration hard on the heels of the Bush v. Gore ruling and who socialized with Dick Cheney after the Supreme Court agreed to take up Cheney's "appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force." Or Bush's Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who as a judge in Texas "took thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from companies that had business before him and he did not recuse himself from voting on their cases." I guess the concept of "conflict of interest" only applies to people who oppose Bush's will, not to people who do his bidding.

Most in US see no tie between Iraq, terror war

A majority of Americans no longer see a link between the war in Iraq and Washington's broader anti-terrorism efforts despite President George W. Bush's insistence the two are intertwined, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released on Tuesday. ...The findings were a considerable shift from polls taken in 2002 and early 2003, when a majority considered the two to be linked, The New York Times said. As recently as June, opinion was evenly split, with 41 percent on both sides of the divide. Now only 32 percent considered Iraq to be a major part of the fight against terrorism.

The Usual Suspects proclaimed that the arrests of alleged terrorists in Britain would give Bush a boost. Maybe those arrests had the opposite effect, however: they made people realize that "fighting them over there" doesn't mean we won't have to fight them over here. And maybe, just maybe, more people are hearing the Democrats' message that Bush's war is making us less safe because it's using up resources that might have been used to oppose terrorism.

Bill Quigley reports (See also Justice for New Orleans The statistics tell some of the story. The City of New Orleans says it is half its pre-Katrina size - around 225,000 people. But the US Post Office estimates that only about 170,000 people have returned to the city and 400,000 people have not returned to the metropolitan area. The local electricity company reports only about 80,000 of its previous 190,000 customers have returned. Texas also tells part of the story. It is difficult to understand the impact of Katrina without understanding the role of Texas - home to many of our displaced. Houston officials say their city is still home to about 150,000 storm evacuees - 90,000 in FEMA assisted housing. Texas recently surveyed the displaced and reported that over 250,000 displaced people live in the state and 41 percent of these households report income of less than $500 per month. ... Only half the homes in New Orleans have electricity. Power outages are common, as hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs have not been made because Entergy New Orleans is in bankruptcy. Entergy is asking for a 25 percent increase in rates to help it become solvent. Yet Entergy New Orleans' parent company, Entergy Corporation, reported earnings of $282 million last year on revenue of $2.6 billion. ... Doctors and health care workers have gone, and there is surging demand from the uninsured, who before Katrina went through now non-existent public health care. There is a shortage of nurses. Blue Cross Blue Shield officials reported, "About three-quarters of the physicians who had been practicing in New Orleans are no longer submitting claims." There is no hospital at all in the city for psychiatric patients. ... Criminal Court District Judge Arthur Hunter has declared the current criminal justice system shameful and unconstitutional, and promises to start releasing inmates awaiting trial on recognizance bonds on the one-year anniversary of Katrina. The system is nearly paralyzed by a backlog of over 6,000 cases. .... Asian tsunami relief workers who visited New Orleans over the summer were shocked at the lack of recovery. This is not merely a failure of the state, federal, and local civil authority. It is a failure of leadership by business, which has gorged at the federal trough and stinted on charitable giving. It is a failure of leadership by private charity, which only deals with crisis as long as the TV cameras are there. The American Red Cross is particularly culpable. It is a failure of leadership by journalism which, despite some good reporting, allowed the Bush Administration to escape full responsibility by blaming the victims and blurring the issues. It is a failure of compassion on the part of the American middle class. Suppose there are 75 million families who could put $10 a week toward New Orleans. Over the course of a year, they could have contributed almost $40 BILLION dollars-- enough to build a brand new house for every displaced family. Our failure to do this is an indictment of this nation. Charities to consider: I can recommend Common Ground and ACORN. Thanks to AllSpinZone, where Richard Cranium has blogged on Spike Lee's film "When the Levees Broke."

Updated, 4:15PM Eastern Buses burning serenely peacefully after a commando attack against Cortv(Channel 9), Oaxaca, dislodged the citizens's movement that had occupied it. Image by Ezequiel Leyva of La Jornada. At 3:30 AM, 60 men in plainclothes fired on the occupiers, wounding Sergio Vale Jiménez, a teacher, and destroying the broadcast equipment. Three teachers, known only as José Adelfo, Daniel y Eloy disappeared (and one can assume are being tortured and perhaps murdered). A similar attack occurred at 6AM at the Secretariat of State Finances. A hundred cartridges of various kinds were found around Channel 9, including .38 and 9 mm, AR-15, and shotgun 12 and 16 gauge. Amazingly, El Universal goes through the looking glass to report exactly what did not happen in Oaxaca. In their alternate reality, the protestors are attacking the stations. In reality, they occupied the stations without any injuries or deaths. They are being dislodged from their occupation under a hail of gunfire by what look like death squads. But propaganda from the English language version of El Universal, Mexico News, is nothing new. The Office of the President says it was ordered unilaterally by the Governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, which probably means it was ordered unilaterally by Fox. Interesting background on Oaxaca and The Blue Anvil is presented by Astillero. And another angel gets its wings as I discover XicanoPwer's blog, which is amazingly detailed and provides lots of historical context. A very powerful philosophical piece by Enrique Dussel explores law vs. legitimacy. To put it simply, law is a system of of rules and procedures. If people are not allowed an equal say in creating the system, it is simply a tool by which the powerful impose their will. One may justly oppose an unjust legal system. Kos Diarist El Cid gives us the Houston Chronicle's version of the Ahumada tapes. They grudgingly agree that, yeah, well, so there was a conspiracy against Lopez Obrador, but it doesn't matter 'cause he's a nut-- as proven by the fact that he thinks people are out to get him. Maroons. The Sicartsa strike in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan, is over. The head of the Supreme Court, Mariano Azuela, is struggling to avoid investigating election fraud as requested by 16,806 legal filings by citizens. He has conceded that Article 97 of the Constitution permits this. If the Supreme Court refuses to get involved, the only other avenue would be the Interamerican Court of Human Rights. In Chiapas, the PRDist, Sabines remains ahead by 0.22% or 2,405 votes. But 270 poll tallies representing 63,000 votes were not counted. There are 247 "inconsistent tallies" and 23 from geographically isolated locations. That leaves plenty of room for the PRI/PAN to steal the election.

On Kos, via Atrios

Hot on the heels of the news that Bush has made a de facto estate-tax repeal by gutting the IRS' ability to catch and punish wealthy tax cheats, we find out about this charming little bit of news:

If you owe back taxes to the federal government, the next call asking you to pay may come not from an Internal Revenue Service officer, but from a private debt collector. Within two weeks, the I.R.S. will turn over data on 12,500 taxpayers — each of whom owes $25,000 or less in back taxes — to three collection agencies. Larger debtors will continue to be pursued by I.R.S. officers. The move, an initiative of the Bush administration, represents the first step in a broader plan to outsource the collection of smaller tax debts to private companies over time. Although I.R.S. officials acknowledge that this will be much more expensive than doing it internally, they say that Congress has forced their hand by refusing to let them hire more revenue officers, who could pull in a lot of easy-to-collect money.

How much better off would the IRS be if it were simply allowed to hire more staff? This much better:

The private debt collection program is expected to bring in $1.4 billion over 10 years, with the collection agencies keeping about $330 million of that, or 22 to 24 cents on the dollar. By hiring more revenue officers, the I.R.S. could collect more than $9 billion each year and spend only $296 million or about three cents on the dollar to do so, Charles O. Rossotti, the computer systems entrepreneur who was commissioner from 1997 to 2002, told Congress four years ago.

In other words, privatizing the IRS -- just like privatizing state-run pension funds like Social Security -- is not only more expensive, it's not as efficient as simply giving the Federal professionals the tools and money needed to do their jobs. But of course with decades of Ayn-Randroidian conservative radio and TV commentators from Rush Limbaugh to Lou Dobbs telling us how eeeevillll all gummint is (and with Grover 'drown the government in the bathtub' Norquist serving as the RNC's policy guru), very few people in power can see past the neocon gaslighting to the grim reality. In fact, for most of these people, causing the government to fall apart is their real job.

(Sample thief) The lie that will not die The lead story in this Sunday's New York Times describes the Bush administration's plans to crank up the pressure on Syria's government and, in that context, the Times twice references Syria's alleged guilt in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In the second paragraph, reporters Helene Cooper and David E. Sanger cite "Syrian officials implicated in Mr. Hariri's killing" and later mention U.S. actions taken "after Syrian officials were accused of involvement in Mr. Hariri's assassination." But an unsuspecting Times reader might not realize that, one, Syria has denied these allegations and, two, that many of the claims in a preliminary United Nations report have since collapsed.... ... “Given the many different positions occupied by Mr. Hariri, and his wide range of public and private-sector activities, the [U.N.] commission was investigating a number of different motives, including political motivations, personal vendettas, financial circumstances and extremist ideologies, or any combination of those motivations,” British Labour is about to get it's butt dropkicked into France. It seems the Iraq war is not popular there. But jiminy, the Tories were just as eager as Labour. Via SenderodelPeje, you can see footage of Ahumada implicating the PAN in Swiftboating Lopez Obrador With 94.08% of the vote, PRDista gubernatorial candidate Sabines has 48.39% (517,037 votes) versus 48.17% (514,737) for PRI-AN-ista Aguilar Bodegas. Turnout was low at 45%. PRI will demand a selective recount. Sabines is inclined to go along saying that they want to resolve matters by consensus. What will he do if the selective recount does him out of a job? Shots were fired at Channel 9 in Oaxaca, occupied by protestors.

Let's see, here: Do a scathing and factually-sound series of newspaper reports on the CIA's crack cocaine connection, and not only will every major newspaper in the country falsely condemn you for things you didn't do, but you will be hounded to suicide while those who didn't stand by you get lucrative promotions. Lie like a rug on behalf of the Bush Junta? You get away with it until such time as they decide they need someone to take the fall for Plamegate, then you get to leave your job with a hefty undisclosed financial settlement. Yup, that's modern American journalism, all right.

The citizens's movement that suppports the PRD has come up with a "powerful fortification of resistance." Up against the water cannons and riot police, they have in the Greek style placed a chorus of the elderly. "The Gray Kingfishes" as they call themselves sung a hymn composed of the words of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. There was a protest in front of the national cathedral against Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera for injecting himself into politics. The Mandoki "Anvil" films are available at here and here As of 5 AM Chiapas time, SenderodelPeje reports that the PRD gubernatorial candidate was ahead, but that-- just as in the presidential election-- the margin was falling. At 70% vote counted, it was a 2% margin. La Jornada delivered a very stern editorial on the elections in Chiapas, titled PAN and PRI, corrupters. Two PAN/PRI-istas were recently arrested for passing out money: Jaime Villarreal Gramajos arrested Friday in Tuxtla Gutiérrez and Sunday in Tonala, Francisco de Jesús Torres Hernández, local director of Elba Esther Gordillo's teacher's union. So, is there a connection between the money talked about in the intercepted phone conversation between Espina and Islas (see Sunday's post below)? The rate of growth of manufacturing fell during the Fox Administration. Of the seven sectors, only alcohol/food/tobacco and extraction of non-metallic minerals exclusive of petroleum or coal (like, cement) have prospered. The rest have slowed their rate of growth or even contracted. The maquilas have laid off 116,000 workers, 8.7% of the number at work at the start of Fox's Administration. SenderodelPeje reports that one of the big ISPs, Megacable, is blocking access to their site. Aside: something that those who rely on the Internet need to consider. We may need to develop alternate means of communication. Horacio Duarte explained the election irregularities on TV here (the Swiftboating of Lopez Obrador), here and here

Avedon is on the case. Bushco has given us true corporate socialism: government is run purely for the benefit of businesses, not to actually collect taxes, incarcerate prisoners, win wars, or protect the public from terrorism.

