(1400 PDT) Just now, #51 Ichiro Suzuki came to the plate for the Mariners. Top of the 5th. A hit would tie George Sisler's 1920 record for most hits (257) in a season. And ESPN did not cut into regular scheduled programming to bring it to us, live. Guess it's still true: if sports news happens more than 50 miles from Manhattan, it's not worth getting excited about. Or maybe they consulted Psychic Friends Network and knew Ichiro would strike out.

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The Lone Star Iconoclast of Crawford, TX endorses Kerry.

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I love Air America Radio. I really do. It ought to be called Breath of Fresh Air America Radio. It's great to finally have a station I can turn on anytime and actually hear—gasp—viewpoints that I agree with!

And yet if I want to listen to AAR anywhere other than at home, I have to either get XM Satellite Radio service or haul around a purple & white iMac, circa 2000, and a very long extension cord. Because, you see, I'm in Seattle, and the nearest AA affiliate is down Interstate 5 in Portland.

AAR could woo a low-power AM station, or one of the many soundalike FM music stations. But why not go for a major station with a track record in the newstalk format?

I'm talking about KVI 570-AM. For years KVI has been the sore thumb of Seattle radio, blaring right-wing "hot talk" radio. Liddy, Limbaugh and the like have called KVI home; if you wanted to know about Monica Lewinsky or Vince Foster, you dialed to KVI.

Once the Number 3 station in the Seattle market, since late in 2003 KVI has had to compete with KTTH, a Clear Channel station that switched to the right-wing format. The Rush-bag moved to KTTH. In the Winter 2004 ratings book, KVI fell to 22nd place. KTTH was 13th.

Seattle doesn't need two commercial conservative stations. Why on earth should KVI continue to fight over a shrinking piece of the right wing pie? Why not jettison the hatemongers and pick up progressive Air America? The marketing hook is obvious: "KVI 570: on the Left side of the dial!" Some might object at losing a place for George Noory and Art Bell. Fine, an AAR-ified KVI can keep their late-night Coast To Coast show, which Mr_Blog sees as charmingly nutty (besides, liberals go to bed early). Others might whine that Seattle already has a liberal station. KUOW is a powerful FM station, but it is an NPR affiliate and therefore blandly nonpartisan. What's more, very little of KUOW programming features call-in opportunities.

A final reason for a switch: KVI is owned by Fisher Broadcasting. The Fishers are everything good about Seattle: civic-minded, responsible, and generous. The Fishers own community-minded KOMO TV and radio, ABC affiliates. The Fishers are Puyallup Fair scones and Exploration Northwest. Why they continue to have divisive, narrow-minded, greed-advocating KVI in their portfolio is mystifying. Installing Air America at KVI would have two benefits: a balance to right-wing KTTH, and give the Fishers something in-tune with the community's moderate-progressive mainstream.

Good grief, Bob Melvin. Monday's Mariners-As game. It was the bottom of the 9th, with the score tied at 5-5. Leading off for Oakland, Erubiel Durazo sent a short fly into shallow left field. Instead of an easy out, Seattle SS Jose Lopez collided with LF Raul Ibanez, and the ball dropped for a double. But what cost the Mariners in what became a 6-5 loss was what happened next. Or rather, what didn't happen next.

Seattle manager Bob Melvin had reliever Julio Mateo pitch to the next batter, Jermaine Dye. What Melvin should have done is intentionally walk Dye, setting up a force at any base. Instead, Dye grounded out to second, advancing Durazo to third. Now with 1 out but no double play possibility, Melvin decided to walk the next two batters, loading the bases. Then Bobby Crosby sacrificed Estaban German home.

Another close loss, another Melvin miscue. Is Dusty Baker available?

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Ah... a piping-hot espresso and the morning paper. Mariners had a travel day, Ichiro's still at 247 hits... the House extends middle class tax cuts, sends the bill to The Future... Jack Straw is a Cat Stevens fan... God, that Dilbert just kills me, really he does. And what other important business has Congress been devoting its valuable time to? Iraq? The economy? Social Security? The looming pension crisis? No—keeping "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance:

The legislation, promoted by GOP conservatives, would prevent federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from hearing cases challenging the words "under God," a part of the pledge for the past 50 years. AP, 9/23/2004

One could ask how the Separation of Powers and the principle of judicial review can be legislated away. But what with the lies leading to the illegal invasion of Iraq, the theft of the Florida 2000 vote, the PATRIOT Act, illegal imprisonments, etc., shredding more of the Constitution is hardly worth mentioning.

And what other priorities did our federal representatives attend to? I happen to know that last week the Republican't-controlled House voted to protect American corporations that have moved headquarters to the Caribbean to avoid U.S. taxes. By a vote of 189-211, the House voted to allow such lowlifes to continue to receive federal contracts from the Treasury and Transportation departments and other agencies.

Isn't free enterprise great?

A call to the Red Phone

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Yet another instance of documents under a microscope—but this time from the anti-Dubya side. Blue Lemur is reporting that papers from Bush's Guard file show signs of being altered, possibly to coverup a failed attempt to become a flight instructor (after already being removed from fighter status). The papers under scrutiny come from Bush's discharge form.

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CBS News today apologized for the "60 Minutes" story charging that President Bush had received favorable treatment in the Texas Air National Guard
...
CBS News President Andrew Heyward... [said retired National Guard lieutenant colonel Bill] Burkett "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report," Heyward said, "giving her a false account of the documents' origins"... Source

Who cares? Marian Carr Knox has already stated, twice, that she typed other memos that contained the same information as in the suspect memo.

