Sometimes we get lucky and find clues. Even luckier, is when we recognize that a clue is a clue and pay attention to it. The mother of all jackpots awaits if the clue provides an answer to an inquiry.

On May 20th of this year, a person believed to be the Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik, left what looks to be a clue on his motivations for committing mass murder. When combined with what we do know about the Major, that he "never spoke ill of the military or his country", yet "viewed the war against terror" as a "war against Islam", the clue gains even more significance.

 

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I also believe that the stakes are high for Afghanistan and for the region. An unstable Afghanistan not only negatively affects what happens within its borders but also affects its neighbors. Afghanistan is, in many ways, one of the keys to stability in south Asia. A state that can provide its own security is important to all international security, and certainly to that of the UK, the US and our international partnership. [Gen. McChrystal's address to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, 10/1/09.]

I am wondering about the involvement, or the non-involvement, of Afghanistan's neighbors. I understand that the US and UK are very concerned that al Qaeda could once again use Afghanistan as a 'Terror Central' if the Taliban should regain control, but I don't understand why Afghanistan's more immediate neighbors don't have more action in its stabilization that is at least equal to that of the West's. As dickday might say, "Isn't that what neighbors are for?"

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In his definitive lefty blog, Quinn the Esqimo Rocks: HOW TO BLOG GOOOOOD, dickday invites us to blog about nothing and even hands out titles for the nothing to be about. So here is Yet Another Blog About Nothing that asks the question we all care about: Why are all closet homosexuals in the Republican Party?

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Originally, this was a reply to jdl51 in Jesse Lava's excellent post, GOP: Obama's health care plan would be too effective, until I realized it would scroll off in half an hour.

jdl51 had asked, But what about the republican argument that government run healthcare won't work, long waits for treatment, crappy service, etc.?

I go back and forth between a large metro area, Atlanta, and a medium metro area, Palm Beach County.

In both areas, trying to get appointments with most Doctors requires a 1-2 month wait, and that's when you're already a patient. It's much longer if you're not.

I called my mother's neuro doc today cause she's been having vague symptoms. Not enough for an emergency, but enough to want an appointment sooner than her regularly scheduled one on April 24. Turns out, April 24 was better than anything they could offer, which was the end of May, although she did make the list if someone cancels. Not at the top, but she's on the list.

She has 4 docs she sees for various body parts and each one has the same waiting times. I've heard that the waits are (much?) shorter in Canada and Britain.

Republicans must live in a one horse, 10 doctor town if they think we'll be worse off, that's all I can say. What is it like in the rest of the country where you all live? Waiting minds get curious!

A stunning video has surfaced of Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) describing Thursday September 18 when Bernanke and Paulson starkly informed Congressional leaders how close the economy had come to collapsing that day.

After $550 billion had been electronically drawn out of money market accounts and $105 billion had been poured back into the system with no effect, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury made the decision to shut down the money market accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account.

Rep. Kanjorski:

If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o'clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.

It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it. [via Magnifico at Daily Kos]

Again via Magnifico, The Motley Fool adds some background as well as a possible connection to martial law in The One Jaw Dropping Video that Every Fool Must See. Both Sen. Inhofe, R-Okla., and Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif claim that Paulson brought up the possibility of a declaration of martial law.

The same article also revealed that a November 2008 Army War College Report discusses the possible use of the US military in the event of a domestic economic collapse.

Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security. Deliberate employment of weapons of mass destruction or other catastrophic capabilities, unforeseen economic collapse... are all paths to disruptive domestic shock. [p.32]

Support for Kanjorski's claims can be found in archives from that time period:

Congressional Leaders Stunned by Warnings, NY Times, Sept. 19, 2008.

...as the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, laid out the potentially devastating ramifications of the financial crisis before congressional leaders on Thursday night, there was a stunned silence at first. Mr. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had made an urgent and unusual evening visit to Capitol Hill...

Rushing to save money-market funds, CNN Money, Sept. 19, 2008

By Friday, federal officials worried that the strain on money-market funds had become too great and threatened the world's financial system.