And I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts this never makes the "liberal" US TV network evening news tonight:

The Briton alleged to be the ‘mastermind’ behind the airline terror plot could be innocent of any significant involvement, sources close to the investigation claim. Rashid Rauf, whose detention in Pakistan was the trigger for the arrest of 23 suspects in Britain, has been accused of taking orders from Al Qaeda’s ‘No3’ in Afghanistan and sending money back to the UK to allow the alleged bombers to buy plane tickets. But after two weeks of interrogation, an inch-by-inch search of his house and analysis of his home computer, officials are now saying that his extradition is ‘a way down the track’ if it happens at all. It comes amid wider suspicions that the plot may not have been as serious, or as far advanced, as the authorities initially claimed. Analysts suspect Pakistani authorities exaggerated Rauf’s role to appear ‘tough on terrorism’ and impress Britain and America. A spokesman for Pakistan’s Interior Ministry last night admitted that ‘extradition at this time is not under consideration’.

But since Bush and the GOP used 9/11-based terror fear to win in 2002 and 2004, and get us to agree to invading and occupying Iraq in 2003, don't expect to see stories like this -- stories that undercut BushCo's goal of keeping us all scared of icky brown people -- get much US media play. UPDATE: And here's something else that won't make tonight's US evening news: Now we find that the British intelligence people are finally putting their foot down -- nearly two weeks after they were forced by the US to spring their terror trap prematurely -- and telling the Yanks (the FBI, specifically) to quit endangering what case the Brits actually have by constantly running their mouths off about it:

Anti-terror police in Britain have made an angry request to their US counterparts asking them to stop leaking details of this month's suspected bomb plot over fears that it could jeopardise the chances of a successful prosecution and hamper the gathering of evidence. The British security services, MI5 and MI6, are understood to be dismayed that a number of sensitive details surrounding the alleged plot - including an FBI estimate that as many as 50 people were involved - were leaked to the media. FBI sources confirmed to The Observer that the bureau had been ordered to stop briefing at the request of the British authorities. 'The shutters have come down,' a bureau source said. 'We have been told not to discuss the case any more.' The request for silence by the British authorities is an early sign that those involved in the investigation have concerns at the way their evidence-gathering is proceeding. It is understood that British anti-terror police wanted to prolong their observation of the suspects for as long as possible in a bid to gather sufficient evidence. There are now fears among some Scotland Yard officers that they may have acted too hastily when deciding to arrest the 24 suspects earlier this month. Although martydom videos and the components of a bomb have been recovered in the investigation, linking such evidence to all those arrested could still prove difficult.

The J. Edgar Hoover gloryhound instinct still exists at the FBI, I see.

UPDATE #2: Richard Cranium over in the comments thread for the diary I posted at DKos on this points us to an article showing just how un-frickin'-likely it is that the "UK liquid bombers" could have pulled off a plot to create a dangerous explosive from two or more separately-harmless chemicals in a plane toilet.

The PRD has produced a recording of a conversation between Manuel Espino of PAN and Victor Hugo Islas of PRI involving millions (whether dollars or pesos is unclear) to install José Antonio Aguilar Bodegas as governor of Chiapas. The PRI congressman calls the PANista "boss." AMLO played the tape for the people assembled in the Zocalo. So, who got arrested for handing out bribes? Why, the PRD, of course:

Police arrested four supporters of the leading leftist party allegedly caught trying to give away 36 tons of construction material to Hurricane Stan victims who promised to support the Chiapas state government´s candidate for governor in Sunday´s vote, authorities said.... Chiapas resident Rosendo Paniagua said he was asked to hand over his voter registration card and told to vote for Sabines, the former mayor of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, or he wouldn´t receive a box of soup, milk, cooking oil and other basic food supplies from the city. Paniagua said he and some 1,000 other senior citizens collected the foodstuffs after promising to vote for Sabines "or they wouldn´t give us anything."

For what it's worth, if the charges are proven, I hope they throw the book at them. But I also hope that the evidence of vote buying on the part of the PAN/PRI is also investigated. Because what this looks like is an attempt to shout down evidence of a massive vote buying scheme by PRI-PAN vs. petty patronage. Thirty six tons of construction supplies might sound like a lot, but if it's sand, gravel, and concrete, it might not represent a lot of money. Cement, for example, costs $16.39/94 lb bag, so 36 tons is about $12,000 or about 120,000 pesos. In Mexico, I would bet one would pay a third that price. So this vote buying scheme looks like small potatoes. Historian María del Carmen Collado Herrera says that all bridges of dialogue are broken, for which she largely blames the government. And things are rolling downhill quickly. AMLO has accused the right of offering bribes in the forms of cannonades of money and offers of public position to the electoral court. It's unclear whether he thinks they accepted. But given the amazing capacity of the PRD to intercept telephone calls, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't roll the tape. There are 3,500 cops around the Legislature. Democracies do not need water cannon and riot cops to protect the government from the people.

Atrios' post on these fine people reminded me of an interesting argument I've seen advanced recently concerning electoral politics. Simply put, it asks why someone who is as interested as are Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in maximum results for expenditures -- more "bang for the buck", if you will -- would put $32 billion into a charity rather than a political party. $1 billion given to the Democratic National Committee would suffice to get enough legislators elected to provide veto-proof majorities for legislation that would meet all of the Gates-Buffett's charity's claimed goals. Think about what Howard Dean could do with one billion dollars at his disposal. He's already done a lot with a lot less.

Would you buy a used president from this man? Image of Procurator General Rafael Macedo de la Concha from La Jornada Journalist Carmen Aristegui released an interview demonstrating that the effort to block Obrador from the presidency involved President Vicente Fox, which was criminal under Mexican law. Entrepreneur Carlos Ahumada Kurtz said that the campaign to block Lopez Obrador was headed by ex-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Government Secretary Santiago Creel, the national Procurator General Rafael Macedo de la Concha, and Senator Diego Fernández de Cevallos. "And it would be difficult for President Fox not to know." This high-minded civic effort involved 30 million dollars, the purchase of land in Leon, Guanajuato, and personal protection and was exposed because Cevallos welshed on his part of the deal. In exchange, films supposedly compromising people near to Lopez Obrador would be fed to the media. This was, in fact, how Lopez Obrador's seemingly insurmountable lead was erased. The transcript is here And most of the media refuses to cover any of this. Jaime Aviles says that a coup against democratic government appears to be underway. He says that the film is actually a diversion from the exposure of fraud. He says that the political figures involved, with the exception of Creel Miranda, are political corpses. Creel Miranda is a political enemy of Calderon. My reaction: well, yeah, but it shows PAN cooking a conspiracy, it shows the most corrupt figures of the PRI in bed with PAN, and La Jornada editorialized thatthe interview showed the advanced state of corruption of the political classes. In Oaxaca, 80,000 strikers brought things to a halt. A professor, Benito Castro Juárez, was shot by three presumed police agents, who fled in a Pointer auto, license plates Pointer, license plates DF 331-TUK, later found parked in fromt of the San Agustín Etla Police Academy. The Procurator General says they were just robbers. A teacher, Antonio Marcos Ramos Sarmiento was stabbed by an unknown assailant. In Chihuahua, there have been executions at the rate of one per day this week. Victims include a journalist, Enrique Perea and the top commander of the State Agency of Investigations, Arturo Nazar Contreras. This on top of the ongoing murders of women and the failure of the government to provide disaster relief. The VW plant in Puebla is on strike over salary issues. The plant, with about 10,000 workers, produced 1,538 vehicles a day. In Chiapas, PAN and PRI want the army to supervise elections. ___________________________________________________ Update: Via The Unapologetic Mexican, you can read about the Ahumada story in English as well as The Mex Files's translation of La Jornada's editorial.

From Democracy Now JOHN GIBLER: ...First off, the shootouts have all taken place in the context of either marches or meetings that the APPO have held, protest gatherings, or in one case, several people were ambushed on their way to such a meeting. That's where three people in the Triqui region, three indigenous people, were killed by armed gunmen who were not in uniform. Later, a few days later, in a march that was actually held, convoked on a day's notice to pull people into the streets to demand that people who had been either disappeared or taken prisoner and beaten be presented and be released. During that march, armed gunmen shot from two sides of the street into the crowd, wounding three people and killing one person, Jose Colmenares, who’s a mechanic and husband of one of the teachers and members of the teachers’ movement. The policy here has been systematic, that it's isolated, unarmed gunmen who appear in the crowds, shoot sometimes into the air, as with the case the week before in several protest gatherings in Oaxaca City, and is also the case with the Noticias newspaper, the critical newspaper in Oaxaca state. Armed gunmen entered with Uzis and shot into the ceiling. There, bullet fragments wounded six people. But in several cases, amazingly, the APPO members have actually detained the gunmen themselves and disarmed them and then turned them over to federal agents or detained people who were suspected of being -- they weren't seen to have shot, but were seen either running or caught, in the case of the March shooting... ...the working class society in Mexico is boiling.

Lightfoot and Alex are resting up for the weekend, worn out from a busy week of ... napping.

The letters in today's Detroit Free Press could be a warning to the Republicans that running on "national security" might not work this time around.

...it's ironic that Debra Saunders and many of her fellow conservative commentators bemoan the fact that strict adherence to our Constitution's Bill of Rights makes this country less safe. It's the Bill of Rights that gives us those freedoms and liberties supposedly hated by Islamic terrorists. --- For the values that many Americans hold dear, the current strategies have not been successful to strengthen our security.... The Republican Party policymakers have not responded to the 9/11 Commission nor did the administration respond to Katrina. I want my country back. --- Here we are, five years after 9/11 and the current administration continues to fail on keeping us safe.... The Republicans' current political attacks are nothing less than shameful.... Should we all be afraid to express our views unless they match the current administration's views? That doesn't sound like democracy to me. --- ...I will be voting to take government out of the hands of the Republicans. Living abroad I have seen the negative effects of the Bush administration on the world's opinion of the United States.... The Bush administration has failed to keep us safe and is breeding more hatred toward the U.S. --- Why are people in other parts of the world willing to give up their lives to hurt us? I'm sure it is not 10,000 virgins that motivate them. More like 10,000 homes in ruins, and the perception that the future promises no better. It is long past time for a politics that begins with the intelligent naming of real problems that must be addressed in intelligent and compassionate ways. --- The Republicans are nothing but fear mongers and will keep us in this war as long as they can for their own purposes. They can't bring the troops home because they have to guard Halliburton. --- The terror threats that Republicans are attempting to create this past week is showing America that they are getting a little out of hand. It is interesting how whenever something does not go in their favor, they further this culture of fear that they have been building since 9/11. I encourage people not to buy into it. --- They want us to think we are safer than before 9/11. They want us to believe they have our safety as their No. 1 priority. What I want them to know is that we know their priorities: saving face, protecting their interests in oil rich countries, letting the rich get richer, widening the gap between Americans, outsourcing which hurts the average working men and women. We have had enough.