But Marian Carr Knox, a former Texas Air National Guard secretary, said she did type similar documents for her boss, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian.

"I know that I didn't type them. However, the information in those is correct," Knox told CBS anchor Dan Rather.

Knox, 86, had previously told the same story to the Dallas Morning News in a report that was published Wednesday morning.

The newspaper said Knox "spoke with precise recollection about dates, people and events."
...
Knox told Rather that Killian was "upset" that Bush did not obey his order to have a physical, and she said the young lieutenant showed disregard for the rules to a degree that irritated other pilots.

Knox said the information about Bush in the memos was familiar and that she had typed documents for Killian with similar complaints. She also said the colonel did keep private "cover your back" files.
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She told the Morning News, "I remember very vividly when Bush was there and all the yak-yak that was going on about it."
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Knox suggested that the memos obtained by CBS News might have been recreations made by someone who had seen the other documents, although she conceded that was "supposition" on her part. Source

Mrs. Knox is an eyewitness saying that Dubya didn't fulfill his Guard obligations. He still cannot produce any credible evidence or witnesses to the contrary.

Imaginative Florida strategy. Democrats still smarting from the Florida 2000 fiasco (and aren't we all?) may want to check out the site for Operation Snowbird. Site owner Lawrence Caplan is targeting New York voters who spend part of the year in Florida to change their registrations and vote in Florida by absentee ballot. Caplan's rationale is that since Kerry is likely to win New York by a huge margin, it only makes sense to send some of those "extra" votes to where they will do more good.

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Here's yet another example of an anti-Dubya/Dick protestor. Again, the protestor does nothing but exercise freedom of speech, but is assaulted in a public place and "escorted" away like some kind of criminal:

One protester who made his way into the Eugene rally shouted, "Stop the war, bring home the troops," several times before he was tackled by Springfield resident Arthur Briga, a senior citizen and former Marine. Security officers then escorted the demonstrator from the hangar. Cheney urged the crowd to treat the protester "with kindness." Source

A report on Northwest Public Radio/KUOW added the information that the demonstrator had been "smashed in the face."

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Breaking: (1750 PDT) From The Guardian, where it's already Saturday:

      Iraq had no WMD: the final verdict

It's been widely know for some time that audiences at Dubya/Dick campaign events are tightly controlled. Loyalty oaths must be signed by would-be attendees.

When Vice President Dick Cheney spoke July 31... in Rio Rancho [NM]... several people who showed up at the event complained about being asked to sign endorsement forms in order to receive a ticket to hear Cheney.
...
"Whose vice president is he?" said 72-year-old retiree John Wade of Albuquerque, who was asked to sign the form when he picked up his tickets. "I just wanted to hear what my vice president had to say, and they make me sign a loyalty oath." Source

Hand-picked rally audiences are nothing new. What is alarming is that harsh retaliation is occuring against dissenters who commit the apostasy of heckling Dubya. Harrassment is taking the form of loss of jobs, arrests, and even assaults.

(Aug. 21)—[Glen Hiller,] who heckled President Bush at a political rally was fired from his job at [Octavo Designs of Frederick, Md.,] an advertising and design company for offending a client who provided tickets to the event. ... Hiller was ushered out of Hedgesville High School on Tuesday after shouting his disagreement with Bush's comments about the war... The crowd had easily drowned out Hiller with its chant: "Four more years." Source

A recent victim is Ms. Lynne Gobbell of Moulton, AL. Her offense? She showed up for her job. Gobbell

was fired from her job at Enviromate, a company that makes housing insulation, for driving to work with a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker in the rear windshield of her Chevy Lumina. The person who did the firing was Phil Geddes, who owns the company and is an enthusiastic Bush supporter. (Although Gobbell hasn't done any proselytizing for Kerry at Enviromate, Geddes distributed a flyer to all Enviromate employees explaining why they should vote for Bush.)
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"...my manager told me that Phil said to remove the sticker off my car or I was fired," she said. "I told him that Phil couldn't tell me who to vote for. He said, 'Go tell him.' "
...
"I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, 'Yes, I did.' I told him he couldn't tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, 'I own this place.' " Source

Luckily, Ms. Gobbell's plight came to the attention of John F. Kerry, who has given her a job. Not even elected yet and already Kerry has a net gain in job creation.

You can't even yell at Laura Bush. Yesterday, Sue Niederer of Hopewell, N.J., attempted to confront the Selected First Lady during a speech:

Police escorted [Niederer] from a rally at a firehouse after she demanded to know why her son, Army 1st Lt. Seth Dvorin, 24, was killed in Iraq. Dvorin died in February while trying to disarm a bomb.

As shouts of "Four More Years" subsided, Niederer, standing in the middle of a crowd of some 700, continued to shout about the killing of her son. Secret Service and local police escorted her out of the event, handcuffed her and placed her in the back of a police van.

Niederer was later charged with defiant trespass and released. Source: Guardian/AP 9-17-2004

Her son died for Bush's war, and she is hauled off like a common criminal.

The retaliation is even occuring with government sanction and cooperation. The 'offended client' in the Hiller firing was a PR firm representing the Berkeley County, WV, public school district.

On July 4, 2004, the day on which we celebrate our nation's freedoms, the Republicans decided instead to breach the 1st Amendment. Jeff & Nicole Rank of Texas were arrested on the grounds of the West Virginia state capitol because, at a Bush campaign appearance

The pair wore T-shirts with the message "Love America, Hate Bush."

The Ranks were ticketed for trespassing and released. They have been given summonses to appear in court...
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Those who applied for tickets [to the Bush event] were required to supply their names, addresses, birth dates, birthplaces and Social Security numbers.

