bluprnt 4 rvolution: Dubya's Army

Chomsky on terrorism right now

This is St. Noam's recent interview on the state of things. One extremely interesting paragraph.

"Take, say, the invasion of Iraq again. We're told that they didn't find weapons of mass destruction. Well, that's not exactly correct. They did find weapons of mass destruction, namely, the ones that had been sent to Saddam by the United States, Britain, and others through the 1980s. A lot of them were still there. They were under control of U.N. inspectors and were being dismantled. But many were still there. When the U.S. invaded, the inspectors were kicked out, and Rumsfeld and Cheney didn't tell their troops to guard the sites. So the sites were left unguarded, and they were systematically looted. The U.N. inspectors did continue their work by satellite and they identified over 100 sites that were systematically looted, like, not somebody going in and stealing something, but carefully, systematically looted."

And on the topic of democracy in Iraq:
"Now let's talk about withdrawal. Take any day's newspapers or journals and so on. They start by saying the United States aims to bring about a sovereign democratic independent Iraq. I mean, is that even a remote possibility? Just consider what the policies would be likely to be of an independent sovereign Iraq. If it's more or less democratic, it'll have a Shiite majority. They will naturally want to improve their linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran. Most of the clerics come from Iran. The Badr Brigade, which basically runs the South, is trained in Iran. They have close and sensible economic relationships which are going to increase. So you get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore, right across the border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which has been bitterly oppressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. And any moves toward independence in Iraq are surely going to stimulate them, it's already happening. That happens to be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you can just imagine the ultimate nightmare in Washington: a loose Shiite alliance controlling most of the world's oil, independent of Washington and probably turning toward the East, where China and others are eager to make relationships with them, and are already doing it. Is that even conceivable? The U.S. would go to nuclear war before allowing that, as things now stand."

US military to buy bulk anthrax

New Scientist won't let me read the whole article but I'm sure it will be picked up soon. Amazing.

US army plans to bulk-buy anthrax
24 September 2005
David Hambling

THE US military wants to buy large quantities of anthrax, in a controversial move that is likely to raise questions over its commitment to treaties designed to limit the spread of biological weapons.

A series of contracts have been uncovered that relate to the US army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. They ask companies to tender for the production of bulk quantities of a non-virulent strain of anthrax, and for equipment to produce significant volumes of other biological agents. Issued earlier this year, the contracts were discovered by Edward Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, a US-German organisation that campaigns against the use of biological and chemical weapons.

One "biological services" contract specifies: "The company must have the ability and be willing to grow Bacillus anthracis Sterne strain at 1500-litre quantities." Other contracts are for fermentation equipment for producing 3000-litre batches of an unspecified biological agent, and sheep carcasses to ...

and then it gets cut off.

the war on pot smokers

This is an amazing article, from Rolling Stone of all places, about the current DEA strategy for pot smokers: lock them away.

John Walters, Bush's drug czar, has redirected most of the effort of the DEA towards marijuana rather than dealing with pesky drugs like heroine and crack. Recently, the federal governement ruled that even states that legalize medical merijuana are not exempt from drug raids. So clinics in SF are being raided and people there charged with federal crimes, a far worse offence than state.

* All told, the government sinks an estimated $35 billion a year into the War on Drugs.

* The results? "Drug prices are at an all-time low, drug purity is at an all-time high, and polls show that drugs are more available than ever"

* Since 1992, according to a recent analysis of federal crime statistics by the Sentencing Project, arrests for marijuana have soared from 300,000 a year to 700,000.

* The government spends an estimated $4 billion a year arresting and prosecuting marijuana crimes -- more than it spends on treating addiction for all drugs -- and more and more of those busts are for possession rather than dealing.

* One in four people currently in state prisons for pot offenses are classified as "low-level offenders." In New York, arrests for possession -- which now account for nine of every ten busts -- are up twenty-five-fold during the past decade. [I can attest to this personally.]

* 9,000 tons of pot are still harvested each year in the United States

* Walters has launched a nationwide effort to persuade schools to conduct drug tests on student athletes -- and even entire student populations.

* The Supreme Court has upheld drug testing of students involved in sports and other extracurricular activities, [which can] include any student who parks on campus.