Remember the big stink the Powerline boys made over Minnesota state senator Keith Ellison's having as a college student -- along with many other naive black men who soon learned their lesson -- had the most tenuous and temporary of connections to Louis Farrakhan? Remember, also, just how much the Powerline boys love Joe Lieberman, their favorite (former) Democrat? Well, guess what: Back in 2000 -- long after Keith Ellison and every key black leader and national figure had rejected Farrakhan's bigotry and anti-semitism, guess who was cuddling up to the guy? C'mon, guess. OK, I'll tell you: Joe Lieberman. Check it out, right here:

The Lieberman campaign is trying to frighten white voters in Connecticut -- and Democrats in Washington -- by reminding them over and over again that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson support Lamont. This week, the senator's aides told the New York Times that playing the two African-American preachers off against Lamont will enhance Lieberman's appeal on an independent ballot line. "Primary night was the first time that many Connecticut voters saw Lamont on TV, and he's surrounding himself with two of the more divisive and problematic figures in the Democratic Party," said Dan Gerstein, the Lieberman campaign's communications director. It's true that Jackson and Sharpton, who bustled onto the podium the evening of the primary to grab their share of the Lamont spotlight, tend to be polarizing figures. But what if Lamont had praised an even more polarizing black leader? What would Lieberman say if his rival had reached out to someone really outrageous, like Louis Farrakhan? If he were honest, he'd exclaim "Great idea!" -- because that's exactly what he said six years ago. Lieberman can hope to get away with his racially inflammatory strategy only if everyone else forgets not only his habit of sucking up to Jackson and Sharpton but his history of stroking the most bigoted black leader in the world. Evidently he and Gerstein (who was also his spokesman during the 2000 presidential campaign) expect that nobody will mention the embarrassing episode when Lieberman's ambition (and opportunism) led him to praise Farrakhan. Given the laziness and amnesia that afflict the national press corps, they may be right.

UPDATE: It was just pointed out to me that Keith Ellison's most vocal local attacker, Minneapolis attorney Daniel Rosen of the Rosen & Rosen law firm, is a prominent Republican activist and generous GOP donor. Funny how Rosen's GOP ties never got mentioned in all those StarTribune and Minnesota Public Radio stories -- or by his fellow Republicans at Powerline and MDE.

Water cannon, covered by tarps, and police stand ready to quell unruly PRD legislators near the Mexican Congress. Image by José Carlo González from La Jornada. Mariano Azuela Güitrón, ministerial president of the Supreme Court of Mexico, says that the court will not intervene in the election. Article 97 of the Constitution is obsolete he says, cut off at the feet. Talk about legislating from the bench. He's effectively carved out a space independent from Mexican law for the Elections Court, requiring that the evidence that the election was stolen be gathered and made public before the high court intervenes. Well, if you can watch a Google vid, you can see for yourself. Seven districts, representing perhaps a thousand precincts worth of unsealed ballot boxes (25,000 ballots?), ballots outside of their envelope, ballots not folded as would have happened if they had been inserted into the ballot box, etc. And this is in a place where the the PRD was strong enough to get a camera in the door. The Mexican police have water cannon and barricades outside the Congress. Do real democracies need riot control to hold an election?

Hot off the wire:

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. "Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion.

Courtesy of Think Progress, via Atrios, here are PDF files of Judge Taylor's decision and of the injunction.

Craig Murray, who after speaking out against Tony Blair's tacit approval of torture was hounded from his British diplomatic career on trumped-up charges that were later dismissed (and who was punished for actually fighting the charges by exposing their ridiculousness to the media), has some interesting thoughts on the recent alleged liquid-bomb-plot arrests:

In the UK, at least, the more serious wing of the mainstream media is beginning to catch up with the idea that all is not well here. Still, after eight days of detention, nobody has been charged with any crime. For there to be no clear evidence yet on something that was "imminent" and "Mass murder on an unbelievable scale" is, to say the least, rather peculiar. The 24th person, who was arrested amid much fanfare yesterday, has been quietly released without charge today. Breaking news, another "suspect" has just been released too. The drip, drip of information to the media from the security services has rather dried-up. The last item of any significance was that they had found a handgun and a rifle - neither of which could have been in any use in the alleged plot. If you were smuggling undetectable liquid explosive onto a plane, you would be unlikely to give the game away by tucking a rifle into your hand baggage. [...] As the Police immediately told the press about the guns, it is a reasonable deduction that it remains true that they still have found no bombs or detonators, or they would have told us, particularly as they haven't charged anyone yet. They must be getting pretty desperate to announce some actual evidence by now. This brings us to one particuarly sinister aspect of the allegations - that the bombs were to be made on the plane. The idea that high explosive can be made quickly in a plane toilet by mixing at room temperature some nail polish remover, bleach, and Red Bull and giving it a quick stir, is nonsense. Yes, liquid explosives exist and are highly dangerous and yes, airports are ill equipped to detect them at present. Yes, it is true they have been used on planes before by terrorists. But can they be quickly manufactured on the plane? No. The sinister aspect is not that this is a real new threat. It is that the allegation may have been concocted in order to prepare us for arresting people without any actual bombs. Let me fess up here. I have just checked, and our flat contains nail polish remover, sports drinks, and a variety of household cleaning products. Also MP3 players and mobile phones. So the authorities could announce - as they have whispered to the media in this case - that potential ingredients of a liquid bomb, and potential timing devices, have been discovered. It rather lowers the bar, doesn't it?

It does, indeed.

That may be the rallying cry of the Second Mexican Revolution. Gerardo Fernández Noroña of the PRD says that they are ready if necessary to amp up from nonviolent civil resistance to nonviolent civil disobedience. The PRD is advising against bringing children to further demos. Good advice: since the cops seem willing to club legislators, they'd probably have even fewer compunctions about clubbing babies. The Permanent Commission of the Congress of the Union has condemned the police attack on PRD legislators. 3,500 healthcare workers are on stoppage in Oaxaca. Only emergency services are open. Thanks to Astillas and Senderodel Peje you cans see films of some of the outrages that are before the electoral court. Astillero also lists the following, in which representatives of the electoral institute, acting without any authority, open ballot packets for completely unknown reasons: Council 5, District 11. Workers of the election institute riffle through election packets without a representative of the PRD present. On being confronted, they become defensive. T But at 18 seconds, we see a young lady placing loose papers into a ballot box. At 30 seconds, a young man places boxes, presumably packs of ballots into a box. Also at 1:01. At 2:01, we see what appears to be a ballot on the floor. At 2:12, we see red-bereted members of the military who have apparently been called for by the Election Institute. At 2:50 the head of the local Election Institute tells the workers to leave. At 4:00 a woman says taht there are 20 people in the "bodega" (booth) are coming out at intervals of three hours. She says they are carrying backpacks (none are evident in the film) and asks that people watch to see what containers enter and leave. She alleges at 4:10 that a ballot box was re-sealed with no party representative except PAN present. She says that on talking to the head of the Election Institute, he claimed that they were "removing trash" from the ballot boxes and inserting the markers(?) Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_0IrsHBTKo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpo-H-GnWwU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJUnu7P--O8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4425jT7xyeQ y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IRQrUz-v4

Now this is why Al Gore gave us the internet:

Last Friday, we got a couple of clues from a Stamford Advocate article as to how many of the 18,000 signatures submitted to get Joe Lieberman on the ballot were valid. The town clerks should have received the petitions on Monday, so by now, they should be able to tell us what they're finding.

The down side is that there are 168 different town clerks to call. So follow me over the flip, and see how you can help pin down some hard numbers today, since hard numbers seem to be in short supply from our intrepid journalist corps... [...] It occurred to me the other day that Google Spreadsheets have some interesting possibilities for elections reporting - allowing for simultaneous, multi-user, online editing of spreadsheets into a template. I don't mean to be pimping google products here, but I thought I'd give it a try, and see if it winds up being practical for this kind of research project.

And damned if that wouldn't have been a lot more convenient on 8/8, when every reporting site on the internet was going down in flames - and several blog kids had the precinct-by-precinct returns as they were coming in.

If you have a gmail account, drop me a line at scvmatt at gmail, and I will send you an invitation to edit the spreadsheet. If you don't, or can't be arsed, you can visit this link and use an account I created for the purpose - login name is "dkos.spreadsheet" and the password is "metajesus". You can also just log into gmail.com with that name and password, and the invitation is sitting in the inbox. But then you get a generic name in the chat window there.

How this should work

This should start at 9:15am EST, or 6:15 PST. Give the poor secretaries a few minutes to get a cup of, erm, joe before asking them to dig up stats for you. Before you call, type your initials or your dkos UID to reserve the towns that you want to call after 9:15.

1) When you call, put an X in the "contacted" column so we know it's been done.

2) If you get someone, say that you're calling to inquire about the petitions submitted by the Joe Lieberman Senate campaign. Feel free to call yourself an independent journalist, or blogger if you're feeling lucky, and ask to speak to someone in the Clerk's office who can give you the number of submitted and confirmed signatures.

3) If you get punted to another office, or are told to call back at a different time, mark the relevant info in Column E - Followup Notes

4) Mark down each of the statistics, if they'll give them to you, in each of columns F-I. Be sure to ask if their count has already eliminated petition forms with invalid petition gatherer information, and if the number they've given you is the number that they will be sending to the Secretary of State to tally.

5) Make a note of the date and time that you updated the spreadsheet.

Alright, I hope a few of you guys are up and interested in this - again, email me at scvmatt [at] gmaildotcom if you want me to send you an invite.

If there's anything that needs to change, or if you have more exciting spreadsheet abilities than I do, comment here before the 9:15 EST and we can modify the template so it's as useful as possible. I understand that more complex auto-updating formulas are possible, and I'd be open to having an ambitious kossack set that up on the spreadsheet (use Sheet2 or Sheet3 to test) if you'd like.

I'll post updates here every so often after this thing gets started.

Amazing. Just amazing.

Justin McCurry in The Guardian The Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, sent his country's wartime victims a defiant valedictory message yesterday when he visited a controversial war shrine on the anniversary of Japan's defeat by the Allies....Victims of Japanese wartime aggression condemned his trip to Yasukuni, which honours 2.5 million Japanese who died in battles since the second half of the 19th century, among them 14 executed class-A war criminals that include the wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo. ...The Yushukan museum, next to the shrine, promotes the belief that Japan went to war to save Asia from western imperialism. It makes no mention of Japanese wartime atrocities, such as the 1937 Rape of Nanking/ Sorta like visiting Philadelphia, Mississippi as the first stop on your campaign. Everyone knows what it means.

Welcome The Unapologetic Mexican to the honor roll.

I guess my translation skills aren't too shabby. Al Giordano Mexico’s Partial Vote Recount Confirms Massive and Systematic Election Fraud With Less than 9 Percent of Precincts Recounted, More than 126,000 Votes Are Found to Have Been Disappeared or Illegally Fabricated ... The partial recount has also revealed more evidence of a pattern of malice on the part of IFE officials. The existence of more ballots than there are voters in PAN stronghold precincts indicates that either the IFE illegally sent more ballots than allowed to those precincts, or somehow the party in power obtained them by other illegal means. The recount has also revealed a massive number of precincts where the seals on the ballot boxes had been broken since Election Day, opening the possibility that ballots were inserted or removed after July 2nd. Mexico’s television duopoly – Televisa and TV Azteca – have declined to report the irregularities that have surfaced as a result of the partial recount. The same goes for much – but not all – of the corporate media. The facts have instead broken the media blockade via Internet and organization, as well as the detailed reporting of the daily La Jornada in Mexico City, the daily Por Esto! in Yucatán (two of the nation’s four largest newspapers) and some other media.... If the seven electoral justices believed that holding a partial recount would calm passions, the facts unleashed by that partial recount have served, instead, to flame them. What the judges do with those facts will determine whether the institutions will correct the fraud, or whether the institutions will risk, as in Oaxaca, falling from power because of trying to impose an indefensible crime against Mexican society and democracy. What seven judges decide in the next three weeks will mark a crossroads in Mexican history… and that of all América.