As an aside, if all of this happened on Thursday, Sept. 18, why in the world did McCain wait until the last minute on the 24th to cancel his interview with David Letterman?

The crowd at NRO's 'The Corner' just suffered another hit with this one. I don't know if they consider her an intellectual, but she was still a member of the tribe. Here is the entire blog post from the Political Insider in the Atlanta Journal Consitution:

Tuesday, October 21, 2008, 07:57 PM

Barry Goldwater's granddaughter voted early in Fulton County on Tuesday -- for Barack Obama.

This isn't a surprise to those who follow Arizona politics. Here's a piece from May of this year posted on Democratic Underground.

Alison Goldwater Ross, 45, waited about an hour and a half to cast her vote at the Fulton County government center in Atlanta, for the Democratic presidential candidate.

"I'm avoiding the crowds on Election Day," Goldwater Ross told my AJC colleague, Mary Lou Pickel.

Barry Goldwater, recognized as the founder of modern Republican conservatism and the 1964 GOP candidate for president, served 30 years in the U.S. Senate. He died in 1998, at age 89.

The Goldwaters and the McCains have a history of antagonism.

"Coming from a political family, I had insight into a lot of things," Goldwater Ross said. Of McCain, she said, "I don't have respect for him."

After the last 8 years of listening to these people, I can't help but smirk every now and then. I'm losing track of how many members of their tribe, the intellectuals, the former high officials and just the average Not-Joe-Not-a-Plumber types that they have lost to the Obama side recently. Kathleen Parker, George Will, David Brooks, Ken Adelman, Colin Powell, The Chicago Tribune and many more that aren't on the top of my head at the moment.

Who's next, I wonder. Barbara Bush?

In another thread, bslev wished for a website where he could discuss violations of the VRA. I don't have a website, but I spent time last night tracking down Georgia's troubles with the Dept. of Justice and the Social Security Administration.

Karen Handel (R) is the Secretary of State in charge of elections. Her zealousness for guarding the citizens of Georgia from Voting Fraud has triggered over two million voter verifications to the SSA database since October 2007. Under HAVA (2002), the state and SSA have an agreement for checking new voter verifications if the voter can't produce a state issued ID. So it is understandable that the SSA sent a somewhat peevish letter to Ms. Handel on Oct. 3rd. This is the main substance of the letter:

Under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, we have an agreement with your State to assist in verifying newly-registered voters.  Consistent with this statute, part of this agreement requires us to verify the last 4 digits of the Social Security numbers of individuals who do not have an acceptable State-issued identification, such as a valid driver's license.

 

Since October 1, 2007, however, we have received nearly two million requests for verification from your State.  Such a volume appears to be much greater than one would expect, given that States of comparable or larger populations have a significantly lower number of verification requests.

 

I ask that you look into this matter to ensure that your election officials are verifying only those newly-registered voters who do not have suitable State-issued identification.  If your State's election officials are requesting verifications not covered by the verification agreement, we ask that you bring your procedures into conformance with your legal obligations.

Then on October 8th, the DOJ sent their letter to the GA Attorney General after consultation with the SSA and officials in the SOS office. The letter outlined the activities done by the state and determined that they come under Section 5 of the VRA, which requires either judicial review by the US District Court for the District of Columbia or administrative review by the US Attorney General

The activities outlined in the letter include:

...revisions to voter registration applications; a process of attempting to verify voter registration information against databases maintained by both the Georgia Department of Driver's Services and the federal Social Security Administration (SSA); generating and distributing reports of the results of those checks to county registrars for further action; and issuing a series of guidance memoranda from the Office of the Secretary of State to the counties concerning a number of aspects of the identity verification/voter registration processes.

Then the next day, Oct. 9, Jose Morales filed a lawsuit against Karen Handel for trying to repeatedly deny his right to vote. A US citizen since Nov. 2007, Morales registered to vote in September 2008 and received his first letter from the couinty where he lives two weeks later, saying he would not be able to vote unless he came to the Elections center with his proof of citizenship. The letter also warned that if he did not comply with this requirement, he would no longer be registered to vote.