CANADIANS! I just want you to know that you dont need to boycott the US or anything. In fact, it's all fine. We are being taken down systematically by George W. Bush and it's SO fucking obvious it's amazing. Look at this:

* "While the feds target pot smokers, a burgeoning meth epidemic is swamping rural communities, especially in the West and the Great Plains. Nearly half of state and local law-enforcement agencies identify meth as their greatest drug threat -- compared with only one in eight for marijuana -- and more than 1 million Americans use the highly addictive drug, which is linked to violent crime, explosions and fires at meth labs, severe health problems, and child and family abuse. In 2003, drug agents busted a staggering 10,182 meth labs, and the fight against meth is straining the resources of local police and sheriffs in small towns. But the White House has proposed slashing federal aid for rural narcotics teams by half. "If those cuts go through, they're going to totally wipe us out," says Lt. Steve Dalton, leader of a drug task force in southwest Missouri."

CAN IT GET ANY MORE BLATENT????

Let them eat bombs.

A message from the Department of Making Things Better for Children in the Middle East By Military Force.

Terry Jones's take on the war in Iraq.

We give these people guns?

Cops will be cops:

Videotaping people on a rooftop making out rather than the arrest of Critical Mass people below.

*Tasering* a man in front of his and other petrefied children for allegidly stealing salad from Chuckey Cheese.

Negroponte and the media who love him

FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism

Media Omissions on Negroponte's Record (more in more)

George W. Bush's February 17 nomination of John Negroponte to the newly
created job of director of intelligence was the subject of a flurry of
media coverage. But one part of Negroponte's resume was given little
attention: his role in the brutal and illegal Contra war against the
Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the mid-1980s.

From 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, a
country that was being used as a training and staging ground for the
CIA-created and -backed Contra armies, who relied on a terrorist strategy
of targeting civilians. Those years saw a massive increase in U.S.
military aid to Honduras, and Negroponte was a key player in organizing
training for the Contras and procuring weapons for the armies that the
United States was building in order to topple the socialist Nicaraguan
government (Extra!, 9-10/01).

Negroponte's ambassadorship was marked by another human rights scandal:
the Honduran army's Battalion 316, which operated as a death squad that
tortured, killed or disappeared "subversive" Hondurans-- and at least one
U.S. citizen, Catholic priest James Carney. Despite regular reporting of
such crimes in the Honduran press, the human rights reports of
Negroponte's embassy consistently failed to raise these issues. Critics
contend that this was no accident: If such crimes had been acknowledged,
U.S. aid to the country's military would have come under scrutiny, which
could have jeopardized the Contra operations.

Many reports included brief mentions of Negroponte's past. The New York
Times (2/18/05), for example, noted that "critics say" that Negroponte
"turned a blind eye to human rights abuses" in Honduras. But the Times
(like most mainstream reports) quoted no critics on the subject; to get a
sense of what Negroponte's critics actually said, you had to tune into
Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now (2/18/05), where Peter Kornbluh of the
National Security Archive said that Negroponte "essentially ran Honduras
as the Reagan administration changed it from a small Central American
country into a territorial battleship, if you will, to fight the Contra
war and overthrow the Sandinista government. He was really the head person
in charge of this whole operation, which became a massive paramilitary war
in the early 1980s."

Kornbluh added that declassified documents from those years show
Negroponte had "stepped out of being U.S. ambassador and kind of put on
the hat of a C.I.A. station chief in pushing for the Contras to get more
arms, in lobbying and meeting with very high Honduran officials to
facilitate U.S. support for the Contras and Honduran cooperation, even
after the U.S. Congress terminated official support for the Contra war."

The night of Bush's announcement, network news broadcasts woefully
understated or misrepresented this history. On NBC Nightly News
(2/17/05), reporter Andrea Mitchell glossed over Negroponte's Honduran
record: "As Ronald Reagan's ambassador to Honduras, he was accused of
ignoring death squads and America's secret war against Nicaragua." While
Negroponte might be accused of ignoring Honduran death squads, no one
could credibly suggest he was ignoring "America's secret war against
Nicaragua." The documentary evidence, as Kornbluh explained, suggests
that he was intimately involved with running it. ABC's Good Morning
America Robin Roberts turned this reality on its head (2/18/05), noting
that Negroponte's "entire life has been a lesson in quiet and measured
diplomacy" and that "he generated controversy long after a stint in
Honduras when he denied he knew anything about the work of Contra rebel
death squads."

Some reporters simply soft-pedaled the history; as CNN reporter Kitty
Pilgrim put it (2/17/05), "During his four-year stint as U.S. ambassador
to Honduras, he had a difficult balancing act in the battle against
Communism in the neighboring Sandinista government in Nicaragua."
(Sandinista Nicaragua, of course, was not Communist, but a country with a
mixed economy and regular elections, one of which voted the Sandinistas
out of power in 1990.) Pilgrim's CNN colleague, Paula Zahn (2/17/05),
complained that "the critics are already out there sniping at him."

