BACK STREET GIRL
BlogActive is at it again: He’s outed the CFO of the Republican National Committee, God bless ‘em.

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MY THEME SONG: “Philosophy,” Ben Folds Five: I see that there is evil/ and I know that there is good/ And the in-betweens I never understood/ Won’t you look at me, I’m crazy/ But I get the job done/ yeah, I’m crazy, but I get the job done/ and I say/ Go ahead you can [...]

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I’M YOUR PUPPET
I don’t know if you caught on the subtle digs from the news coverage, but the consensus is that the White House speechwriters authored Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s speech yesterday.
Anyway, it sure sounds like they’re writing all his material. From Josh Marshall:
An amazing exchange from Jim Lehrer’s interview this evening with Iyad [...]

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SLIPPIN’ AND A’SLIDIN’
Now, here’s a nice visual to start the day:
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — It looks as if the charges will stick in a bizarre case of Vaseline vandalism in a New York town.
A Virginia man is accused of covering virtually every surface in a motel room with petroleum jelly.
A grand jury Thursday indicted Robert Chamberlain [...]

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DARLIN’ ARLEN
This kind of cross-party pollination is a lot more common than people admit, but Philadelphia’s Democratic ward leaders have been warned not to support Arlen Specter this time:
The message to Philadelphia Democratic ward leaders packed inside party headquarters came across clearly: Don’t even think about working for Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter.
Word had gotten [...]

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GETTING TO THE POINT

This is an effectively devastating piece on Kerry’s communication skill compared to Bush’s:
Senator Kerry, my students observed with a mix of solemnity and glee, has violated two cardinal rules of exposition: don’t presume your audience has information you haven’t provided, and always pay attention to the expectations of your listeners. They also [...]

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WAKE ME, SHAKE ME
Bob Herbert:
The president said he is personally optimistic and he delivered an upbeat assessment of conditions in Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. Iraq, he said, is well on its way to being “secure, democratic, federal and free.”
If you spend more than a little time immersed in the world according [...]

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A MISERABLE FAILURE
Krugman:
Long after it was obvious to everyone else that we were engaged in an escalating guerrilla war, Bush appointees clung to the belief that they were fighting a handful of dead-enders and foreign terrorists.
As a result, they casually swelled the ranks of our foes - remember, Moktada al-Sadr was never going to [...]

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NO MORE COASTING
Here’s an interview with Steve Earle, one of my very favorite artist/activists. You can hear him Sunday nights on Air America at 10 p.m.
What do you think about a potential Kerry victory? Will the nation go to sleep after he wins, as it did after Clinton, as you’ve said before in interviews?
Yeah, and [...]

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WHY DOES GOD HATE FLORIDA?

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RIGHT ON SCHEDULE
It was just a matter of time:
(WASHINGTON, September 23rd, 2004, 4:30 p.m.) — As the election draws nearer, U.S. officials are increasingly concerned al-Qaida terrorists will mount a devastating attack to try to disrupt the political process.
In an unusual move, Attorney General John Ashcroft held a conference call with all 93 U.S. attorneys [...]

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NOTES
Tina Brown, via Kevin Drum:
Fear of missing the bandwagon is behind all the hype about the brilliance of bloggers who blew the whistle. You’d think “Buckhead,” who first spotted the flaws in the documents, is the cyberworld’s Woodward and Bernstein. Now the conventional wisdom is that the media will be kept honest and decent by [...]

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NOBODY HOME
Great piece by E.L. Doctorow:
But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning [...]

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KEEP IT SIMPLE, SMARTYPANTS
Michael Moore spoke to a sold-out crowd of 10,000 at Syracuse University last night, and he had some great advice for Kerry:
If Moore gave any advice to Kerry, it would be to keep it simple. Bush has kept it simple. We all have his three slogans memorized.
1. Kerry is [...]

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LEND A HAND
If you go vote for Joe Hoeffel here (you remember Joe - he’s running against Sen. Arlen “Single Bullet, Have You Met My Friend Clarence?” Specter and it’s a competitive race), Democracy for America will throw a whole shitload of money into his campaign.
It’s fast. It’s easy. Go do it now.

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RAH RAH SIS BOOM BAH
For those of you in the area, Kerry appears at a Philadelphia rally tomorrow on Penn campus. Click here to get a ticket. (It’s an easy walk from the nearby train station.)