Of course the GOP/Media Complex is much more interested in recycling RNC blast-e-mails about What A Tragedy It Is That Lieberman Lost The Primary than in actually recounting Democratic responses to Republican screwups, so I'm betting that this will be the first time that you, Gentle Readers, have seen this little ditty published nearly a week ago:

The Senate's top Democrat says Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson should resign, calling his leadership a threat to national security after the VA lost another computer containing veterans' personal data. "Enough is enough," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday. "Less than a month after promising to make the VA the 'gold standard' in data security, Secretary Nicholson has again presided over loss of the personal information of thousands more veterans." Reid is the third Senate Democrat - joining Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and John Kerry of Massachusetts - who has called for Nicholson's ouster following high-profile data thefts at the government's second largest agency.

Oh, and the big irony of this? The computer was stolen from the offices of a private contractor, Unisys. What was that again about private industry being better than Evil Gummint Bureaucrats? And what are Jim Nicholson's qualifications to run the VA, anyway? Um, besides being the former head of the Republican National Committee? Are Useless Party Hacks and Corporate Board Chair-Warmers and Campaign Contributors somehow better than, y'know, actual government professionals?

X-ray machines can't detect the sorts of explosives that a shoe bomber would use. So X-raying shoes might detect a hidden shiv, but then the metal detectors would find those anyway. Know what would really make America more secure? If we stopped propping up right-wing antidemocratic régimes and corporations the world over. Then very few people would want to bomb us in the first place. But at least this is a step in the right direction.

The PejePollo. "This Superchicken comes equipped with testicles." (The conceptually correct, if literally incorrect translation for Lopez Obrador's nickname "Peje" is "The Kingfish"). The news from Mexico is sometimes so grim that we forget that people there know how to laugh. The image above was posted on SenderodelPeje along with a lot of other very funny phototoons that don't require too much imagination to interpret. And there are photos of wonderful street scenes from the "megaplanton" (Million Man Sit-in) But speaking of grim, Narconews reports OAXACA CITY, August 10, 2006: The government of Oaxaca has advised the public that it will arrest all the leaders of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) to “guarantee the safety” of the state, the Secretary of Public Security Lino Celaya Luria said yesterday. This clarifies the sudden rash of plainclothes operators snatching men off the streets. That’s what they mean by “arrests.”

Senators and representatives of the PRD protesting at the Chamber of Deputies were beaten by federal police, who lobbed in tear gas to break up the demonstrations. At least 11 were beaten or left in shock. Two grenades exploded outside the Procurator General in Chetumal in the southern state of Quintana Roo. A few weeks ago, five presumed members of the Gulf cartel were arrested with four shoulder launched missiles, two carriers (cases?) of AK-47s, 100 cellular chargers, transfers with insignia of the Judicial Police, and equipment for radio transmission and satellite radiocommunication. Two senior police officials have recently been executed. The Governor, Félix González Canto, says that recent violence has not tarnished the attractiveness of Quintana Roo as a tourist destination.

During World War II, Winston Churchill sent a delegation of British intelligence professionals, including Ian Fleming (who would later turn his hand to writing spy novels), to visit the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover and to see if they could trust him to hold up his end of the deal in a transatlantic anti-Nazi intelligence network. They found him wanting and ended up going behind his back to work out a relationship with William Joseph "Wild Bill" Donovan, who they assisted in his running of the OSS. Fast-forward six decades. Just as J. Edgar Hoover was in the habit of driving the UK's intel community nuts by making photo-op arrests of German spies the second they were uncovered on American soil, as opposed to listening into their transmissions and feeding them bogus information (a technique Fleming details in his James Bond short story "The Property of a Lady"), we now find out that Bush and his people have forced the British -- over the strong objections of the UK's intel community -- to spring the liquid-bomber trap far too early, thus allowing over half of the terrorists to escape. Oh, and guess what: As the news of the arrest of the would-be bombers spread, Bush was still trying to cut $6 million from the funding of American bomb-detection efforts. Because of course saving rich people from having to pay taxes is far more important than saving lives. And of course, the Bush junta and their media allies are treating this disaster as a feather in Bush's cap. Just as they did with 9/11.

Avedon Carol of The Sideshow has led a very short honor roll of English-language bloggers who have recognized the importance of developments in Mexico. Aside from her, there's Machete, CorrenteWire, Booman, AllSpinZone, Good Nonsense. Oh, and The (usually-much-smarter) Agonist, which thinks that the PAN candidate's name is Cardenas, a mistake on par with imagining a GOP presidential nominee named Kennedy or Roosevelt. Kos, Atrios, Digby, FiredogLake, Calpundit, Alterman... all the cool heavies have barely registered the existence of Mexico, much less its current slide toward crisis. Instead, they seem to have been focused on what are almost pseudo-stories: "World War IV," a terror plot where no details to make the threat plausible have yet emerged, and The Tragic Hacking of Joe Lieberman's Web Site. It's not that these stories are irrelevant, but how important are they, really? They have been fed to us by the same media that lied us into Iraq, perhaps for the same reason. At least as they are presented, they are spectacle, not news. All of which makes me appreciate Avedon and The Sideshow all the more. The Sideshow is a delicious mix of art, nature photos, video, music, science fiction, and politics, not to mention the ever-popular Bra of the Week. (If only I had broadband, to enjoy the music and vid). The Mexico story, as is appropriate, is a minor element of The Sideshow. But, as is appropriate for a country that is a major petroleum exporter, a major trade partner of the US, and the likely source of millions of refugees if things blow up, it is an element. So, here's to Avedon and to one of the best blogs on the web, The Sideshow. Que viva!

The PRD asserts that in 4,200 of the 6,500 precincts counted so far, there have been 132,000 "altered votes." In 1,431 precincts, there were 41,831 "illegal votes," while in 2,807 precincts, 61,374 votes disappeared. By contrast, El Universal columnist Ricardo Aleman claims that there is absolutely no evidence of fraud. But his column fails to address specific complaints that have been agreed to: the illegal opening of ballot packets, for example, that has so greatly amplified the suspicion of fraud. And he closes his column with the statement that 65% of the voters didn't want AMLO. Ironically, the same could be said about Calderon. Where are the reasonable voices that hear the arguments of the opponent? The PRD may seek to have the ballots from precincts where there is clear evidence of tampering be annulled. This would have the effect of reversing the electoral result. They list a number of examples, including votes for PAN with a check attached, more votes than possible voters, and three precincts where not a single PRD vote was recorded. Some other examples: * Zacatecas 3, precinct 1610: 109 votes more for AMLO, 101 less for FeCal * In Vetagrande, an error of orthography, in which 91 votes for PAN was recorded as 191 * In district 1 (Fresnillo), 43/45 packets opened * In district 2 (Jerez), packets not sealed * Chihuahua, district 8: 108 packets contained 1,418 extra ballots. Most packets had ballots outside the seals, perhaps vote shaving. * In Campeche, the representative of the court said the counts were only off by a vote or two per precincts (which, if that's widespread, I would say is proof positive of fraud) * District 5, precinct 1101 of San Luis Potosi: 160 votes for Calderon weren't substantiated by ballots * In Districts 2-7, open packets (And many more examples) Former Supreme Court Justice Genaro David Góngora Pimentel says that Article 97 para. 4 permits the Count to intervene in the election, if there is an evident violation of the citizens's vote. Article 97 was invoked by a 6:5 vote in the case of the Lydia Cacho, a journalist in Puebla believed to be in danger of death. AMLO has been in Chiapas. I admit that I don't understand the local politics. It seemed to me to be a sleazy move by the PRI and PAN to grab a governorship. But Astillas tells me that my interpretation is wrong, that in fact it is Lopez Obrador who has made an opportunistic alliance that doesn't smell right. An American university professor, Neil Harvey, published a piecein La Jornada. An excerpt (my paraphrase):

The decision of the electoral tribunal to not recount all the votes will not overcome the lack of credibility of the electoral process by millions of Mexicans. The decision to recount 9% of the precints seems to reveal more of an intent to legitimize an election that is questioned than to provide certainty to the people regarding the actual result.

He reviews three theories of political change: modernization divorced from democratization, democratization as a result of an interplay between the authoritarian state and the opposition independent of the rest of civil society, and  democratization as a result of a struggle for rights between various groups independent of economic development. He points to the role of economic development in the Mexican election, since the major election fraud happened in the north, where the PANistas have forgotten the struggles they underwent two decades ago. In Oaxaca, two teachers were tortured by the police

Via Bradblog Donzella James has filed suit against Georgia for using non-verifiable voting machines in GA-13. Cynthia McKinney may join the suit over her recent primary in GA-04. This in addition to the lawsuit filed over the Busby/Bilbray race... lamentably, not by Busby. Also, allegations of election fraud are being reviewed by a Grand Juryin Texas. It's very hard to read the details of how people are denied their right to vote and then the sneers delivered by so-called liberals who are comfortable enough to not really care if elections are legitimate.

One of the greatest concepts in human philosophy comes from the field of thermodynamics, from a man almost unknown outside that discipline, Lars Onsager. Onsager developed a notion for how processes evolve, known as the reciprocal relations or, more colloquially, as Onsager coupling. A very simple example might be air leaking out of a balloon. Molecules flow out and cold "flows in." The greater pressure inside the balloon amounts to a force driving the molecules out (called a "flow"). The product of force and flow is proportional to changes in thermodynamic quantities, such as entropy. For the full nine yards, click here. From a philosophical standpoint, the lesson is that one can couple two productive processes to minimize waste (entropy production). One wonderful example I stumbled across is this A project to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from oil refineries by using the gas as "fertiliser" in commercial greenhouses has been so successful it is being extended. The project, which adds new meaning to the term "greenhouse gas", is the first in the world. It distributes CO2 from Shell's Pernis refinery outside Rotterdam to 400 greenhouses, saving a large amount of natural gas each year, which is equivalent to 170,000 tonnes of CO2....tripling the concentration of the gas inside the greenhouse they allow the plants to photosynthesise more quickly. This boosts productivity by up to 25% and cuts growing time... So, here, we have two processes: the burning of gas to create electricity and the stimulation of photosynthesis to produce carbohydrates. Each process can occur independently, but relatively-speaking wastefully. By coupling them, one can extract more work out of the same process. By the way, the stimulation of photosynthesis that can be achieved in a greenhouse probably does not happen in global warming. Global warming has other effects, such as elevation of temperature, changes in rainfall pattern, and acceleration of depletion of ozone that overcome the growth stimulus. We human beings tend to think in simplistic terms. Global warming is bad-- indeed it is. But to get out of the crisis, we will need to learn to couple two bads to make a good. The Rotterdam experiment is the sort of thing that needs to be encouraged.

From "Mrs. Monsky" in Salon's Table Talk discussion forum:

Lieberman has decided to not only run as an Independent, but to do so from the state of Maine. Apparently the chance to have (I-ME) after his name was just too delicious for this smug self-satisfied bastard to pass up... Lieberman (I - ME)!

The Bush Administration is, of course, exploiting the arrest of suspects accused of planning to blow up airplanes with liquid explosive, using it as an excuse to go all "This proves we need to keep fighting the war on terror and Democrats want to undermine our security blah blah blah". This would be the Bush Administration that tried to "divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology ... The administration also was slow to start testing a new liquid explosives detector that the Japanese government provided to the United States earlier this year." Had enough? Vote Democratic.

Lady Lightfoot had a rough day today; she had her teeth cleaned, which has to be done under general anesthesia, and she had one molar extracted. She's doing well, however, and I figure she's entitled to display a bit more cattitude than usual.

The limited recount nears its end. . Lopez Obrador explains why this limited recount is not acceptable (via ElMachete).

Polls show that at least a third of Mexican voters believe the election was fraudulent and nearly half support a full recount. And yet the electoral tribunal has ordered an inexplicably restrictive recount. This defies comprehension, for if tally sheet alterations were widespread, the outcome could change with a handful of votes per station. Our tribunals — unlike those in the United States — have been traditionally subordinated to political power. Mexico has a history of corrupt elections where the will of the people has been subverted by the wealthy and powerful. Grievances have now accumulated in the national consciousness, and this time we are not walking away from the problem.

