Politics

I’m not entirely caught up with the post-debate threads that made it into my newsreader last night and this morning, but according to a couple posts from Kos last night, I may have been too pessimistic in my debate wrap-up — people seem to be giving Kerry a definite win.

The Scorer’s Table unenthusiastically reports this bout as going to Senator John Kerry by 12 rounds to 4, with 5 rounds even. On individual points, Senator Kerry is awarded a net total of 19 points, and President Bush a net of 2, having undermined his own effort with no less than eight points subtracted, three of them in a disastrous 12th Round in which the President had to be told time was up, answered a question with, in essence, ‘all of the above,’ and stumbled by inadvertently criticizing himself by claiming the borders of Texas were tighter than they’d been when he was Governor there. He also lost points for having twice invoked the 2000 election, and for once having given back at least a minute of time when the question hadn’t really been answered.

So — final tally 3-0 for Kerry? Not bad, not bad at all.

“Download” by Skinny Puppy from the album Last Rights (1992, 11:01).

Almost time for tonight’s Presidential debate, the last of this election season’s round. Will Bush actually look like a President? Or, more likely, will we get to see him stumble and fall yet again?

As before, I’ll be watching on C-SPAN, and will update this post with my usual random babbling after the debate’s done with.

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You might want to double-check your voter registration if you live in the Las Vegas area (and possibly somewhere in Oregon, also), as one RNC-funded organization has been destroying Democratic voter registration applications.

Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.

[…]

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

“We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me,” said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

[…]

The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.

(via BOPNews)

There’s no way that this comment won’t end up getting spun to ridiculous extremes, but as far as I’m concerned, this may be one of the most reasonable statements I’ve heard from Kerry yet.

When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview. “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,” Kerry said. “As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”

(via Salon)

Remember when Bush made the odd reference to the Dred Scott case during his answer to what kind of Supreme Court justice he’d appoint in the second debate? It didn’t seem to make a lot of sense, and had a lot of people confused. Looks like one of the diarists on Daily Kos may have stumbled upon the answer — it’s right-wing code for abortion.

The “Dred Scott” reference by Bush sent everyone at Atrios and other blog sites scrambling to historical tomes to figure out what on Earth Mr. Bush could mean, short of saying that he wouldn’t appoint pro-slavery judges.

Really, we should have just done a damn google search on the Internets.

Because it’s all there, plain as day. The Dred Scott reference is code language for abortion rights. Here’s how one anti-choice site describes it:

Stephen Douglas didn’t see Dred Scott as a person with rights because he was black; now Al Gore doesn’t see these children as people with rights because they are unborn.

[…]

In short:

When Bush made reference to “Dred Scott” he was assuring his anti-choice constituents that he would indeed only appoint Supreme Court justices who would remove abortion rights.

It’s unmistakable, once you know the code words. There’s no other reason he said it, that damned fundamentalist fascist.

(via Lane)

“Breakdown on Paradise Boulevard” by Chaykin, Maury/Jarmusch, Jim/Stanton, Harry Dean from the album Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1995, 7:41).

The Presidential debate starts in about ten minutes. As before, I’ll be watching it on C-SPAN’s internet feed. Rambling, incoherent, stream of consciousness commentary to be posted once the debate is over with.

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