Morales went to the office and showed the clerk his passport and received his voters registration card two weeks later on Oct 3.  And then five days later, he received another letter saying that he might not be a US citizen and he should contact the Elections office by October 15th or show up for a hearing on the same day, or his name would be struck from the voter rolls.

As of Friday, Oct. 10, Handel's office had asked counties to check the status of 2,675 individuals statewide whose driver's license records indicated they were not citizens, but who had registered to vote, according to Handel's office.

Karen Handel insists that she is only following HAVA and is fighting all attempts to stop her voter checking. She had told the GOP during the September convention that it was a myth that there was a surge of new voters for Barack Obama. However, there are 406,000 new voters in GA this year and a record amount of people taking advantage of early voting, and they have given Obama a 6 point advantage according to SurveyUSA. of The rest of the story can be found here along with links to related articles.
 

 

 

Maybe it really is true -- what goes around, comes around.

SACRAMENTO -- The owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired to register tens of thousands of voters this year was arrested in Ontario over the weekend on suspicion of voter registration fraud. [LA Times.]

Mark Jacoby's firm, Young Political Majors (YPM) was hired by the California Republican Party to register voters. The only requirement to perform this job is a California law that says the signature gatherers must be eligible to vote in California. Apparently, Mr. Jacoby does not live in California, so he used an address where he used to live -- as a child.

But that's not what first brought him to the notice of the police. It seems there was a rather large fraud that was also involved:

Jacoby's arrest by state investigators and the Ontario Police Department late Saturday came after dozens of voters said they were duped into registering as Republicans by people employed by YPM. The voters said YPM workers tricked them by saying they were signing a petition to toughen penalties against child molesters.

YPM received  $7-$12 per head if the person registered as a Republican.

For reasons that are unclear and unexplained, it took seven squad cars and nine police officers to arrest Mr. Jacoby outside of a hotel in Ontario, CA.

Mr. Jacoby's attorney, Dan Goldfine, gave what is quite possibly my favorite line in this article when he said the arrest was part of a "long pattern of harassment against Mr. Jacoby for an entirely valid voter registration effort."

Mr. Jacoby was released on bail Sunday evening, but he might want to keep more bail money handy. Investigations into YPM have already started in such diverse areas as Florida and Massachusetts.  And these came after his recent stint as a defendent in an Arizona civil rights lawsuit.

The California Republican party played its part well when it announced that the charges against Mr. Jacoby are "politically motivated." It shouldn't surprise anyone to find that a Democrat is the culprit behind the motivation. They say that Secretary of State, Debra Bowen (D), is "using her office to play politics."

Yes I can name a nation state in which the disrespect for life has led to the erosion of civil freedoms less fundamental than life. Russia:

Mike, my response to this is below, but first I need to clear up a couple of issues leftover from previous posts of yours.

When you write that eviscerating or dismembering or stabbing in the neck an unborn human life is just patently wrong ... and We have no right to kill someone merely for coming onto our property, especially if we engaged in conduct that amounts to an invitation ...  and compare mercenary wars to elective abortions, the we that are responsible for such 'atrocities' are women. So as one of the accused in the vigilante court of Mike, the Judge and Jury, allow me to have a few last words.

As you have heard in post in after post, if you really wanted to stop or at least limit abortions, you would be the head cheerleader for the contraceptive route, making them safe, affordable and available. Post after post, you ignore the one really good option for achieving your goal. I don't know why.

Instead, you insist on the legal route of banning abortions totally. Again, why you want to go down that path is unknown.  But I can guarantee, and provide the studies if you so insist and I still care to show you, that the number of abortions will only decline marginally, and only in the number of poor women having an abortion.

I have had an abortion (post Roe), my mother has had one  (pre Roe) and her mother had one. One third of the women in this nation have had an abortion. And if abortion is made illegal, one third of the women in this nation will still obtain one.