A two-page document given to ticket holders said they were prohibited from bringing certain items to the event... T-shirts, political buttons and lapel pins were not on the list of prohibited items. Source

Trespassing charges against the Ranks were later dropped, and the City Council of Charleston issued an apology at the behest of a Democratic member.

Bush's Secret Service detail is even getting into the act.

(Sep 9)—seven AIDS activists who heckled President Bush during a campaign appearance were shoved and pulled from the room -- some by their hair, one by her bra straps -- and then arrested for disorderly conduct and detained for an hour.

After Bush campaign bouncers handled the evictions, Secret Service agents, accompanied by Bush's personal aide, supervised the arrests and detention of the activists and blocked the news media from access to the hecklers.
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Bush forced a smile... as the crowd drowned them out with chants of "Four More Years"...

[A Secret Service] agent, who did not give his name, told one journalist... that there was a "different set of rules" for reporters who did not seek out the activists. Source

Do you suppose assault charges are pending against this gentleman (and I use that term loosely)? Probably not. But Bush and his cultists running scared from dissent has got to be an emotional boost for Kerry.


 

Sidebar: The Littlest Shill (or, "Not since Ryan and Tatum O'Neal teamed up...") (1640 PDT) Check out our friends at T.I.T.S., where Citizen Daryl relays a very interesting piece of sleuthing that exposes one Phil Parlock as a repeat dirty trickster, a three-time offender of the Republican't stripe. It's certainly a case of child exploitation by the pro-family party—how about endangerment, too? Chapter 49-1-3(a)(c) of the West Virginia Code lists "mental or emotional injury" in the definition of abuse or neglect. Maybe someone should call the authorities and run the question by them. You know, just to be safe. The number for the West Virginia Bureau for Children & Families Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline is 800-352-6513. Remember, it's spelled p-a-r-l-o-c-k.

Scamming the Media, Parlock Style (Truthout)

Sidebar: NBCee Danger Everywhere. Are there a lot of TV shows that look like they are being written by Tom Ridge and Dick Cheney? Last night while I was not laughing at the latest installment of NBC's Joey, I happened to see two previews for new episodes of Law & Order and Medical Investigations. Both episodes attempt to garner viewership with storylines about Our Troops In Danger Here At Home: on L&O, a soldier is MURRRDERRRED, and the prime suspect might just be a former military prisoner! And on MI, stateside soldiers are attacked with bio/chemical WMDs! So what if such things aren't really happening—an America too afraid to leave the warm glow of their TVs and go outdoors equals Big Ratings! (As well as low voter turnout.)

And the odds we'll soon be seeing the J.A.G. legal team defend a Muslim Army chaplain falsely accused of espionage? Or a new spinoff Law & Order: Secret Military Tribunals? Not likely! Instead, turn off the TV and join me at the multiplex, where'll I'll be seeing John Sayles's Silver City and the Thunderbirds homage, Team America.

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Ya gotta love it when the Bushies' arrogance gets so extreme that even a high profile journalist has to bust them on it. Witness CNN's Capital Gang from last weekend; the panel included Bush pitbull Robert Novak and guest host Al Hunt of the Wall Street Urinal. The segment (transcript) was the CBS story on the Killian memos that show Bush didn't complete his national guard obligations. CBS has so far declined to name where it obtained the memos; but Novak has always refused to divulge the source(s) who leaked to him the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Which side would Novak take in the Killian matter? Let's see:

NOVAK: ..."The Boston Globe" got a new expert who said the thing probably is authentic. In the same story, they went back to the expert that "The Washington Post" had used. He said it isn't authentic. I think it's going to be very interesting to find out if these are forged or phony documents. That's—as a journalist, I think that's a very interesting story.

I'd like CBS, at this point, to say where they got these documents from. They didn't get them from a CIA agent. I don't believe there was [sic] any laws involved. I don't think we'll have a special prosecutor, if they tell. I think they should say where they got these documents because I thought it was a very poor job of reporting by CBS... I thought that the "60 Minutes" thing by Dan Rather was a—was a campaign operation, rather than an attempt to get to the bottom of the truth.

HUNT: Robert Novak, you're saying CBS should reveal its source?

NOVAK: Yes.

HUNT: You do? You think reports [sic] ought to reveal sources?

NOVAK: No, no. Wait a minute.

HUNT: I'm just asking.

NOVAK: I'm just saying in that case.

HUNT: Oh.

NOVAK: I think—I think it's very important. If this is a phony document, the American—the people should know about it.

HUNT: So in some cases, reporters ought to reveal sources.

NOVAK: Yes.

HUNT: But not in all cases.

NOVAK: That's right. Source

Sidebar: The Mark Of Rove. (1300 PDT) At the end of my Sept. 10 post I made the observation that the Killian memos, if fake, could have been leaked to help Dubya by casting doubt upon the authenticity of all disclosed and yet-to-be disclosed records. Almost as a joke, I closed with the remark that Karl Rove would be good at such a plot. It turns out others are thinking the same thing:

Sidebar: Huge Bush drop among Undecideds (1100 PDT) From Bloomberg News:

Sept. 15— President George W. Bush's approval rating declined to 44 percent from 56 percent among undecided voters since the Republican National Convention, a poll by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center found.
...
The poll found 32 percent of uncommitted, or "persuadable," voters approved of Bush's handling of the economy and 63 percent disapproved. In August, 39 percent approved and 54 percent disapproved. Bush's approval rating among these voters dipped from 56 percent in August to 44 percent in September.

