2006 archive

Today’s Quotes of the Day, from the Quotemaster. The last one is the best.

Our elections are free, it’s in the results where eventually we pay.
– Bill Stern

In politics it is necessary either to betray one’s country or
the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.
– Charles de Gaulle, 1899 – 1970

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the
most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are
those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more
be elected president of the United States than he could be
elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men
favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the
bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
– Henry Louis Mencken, 1880 – 1956

Californians seem to understand that government’s major
function is to entertain. No matter who is elected, the
politicos end up swindling us, wasting our tax money on
pork-barrel projects. The only way to reclaim at least some
of that lost money is to elect politicians who put on a good show.
– Orange County Register

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or
before an election.
– Otto von Bismarck, 1815 – 1898

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are
decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy
two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.
– Lily Tomlin

Here.

Whoops.

Sorry.

Doubt.

John Amato is right.

Factcheck dot org looks into the biggest lies of the campaign advertising season:

Much of what we found went well beyond the bounds of honest advocacy, and would warrant dismissal for any reporter who tried to pass it off as an accurate news story. We believe reasonable citizens will also find these distortions to be unacceptable even in political advertising, where a certain amount of puffery is expected and tolerated. It’s one thing to present your own case in the best light and to point out the flaws in your opponent. But a lot of what we encountered was far from the truth.

(snip)

In addition to a general disregard for factual accuracy, we also found systematic attempts to mislead voters about some of the most important issues of the day. Republicans repeatedly mischaracterized Democratic positions on dealing with terrorism. Democrats continued to claim that the Medicare drug benefit is somehow bad for seniors when in fact it saves them hundreds of dollars per year on average.

Good reading before Tuesday.

Personals from the London Review of Books:

Long seen as cold fish compared to the torrid Latin lovers of Italy and France, the book, titled “They Call Me Naughty Lola”, shows that Britons are not all stiff-upper lip with this collection from the world’s strangest lonely hearts section.

“Woman, 32, needful of the finer things in life seeks stinking rich bloke, 80-100,” one ad says. “Must be willing to fibrillate his ventricles when he becomes tiresome or bankrupt or both. Also interesting thirtysomethings for illicit, immoral affair to be conducted concurrently with the above.”

More at the link.

The current Federal Administration wishes to bar captives detainees in Gitmo from talking about how the current Federal Administration has treated them:

The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets and that their release — even to the detainees’ own attorneys — “could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.” Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26.

Yeah.

Right.

Sensitive national security secrets.

Such as that the current Federal Administration’s claims that “We don’t torture” is another Bush lie.

It’s not national security that is at risk here. What is threatened exposure is the years of hypocrisy of the current Federal Administration.

And they dare to prostitute the National Honor (well, what little they have left to the Nation) to protect their own sorry sadistic behinds.

As promised, here is FactCheck.org’s analysis of ads by the Democratic Party. Follow the link for the complete analysis:

Gauging by the attack ads flowing from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s House contenders are running against Exxon, Pfizer and Bush. The ads tie Republican House candidates to unpopular industries and an unpopular President. Some of these ads are exaggerations.

At times DCCC ads run completely off the rails of factual accuracy. One falsely implies that an Illinois candidate tried to ban Dr. Seuss books from schools. Another correctly states that an Ohio candidate was investigated “for abusing her position,” but fails to mention that the investigation found “no substance” to the allegation. Others claim Republicans voted to “raid the Social Security trust fund,” a bit of misleading nonsense we’ve noted previously.

What follows is our analysis of 143 ads from the DCCC that have appeared since Labor Day, nearly all of them attack ads. For our take on ads from the DCCC’s counterpart, the National Republican Congressional Committee, see the article we posted Oct. 27.

Of course, as far as I am concerned, support of the current Federal Administration and its depredations is sufficient to send a candidate to the unemployment line.

I have been at home the last three days.

The phone has run steadily, seven or eight times a day. Almost all the calls have come from “Unknown Name/Unknown Number.” Some have come from “Unknown Name/866-xxx-xxxx.”

One came from “Real Name/Real Number.” It turned out to be “Real Name/Real Wrong Number.”

One came from “Obvious Marketing Name/Real Number.” I actually answered that one. I wanted to compliment them on not disguising their number.

But it was a recording asking me to validate an application for a new mortgage–an application I had not sent.

The Unknowns get to ring over to the answering machine. If they really want to talk with me, they can leave a message.

Surprise, surprise, surprise, no messages.

Caller ID rocks.

My one or two regular readers may have noticed that the percentage of posts with political themes has diminished over the past couple of weeks–I have done a couple linking to analyses that I found interesting or enlightening, but nothing about the issues.

Anyone who hasn’t figured out the issues yet shouldn’t be voting.

(Aside: I am against “motor voter registration” for a related opinion–someone who can’t be bothered to go down the registrar’s office for an hour or two when he or she moves shouldn’t be voting. I guess some people would feel that, in place of a poll tax, I’m favoring an apathy tax. But, dammit, if you don’t care enough to register, you probably don’t care enough to vote intelligently. The apathy tax is one that the apathetic impose on themselves, and they deserve to pay it.)

Voting is neither a right nor a privilege.

It’s a duty.

I’m sick of the campaign and can’t wait for it to be done (with the good guys winning, I hope). The news is so saturated with the same old thing day after day, that it seems to me that any posts I might do will be deja vu all over again, since anyone who dips into my archives will quickly find out where my sympathies lie.