The electoral court blocks observation of the recount. Outside observers are only permitted to see the opening of the ballot packets. In Veracruz, PAN lost 754 votes, while Obrador gained 114. Open ballot packets were found. Precinct 263, district 4 of Durango, had a ballot packet. But, um... funny thing! No ballots inside. Another electoral packet had ballots with multiple signatures on the backs. In districts 1, 3, and 4 (where counting continues is districts 1 and 4). 63 precincts had errors. Of the 59 out of 174 counted precincts (344 total), there were 205 extra ballots and 679 missing ballots. In Cuernavaca, PAN is claiming that it actually gained a few votes. The PRD says that there were no ballots seals to prove provenance and 101 overvoted ballots actually were spoiled by someone with different handwriting than the voter. Meanwhile PAN claims that only 25% of precincts have any errors, and only 3% of precincts are off by more than 5 votes. If more ballot packets had been sealed or not opened, that might mean something. Only a third of Mexicans think the election was fraudulent?

Predictably, the Republicans are using the news of a plot to blow up airplanes during intercontinental flights as justification for their dismantling of the U.S. Constitution. But seriously, do they even hear what they're saying as they say it? Because their assertions make no sense at all.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman responded that "instead of focusing on political attacks," Democrats should be reminded the country is at war and needs every tool to win. "If Harry Reid had his way and killed the Patriot Act and ended the Terrorist Surveillance Program, authorities would be less able to uncover terror plots," he said. The U.S. government heightened security on passenger planes and barred air travelers from carrying liquids on Thursday after Britain foiled the plot aimed at blowing up planes flying to the United States.

Yo, Ken. It was the British who uncovered this plot. [Edited to add: And, according to a report I heard this evening, the Pakistanis.] That has nothing to do with our laws, okay? And in case you haven't noticed, the war in Iraq, which you and yours regularly tout as a critical part of the War on Terror, didn't stop the terrorists from plotting this attack. It didn't even have anything to do with uncovering the plot. In fact, while y'all have been occupied with the war in Iraq, you have not addressed the security issue revealed by this plot: objects that might be liquid explosives in disguise were not banned from flights until after the arrests were announced. So stop claiming to be the people who can protect us, because so far you've done a really lousy job of it.

(No, I don't think that the Lebanon war or the recent terrorist plot are worth blogging on. The former is a continuation of a war that has been raging for 60 years. The only interesting question is where Israel will set its boundary line this time. I'm betting they'll take the Litani. The latter... well, let's say I have my doubts about whether this is for real or just more fantasy. Explosives detection technology is awfully sophisticated, and there are red flags all over the official story). Three hundred police arrive in Oaxaca. Narconews has an on-the-scene account in English. One of the fascinating points is that the people occupying Oaxaca are playing films on previous repression, back to the mass murder at Tlatelolco. More on Atenco from Mexico Solidarity Network: Forty five of the 47 women arrested in the police action on May 4 were sexually molested or raped, according to lawyers representing many of the accused. The death of 14-year-old Javier Cortes Santiago was caused by a .38 caliber bullet, the same caliber used by state police, fired from a distance of two feet. Doctor Fernando Rubi Apreza, who was present in Atenco on May 4, reported other people wounded by gunshots. Also from MSN: Meanwhile, despite his bold initial announcements, Calderon has been surprisingly on the defensive for much of the past two weeks. Calderon was always somewhat of a pariah in his own party. He tried to distance himself politically from Fox during the campaign and he has a running battle with PAN president Manuel Espino. Nevertheless, the response of his party has been surprising. Officials closed his campaign headquarters within days of the election, denying him a logistical center from which to defend his position. Most leading PAN officials virtually disappeared from public view, with the Espino taking a highly public vacation in Spain. Searching for allies, Calderon scheduled a highly publicized press event claiming union support, but only a retired electrical worker with no official union post and two largely discredited union bosses formerly aligned with the PRI bothered to show up. Televisa and TV Azteca, both strong supporters of Calderon, breathlessly reported his labor support. From the MSN newsletter: On August 3, state authorities led by officials from Agrarian Reform evicted EZLN support bases from Chol de Tumbala, located in the autonomous municipality of El Trabajo in the La[c]andon rainforest. Over 260 police burned the homes and belongings of 30 families, including all of their stored food. Police arrested Juan Jimenez Vazquez, Bartolo Arcos Mendoza and Mateo Sanchez Montejo, who were taking the license plate numbers of official vehicles. All three were beaten during the arrest. ___________________ Added: PAN and another right wing party, the New Alliance turned over the governorship of Chiapas to the PRI. Since otherwise the PRD would have the plurality, this combines payoff with frustrating the popular will. Senderodel Peje relays a claim that in Campeche, 1000 ballots vanished. In Oaxaca. five armed men shot three professors, killing one. This definitely looks to me like death squad activity.

Imaginary numbers. PAN, says that only a couple of votes have changed from the tens of thousands counted. Jesus Ortega of the PRD says that in fact the recount has shown significant shifts. The Heisenberg Uncertainty hazeThe "citizen net" (PRD) spokesman Ricardo Monreal Ávila alleged that the results of the recount prove that fraud was committed not only on Election Eve but in the (ca. 3%) illegal recount performed by the election institute (IFE) July 10-14. The language used by Monreal to describe the condition of the documents is colorful enough that it's difficult to translate. In 15 districts, the IFE broke the locks and seals where the electoral documents were kept, and thumbed through the documentation. In District 4 of Torreon, the packets were "disemboweled." In the capital, 5% of the packets were opened. This exceeded what the judge allowed, namely the opening of a single packet. In District 5, the judge said he had not authorized the opening of any packets. Real numbersAccording to Marti Batras Guadarrama, the basic problem is that in 30,000 precincts there are 898,000 surplus votes, while in 42,000 precincts, there are 722,000 fewer votes than voters. This uncertainty is six times Calderon's supposed margin of victory. La Jornada adds some details: * In Jalisco, about 1000 votes were subtracted from Calderon. * In the capital (DF), tampering with the electoral packets and a mismatch of ballots to votes * In DF district 12, the recount was done under the guns of the military * In district 24, there were remains of seals from multiple entries * Again in district 24, 20 out of 42 electoral packets had been opened * In district DF 10, there were 156 sign-ins but 159 votes. * District 10 had 136 unused ballots but reported 137 to the authorities * In district 8, 17 of 18 packets had been opened and there were other irregularities * Again in district 8, there were discrepancies of up to 11 votes per precinct in Calderon's favor * In district 5, the representatives of the PRD were not allowed entry * Precinct 995-1 (Veracruz) produced 75 more votes for Obrador * Precinct 690-1 (Veracruz) produced 45 more votes for Obrador * Precinct 677 (Guadalajara) produced 80 more votes for Obrador * Precinct 136 (Tepatitlán) had 158 perfectly duplicate ballots * In Aguascalientes, Baja California, Coahuila, Querétaro, Quintana Roo, Chihuahua, Nuevo León y Veracruz, all the ballots had been openedm and precincts were found with no ballots. * In Michoacan, the PRD got 200 more votes from 80 precincts (There are many more examples) Funny how all the errors are in Calderon's favor.

Strategic Telemetry's analysis (PDF) has the following:

Although Ned Lamont’s 52% to 48% win in last night’s Connecticut U.S. Senate primary was closer than some recent polls had suggested, his victory was widespread. Lamont carried seven of Connecticut’s eight counties, and 125 of the 169 municipalities. Lamont carried both of Connecticut’s media markets, doing slightly better in the New York market, where he got 52.5% of the vote, than he did in the Hartford / New Haven market, where he got 51.6%. There has been a great deal of interest in the differing demographics of Lamont and Lieberman voters. Using the unofficial results by municipality, Strategic Telemetry performed an analysis looking for correlations between the percent support for Lamont or Lieberman, and several hundred demographic characteristics of each community. [...] Following are some of the characteristics that correlate with support for Lamont: • Rural areas • Areas with a high median household income • Areas with a high housing value • Areas with a higher percentage of voters with college degrees or graduate degrees • Areas with a high percentage of owner-occupied housing • Areas with a high percentage of married couples • Areas with a high percentage of children in private schools • Areas with low turnover in housing • Areas with high percentage in white-collar occupations • Areas where many voters have long commute times • Areas with high concentrations of veterans Characteristics that correlated with support for Lieberman were: • Urban areas • Areas with high numbers of single women • Areas with high numbers of unmarried partners, including same-sex partners • Areas with a high percentage of renter-occupied housing • Areas with a high property tax burden • Areas with a high percentage of voters working in blue-collar occupations • Areas with a high percentage of voters working in service sector occupations • Areas with a high concentration of people receiving social security • Areas with high concentrations of individuals currently serving in the armed forces

In other words, if it wasn't for Lieberman's locking up the backing of most of the big unions early in the primary, back when Lamont had just started his challenge and was still polling well below twenty percent, the race wouldn't have even been close. It would have been Lamont's going away.

Democrats abandon Lieberman, back Lamont Uh, no. Lieberman abandoned the Democrats.

Read the latest Kool Kid script on Cynthia McKinney, thanks to that fearless fount of investigative journalism, Salon. I have my own problems with McKinney, but they pale in comparison with my problems with the jackasses crowing about her defeat. My comment: Impressively lame This article is an impressively lame re-hash of the basic Kool Kid script on McKinney. While she has plenty of flaws, she is one of the few people inside the Beltway to provide leadership on any issue. The rest of them are still trying to explain how they blundered into bottomless debt, endless war, and granting George Bush imperial powers. But when the dollar drops by half and the American Army mutinies and Iran annexes Iraq, they'll still have Cynthia to sneer at. One more reason not to subscribe to Salon.

That's the title of an article by Luis Linares Zapata in La Jornada. It captures the situation in Mexico. After a month of intransigence by the electoral commission, the ballot recount begins. Much of the electoral clock has already been run out, meaning that if there are serious disagreements about the results, there won't be time to talk them through. They will be fought through. The PRD is suggesting that the federal election institute tampered with the ballot boxes during their illegal recount. Via El Machete the Center for Economic Policy Research has a report saying that the election institute chose to recount those ballot boxes which one would know in advance would increase Calderon's margin. If there is a big loser in this election, it's the election institute, which is plainly crooked. In the "you can't make this stuff up" category, Astillero also provides a dialogue that occurred in Iztapalapa. Here's my paraphrase: PRD Representative: The numbers on the precinct tally don't add up. Council President: It hasn't been changed from the original. PRD Rep: I'm saying that the tally data don't match the vote count... Council President: (interrupting, reads legal mumbo jumbo) PRD Rep: Um... Council President: I haven't given you the floor and you haven't requested it. I expect you to return the respect you've been granted. PRD Rep: May I speak? Council President: Not until the next round. This cartoon points out that the PRD is using exactly the same civil disobedience the PAN used to protest the rotten 1988 election.

You MUST check this out from Kossack "thereisnospoon", here:

Let's face some cold, hard facts, people. We didn't do this, because what we supposedly DID was impossible to do--in any politcal climate.

In one corner, you had a bunch of unpaid volunteers, Internet rabble-rousers, and an inexperienced politician whose highest post had been County Selectman.

In the other, you had the three-time Senator, former vice-presidential candidate, visible party statesman, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, the other popular CT senator Dodd, most of Organized Labor, the women's groups and the environmental groups, most of traditional Democratic party support, paid lobbyist support, paid armies of GOTV staff, the slick ad money, the top DLC consultants, and a 3 to 1 budget gap.

I'm sorry. That's not David vs. Goliath. This isn't even the NBA champions versus a rec league team.That's more like an ant vs. my shoe.

