From Holden: Do you want to take this call, Mr. Powell? Shock jock Howard Stern made a surprise call to a radio station during an interview of the Federal Communications Commission head, claiming the chairman only got his job because his father is Secretary of State Colin Powell. Stern called in to KGO-AM radio in San Francisco during a live interview Tuesday with FCC Chairman Michael Powell. After claiming Powell consistently avoids him, Stern began to question his credentials. “How did you get your job? It is apparent to most of us in broadcasting that your father got you your … Continue reading Caller on Line 3

From Holden: Today the Times’ Nicholas Kristof blandly states that he will not call Bush a liar before recounting a prime example of a Bush lie. But what I found most galling about Kristof’s missive today was this paragraph: In fact, I’m convinced that Mr. Bush is not only smarter, but also a better man than his critics believe. Most important, he’s not a panderer. While Mr. Kerry zigs and zags on trade and Middle East policy, Mr. Bush has a core of values and provides genuine leadership (typically, I believe, in the wrong direction, by trying to reshape America … Continue reading Nick Kristof, Dumbass

From Holden: Thirty-six newspaper that endorsed Bush in 2000 endorsed Kerry this year. Continue reading Read it and Weep

From Holden: The latest Washington Post daily tracking poll shows Georgie continuing his search for oblivion. Date | Bush | Kerry 10/26 | 48 | 50 10/25 | 48 | 49 10/24 | 48 | 48 10/23 | 50 | 46 10/22 | 50 | 46 10/21 | 51 | 45 Continue reading Bush Continues His Fall in the WaPo Poll

Greg Palast on BBC’s Newsnight has a story about Republican plans to intimidate mostly black voters in Florida. A secret campaign document that was obtained from inside the Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggest a plan to disrupt voting in certain districts. Two emails that were written to the executive director of the campaign in Florida and the national research director in D.C. contain a 15 page “caging list.” <p. It lists 1,886 voters’ names and addresses in areas of Jacksonville that are predominantly black and Democratic. When shown the list, an election supervisor in Tallahasee said that “the only … Continue reading Florida, 2004

One week to go, guys. A World Series to keep us all focused on losing our minds over something other than this, and a presidential candidate who has never been hotter. Politically. Politically hotter. Yeah. Seriously, if you find yourself panicking in the coming few days, just keep saying to yourself: a year ago this wartime president’s poll numbers were through the roof, and nobody was going to bring him down. He had the whole country fooled. Now, even if by some miracle he limps to re-election, it will be as a broken man, forever marked with the knowledge of … Continue reading Happy Kerry Photo: Hey, Look! My Poll Numbers!

From Holden: Airman: “Yeah, when will I see your daughters in uniform, bitch?” Continue reading Daily Caption Contest

From Holden: The Pentagon is planning to send an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq. Wonder where they are gonna get ’em? US officials are considering raising the number of American troops in Iraq by more than 20,000. They are concerned they won’t get enough new troops from allies to help provide security for Iraqi elections in January. The goal is to raise the number of troops in Iraq from 138,000 to 160,000. Continue reading Drafty

From Holden: Yet another in an unending series of reasons to dump Bush: [Former director of the National Park Service Roger] Kennedy has not seen “Grand Canyon: A Different View,” but others who have, including geologists on the Park Service staff, say it does not meet that test. A compilation of photographs, biblical quotations and essays published last year by Master Books, the book says God created the heavens and the earth in six days, 6,000 years ago, and that the canyon formed in a flood God caused in order to wipe out “the wickedness of man.” The geology of … Continue reading And I Suppose Mount Everest Was Formed When God Got a Stiffy

From Holden: A new Get Your War On. Continue reading What Do You Wear to a Civil War?