Why? Because when a woman becomes pregnant she makes a choice that is not based on the law or politics. Nor is it based on thoughts of life or death, either her own or the seed's that is implanted in her womb. The decision is usually based on a mix of practicalities and instincts that lead her to either accept the sacred chance she has been given or to delay or forever deny it, whichever is right for her.

Neither you, the law or politicians can change that.

Back to Russia.

I don't think anyone has denied the high abortion rates of the former USSR or Russia. However,  the cause for the high abortion rates you gave was your opinion, not Rand's. Rand has an entirely different take on the causes:

WHY ABORTION BECAME THE PREFERRED METHOD OF FERTILITY REGULATION IN RUSSIA

Two influences have worked to keep Russian abortion rates high. First, Soviet ideology hindered the development and spread of effective contraception. Soviet ideology held that declining fertility rates were not typical of socialism and that socialist economic improvement would yield higher birth rates and lower abortion rates. Such views resulted in little effort to develop or distribute modern contraceptives. They also led the Stalin government, which equated power with population size, to prohibit abortion and to restrict contraception for nearly 20 years in an effort to fuel population growth.

Abortion became legal in the 1950's but when health planners recognized the problem and tried to distribute contraceptives widely, the poor quality and erratic supplies meant abortion remained the preferred method of family planning.

The good news is that expanded family planning (contraceptives) has helped reduce abortion rates in Post-Soviet Russia.

It really is as simple as that.

According to<a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/08/mccains-denver.html">ABC:</a>

<blockquote>A staffer in Denver opened an envelope that had been sent to the campaign which contained white powder and a threatening letter.

"As a precautionary measure we have closed the office and staff are being examined by medical personnel," said McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds.</blockquote>

A similar letter was sent to the New Hampshire office, but it didn't contain any powder.

Now, who would think of doing such a stunt in the city that is hosting the Democratic Convention starting Monday?

As a reminder, here is a pretty good list of past <a href="http://www.evergreenpolitics.com/ep/2006/09/dirty_tricks_ma.html">Rovian tricks</a>.  I particularly like the one where he bugged his own office, called the FBI and the media,  and then blamed it on the Democrats.

There is something about Why Won't the Media Establishment Share This Hillary News? that smells fishy with its 5 recommendations and one comment - mine. There was no attempt by the first time author to fix the mess he made of embedding a link and you would have to know how to copy and paste a part of the mess to get to the video.

As some of us have the ability to rate a post numerous times, it's hard to believe it received that many recs from people unable to follow the link.  Any chance of a removal from the Recommended list before the fish decomposes?

ABC news has posted a <a href="http://tinyurl.com/36xemu">confidential memo (pdf)</a> sent to the US embassy in Iraq from a <i>"long-time Republican operative"</i> who has served in Baghdad for the past year.

Manuel Miranda didn't hold back his thoughts in the memo to Ambassador Crocker and All Concerned (ALCON).

<blockquote>I would venture to say that if the management of the Embassy and the State Department's Iraq operation were judged by rules that govern business judgment and asset waste in the private sector, the delays, indecision, and reorganizations over the past year, would be considered willfully negligent if not criminal. </blockquote>

Much of the 10 page memo is in a similar vein. Here he diagnoses the Embassy with ADD:

<blockquote>The Embassy is also severely encumbered by the Foreign Service's built-in attention deficit disorder, with personnel and new leaders rotating out within a year or less. Incumbent in this constant personnel change is a startling failure to manage and retrieve information. The Embassy is consequently in a constant state of revisiting the same ground without the ability to retrieve information of past work and decisions. </blockquote>

While support for the Iraq adventure was rapidly going downhill in the US, apparently the embassy had different worries:

<blockquote>At the keystone moment that America's leaders and people were pained over the debate of our continued national sacrifice, the Baghdad Embassy was doing a bureaucratic imitation of the Keystone Cops, counting chairs and desks and reviewing decisions over and over again.</blockquote>

So what does the State Dept think about the memo?  Tom Casey, the spokesman for the Department told <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=4263378">ABC news</a>:

<blockquote>"We think Ambassador Crocker and his team are doing a very good job under extremely challenging circumstances. We have great confidence in their ability to carry out their mission."</blockquote>

At least we'll know how many desks and chairs have been sacrificed for the mission.