And the shoe lost.

Go read the whole thing. It's brilliant.

... will August 8 be known henceforward as "Democracy Repair Day" in the US? Meanwhile, Joe Lieberman is still, despite abundant proof to the contrary, pimping the "Lamont hacked my cheap-ass website!" lie. What was that again about Holy Joe's moral superiority? And if Joe really thinks he's going to be anything other than a spoiler in a three-way race, he'd better think again.

* Quinnipiac has it at Lamont 54: Lieberman 41 * Johnny Wendell of KTLK has called it Lamont 57.5, Lieberman 42 * I think Lieberman will manage to find one more bear trap to fall into: I'm gonna go for 60: 40. What's your prediction? ______________ 9:45 PM Eastern. Lieberman has narrowed the gap to 46.4 (Lamont 51.6), with 65% reporting. Nailbiting time. Maybe fingerbiting time. ______________ 11:20 PM Eastern. Lieberman becomes the former Democratic Senator from Connecticut. Courant calls it 51.8 48.2 Lamont, with 98% reporting. ________________ Fat lady is singing ... "Happy Days Are Here Again." _________________ Flash of Centrisity gets bragging rights, and lives to wear them because he didn't hold his breath waiting for Lieberman to be loyal to the party that gave him 18 years in the Senate and a chance to run for the vice presidency.

Since Joe Lieberman has once again put his own career over the good of both his party and his country, Kos has the following excellent directives:

Here's what we all need to do the next few days: 1. Push Harry Reid to strip Lieberman of all committee assignments. 2. Let people know what a sore loser Lieberman is. 3. Get all Democrats -- including Bill Clinton -- to publicly back Ned Lamont. 4. Get the Democratic interest groups who backed Lieberman to switch allegiances in the general. The DSCC and the DCCC will have to deal with the fact that this race will continue to suck oxygen from great pickup opportunities. And I won't apologize for that, because as a proud Democrat, I will help in whatever way I can the Democratic nominee from the Great State of Connecticut. The Republicans rejoiced at Lieberman's decision to stay in. They couldn't be happier. And let's not talk about the lobbyists! They're besides themselves! Joe Lieberman is not an independent Democrat. He needs to be stripped of his committee assignments and have those handed to real Democrats. And then we need to buckle down and finish the job we started. This was never going to be easy. it still is not. But in the end, we will prevail.

In downtown Oaxaca, a professor was assassinated by two assailants on a motorcycle. A good guess is that this is a death squad hit. Striking teachers in Oaxaca are holding two ministerial police from the Procurator General's office in the Department of Rights and Social Sciences. They were surprised while making notes about what they heard. One of them denies he was engaged in espionage. The PRD will expand non violent civil resistance. They explicitly exclude takeovers of government buildings like those that are occurring in Oaxaca

...because he sure doesn't seem to be interested in running for the seat he just resigned from -- and which not too long ago he was a lock to win. ------------- UPDATE: And it's official now. Seems that Tom's lobbyist donor buddies weren't falling for the old "re-election campaign" scam a second time -- a number of them believed Tom when he'd said that he'd beat the rap and be back in Congress, and so were REALLY ticked off when he resigned his seat immediately after winning the GOP primary. They expected to see the nearly two million they gave him spent on his re-election, not his legal fund. No point in their throwing money at an EX-Congressman, now is there? Start singing now, Tom. Your last funding hope's been cut off -- your old friends won't have anything to do with you now, not since you bilked them out of nearly two big ones. Better try to cut the Mother of All Plea Bargains now, while you still have some cash left in the kitty.

PRDists took over toll booths for several hours and apparently let people pass for free. The police riot is on in Oaxaca. Thirty police in pickup trucks drove up and began clubbing teachers and members of the Popular Assembly and tossing out tear gas. The protestors responded with a hail of rocks, at which point the cops fired in the air. The police fired in the air. The protestors picked up sticks and pipes to go after them, so the police fired at them. When the protestors hit the deck, the police withdrew. The head of public security says they are planning an operation to displace the demonstrators from public buildings they have occupied. Moving on to Mexico City, Lopez Obrador apparently didn't make the speech I would have, laying out the causes of grievance against the court ruling. This would have set the stage for responding to whatever is found in the recount. Instead, the thrust of the speech was to broaden the goals of the movement to a transformation of Mexico. I hear in this a declaration of pessimism about the legal proceedings and it was unclear to me what the goals of this broader struggle are to be. Perhaps he feels he must prepare his troops for an even longer and more difficult struggle than many of them may have envisioned, but I think this is premature. Unless one understands in detail the "train of abuses" that are leading to a broader social struggle, it seems arbitrary. And the wealthy do their very best not to understand the wrongs they do. But he had an interesting take on the judicial system that was far more than simply a declaration of intransigence. He said that the Por Bien de Todos movement wants more than a ration of democracy-- it wants it in its fullness. He said that the judicial system has, with the one extraordinary exception of the nationalization of the oil industry, always served the wealthy. Shouldn't the judiciary take a larger view of the case than treating each challenged precinct were an individual whose rights had to be zealously guarded and instead act in the interest of the whole nation? This latter point is subtle, but of central importance to our own search for a just society. Legal systems based on Napoleonic law tend to issue rulings on a purely technical basis.If that results in wildly inequitable resulst, too bad. A good example of technicalism is the "three strikes" law. Shoplift three loaves of bread or murder three children and the offense is equal under the law (not quite, of course, but you take my meaning). The English system of law had a broader view, which sought equitable outcomes, even if technically the law was not adhered to. It had the disadvantage of producing different outcomes in different jurisdictions, leaving the higher courts with the difficult job of reconciling the disparate results. Mexico's legal system leans toward the Napoleonic, while the US has long been abandoning equity in favor of technicalism. The operation of vote buying is described and it provides an example of how paper ballots can be as insecure as computers. The vote buyer hands a marked ballot to the seller. The seller goes to vote, picking up a blank ballot to return to the buyer, at which point he gets paid. This is more ingenious than the methods of the old US city machines.

Did the man have his conscience surgically removed, or what? It's one thing to be a known serial liar of long standing. But for Horowitz to leap to the defense of Mel Gibson -- after everything we know and have had reconfirmed about Gibson, his anti-Semitism, and his family -- is unbelieveable. I can just see Horowitz as a Kapo in one of the Nazi death camps. Frankly, that's actually insulting to the Kapos, because they did what they did to stay alive. Horowitz merely sold himself out for an easy, lazy paycheck from various right-wing sugar daddies.

Juan Cole has a good post on the mad plan to dominate Iranian oil reserves. Bush as Gollum? Cheney as Sauron? Meanwhile, a new blog has started, IranianInformationAgency to document the rush to war. It's possible that it's government-sourced, though I have a hard time imagining a mullah calling himself a Bob Marley fan. But the guy does collect the articles.

So how wrong was Tom DeLay when he claimed that he had to be removed from the Texas ballot because he really lived in Virginia? He was so wrong, he couldn't even get Fat Tony Scalia to go along with the scam. This doesn't mean the Democratic candidate for Hot Tub Tom's former district has a clear road to victory. Juanita has a great idea for helping his campaign.

Excerpts from a post on El Machete Click and read in full pelón Says: August 7th, 2006 at 4:14 am Observations and questions. I’m a gringo living just three blocks from the blockade. Saturday night I took a walk through the tent city and found hundreds of people dancing to banda, cumbia and mariachi music in the cold rain. To my surprise the street vendors have not filled every unused space but there are enough tamales and elote to keep people fed. I was astounded by the level of organization. ... The people are not taking time off from their daily routine to voice their opinion, they are incorporating the protest into normal life. Those that have a job go to work every day and return to the tents in the evening.... If Calderon is “appointed” president I can imagine six years of “occupation” in the Zocalo as well as along Reforma. (Emphasis added)

Greg Palast has managed to convince me there's a problem in Mexico. The only precincts the TRIFE ordered re-counted are those where the tally sheets literally don't tally -- precincts in which the arithmetic is off. They refuse even to investigate those precincts where ballot boxes were found in city dumps. What have they managed to exclude from the tally? The TRIFE, the official electoral centurions, rejected AMLO's request to review those precincts that reported the miracle numbers [like more votes than voters or laughably low levels of turnout]. Nor would the tribunal open and count the nearly one million "null" votes -- allegedly "uncountable" votes which totaled four times Calderon's putative plurality. This will not sell. This will end very badly. Let's hope that the 9% of precincts to be recounted shift the tally enough that the court is forced to act.

1) More national GOP/Media Complex time will be spent this week on discussing Lieberman-Lamont (especially in warning what a tragedy it would be if someone were elected whose views on the Iraq war actually mirrored those of the American public) than on noting that Bob Ney has, like Duke Cunningham before him, decided not to run for re-election in the face of corruption scandals after months of protesting his innocence and insisting he'd run again. (Remember, the GOP/Media is under order to pay more attention to propping up Lieberman, Bush's favorite Democrat, than to the tight ties between Ney, DeLay and Abramoff -- or that Abramoff was the president of the College Republicans during much of the 1980s and made them what they are today.) 2) No national network TV news show will mention anything bad about Ney's replacement, Joy Padgett, even though she probably has a better chance of becoming a congressmember than Ned Lamont does of becoming a Senator (especially if Lieberman runs as a spoiler and throws that Senate seat to the Republicans) and thus would under normal, non-GOP-favoring rules, be considered worthy of scrutiny. We have the power to stop the Ney-approved, Taft-anointed Padgett from ascending to Ney's seat. Go check out Zack Space and throw him a few shekels.

Proof yet again that in certain key fields of endeavor, the overriding goal should not be to turn a profit:

Not-for-profit nursing homes generally provide better care than those operated for profit, an analysis of state inspections for some 16,000 homes nationwide found. Also, independent nursing homes tend to provide better care than those managed by companies that run numerous nursing homes. Consumer Reports, which provides consumer tips, says that those conclusions are based on its evaluation of recent state inspection reports for the nursing homes. A grant from the Commonwealth Fund was used to compile a list of the facilities in each state that rank in the best or worst 10 percent on at least two indicators of quality. Researchers reviewed the three most recent inspection reports for each home. Only a fraction of nursing homes, regardless of whether they were a for-profit or non-profit, met Consumer Reports' standards for a quality nursing home. With for-profits, only about 2 percent were classified as likely to provide good care. The non-profits fared a little better at 7.3 percent.

A "little" better? How about nearly four times better? But I digress:

One reason the independently owned facilities might do better than those run by chain is that they tend to have more staff. The magazine found they also are more likely to use registered nurses.

I noted an interesting thing when Googling for this story after hearing it mentioned in passing on NPR yesterday afternoon: Whereas about half the news entities that reprinted it, in whole or in part, wrote headers that faithfully depicted what the main thrust of the story was about -- namely, the fact that non-profit independent nursing homes give better care than for-profit chains -- many of the headers seemed to want to bury the lede, concealing it with headers along the lines of "Bad Nursing Home Care Persists". Note, of course, that "Bad Nursing Home Care Persists" doesn't tell us who the perps are, whereas "Non-Profit Nursing Homes Rate Better" gives us a hint on what to look for in a good nursing home, and by implication tells us who the bad guys are.