Sidebar: impending Democratic majority? (0933 PDT) The vote totals from yesterday's first-ever Washington State Partisan Primary show that 54% checked the Democratic box. Only 37% checked Republican. That's a D majority of all votes, including those of the petulant babies who refused to indicate a party preference, and so were only able to vote in nonpartisan races.

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It's Primary Election Day 2004, and many Washington state voters are revealing themselves to be spoiled rotten. A recent court decision held that the major parties and Libertarians have the right to control who nominates their candidates: Democrats voting for Democrats, Republicans voting for Republicans, Libertarians voting for Libertarians, idiots voting for Greens, and so on.

I know what you're thinking: "But Mr_Blog, all that means is that each party has a separate primary. You only vote in one party's column. Lots of states do that." Exactly! It means you don't live in Washington. For in Washington for the last 70-something years we've had a blanket primary—candidates from all parties in the same column, only one column, and voters just go down the offices ticking off whatever candidates they want irrespective of party. Now that's all over; this year, for the first time, a voter must check a box for Party Preference and vote only in that column.

A lot of people are livid over this. "I vote for the person," say the whiners. Mr_Blog hates this philosophy. You might as well say "I vote for the best hairdo" or "I vote for the one with the most attractive dog." It is the reverse of what we ought to do; it is "I vote on personality, not the issues." The reality shows the silliness in even sharper relief: stating party preference isn't a party registration, elections officials don't turn the information over to the parties.

For weeks the Personality Voters, the angry nonpartisan partisans, have phoned call-in shows and lettered to Editors. This morning on KIRO 710-AM, fill-in host Charles Jaco interviewed Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed about the backlash. Reed said that many absentee ballots already sent in have colorful political statements written on them, concerning what poll workers can do with their partisan ballots.

Worse yet, the Personality Voters threaten to protest by not voting. Jesus H. Christ. Remember Civics 101—low turnout benefits Republicans. The polls show Washington is leaning to Kerry now; if it goes for Bush, I know who I'm blaming.

I am here to say Grow Up You Freakin' Babies. You don't live in some happy nonpartisan Nirvana. In case you haven't noticed we are living in highly partisan times. The right wing wackos are already voting a de facto partisan ballot: Republican all the way.

Time for the rest of us to form a progressive bloc: fill in the bubble next to Democratic and vote in that column. Just this year at least. But if you think you'll just die if you can't vote for an R in at least one race, try this as a security blanket: vote in the Democratic column, but vote for an R as a Democratic write-in.

Got your blankie? Now stick your thumbs in your mouths and go vote. Freakin' babies.

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Seattle is known around the world for its 1962-vintage Alweg monorail, perhaps the biggest icon for the city save for the Space Needle. Many visitors are still surprised that the route of the art deco train-on-a-stick is less than a mile long, shuttling between the Needle and a downtown station.

A plan to begin design work for a 14-mile line finally got the go ahead in 2002, and has been problem-plagued ever since. Errors in estimating the revenues from a special car tax led to tax collection shortfalls; the pricetag of the hypothetical train rose, forcing design changes.

While the bad news piled up, a few citizens began organizing a recall campaign. Petitions were circulated, getting enough signatures for the Nov. 2004 ballot—except it has been tied up in court. The case may have been resolved today: an appeals court ruled in favor of the recall.

A state appeals court this morning ruled that anti-monorail Initiative 83 should proceed to the November ballot.

The judges did not determine whether the initiative would ultimately be declared legal, but their immediate priority was to preserve the public's opportunity to re-vote the project.
...
The Seattle City Council planned to decide today whether to forward the measure to King County elections officials for placement on the Nov. 2 ballot, and the city was waiting on the court's guidance.
...
Today's ruling sets the stage for a fourth monorail showdown in Seattle.

Voters approved the line in 2002 by 877 votes, after they passed planning initiatives in 1997 and 2000 by wider margins.

The SMP's tax income has come in nearly one-third below projections, it chose a controversial path through Seattle Center and its current plans show support columns wider that the slender three-foot columns promoted during the campaign. Source

What should happen to the recall? I'm of two minds. On the one hand there's the The People Have Already Spoken argument: we've already voted, several times. Whether the monorail was approved in 2002 by an 800 vote margin or 8,000 votes, we can't keep second guessing the planning of a massive public works project. But then there's the converse argument: The Taxpayers Are Free to Change Their Minds; it's why we have ballot questions.

Yes, I know the recall is being bankrolled by shadowy business interests who are afraid monorail construction will hurt their property values. But in this instance I think greed wound up on the right side.

1. The monorail plan, especially the cost, has changed drastically in the past two years, and for the worse. As noted, funding levels are below projections. The recently opened Las Vegas monorail came in at a cost of $162 million per mile, even with no difficult terrain or water crossings like there will be in Seattle. Moreover, a bid was received from only one contracting team, led by Hitachi. So the Seattle Monorail contract will be awarded after a negotiation, not a competition.

2. The People Have Spoken, but changing their minds is inconvenient only for the planning bureaucracy. Agency inertia is difficult to check, but that shouldn't be the deciding factor on what is essentially a taxation and urban development question.

3. The bankrollers of the recall are not its only supporters, businesses and residents along the projected route appear to be lining up against the project. Their opinions should not be discounted. After all, it's for the people along the route that the monorail is to be built; if you live too far from the route, it's just not convenient.

Longtime followers of this website know my opinions about mass transit: what the U.S. has now works only for a few big cities, and conventional technologies have proven they cannot serve the rest. If it were up to me we would make a relatively small public investment to develop a number of new-paradigm automated transit systems.