From Holden: Even giant inflatable cows hate Bush. This one lives in Onalaska, Wisconsin. Continue reading Giant Inflatable Cows for Kerry

From Holden: OK, so he didn’t quite say that Bush is incompetent. But he did accuse U.S. forces of “negligence”: Iraq’s interim prime minister blamed U.S.-led coalition forces Tuesday for “great negligence” in the ambush that killed about 50 American-trained soldiers… [snip] “It was a heinous crime where a group of National Guards were targeted,” Allawi said. “There was great negligence on the part of some coalition forces. It seems there was sort of determination on doing Iraq and Iraqi people harm.” Continue reading Iyad Allawi: Bush is Incompetent

From Holden: Consumer Confidence dropped for the third straight month to its lowest level in half a year. Worries about job prospects drove consumer confidence lower in October for the third consecutive month, a New York-based private research group said Tuesday. The decline was steeper than expected and raised questions about how consumers will spend during the critical holiday shopping season. The Consumer Confidence Index dropped 3.9 points to 92.8, down from a revised 96.7 in September, according to The Conference Board. Analysts had expected a reading of 94. The October figure is the lowest since March, when the reading … Continue reading Consumer’s Can’t Find My Bush Boom with Two Hands and a Hint

Riverbend has posted an open letter to Americans about the election. Here is part of it, but read it all, please. “I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Americans, the name of your country which once stood for ‘freedom & justice’ is tarnished worldwide. Your latest president has proved that the great American image of democracy is just that —- an image. You can protest, you can demonstrate, you can vote —- but it ends there. The reigns were out of your hands the moment Bush stepped into the White House. You were deceived repetitively and duped into … Continue reading An open letter to Americans

From Holden: Bush continues his decline in the Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll: Date | Bush | Kerry 10/25 | 46.4 | 48.4 10/24 | 47.6 | 47.2 10/23 | 48.0 | 46.7 10/22 | 49.1 | 45.9 Continue reading Doin’ the Chimpy Slide

From Holden: You’ve probably read Josh Marshall’s piece slapping around a claim by Pentagon spokesman Matt Drudge Larry Di Rita (amplified by NBC) that the 380 tons of errant Iraqi explosives were missing when the 101st Airborne visited Al-Qaqaa on April 10th. However, yesterday Little Scottie emphatically stated that the explosives were removed sometime after April 9, 2003. He was so sure of that date that he repeated it four times. Q But you’re saying this is the responsibility of the Iraqi forces. But this was our responsibility until just recently, isn’t that right? Weren’t these — there is some … Continue reading April Fools

From Holden: Abortion is still a big issue for some GOP women: Fuelled by a fear that a Bush victory in next month’s election could lead to many states overturning 30 years of legal terminations in the US, several moderate Republican women are rebelling against the crusade against sex education and unmarried women’s access to contraception. Linda Binder, a Republican State Senator in the conservative state of Arizona, is typical. Despite voting for Bush in 2000, she has pulled her support over what she calls his ‘wacky, far right’ position on women’s rights. ‘We don’t want to go back to … Continue reading Republican Women Abandon Bush

I didn’t want to post this story. But it was on the Internet, you see. I had no choice. William Raspberry blames bloggers for, near as I can tell, just about everything: The explosion of the Internet leaves us, in effect, with no gatekeeper. Sometimes important information gains currency that way. The problem is that anyone with Web access can run any cockamamie story up the flagpole — and if enough people salute, prompt the mainstream press to deploy its resources. It’s that bad — and it isn’t likely to get better any time soon. It’s okay, Mr. Raspberry. I’m … Continue reading The Internet Made Me Do It

A key point from Josh’s most excellent work on the explosives story: To say that we knew nothing about the theft of these materials during that entire time is simply not credible. And if it’s really true, it’s considerably worse than if it’s a lie. Exactly. It never ceases to amaze me that “We just had no idea what the holy living hell was going on” continues to be accepted as a valid defense of anything these guys do or don’t do. “We ain’t evil, we’s just stupid” they say as if that makes it okay. Let’s be very clear … Continue reading This Administration’s Eternal Question

From Holden: July 12, 2004: Pat Robertson announces the beginning of Operation Supreme Court Freedom: “One justice is 83-years-old, another has cancer and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire?” October 25, 2004: Operation Supreme Court Freedom suffers its first casualty – Chief Justice down by friendly fire! William H. Rehnquist, a conservative who is the second oldest man ever to be chief justice of the Supreme Court, has been hospitalized with thyroid cancer. Continue reading Pat Robertson’s Collateral Damage

From Holden: Laura: “I wish Condi had never let him see those photos of Lyndie England.” Continue reading Today’s Caption Contest

From Holden: Arkansas Likely voters Bush 48 (-4) Kerry 48 (+5) Nader 1 (unchanged) Continue reading Yo, Big Dog – I Gotcher Next Stop Here

Courtesy of crack den reader jeebs, who posted it in comments over there: Love of John Kerry reunites the best Buffy couple ever! From the Joss Whedon for Kerry event in LA. A. Continue reading Happy Kerry Supporters’ Photo: Magical Lesbians for Kerry!