Click here for a visual of the areas to be recounted (via Sendero del Peje There are various takes on the decision of the electoral court to count 9% of the ballots. The PRDists are fulminating. Pancho Villa at El Machete calls it a ratification of the fraud. Sendero del Peje points at pictures of the PANistas (e.g. ,here) with long faces, but thinks PAN got what they wanted. But based on reports of what Lopez Obrador said, I think the game is more complicated than other commentators. Both sides are playing a dangerous, high-stakes game. The winner gets to either keep PEMEX for the public good or auction it off to the American oil industry. The winner gets to decide whether Mexico greatly expands "globalization" or whether it asserts national sovereignty and sets limits on it. The winner gets to decide whether there's a safety net for the poor, or whether the safety net is cut into puppet strings. Personally, I agree with The Economist's pre-election assessment that Mexico is showing signs of dangerous shock from the globalization treatment. People who want to see the country prosper need to back off and let it absorb the massive economic and cultural change that has been forced on a formerly rural, agricultural country. If Lopez Obrador pushes too far, he can be painted as a dangerous demagogue. Fortunately, PAN has inoculated him against this by crying wolf a few times too often. On the other hand, he has no choice but to push right to the limit of insurrection, because if he doesn't, the system will crown Calderon even if he lost. We Americans witnessed that with George W. Bush, and I'll bet there are 40 million of us who wish we had been in front of the Supreme Court building in early December, 2000. Lopez Obrador also has to keep his base fired up and in tight discipline for what promises to be a long campaign. This is difficult. People have jobs and family obligations. Living outdoors, even in Mexico City is no picnic. There are the inevitable impulses toward violence, whether from the extreme Mexican left of "Comandante Cero" or, more plausibly, from agent provocateurs. On Calderon's side, it really depends on what happened. Here are three scenarios: 1) there was no fraud, 2) there was fraud, either locally planned or deniably planned, or 3) there was centrally-planned fraud. The first scenario is unlikely. One would expect a candidate confident of his victory to accede to a recount-- to demand it, since it would cement his legitimacy. If Calderon did not commit fraud, he's a complete idiot who doesn't deserve to be president. By pouring so much energy into avoiding the inevitable, he has forfeited any sense of legitimacy. But Calderon is one of those giys who remind one of Groucho Marx's line about Chico "Chicoletti" Marx: "Just because he seems to be a complete idiot, don't let that fool you. He is a complete idiot." Just listening to Calderon, he seems to be a few chromosomes shy of 46, so he might not have stolen the election. It's also certainly possible that a "leaderless resistance" sort of fraud could have occurred. Thousands of precinct-level officials, terrified of Lopez Obrador by propaganda poured out through the election season, might have shaved votes here or there. If so, a recount might show Calderon to have legitimately won, even if many local officials go to jail. This possibility is likely given the sheer number of precincts under challenge. But mass local fraud does not exclude door number three, namely... A separate, centrally planned fraud. If there was a centrally-planned fraud, this is very, very serious stuff. There's evidence it was. Did Hildebrando cook the software? Were lists of social services beneficiaries used to presssure people to vote a certain way or to not vote at all? Did Esther Elba Gordillo engage in a conspiracy to steal votes? Is the IFE corrupt? Are the recent e-mails evidence that the PAN is trying to corrupt the court into doing a selective recount? All Calderon had to do was avoid a recount and he'd become president. He's failed. That's reason for optimism. AMLO has moved the ball off his own goal and to the 9 yard line. That's reason for optimism. If one wants to be pessimistic, look at what AMLO has to accomplish. He has to keep his troops charged up to the max over the course of a month or more, but keep them from taking the law into their own hands. He faces the economic pressure the US can bring to bear, not to mention the assassins it uses when it can't do things cleanly. Above all, he has to engage the Mexican people in seeing a vision of the Mexico that could be. It's daunting.

...is that a portion of the national media is actually reporting it:

A tiny little movie making fun of Al Gore, supposedly made by an amateur filmmaker, recently appeared on the popular Web site YouTube.com [...] The film actually came from a slick Republican public relations firm called DCI, which just happens to have oil giant Exxon as a client.

Normally, the press would just report on the existence of the video and not bother to find out who was really behind it. Are some of the media folk starting to hedge their bets for November?

Lopez Obrador is speaking now (11AM Central) in the Zocalo. He gave a brief speech last night, which was restrained but steady on. (Via Sendero del Peje), you can listen to the speeches broadcast here or here, though you may have to guess your way through some additional clicks. Al Giordano's take was pretty much the same as mine, though he more effectively captures the sense that the court is risking a time crunch by pushing off the recount until Wednesday and limiting it to 11,000 precincts. If there's a shift in the vote, it will create pressure for a complete recount.

Susan McDougal's talk of June 16th is on C-Span. I don't think it will be replayed. The segment can be purchased information here (ID: 193142 - 06/17/2006 - 0:54 - $24.95). She compared American civil prisons such as those she was held in to military prisons in which we are holding people suspected of terrorist acts (or held simply so someone won't have to admit they were picked up for stupid reasons). She said that civil prison administrators make it clear to guards which prisoners are fair game for abuse. Many of the torments suffered by targeted prisoners in civil prisons are as bad as those of Guantanamo. She also showed how heavily politicized the Whitewater "investigation" was. She criticized Democrats for using her and her husband as scapegoats to deflect criticism from the Clintons, saying that che called Richard Ben-Veniste to volunteer to speak to the D'Amato committee and he refused. Michael Chertoff called up and when he heard what she wanted to say, "Click." Her praise of Bill and Hillary as President and First Lady was warm. Her exposition of how Ken Starr's investigation had a Christian face and the devil's heart was compelling. Really, Mr. Starr and Judge Wright: how do you live with yourselves? You have the moral sensibility of algae. Anyway, it's good to know that there are still real live heroes and heroines in this country. Susan McDougal, who went to jail rather than lie about the Clintons, is at the head of the list. [Edited to mollify fussy readers who want what I write to make sense. Hmph!]

The electoral court has decided to count 9.07% of the ballots, beginning August 9th. This is good legal logic. A limited recount should expose any serious irregularities-- as long as the selected precincts are chosen reasonably-- and should provide the basis for further recounts if the initially reported results look fraudulent on re-examination. However, I can read the newspapers. The Mexican stock market, the Bolsa, has behaved as if Calderon's victory is in the bag. Either the wealthy are completely delusional-- quite possible given what we have seen-- or the result is wired. Here's the rub: things have gone too far not to have a serious penalty of some kind imposed on PAN. Two Mexican states are doubtfully under control by the federal government. People are heartily sick of the narcotrafficking and the violence and corruption it brings. So, if Calderon becomes president, legitimately or not, and PAN does not get some sort of whacking around the ears, I predict Mexico will enter serious civil disorder not long after. The genie is out of the bottle. _________ Update: Many observers, including some PRDists, see this decision as a defeat. But remember that a few weeks ago, PANistas were telling us that any recount would be illegal, that the election was over and we should start calling Calderon Mr. President. So, I see a 9% recount as moving the ball to the 9 yard line. It's not a win, but it's movement in the right direction. None of us know what opening those ballot boxes will show. My own feeling is that the pre-election dirty tricks were more serious than even ballot fraud. But Calderon has already lost legitimacy. No one will ever believe he won the election cleanly. Change is coming to Mexico. Whether it comes peacefully or not depends greatly on how AMLO and the PRD handle the next week.

Well, not really. But Greg Palast can't do investigative reporting without your financial support. He says Ain’t too proud to beg: The Palast investigative team is aiming to film and report four stories that will make the ruling regime deeply unhappy… 1. The untold story of the New Orleans flood. 2. Shoplifting your vote: November 2006 fix. 3. The next oil war. 4. [Confidential.] Our problem is straightforward. We’re out of funds. Dead out. All gone. In the red. Maybe we can sell our several journalism awards or return the beer bottles in the back office. Still not enough. So, give by PayPal or check. Help free hostage truth.

When the Republicans try to rally their base by raising the specter of a Democratic majority in Congress, they single out John Conyers for abuse and defamation. Here's one big reason why: The House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff has already compiled the evidence to hold George Bush accountable for his misrule. As the Honorable Mr. Conyers, who will certainly be the Chair of the Judiciary Committee in a majority-Democratic House, explains:

Today, I am releasing the final version of my report, the "Constitution in Crisis." The report, which is some 350 pages in length and is supported by more than 1,400 footnotes, compiles the accumulated evidence that the Bush Administration has thumbed its nose at our nation's laws, and the Constitution itself. Approximately 26 laws and regulations may have been violated by this Administration's misconduct.

Get out the vote, folks. We've had enough of these high crimes and misdemeanors.

(from memory) Franken: Republicans run dirtier campaigns. Hamburger: Republicans see their tactics as simply a development from Dick Tuck. Franken: It's telling that you had to go back 40 years to find an example. ... Franken: Jack Abramoff is a criminal Hamburger: Jack Abramoff has been indicted and convicted. Franken: In other words, he's a criminal. ... Franken: Where is Duke Cunningham? Hamburger: He's in prison. With journalists cowering before the Republicans this way, America cannot be said to have a free press.

It's like a Far Side cartoon. Here the President of Mexico stands accused of massive election law violations including very likely actual fraud, he's using his considerable influence to shut down any investigation or prosecution of his own misdeeds, and he's accusing the guy who's asking the votes be counted of "playing with fire." Cooking the books: a Sylvan Learning Systems (now Laureate International) university is being used for Astroturf e-mails opposing Lopez Obrador. US propaganda operations overseas and even at home are becoming so commonplace that one has to wonder whether the students aren't being asked to pay their tuition partly in spam. The Mexican stock market (Bolsa Mexicana de Valores) has been peacefully blockaded. Although trading goes on as usual, thanks to a system developed to cope with disasters, the Bolsa is a primary symbol of foreign influence. Lopez Obrador says the protestors "went to invest in democracy" In Oaxaca, 20 governmental vehicles have beenseized in ongoing protests. The Corporación Oaxaqueña de Radio y Televisión (Cortv) has been taken over, as have governmental offices, including that of the main Office of Public Security. They are trying to force the resignation of PRI-ist governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz Radio stations have also been seized. There are numerous specific grievances, if anyone were interested in listening. These include corruption, failing to protect the citizenry from the drug trade, failure to complete projects, and so on. The US press finally notices it, probably only because it has interrupted American vacations. For whatever reason, President Vicente Fox has declined to intervene. My guess is that he figures he benefits from confusion between the sometimes violent protests of Oaxaca and the peaceful protests of Mexico City.

Wow. Don't know how much of this was organized by Murtha himself and how much by other Democratic folk, but it sure sounds like it did the job. If Kerry had done stuff like this the second the Swifties first hit in May of 2004, they would have been shamed off the national stage before June rolled around.

Eric Black, bless his heart, runs a really nice blog called The Big Question under the auspices of his bosses at the StarTribune. Now, if you were to believe the screechings emanating 24/7 from the Republican Noise Machine, the Strib is a Commie, Commie, COMMIE newspaper, yadda yadda yadda. And it's difficult on any given day to read the letters section of the paper (or the online entities associated with it, such as Eric Black's blog: Check out today's offering, for example) without running into Yet Another Screed from some Limbaugh/Hewitt/Soucheray/FOX/Powerline Kool-Aid Junkie about the alleged Commieness of the Strib. So I figured that I was doing poor Eric Black a favor a couple of weeks ago when I pointed out on his blog that D.J. "Doug" Tice, a guy whose conservative Republican preferences are well-known, well-documented, and of long standing, is in charge of the political newsroom at the Commie Strib. (But to judge from his reaction, Eric himself apparently wasn't too sure that I really was doing him a favor.) Even as I was mulling over this today, I picked up this week's City Pages, which just happens to feature Britt Robson pounding what he apparently figures is another nail in the "liberal StarTribune" canard coffin. And as with my comments over at Eric Black's blog, his main evidence is D.J. Tice's conservatism -- specificially, Tice's history of vocally espousing conservative Republican causes. Among other things, Robson states that in 1991, he himself left the now-defunct Twin Cities Reader after then-editor Tice published a pro-Desert-Storm editorial.) But Robson goes further, and strongly hints that Tice was trying to take an old traffic ticket and turn it into a gay smear against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch -- a charge Tice denies even as he defends the alleged validity of the questions his reporters asked Hatch. More and more, I'm beginning to wonder if the Strib in many ways isn't an inverted Wall Street Journal. Whereas the WSJ has an archconservative editorial staff and a top-notch, generally neutral newsroom, the Strib seems to be moving, under Tice's leadership in the newsroom, to having a liberal editorial staff and an increasingly conservative newsroom.