Fox News reporter Carl Cameron (2/17/05) noted that "the only partisan
criticism noted Negroponte's role as U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the
'80s, when he played a key role in the Reagan administration's covert
disruption of Communism in the Nicaragua." In this case, "covert
disruption" stands in as a euphemism for a bloody guerrilla war that took
the lives of thousands of civilians. Cameron went on to note that the
"partisan" remarks "came from a member of the House, which has no vote on
his nomination."

NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly made similar observations (2/17/05), noting
that previous confirmation hearings generated "a lot of questions about
the role he played during the early '80s when he was the ambassador to
Honduras." Kelly seemed aware of this history, but thought it a settled
matter: "He has already dealt with those issues and obviously answered
them satisfactorily-- he was confirmed for that job at the United
Nations."

Some pundits were remarkably lenient in the standards by which Negroponte
should be judged. Fox News Channel commentator Charles Krauthammer
explained (2/17/05) that "he was the ambassador in Honduras during the
Contra war. So he clearly knows how to deal with clandestine operations.
That was a pretty clandestine one for several years. And he didn't end up
in jail, which is a pretty good attribute for him. A lot of others
practically did."

In general, right-wing pundits and commentators were much more likely than
mainstream news reporters to cite Negroponte's shady past-- as proof that
he is the right man for the job. On CNBC (2/17/05), Tony Blankley happily
summarized Negroponte's human rights record: "Negroponte is not just some
ambassador. He has a track record. Starting in Honduras in 1981, he was
the ambassador who oversaw the management when the Argentines turned over
the covert operations against the Nicaraguans. He took over that
responsibility. He managed it operationally. The CIA was very impressed
with the way he handled that."

After James Warren of the Chicago Tribune disagreed (calling the Contra
war an "at times slimy operation"), Blankley offered a blunt response--
"Well, we won"-- which host Lawrence Kudlow endorsed: "We did win. Thank
you, Tony. I was just going to say, you know, the forces of freedom
triumphed with a little bit of help from the right country."

Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes took the same line (2/19/05): "I would say
on Central America, I give John Negroponte credit, along with people like
Elliott Abrams and President Reagan, for creating democracy in all those
countries in Central America, in Nicaragua, in El Salvador and in
Honduras, where Marxists were going to take over, they fought them back."
By way of balance, Fox pundit and NPR correspondent Juan Williams noted
that while he didn't "have any love for Marxists," it was important to
note "what death squads do to people, and you understand that nuns were
involved, Fred, then you think-- wait a second-- excess is not to be
tolerated in the name of democracy." Barnes' response: "Well, now that we
have democracy, there are no death squads."

Our very own robot army

So classic future.

Do what we say or we will send our army of kille rrobots to destroy you!

I love how they keep using hte phrase "win wars bloodlessly" or "without deaths" when their robots are all called "search adn kill." It's obvious what they mean but it's just insulting to those of us who are more evolved.

"The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force, and a $127 billion project called Future Combat Systems is the biggest military contract in American history."

Israel runs the ...senate?

This is an article about a really interesting book by a former CIA agent who thinks Isreal secretely runs US foreign policy. The men himself is legit enough to warrent a few hours speaking time at the Council on Foreign Relations. The article itself thinks he's rediculous, but the article itself is absurd, claiming that the US is just as pro-muslim as it is pro-isreal, giving examples that are all wrong.

I'm shocked - SHOCKED at such propaganda

Bush administration paid a journalist $240,000 of tax payer money to tout it's views in the media and convince other journalists to do the same. Please keep in mind that this is totally illegal.

This is a great article from ALterNet on how this is one part of a very vast puzzle:

"While Democrats are still debating whether John Kerry was likeable enough or whether the Party ought to change its position on gay marriage and gun control, they are failing to see the big picture. What they were up against wasn't a poor debater, his Machiavellian consultant, and a portfolio of privatization policies, but a well-established, conservative movement with media outlets, think tanks, foundations and advocacy organizations as well as a host of pundits, journalists, consultants, and politicians all working collaboratively to advance their right-wing agenda (and many of the latter, like Williams, working the double shift as "entrepreneurs" and getting mighty rich)."