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HYPOCRISY ALERT
Okay, the Repugs are oh-so-shocked that Joe Lockhart made a bried courtesy call to Bill Burkett at the request of a “60 Minutes” staffer. Collusion, they say. Unethical and unthinkable, that a member of the media was in touch with a political campaign.
But what about this?
“John Ellis, a first cousin of George W. Bush, [...]

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YOO HOO, KERRY CAMPAIGN!
I’ve been thinking about this absentee ballot thing. I mean, just why are the Republicans so very eager for people to vote this way? And since I had to find out whether I needed to re-register after I move, I called the PA Department of State. (All state contact information is thoughtfully [...]

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WATCH THE HANDS, NOT THE MOUTH
Ignore what he says. The fact is, Rove hates interviews and only does ‘em when he’s worried:
Rove told the newspaper that the swing states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia are already in the Bush camp. The Republicans must now hang on to Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and [...]

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NO SPECIAL TREATMENT
From Kitty Kelley’s “The Family,” p. 298:
George received his commission without ever attending Officers’ Training School. “I’ve never heard of that, said Tom Hail, a historian for the Texas National Guard. “Generally they did that for doctors only, usually because they needed flight surgeons.” Normally such a commission required eight full semesters (four [...]

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THE RICH GET RICH AND THE POOR GET POORER
From the Wall St. Journal (paid subscription):
Eighty-two of the country’s largest profitable corporations paid no federal income tax for at least one year of the Bush administration’s first three years, a study found. The study by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington, and [...]

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IRONY OF THE DAY
In a CNN bit on the Terri Schiavo case, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, in response to the family’s pleas to stop the removal of her life support by her husband, said, “I wish I could. But I don’t have the power to overrule the courts.”

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TRUE DAT
From reader E. McP.:
Why doesn’t one of these 527 groups run an ad showing how income each year is actually distributed in the United States? $100 representing the total of income of the U.S. if distributed among 100 people representing the population of the U.S. would be distributed $40 to one person; $5 to [...]

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DON’T VOTE ABSENTEE
In a Liberal Oasis interview, Greg Palast says they’re going to steal the election again. He warns people not to vote by absentee ballot:
Let me tell you something else to look for in this election.
The number of absentee ballots is increasing by 500%. There’s going to be something like 15 million absentee ballots [...]

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FLIP FLOP OR BELLY FLOP?
Michael Moore lists Bush’s Iraq flip-flops and concludes:
Mr. Bush, please tell us — when will you change your mind again?
I know you hate the words “flip” and “flop,” so I won’t use them both on you. In fact, I’ll use just one: Flop. That is what you are. A huge, colossal [...]

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CALLING THE HARDY BOYS
David Neiwert has another tough nut for the right-wing bloggers to crack:
Seems there’s another questionable document that’s been produced regarding George W. Bush’s National Guard records. And we need some help tracking it down.
The problem was pointed out by that far-left rag, Air Force Times:
Another White House-released document shows a total of [...]

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BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
In his final days, NJ governor Jim McGreevey, as promised, issues an executive order to stop “pay for play”:
RENTON, Sept. 22 - With only weeks until he steps down, Gov. James E. McGreevey issued a broad order on Wednesday that attempts to break the link between political contributions and government contracts in [...]

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A BRIDGE OPENS
The good news is, we completed a new bridge in Iraq:
The two-lane span is the third war-damaged bridge that USAID has restored and reopened. The U.S. government development agency has surveyed 40 others but has no immediate plans to fix them, citing a Bush administration decision to shift some money away from public [...]

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ONE FOR OUR SIDE
Looks like all the blogosphere bitching may have helped get Americans living abroad back in the voting loop:
After suffering a day of relentless criticism from voting-rights activists, bloggers and lawmakers, the Pentagon decided on Wednesday afternoon to lift the access block it had earlier placed on the Web site for the Federal [...]

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‘A NATIONAL CRISIS’
Salient points from Phillip Robertson’s Salon piece on Iraq:
Fringe groups, extreme groups, associations with the most vocal opposition to the U.S. occupation, steadily acquire more legitimacy in Iraq because they tend to express the true feelings of many Iraqis. Not everyone takes part in the fighting, but many people understand why the groups [...]

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