Bonddad explains again that by every respected measure, most Americans have actually seen their pay DROP during the much-touted "Bush boom".

Oh, and their unions are a hell of a lot stronger. That's what an American business executive has found. What say you, Tom "I Married Into One Of America's Wealthiest Families" Friedman? He who loves to diss the French and their 35-hour work weeks?

...but of course, since it's just a Bush staffer, all is forgiven (and forgotten).

Dick DeVos, the GOP candidate for governor of Michigan, just drastically reduced his chances of getting endorsements from the Detroit Free Press and Lansing State Journal. Both newspapers have taken exception to his lies about what the papers have said about his opponent, Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Here's the Lansing State Journal:

Dick DeVos and his campaign for governor have tried to pull a fast one on mid-Michigan viewers with a new ad that makes reference to the Lansing State Journal. This ad, designed to erode Gov. Jennifer Granholm's image, does quite the opposite. It illustrates DeVos' unwillingness to play straight with voters. At issue is a brief TV spot that makes two text references to the LSJ. Citing the newspaper, the commercial says of Granholm, "It's all negative all the time out of the Granholm camp" and "... on a mission to get re-elected ... perhaps at any cost." But what DeVos' ad conveniently fails to note is the comments were in a April 28, 2006, column by Tim Skubick, a State Capitol reporter who writes commentaries for a number of state newspapers. For the record, in the same column, Skubick wrote " ... on the subject of those DeVos ads, it's truly amazing that viewers have apparently been sucked in." Just because the LSJ publishes Skubick's column doesn't mean the paper endorses the views therein, anymore than when we publish letters that take diametrically opposed stands on any issue under the sun. The DeVos campaign could and should have been clear about that in the ad. In fact, after being contacted, the campaign said it would modify the TV commercial to make the distinction. The fact DeVos wasn't clear to begin with is telling, though.

The Detroit Free Press is just as scornful:

In response to an inquiry from the Free Press, the campaign of Republican Dick DeVos has changed his latest TV commercial, the one that amounts to an attack on Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm for going on the attack against DeVos. [...] The original ad attributed to the Free Press the words "phony" and "demagoguery," supposedly describing Granholm's rhetoric against DeVos. In fact, those words appeared in a column by Brian Dickerson of the Free Press, which makes them one person's view as opposed to the newspaper expressing an opinion on its editorial page. While the distinction may be lost on the general public, it is significant to a newspaper that may hold institutional opinions quite different from those of its columnists. Even as changed, the ad involves some misrepresentation. The Dickerson column was about Democratic Party attacks on DeVos for building Amway factories in China while DeVos was president of that business. Dickerson actually wrote that "Granholm would be well advised to disavow this phony bit of Democratic demagoguery before it blows up in her face." That's a little different from criticizing the governor for engaging in same.

At least nobody will be confused about whether Dick DeVos is a Republican. Taking statements of out context and then warping them further into outright lies has become the Republicans' default campaign strategy. It's all they have, after all, since there isn't anything good they can say about what they've been doing the last few years.

Turns out that the GOP's rewriting of the Democrats' minimum-wage bill not only kills the estate tax, it actually lowers the minimum wage in many key cases, such as for restaurant workers. Yet another reason to defeat it.

The extraordinary interest in the Lebanese war is making it difficult to monitor many interesting stories, including Mexico. PAN won an early heat, when the regional elections court refused to recount a senatorial election in Sonora. They did disqualify five precincts, but refused to annul the election. In District 2 of Nayarit, they left intact a victory of the PRD challenged by the Mexico Alliance, but they disqualified two precincts. Narconews says that a TV station has been taken over by locals. Mexican stock market, basically flat. In the US markets, the sentiments index is steadily tanking, meaning that options traders believe stocks are headed down. In yet another demonstration of how right-wingers respect democracy and open debate, the website Senderofecal.blogspot.com has been, as they say, "haqueado." Nothing is left except one trashtalk post. Isn't conservatism such an attractive philosophy?

In case anyone you know still says "but we had NO IDEA invading Iraq would turn out so badly!", please feel free to shove this in their faces:

Brent Scowcroft, who remains close to the Bush family, urged the President to concentrate on trying to broker peace between the Israelis and Palestinians while separately pursuing terrorist threats to the United States. But he said that by going to war with Iraq without linking President Saddam Hussein and September 11, Washington was risking a conflagration in the Middle East that would also engulf its efforts to defeat global terror groups. His warning came as a former British Chief of Defense Staff said that Britain risked being dragged into a “very, very messy” and lengthy war if it supported a US military assault on Iraq. Field Marshal Lord Bramall called on Tony Blair to exercise caution, saying that an invasion to topple Saddam may not be morally or legally justified. “You don’t have license to attack someone else’s country just because you don’t like the leadership,” he told BBC Radio 4’s World This Weekend. “We are supposed to be taking a lead on the moral issues of the world.” Mr Scowcroft, chairman of the President’s foreign intelligence advisory board, said: “It’s a matter of setting your priorities. There’s no question that Saddam is a problem. He has already launched two wars and spent all the resources he can working on his military. But the President has announced that terrorism is our number one focus. Saddam is a problem, but he’s not a problem because of terrorism.” Mr Scowcroft added that he had no doubt a US military campaign could dislodge Saddam. But he added: “I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a cauldron and destroy the War on Terror.”

The neocons and PNAC Platoon loons had been warned over and over again that invading Iraq would be a huge mistake. But they still think it was worth it because of the military bases they've created, which they want to replace the US military bases lost when the mullahs took over next-door neighbor Iran in 1979.

The PRI-ist mayor of Villa de Zaachilam Oaxaca (former head of the Zapotecan empire), José Coronel Martínez, got sent his walking papers, The town is being run by a consensus government, funded by donations from local business and citizens, because Coronel Martínez walked off with the money and the records. Coronel Martínez and Co. are accused of rapes, beatings, and death threats. There are 28 towns in Oaxaca, mostly with PRI-ist mayors that have been similarly evicted. At the center of Villa de Zachilaam's woe's is corporate greed. First off, the real estate giant Geo, implicated in some of the crimes. Geo built 200 housing units, but the irregularities are so great that the new tenants are in revolt. Construction remains unfinished, and there has been contamination by untreated sewage. They bought water from rights from Coca Cola. Initially three wells were drilled and two more blocked on an area of 20 hectares. And the company is pirating water for use elsewhere. Geo accuses the citizens's government of seizing and destroying equipment. The citizens deny it and say they merely want to retain their Zapotecan identity.

Thanks to Avedon Carol's Sideshow, Alan Dechert of OpenVoting.org: SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA -- “This may be the worst security flaw we have seen in touch screen voting machines,” says Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert. Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version. “Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant,” according to Dechert. “If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS -- and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver.” Click on this image from OpenVotingFoundation.org to see how to reprogram a Diebold voting machine.

Here's what the encampment looks like: (Image by Alfredo Dominguez of La Jornada). Businessmen are of course frothing, claiming losses of 435 million pesos for day one of the sit-in. I wouldn't be surprised. Social peace has monetary value, something that people forget. If they were smart, the ones that are able should send their employees out with samples. It's not often that you get a customer audience of a couple hundred thousand people with nothing better to do than look at your products. If I know Mexico City, its real entrepreneurs, hawking hot corn on the cob and other goodies are ringing up the cash registers like never before. La Jornada editorializes that this conflict is not just electoral. Oaxaca was in crisis long before this, as was the miner's strike and Chiapas. Parts of the country are lawless, due to the drug mafia. Speaking of Oaxaca, shots were fired at a dance sponsored by a citizens's group at the Guelaguetza festival. Two suspects are believed to members of a local law enforcement group, while a third fled into the federal judicial building where he presumably did not expect to be arrested and tried. (Jornada link unfortunately lost; the title was "Disparos al aire detonan caos en baile de Guelaguetza;" 7/31/06) One of our readers brought to attention an AP article posted on MSNBC. I appreciate the link and am glad that the US press is noticing that parts of Mexico City just slipped out from under US control. But the article itself is a laundry list of lies. One example: The stock market is not down, as anyone can see. It has been volatile because the premature Calderon celebration was interrupted, but it has followed the general contours of the US market: a run-up through May, a crash in June, and gently rising in July. Another example: The story states that "Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his supporters won’t accept anything less than victory " In fact, they won't accept anything less than a fair count of the ballots. Finally, the article has a section on potential violence. The first sentence is "While Lopez Obrador has called on demonstrators to remain calm, the protesters say things could turn violent." After a paragraph of people saying fairly innocuous things, the article gives us an example of how a hardening of positions could lead to violence: a secretary, late to work, was standing outside a subway stop trying to figure out how to get to work. As far as I know, the subway is still running, so the answer would seem to be fairly obvious. Added: The sit-in covers 8.5 kilometers (presumably square kilometers, 3.2 square miles). For the first time in 40 years, the air in Mexico City may become breathable. In fairness to the indignant secretary, some train routes weren't usable for reasons that aren't clear to me. But the city government is attempting to open certain crossroads. I'm sure they'll succeed now that the business district is aware just how vulnerable they are to the poor people who they step on every day. It's very difficult for me to sympathize with El Universal, which moans about how this is one more catastrophe on top of water shortages, floods, crime, unemployment, homelessness, etc. when they could just count the votes and send everyone home with a handshake. AMLO is, whatever else you may think of him, a thoughtful tactician. Enrique Galvan Ochoa hasan OpEd on the snake lady. Basically, the use of the presidency to buy a successorship is not novel, having been pioneered by the PRI. Image from La Jornada

Bonddad explains it all, here. And if you think that the Chinese will want to continue to prop us up by buying up our currency, or even be capable of propping us up, you might want to think again:

ALTHOUGH China likes most of its numbers to be big, it has been trying to reduce one of them: the size of the bad loans burdening its banks. A report this month by Ernst & Young, a big auditing and consulting firm, therefore came as quite a shock. Ernst & Young, which does plenty of work on the mainland, claimed that China's stock of non-performing loans (NPLs) added up to $911 billion. This is more than five-and-a-half times the latest government estimate of $164 billion, published in March. The report deemed the country's big four state-owned banks, which are trying to attract international investors, to be carrying $358 billion of bad loans, almost three times the official tally. The People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, quickly attacked the research as “ridiculous and barely understandable”. This week an embarrassed Ernst & Young withdrew it, admitting that it was “factually erroneous” and that it had somehow slipped through the firm's normal checks. Ernst & Young says it plans to publish a revised version in due course. The authorities' savage reaction is easy to understand. Other commentators and consultants have published estimates of China's NPLs ranging from $300 billion to $500 billion without attracting similar condemnation. Ernst & Young's estimate stood out not only for its size but also for its timing. The central bank's rebuttal came on the very day that Bank of China, the second of the big four to attempt a stockmarket listing in Hong Kong, began its investor roadshow. Bank of China plans to raise $9.9 billion, even more than the $9.2 billion pulled in by China Construction Bank, which was floated last October. A third big bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, hopes for $10 billion in September. Awkwardly, Ernst & Young is this institution's auditor—and as such had subscribed to the official, much lower estimate of bad loans.

Bottom line: Try to dump as much of your debt as you can, while you can.