The facts are these (and they are uncontested by even the pro-monorail camp): the monorail won't improve traffic; the planned corridor is already well-served by buses; the number of cartrips the monorail is expected to reduce annually is but a fraction of the number that take place in the Seattle area daily.

If the benefit is to be small, the people have the right to pull the plug if the cost is too high. Better sooner than later. In fact, the leaders of the monorail campaign in 2002 promised to take the plan back to the voters if it got too expensive:

If the measure is approved by voters, ETC Chairman Tom Weeks has promised that if the project can't be built for the anticipated cost, it will not proceed. He expects construction bids would be received next year.
"It's all or nothing," he said. "If we can't do 14 miles, we're going to go back to the voters."
When asked what cost level would prompt a revote, he said, "We don't have a drop-dead number yet." Source

I think it's time to ask. After that, we should do the same with the monstrosity known as Central Link Light Rail. But that's a blog post for another day.

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Wow, so one or two of the new Killian memos on G.W. might be fake? In an interview, the source of which I'll relate below, Mr. Fred Showker, who teaches typography and digital graphics at James Madison University, says of the Killian signature on one of the memos:

"Do you think he would have stopped that 'K' nice and cleanly, right there before it ran into the typewriter 'Jerry," Showker asked. "You can't stop a ballpoint pen with a nice square ending like that ... The end of that 'K' should be round ... it looks like you took a pair of snips and cut it off so you could see the 'Jerry.'"

Way back when, I used to do a lot of cut & paste layout work, so I know a snip job when I see one. But here's the thing: it only looks that way if you don't look at the rest of the signature. Try it: open the memo in Acrobat or Preview, and zoom in on the signature. Keep zooming. Now look—the tailend of the K doesn't look any more "square" than the bottoms of the other letters in "Killian", for instance the bottom of the first "i" and the connectors in the "illi" sequence. Look at the tops of those letters, too. Pretty square.

Here are the other things. Look under the signature at Killian's title, "Lt. Colonel[,] Commander". The letters don't share the same baseline; some are higher than others. Many of the letters in the body of the memo also exhibit this characteristic. Now, it is possible to create this effect in MS Word. But if we are to accept this is a fake, we have to accept that the faker was smart enough to alter character vertical position, but not smart enough to know to use a fixed-width font.

Moreover, if this had been faked on a computer, why would you go to the trouble of changing character position, printing it so that some of the lines are crooked like a bad typewriter, and aging it so well—and then do a sloppy, paste-on signature? Why not scan the signature, pretty it up in Photoshop, and then drop it into the document so that it overlaps text in a realistic way? Maybe the K-tail ends abruptly because that was just how Killian wrote.

Do I think it's a fake? On balance, No. Consider who broke the allegations: a few right-wing rags like Cybercast News (poster of the above passage) and Weekly Standard. And consider the wider context: Bush still cannot produce documents (other than payroll records) or (credible) witnesses to prove that he performed his required Guard service.

But there's something else that troubled me last night. It is a passage from a story by the New York Times's Terence Hunt (9/9):

Yet, it was the White House... that distributed four memos from 1972 and 1973 from Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, now deceased, who was the commander of the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Houston where Bush served. ...[The] White House did not question their accuracy. There was no explanation why the Pentagon was unable to find the documents on its own.

We don't know the provenance of the memos, but we do know they didn't come from the Pentagon. It is important to note that Bush doesn't have to prove conclusively all the evidence is fake or wrong, he only has to create doubt about some of the evidence. The political effect is pretty much the same. How better to do this than create your own fake memo, include a dead giveaway (like a proportional font), and slip it into a stack of real memos? Who do you think would be better at doing this, Karl Rove or Jeanne Shaheen? (Karl Rove.)

Finally, Costa Rica has dropped out of the "coalition" of the willing.

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Ladies and bloggers, yesterday we learned of additional files that contain history of Dubya's supposed time in the Texas Air National Guard:

The Defense Department on Tuesday [Sept. 7] released more than two dozen pages of records about Bush and his former Texas unit.
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Pentagon officials said they discovered the documents... while performing a more comprehensive search "out of an abundance of caution" in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Associated Press. Source: CNN/AP 9/8/2004

Yet on February 10th of this year, White House PR flack Scott McClellan said they had already made public all the files on Dubya's National Guard service:

The questions came up in the interview on "Meet the Press"... And it was our belief... that all the records that existed that were relevant were already released [back in the 2000 campaign]...

...we were put in touch with the Personnel Center in Denver, Colorado... [White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett] contacted them and found out that there was, indeed, additional payroll records... And to our knowledge, this is all the records that exist that are relevant to this topic.
White House Press Briefing, 2/10/2004

How many times are "all the records" going to be released? How many more files on Dubya are out there in the archives of the Texas Air Guard, the Pentagon, or even the George the First Presidential Library (which had the photo of Dubya wearing a ribbon he didn't earn)? How many have been intentionally squirreled away, in hopes that no one comes looking for them?

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Breaking:

Bush missed Guard duty, records say
President also avoided disciplinary action for absences

...Twice during his Guard service—when he joined in May 1968 and before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School— Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty.

He didn't meet the commitments or face the punishment, the records show. The 1973 document has been overlooked in news media accounts. The 1968 document has received scant notice.

On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge [MA], Bush signed a document that declared, "It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months..." Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit.

But Bush never signed up with a Boston-area unit.

In 1999, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett... [said] that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, Bartlett now concedes. "I must have misspoke," Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director, said...