How many of us have written a brilliant comment or blog only to see it lost to the ether before it got posted?  Firefox has an extension called AutoSaveTextToCookie  that automatically saves and restores text typed in forms and text areas.

Go to netticat's page if you want to install the extension and have a test page for trying it. Or you can go to the usual addon page by Mozilla.

I checked the Do not use cookies, save text to local file  box,  which is available in options after installation. Warning:  this is a keylogger, so don't install if you're not comfortable with that idea.  I wish it didn't save the text after a successful submission, but it does so be aware of that also. However, in these times of server uncertainty here at TPM, it has saved my text and my patience three or four times already.

From Aspen Daily News.

Who Are You Gonna Believe? Rove or Powell?

During an interview Sunday morning at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival, Karl Rove was asked about the enemy in Iraq. In response, Rove put the enemy into three categories:

First, he said that 80 to 90 percent of the bombs that are killing U.S. soldiers are from al-Qaida of Iraq. That differed from the opinion of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said in Aspen on Thursday that al-Qaida was only 10 percent of the problem in Iraq.

Second, Rove said that Sunni insurgents were fighting the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, although he pointed out that in some areas, Sunnis were now working closely with American forces to rid certain cities of foreign al-Qaida fighters.

Third, Rove said that "criminal elements" were playing a large role, and he included the Shiite militias in Iraq in this category.

Not a single mention of the Iranians that are supposedly killing coalition soldiers. Does this mean we don't have to attack Iran now?

The Weight of Gitmo

Although it holds bad "...people who threatened the United States of America," Rove said the President would like to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Compared to prisoners in detention camps in other wars...

"Our principle health problem down there is gain of weight, we feed 'em so well."

No wonder GOP congressional members are heading for the other side of the aisle. The White House sees the Gitmo problem in terms of fat prisoners.

From Newsweek. During the 2000 Presidential debates, Bush attacked Gore for claiming that a visit to a Buddhist Temple was not a fund-raiser. In Bush's opinion, that wasn't a responsible position. Gore 'fought' back with an unemotional notion about wanting “to spend my time making this country even better than it is, not trying to make you out to be a bad person.”

This is what he should have said:

“You have attacked my honor and integrity,” ... “I think it’s time to teach you a few old-fashioned lessons about character. When I enlisted to fight in the Vietnam War, you were talkin’ real tough about Vietnam. But when you got the call, you called your daddy and begged him to pull some strings so you wouldn’t have to go to war. So instead of defending your country with honor, you put some poor Texas millworker’s kid on the front line in your place to get shot at. Where I come from, we call that a coward.

“When I was working hard, raising my family, you were busy drinking yourself and your family into the ground. Why don’t you tell us how many times you got behind the wheel of a car with a few drinks under your belt? Where I come from, we call that a drunk.

“When I was serving in the U.S. Senate, your own father’s government had to investigate you on the charge that you’d swindled a bunch of old people out of their life savings by using insider knowledge to sell off stocks you knew were about to drop. Where I come from, we call that crooked. So governor, don’t you ever lecture me about character. And don’t you ever talk to me that way again in front of my family or my fellow citizens.”

For all that the electorate decries negative campaigning, a new book called the Partisan Brain details how it wins elections, while appeals to reason go unheard.

Deanie Mills gave us an excellent summary and provided much more analysis on Drew Westen's work several days ago in her blog entry, Checkmate for '08, Beating the Republicans With Their Own Game. The blog rolled off the front page quickly, but it really needs to be read and will help to understand 'What Al Gore Should Have Said'.

I could have used Deanie's word expertise when I was trying to explain the impact of Hillary's Sopranos video in the comment section of another post.