But one thing has certain held true during this election cycle. Bush continues to lie. Not spin, though he also can do a convincing imitation of a top. Just lie.

And we don’t need liars and their sycophants guiding our polity.

Do your duty. Vote. Inform that vote with morality, true American values, and truth.

I just saw an ad for this, or something very similar:

Now, I’m not feeling particularly Christmassy, but that’s another issue.

It’s just too early (even though Harry Shearer reported in, I think, last week’s Le Show–Real Player required–that Christmas decorations were up in Harrod’s in London.) I haven’t been to the mall for a while, but I bet they are up in the mall, also.

Going to the dogs:

The owners of a cocker spaniel have told how their beloved pet became addicted to licking poisonous toads for their mind-bending properties.

Laura Mirsch said her dog Lady returned to their new home from one binge at the local pond “disoriented and withdrawn, soporific and glassy-eyed”.

Watch this.

Then go to the website of the Alexis Park Inn and watch some more.

Down to the wire. And the wire is apparently in a sewer. From FactCheck.org; follow the link for detailed analyses:

The ads being aired by both the NRCC and its rival, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, are overwhelmingly negative. However, the DCCC ads generally attack Republican candidates on policy issues or their performance in office – accusing them of casting votes favorable to drug or oil companies, or of supporting President Bush’s unpopular policies in Iraq or on Social Security. We’ve recently criticized factual inaccuracies we’ve seen in some of those, and we’ll have more to say in a later article. Here we focus on the NRCC’s ads, which are much more likely to demean an opponent’s character. That’s the very definition of political mudslinging.

The Republican ads variously accuse Democratic candidates of such things as charging an “adult fantasy” phone call to taxpayers, of being a “hypocrite,” of being a “greedy trial lawyer,” of being a “millionaire know-it-all,” or of failing to pay local business taxes on time. One ad describes a Democrat’s “ethical judgments” as “bad to bizarre” and claims he favored use of 50,000-volt Taser weapons on seven-year-olds.

A derogatory ad can be accurate, and when supported by facts can give voters information about a candidate that they may well find relevant. For example, one NRCC ad correctly states that a Democratic candidate wrote a letter asking a judge to go easy when sentencing a felon convicted of bank fraud in a scandal that bilked hundreds of homeowners. However, several of the NRCC’s ads are smears that twist facts or ignore them. A sheriff running for the House is accused of having “fixed” a speeding ticket for his daughter, for example, when in fact the ticket was paid and the daughter got no special treatment. We found repeated examples of this sort of thing, and we detail them here.

I’ll post the link to the article on Democratic ads when it appears.

Excellent series of interviews on today’s Fresh Air on the controversy over voting machines and voting procedures: where did it come from and is it valid. Here’s the description from the website:

Election 2006:
Tracking Elections

Election reform expert Dan Seligson is the editor of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan and non-advocacy organization that tracks and analyzes election reform issues. The site is a venture of the Election Reform Information Project.

Election 2006:
Race and the Voting Landscape

NAACP officers Marvin “Doc” Cheatham and Rev. Nelson B. Rivers, III, talk about manipulation of African-American voters, and the efforts they are making to change the voting landscape. Cheatham is the seventh president of the NAACP Baltimore city branch, and an election specialist. He’s also the founder and chairman of the Maryland Voting Rights Restoration Coalition. Rivers is CEO of the NAACP.

Capital Hill Blue’s round-up of the more absurb highlights from both sides of the aisle during this campaign season. Follow the link for more:

A congresswoman was accused of lying about her athletic prowess. A state lawmaker in Kansas got into a fight with a cockroach.

And a candidate in Oklahoma hatched an unusual scheme to protect students in school shootings. His plan? Equip every student with used textbooks thick enough to stop a bullet.

There are two things you can pretty much count on during the course of any political campaign. One, somebody will win and somebody will lose. Two, a few candidates will do or say something truly bizarre.

Barnum was right.

A German court has ordered a self-proclaimed witch to refund a disappointed client her hefty fee for a spell that failed to win back the woman’s partner.

The Munich administrative court said Monday it ruled that the witch must pay back the $1,275 on the grounds she offered a service that was “objectively completely impossible.”

After her boyfriend left her in 2003, the client consulted the witch on a spell that would bring him back.

Dick Polman on the racist Republican ad in Tennessee:

He’s (Ken Mehlman’s–ed.) technically right about the campaign finance laws, which limit how much the national parties can directly spend on individual campaigns – but which permit the parties to spend with unfettered abandon if they set up “independent” committees that operate without any oversight from the party overlords.

But here’s the key point: Mehlman hired the person who in turn hired the person who produced the “independent” Tennessee ad. So even though Mehlman may have been officially in the dark about this specific ad, it strains credulity to believe that he didn’t know what kind of ad his “independent” ad producer would create. Especially since this ad producer would not have been hired in the first place, to act “independently” and provide Mehlman with official deniability, unless he had been sanctioned by top GOP officials.

’nuff said. But I’m not stopping without saying too much.

The issue here is not whether Ken Mehlman or any of his colleagues are bigots. Rather, the issue is that they are willing to harness bigotry to their cause. And, clearly, they are.

While wrapping themselves in virtue.

A sheet, dammit, is a sheet. Whether it comes from Target, Walmart, or Bloomingdale’s. It does not make for attractive wearing apparel.

Hypocrisy.

There’s plenty of it to go around, of course.

But those who would wrap themselves in virtue should be careful to wear clean undies.

Click the pic:

What is it?

And it’s online, here.

With thanks to the Quotemaster.