...on May 27, 1968, Bush signed a "statement of understanding" pledging to achieve "satisfactory participation" that included attendance at 24 days of annual weekend duty... Yet Bush, a fighter-interceptor pilot, performed no service for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973, the records show.
...
retired Army Colonel Gerald A. Lechliter, one of a number of retired military officers who have studied Bush's records and old National Guard regulations, [said]... "[Bush] broke his contract with the United States government—without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen"
...
In May 1972, Bush was given permission to move to Alabama temporarily to work on a US Senate campaign, with the provision that he do equivalent training with a unit in Montgomery. But Bush's service records do not show him logging any service in Alabama until October of that year.

And even that service is in doubt. Since... May 2000, no one has come forward with any credible recollection of having witnessed Bush performing guard service in Alabama or after he returned to Houston in 1973. While Bush was in Alabama, he was removed from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical in July 1972. On May 1, 1973, Bush's superior officers wrote that they could not complete his annual performance review because he had not been observed at the Houston base during the prior 12 months. Source: Boston Globe 9/8/2004

Do you think he'll try to say that serving as Commander in Chief fulfils his Guard obligation?

...is brought to you courtesy of the Dick:

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating..." Source

But Dick, you and W have already proved that you can't prevent us from being hit in a devastating way. That makes the two of you—one might say—the wrong choice for the wrong job at the wrong time. And say: you seem awfully confident that Al Qaeda isn't going to strike before the election. What exactly do you know, HMMMM? You're going down, boy.

Another nomination for The Idiotic 527 Group Award goes to the apparently right-wing Voters Education Committee. Yesterday the Washington Public Disclosure Commission ruled the VEC must disclose the names of the person or persons bankrolling the group's current million-dollar negative TV ad campaign against Democrat Attorney General candidate Deborah Senn. VEC was registered by the chairman of another group that donates to Republicans, and a staffer from that group is listed as VEC's financial custodian.

While I love it when Rs are caught red-handed, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the culprits turned out to be the egregious Mark Sidran, Senn's opponent in the D primary. Sidran is using a witty fundraising letter from Al Franken (they were Harvard classmates), hoping that Seattle Democrats will forget how Sidran as City Attorney pushed a number of "civility" laws whose purpose was to hassle the poor and homeless—making it illegal to sit or lie on sidewalks, for instance. Sidran and his wife Anais Winant also tried to prevent Sonya's restaurant from opening on First Avenue, because they said it would be a "blight". The Sidrans just happen to own the building next door. A Korean-American owned business, Sonya's was a dive in its old 7th Avenue location, but the owners have proved the Sidrans wrong with a successful makeover in both decor and clientele.

And in future maybe Al Franken will be more careful with his endorsements.

Bike News: I am pleased to report that the Princeton Tec lighting company is going to introduce a bicycle version of its outstanding Corona headband light. The word came yesterday from Jason Harrington of Princeton Tec's Outdoor Division.

The Corona looks like a large plastic wristwatch. Where the watchface would be are mounted 8 bright LEDs; buttons allow the user to vary the number of LEDs in use, and to toggle between steady and flash. The only thing making the current Corona unsuitable for bikes is the short power cord; hopefully the bike version remedies this.

Harrington said the Corona bike light might hit the market in two months.

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Breaking: A superior court judge in Thurston County, WA (location of the state capital) today ruled unconstitutional Washington's 1998 Defense of Marriage Act. This is the second judicial finding against the law at the county level.

Articles: Ban on same-sex marriages struck down—again
Second judge strikes down Washington's gay-marriage ban
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Paging Dr. Venkman

Ms_Blog and I were playing Scrabble last Saturday, and the oddest thing happened.

She had left the room briefly, and was in the kitchen recharging our cocktails.

I had just put down a word, and had drawn several new tiles and placed them on my tile rack. One of the new tiles was the X. All I could do now was await Ms_Blog and the cocktails. I sat back in my chair; I looked out the window.

Suddenly there was a clatter of a Scrabble tile hitting the floor. I looked over and there, about 4 feet to my left, was a tile, face down. I assumed it had been in my seat cushion, and I had dislodged it. I picked it up.

At this point Ms_Blog returned. I turned the tile over in my hand; it was an X. I looked at my tile rack; the X I had just placed there wasn't there anymore. The only conclusion I could reach was that the X picked itself up and tossed itself on the floor.

Before you comment, know these facts: nothing bumped the table; there was no wind; the cat was outside; no other tiles fell off the rack.

Sidebar: ...and nurses make you better.

"We've got an issue in America," the president said in discussing the need to limit malpractice awards. "Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." Source

John Kerry went on the offensive on the first day after Labor Day:

"Only George W. Bush could celebrate over a record budget deficit of $422 billion, a loss of 1.6 million jobs and Medicare premiums that are up by a record 17 percent," Kerry said. "W stands for wrong the wrong direction for America."

The Congressional Budget Office projected this election-year's federal deficit will reach $422 billion, the highest ever but less than the amount analysts predicted earlier this year.
...
The estimate came as Kerry talked to North Carolina voters about his plan to change tax rules that let companies defer paying taxes on money earned overseas.

"We give them a complete freebie, and when I'm president of the United States, it will take me about a nanosecond to ask the Congress to close that stupid loophole that rewards companies," Kerry said. Source: ABC/AP 9-7-04

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...was the big applause line from Dubya's acceptance speech. The end justifies the means and I'll do whatever I want to get payback is what he wanted to say. And you know what? If he had, the standing ovations would have been just as loud and frequent.

Lies; distortions; violating the Constitution; imprisonment without trial; sweetheart deals for corporate cronies; fearmongering. These and more are the "whatever" that Bush and his Bushies have proved all too willing to engage in. Nothing has changed; last night's pretty words were spin for the faithful, nothing more.