From Holden: Oooo. Bad day to be Little Scottie. The press corps was all over him this morning about the missing Iraqi explosives. And he did not handle it in a very convincing manner. Tick-tock, Scottie, tick-tock. Q The Kerry campaign is hitting you on this story in the New York Times today that a large cache of explosives have gone missing. Is there anything you could have done about that? MR. McCLELLAN: Maybe the best way to do this is kind of walk you through how we came to be informed about this. The Iraqi Interim Government informed — … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

From Holden: My mistake. The Rasmussen poll numbers I posted this morning were from yesterday. Kerry has broken into the lead in today’s poll: Bush 46.4 (-1.2) Kerry 48.4 (+1.2) “This is the first time Senator Kerry has held the lead since August 23.” There’s more: Is the U. S. winning the War on Terra? No 49 (-2) Is Bush the stronger dear leader? Yes 49 (-1) Bonus: after watching the Big Dog in Philly today I tuned into Bloated Addict’s show to hear him madly spinning different scenarios in which Bush could lose Florida and/or Ohio and still win … Continue reading Rasmussen Breaks for Kerry

Not that I’d expect anything less from the magazine home of Mr. Hersh, but this is pretty damn extraordinary: The damage visited upon America, and upon America’s standing in the world, by the Bush Administration’s reckless mishandling of the public trust will not easily be undone. And for many voters the desire to see the damage arrested is reason enough to vote for John Kerry. But the challenger has more to offer than the fact that he is not George W. Bush. In every crucial area of concern to Americans (the economy, health care, the environment, Social Security, the judiciary, … Continue reading New Yorker Endorses Kerry

From Holden: Big news. I don’t wish cancer on anyone, but I most defintely would like to see William Rehnquist off the court as soon as possible. Had he not been Chief Justice in 2000 we might on this day be able to look back on four years of peace and prosperity under President Gore. William H. Rehnquist, a conservative who is the second oldest man ever to be chief justice of the Supreme Court, has been hospitalized with thyroid cancer. The 80-year-old Rehnquist spent the weekend in Bethesda Naval Hospital in suburban Maryland, and underwent a tracheotomy on Saturday, … Continue reading Rehnquist Hospitalized with Cancer

From Holden: The handwriting is on the wall for Georgie. When the Financial Times, one of the most influencial (and conservative) daily papers endorses John Kerry and is stingly critical of George Bush, you know Bush’s days are numbered. The paper, one of the world’s leading financial dailies, called Bush “a polarizer, exploiting the war on terror to cow domestic opposition and divide the world into Them and Us.” “Over the past three years, the gap between ambition and reality has created what could be termed a ‘Bush bubble’,” it said. [snip] “Mr. Bush’s flaw is his stubborn reluctance to … Continue reading Financial Times Endorses John Kerry

From Holden: MoJo Blog brings us a delicious Frank Rich column on Bill O’Reilly and Mary Cheney that opens with a quote from Long Island’s kinkiest blowhard. And guys, if you exploit a girl, it will come back to get you. That’s called ‘karma.’ ” – Bill O’Reilly, “The O’Reilly Factor for Kids” Continue reading Rich Hearts O’Reilly

From Holden: Not much has changed over the weekend. The national polls are still tight, with any noticable upward movement belonging to Kerry. Zogby Likely Voters, 3-way Bush 48 (+1) Kerry 46 (+1) Nader 1 (unchanged) ABC News/WaPo Likely Voters, 3-way Bush 49 (-1) Kerry 48 (+2) Nader 1 (unchanged) Newsweek Likely Voters, 3-way Bush 48 (-2) Kerry 46 (+2) Nader 1 (unchanged) Registered Voters, 3-way Bush 46 (-2) Kerry 46 (unchanged) Nader 2 (+1) Rasmussen Bush 47.6 (-0.4) Kerry 47.2 (+0.5) Meanwhile Bush’s job approval numbers continue to slide. Newsweek Approve 46 (-1) Disapprove 47 (+1) Continue reading Poll Update