More problems with overseas voting

More problems with overseas voting. I'm sure half of this stuff (or most of it?) has been going on for years, but my god, what a mess.

1998 Blueprint for Iraq

ABC News seems to have pulled this article down. Hmmm... wonder why.

I had other things to do this weekend

NLDS game 3, 10-9-2004

Friday misc.

An AP poll shows Kerry with a slim lead.

The Note has this Bob Novak quote:

When I reported in this column Sept. 20 that there is 'strong feeling' in the 'Bush administration policymaking apparatus' that 'U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year,' Republican politicians — most recently Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman — disagreed. But Don Rumsfeld has not contradicted me.

Hmm. -- That's from yesterday's issue (in the Politics of Iraq section), and the source is here. This rather depressing USAToday column also deals with the same issues.

Another post-debate report

Debate transcript. And here's the skinny from factcheck.ORG (not .com, as Cheney said). Somebody must be getting their URL right because I'm still getting "server too busy" errors today. (Available Light has some info on that "Senator Gone" comment, too.)

And I just got around to looking at factcheck.com, which turns out to forward to georgesoros.com. That's hilarious.

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The reason you're getting so many links to CNN from me lately is because they've been inundating me with e-mail updates. Some good stuff, but jesus do they send a lot of e-mails. And I've been kind of busy and I haven't had time to comb the weblogs like I'd like to.

I'm catching up on Mark Morford's columns, though. Here's the latest:

Middle America is a scattershot conglomeration of the politically apathetic and the actively disenfranchised, full of people far too busy with their lives and kids and jobs and zoning out on "Fear Factor" and "Monday Night Football" to care about following the elitist, ever dire dramas playing out on the nation's gilded stages.

Most Americans, in other words, have no idea what the hell a Halliburton is. Or a Karl Rove. Or a Donny "Shriveled Soul" Rumsfeld. Or a Lockheed Martin. Or a Carlysle Group. Or have any idea that Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Or that WMDs were never found. Or that President Bush has taken more vacation time than any president in U.S. history. Or that Jesus thinks Dubya is "sort of a dink." Or where Iraq is on a map.

("Sort of a dink"? I must've missed that one.)

Last week, he was meditating on why god hates Florida:

You know if, say, San Francisco had just been blasted by not two, not three, but fully four lethal trailer-park-eating earthquakes, why, the Right-wing Bible set would be yelping with barely disguised joy.

Of course they would. They'd be jumping up and down and saying I told you so and pointing to Volume 18 of "Left Behind" and claiming that this was, of course, God's wrath upon the sinners and the gays and the heathens and sodomites and the tofu eaters and the Toyota Priuses and the yoga studios and the anal sex and the incense burners and the Zen meditation centers.

Ha ha snicker, they'd say. Serves you right, they'd sneer. Shoulda voted Republican, they'd add. And then they'd go make lime Jell-O and watch Raymond.

I love this guy. Yeah, yeah, I know, all Republicans don't eat lime jello (and for that matter I have some lime jello in the cabinet myself. I put green grapes in it. Shut up, it's good). But it's still funny. And unfortunately, quite true.

It can't be science because the storms can't be in any way related to climate change or global warming, because as Bush policy has shown, nature is a merely a huge, exploitable sandbox for the rich and global warming is a big fat liberal myth and the Kyoto Treaty is a pathetic joke despite all those reams of international, world-class scientific evidence to the contrary. So, you know, screw science.

The real world

Apparently the Kerry campaign agrees with my snide remark I made yesterday:

If George Bush thinks John Kerry's plans to strengthen the military, build alliances and implement the 9/11 Commission's intelligence reforms will make the world a more dangerous place, he's even more detached from reality than he demonstrated at the debate the other night.

--Official response from the Kerry campaign to Bush's speech yesterday.

And, wow, they finally bowed to reality on one point: Rumsfeld has admitted that Iraq didn't have WMD. (Now if Cheney says the same thing in the debate tonight I'm really going to be shocked.)

'No basis in reality'

That ought to be the Bush campaign's motto. However, what it really is is their refutation of Kerry's claims that votes are being suppressed.

And will there be more problems in Florida?

I like this one:

George Bush doesn't have a record to run on. He has a record to run away from.

-- John Kerry

(from here)

This seems to be the all-CNN day. Here they are on the possibility of an October surprise.

There's got to be a morning after

CNN is working on a debate transcript - it starts here and there's a sidebar with the links to the other pieces.

I didn't have a lot to say during the debate, did I? That's mostly because I was in chat almost the whole time. Most of what I had to say was fairly predictable given my normal take on the participants, anyway. I don't know how much effect it will have in the end, but I thought Kerry looked presidential and Bush looked petulant, which is pretty important, all told. Usually it seems in the end like form matters more than substance in these things. Everybody remembers (or has heard about) Nixon sweating in his debates against Kennedy; does anybody remember what was actually said in that debate?

(And boy, does that title give me 70s flashbacks.)