Some other reactions:

Saying whatever it takes to win
At another point the president argued... "Do I forget the lessons of September 11th and take the word of a madman or do I take action to defend our country? Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time."

Hearing that line... a listener could be forgiven for thinking that Iraq was complicit in the Sept. 11 attacks.
...
Last night Bush also took pains to cast Kerry as someone prone to wavering and vacillation, while other convention speakers over the week accused the Democratic nominee of disastrously poor judgment.

...Yet when it comes to the all-important issue of presidential judgment, it's truly remarkable to see that kind of attack made on behalf of an incumbent whose principal rationales for taking the nation to war with Iraq simply haven't been borne out.

...one has to believe that President Bush would have invaded Iraq even knowing that the invasion would reveal neither a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction nor a network of collaborative ties to Al Qaeda. That contention strains credulity. Scott Lehigh, Boston Globe

Swaggering toward Election Day
George W. Bush accepted the Republican nomination for president Thursday, dragging his "compassionate conservatism" slogan out of the spider hole where it's been hiding since the Sept. 11 attacks...

The second-term domestic agenda Bush proposed, however, was rather shopworn...

Bush also advocated welfare reform—but wait? Didn't President Clinton already do that? And didn't Clinton also make worker retraining, as Bush said he would push through...?

And why didn't he mention the ballooning federal deficits? As a forward-looking blueprint for a second Bush term, the speech disappointed. But as a showcase of the softer, compassionate side of Bush, it was a success. Mary Jacoby, Salon

Secrets of the Garden
President Bush [on the cover of Newsweek] is standing alone, with the words "No Excuses" emblazoned just below his chest.

I asked Elizabeth Roxas, former principal dancer at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, "If I were to play Bush, how would I exude the kind of toughness that's on that cover?" She said, "It leads from the chest. Even the way his arm is sort of separated from underneath his armpits—it's not closed in." It looks like he's going to reach for his guns.

The public has danced all over Mr. Bush's verbal gaffes for four years. It has become clearer here that it's not about the words.

Richard Slotkin, the author of "Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in 20th-Century America," explained to me how the cowboy gunslinger myth might fit with this political campaign.

"The thing that the cowboy knows, he knows instinctively," Mr. Slotkin said. "And everybody in the audience knows what it is. It's 'a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.' You are pitted against an enemy that is so merciless that it's kill or be killed."

Connected to this cowboy myth is the "scary" story. There was only one story at the convention, at least inside the halls, and that's the story of Sept. 11...

The Republicans have turned Mr. Bush's verbal limitations into virtues. Mr. Cheney describes the president as a man who speaks plainly. His audience believes that it sees all it needs to see...

I sat with three delegates in a bar, and asked specifically about what they connected to in Mr. Bush. "Sincerity," Bill Quinn of Pocono Lake, Pa., told me. "Speaking from the heart and believing in your convictions. Firm hand shake and he looks you in the eye. Gives you his word. That's sincerity." Anna Deavere Smith, in The New York Times

Bush says world too dangerous to risk U.S. leadership change
If this election were about the economy, President Bush would be in trouble. If it were about the war in Iraq, the bag is decidedly mixed. If it were about progress in the war on terror, he would be on firmer but hardly solid ground.

So the president and his followers made this Republican National Convention largely about someone else: John Kerry.

The message was martial and it was clear: The world is too dangerous to risk change, and changing for Kerry is not worth the risk.
...
It was not a night to talk about missions not accomplished. The president continued to draw tight the link between the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq, a link that an independent commission has rejected.

He ridiculed Kerry's vote against an $87 billion supplemental appropriation for military operations and reconstruction... "My opponent... voted against this money for bullets, fuel and vehicles and body armor..." (Much of the funding for body armor was added to the bill by Democrats in the House, not the administration...)
...
In the hermetic environment of the convention, Bush had ultimate control. But more than this convention, it is the uncontrollables—things such as economic data and terrorist incidents around the globe and possibly at home—that will determine whether he gets a second term. Michael Tackett, Chicago Tribune

Decision 2004: The Stars Weigh In. One of the things I've enjoyed doing since starting this blog is reading other people's blogs. One I found recently is Robert Wilkinson's The Aquarius Papers. Wilkinson appears to be an astrologer and author in addition to commentator.

A Wilkinson post from the other day concerns his claim of inside info that Dick Cheney is going to step down from the GOP ticket, for health reasons, in favor of John McCain:

Cheney is out, John McCain is In
This just in from my connections in New York. According to an "ultimate insider," (and the source of this one is REALLY an insider!) word is that Black Dick is about to resign for "health reasons," and that John McCain will be annointed the next Veep in a matter of days, if not hours.
This of course fixes the election for the Repubs. Apparently Dick was a drag on the line for the undecided voters, and the machine offered the second banana job to Big John, who will accept despite loathing Bush personally. This definitely jibes with other indicators I've been tracking. Source

Though my source said that the Cheney resignation would take place in "days, maybe hours," remember the playbook dictates that they wait for the right timing for the exit and John's annointment. The Repubs are strategists, patient, and willing to do what it takes. This guarantees dominating the news cycle any time it looks like the Dems are building momentum, whenever that might be. Source

Wilkinson's instincts are good. What I'm afraid of is that his sources and "indicators" are from a plane of existence different from our own.

We're not buying it. 1345PDT— Today's poll numbers show Dubya may get a Tony nomination for his Convention performance, but it's not changing public opinion—much. Zogby polling numbers through to Sept. 2: Bush job performance: 48% "Exc/Good" (up 1%). The biggest convention bounce is in the hazy "overall opinion" category: Zogby has Bush at 54%, up 3% from the previous week. But on the preference question, the latest numbers show Kerry and Bush tied or separated by only 2-3% (and note that Nader indeed has the spoiler margin). The Fox poll, of all things, has Kerry ahead by 1%. In other words, it's still even. Bring on the debates.

On the web: PollingReport.com

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0920PDT— At present there are only 2 hits in Google News about Bush Medalgate. But bless the blogs and progressive sites: 645 hits.

Tune in to Al Franken right now, he's exposing last night's Zell Miller and Dick Cheney LIES about Kerry's defense votes.

1000PDT—The Washington Post did its best to set the record straight, for those who bother to read farther down in the stories:

Cheney started with a comment the Democrat made while in his twenties, saying that he wanted U.S. service members deployed "only at the directive of the United Nations..."
...
Democrat Zell Miller of Georgia... said that "Kerry would let Paris decide when America need defending; I want Bush to decide."
...
"He talks about leading a more sensitive war on terror, as though al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side," Cheney jeered, to laughter and boos in the convention hall. "USA! USA! USA!" chanted the convention audience in mid-speech.
...
Giving the United Nations a veto over deployment of U.S. forces is not Kerry's position now nor has it been any time as an elected official. Source

...both speakers also condemned a vote Kerry cast against Bush's request for $87 billion for... Iraq and Afghanistan. Cheney said Kerry "does not seem to... support American troops in combat."

Kerry voted for an alternative version of the bill that would have funded some of the spending by raising taxes on incomes greater than $312,000. For his part, Bush had vowed to veto a version of the bill that passed that would have converted half of the Iraq rebuilding plan into a loan. Source

Then & Now. 1030PDT—And finally, Kerry hits back on last night's Cheney flip-flops:

Deeply Held Convictions - The Cheney Flip-Flops

Cheney Strongly Opposed Taking Out Saddam In 1991...
Cheney Said "We Got It Right" By Leaving Saddam In Power...
Cheney Proposed The Cuts For Which He Now Criticizes Kerry...
Cheney Opposed Sanctions Because They Hurt Halliburton...
Cheney Advocated Easing Sanctions Against Libya, Iran, and Syria...
While Vice President, Imposed and Renewed Sanctions [on] Those Countries...
Cheney Was Once a Deficit Hawk...
Now, Cheney Ignores the Skyrocketing Deficit...

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I know, you probably choked when you heard that John McCain told the GOP assemblage

The years of keeping Saddam in a box were coming to a close. The international consensus that he be kept isolated and unarmed had eroded to the point that many critics of military action had decided the time had come again to do business with Saddam, despite his near daily attacks on our pilots, and his refusal, until his last day in power, to allow the unrestricted inspection of his arsenal. Source

Yeah, I know: SO much wrong with that paragraph.

There's a lot of lying going on in New York this week, and here's one that is so far getting almost no coverage: House Speaker Dennis Hastert has vomited all over the gravitas of his office by "speculating," to FOX's Chris Wallace, that progressive financier George Soros gets his money from shady "drug groups".

"You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where - if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from," Hastert mused. An astonished Chris Wallace asked: "Excuse me?" The Speaker went on: "Well, that's what he's been for a number years - George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he's got a lot of ancillary interests out there." Wallace: "You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?" Hastert: "I'm saying I don't know where groups - could be people who support this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know."

Where else is this smear getting play? Why, the right wing media of course—the NY Daily News, the Washington Times, and Rupert Murdoch's Times of London. Having entered the newsstream, it will no doubt be picked up by thousands of sources. Let's try tracking the number of hits it gets in Google News. At the moment it's... 8. Four of those are stories about Soros demanding an apology.

Sidebar: What's he got against garages? From 2001, here's one for the file labeled "Bush cannot deal with criticism":

When Bush Senior ran for office, Laura Bush was offered some advice by her mother-in-law Barbara. She was told not to criticise her husband's speeches whilst he was working on his father's campaign. She was careful to follow the advice, but one night she let slip.

Laura Bush said: "we were just turning into the driveway and he said 'Tell me the truth, how was my speech?' And I said 'Well it weren't that good'. And with that he drove into the garage wall." Source

Irony Alert. Theresa LePore (R), the woman who gave us the Butterfly Ballot, has apparently lost her bid for reelection as Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections. With 100% of the vote counted, she is trailing Dr. Art Anderson (D), 52% to 48%. The problem is that LePore's own office counted more than 100% of the vote: over 6,000 more absentee ballots were recorded than the number that were actually sent in. All the Palm Beach absentee votes are being recounted.

Hardball time? (1620 PDT) Is this the start of Kerry getting some payback over the Swiftboat smear? A new story in the charmingly-named Blue Lemur hits Bush with a disclosure sure to earn the wrath of veterans:

President Bush photographed wearing medal he never earned
A closer examination of a photograph included in President George W. Bush's Air Force records, released by the White House earlier this year, shows then-Second Lieutenant Bush wearing an Air Force Outstanding Unit Award which he never earned.

Additionally, Lieutenant Bush would not have been authorized to wear the ribbon temporarily, the Air Force Personnel Center said in an email.

...The Air Force Public Affairs office tried to answer an inquiry, but went silent and said they just didn’t have enough information to answer after they heard the query was on President Bush.

...The Air Force Historical Research Service Organization confirmed that the 147th Fighter Intercept Group and the 111th Fighter Intercept Squadron received an Air Force Outstanding Unit Award for the time period of 1965-1966, [and] in 1975... [the] photograph [of Bush] had to have been taken some time between... November 26, 1969 and... November 7, 1970 Source

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