Classic Propaganda in your face

Clear Channel, a media company that owns most of the radio stations in the USA, took it upon themselves to put up these billboards in Florida. It's just so classic. Up until now, I've been so impressed by the propaganda techniques of the replublican party: manipulation by fear, patriotism, misinformation, southern pride, "states' rights," it's all been brilliant. But this is just so obvious. I guess it is a great example of the extent to which they control the media...

Image taken from this site, which has more photos and comments.

The nature of the undecided

This is a really interesting article on the nature of undecided voters in the US. It shows how talking politics to people could be alienating them. My little sister made the brilliant observation last week that we (leftist USA people) need to stop talking and preaching and just live our lives and focus on genuine connections to other people for a while.

The author says that, by the very fact of you reading this article, or blog I guess, you are showing yourself to be a person who is "into" politics and therefore might not even be able to talk to people who are not. Of course, it's sort of immobilizing, but we need new strategies and this is an interesting jump off point.

I've included the entire article in the more section.

Lessons Learned about Undecided Voters
By Christopher Hayes
The New Republic
Wednesday 17 November 2004

For those who follow politics, there are few things more mysterious, more inscrutable, more maddening than the mind of the undecided voter. In this year's election, when the choice was so stark and the differences between the candidates were so obvious, how could any halfway intelligent human remain undecided for long? "These people," Jonah Goldberg once wrote of undecided voters, on a rare occasion when he probably spoke for the entire political class,
"can't make up their minds, in all likelihood, because either they don't care or they don't know anything."

And that was more or less how I felt before I decided to spend the last seven weeks of the campaign talking to swing voters in Wisconsin. In September, I signed up to work for the League of Conservation Voters' Environmental Victory Project - a canvassing operation that recruited volunteers in five states to knock on doors in "swing wards" with high concentrations of undecided or persuadable voters. During my time in suburban Dane County, which surrounds Madison, I knocked on more than 1,000 doors and talked to hundreds of Wisconsin residents. Our mission was simple: to identify undecided voters and convince them to vote for John Kerry.

My seven weeks in Wisconsin left me with a number of observations (all of them highly anecdotal, to be sure) about swing voters, which I explain below. But those small observations add up to one overarching contention: that the caricature of undecided voters favored by liberals and conservatives alike doesn't do justice to the complexity, indeed the oddity, of undecided voters themselves. None of this is to say that undecided voters are completely
undeserving of the derision that the political class has heaped on them - just that Jonah Goldberg, and the rest of us, may well be deriding them for the wrong reasons.

Undecided voters aren't as rational as you think. Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We're giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man's house, she still couldn't make sense of his decision. Then there was the woman who called our office a few weeks before the election to tell us that though she had signed up to
volunteer for Kerry she had now decided to back Bush. Why? Because the president supported stem cell research. The office became quiet as we all stopped what we were doing to listen to one of our fellow organizers try, nobly, to disabuse her of this notion. Despite having the facts on her side, the organizer didn't have much luck.

Undecided voters do care about politics; they just don't enjoy politics. Political junkies tend to assume that undecided voters are undecided because they don't care enough to make up their minds. But while I found that most undecided voters are, as one Kerry aide put it to The New York Times, "relatively low-information, relatively disengaged," the lack of engagement wasn't a sign that they didn't care. After all, if they truly didn't care, they wouldn't have been planning to vote. The undecided voters I talked to did care about politics, or at least judged it to be important; they just didn't enjoy politics.

The mere fact that you're reading this article right now suggests that you not only think politics is important, but you actually like it. You read the paper and listen to political radio and talk about politics at parties. In other words, you view politics the way a lot of people view cooking or sports or opera: as a hobby. Most undecided voters, by contrast, seem to view politics the way I view laundry. While I understand that to be a functioning member of society I have to do my laundry, and I always eventually get it done, I'll never do it before
every last piece of clean clothing is dirty, as I find the entire business to be a chore. A significant number of undecided voters, I think, view politics in exactly this way: as a chore, a duty, something that must be done but is altogether unpleasant, and therefore something best put off for as long as possible.

A disturbing number of undecided voters are crypto-racist isolationists. In the age of the war on terror and the war in Iraq, pundits agreed that this would be the most foreign policy-oriented election in a generation - and polling throughout the summer seemed to bear that out. In August the Pew Center found that 40 percent of voters were identifying foreign policy and defense as their top issues, the highest level of interest in foreign policy during an election year since 1972.

But just because voters were unusually concerned about foreign policy didn't mean they had fundamentally shifted their outlook on world affairs. In fact, among undecided voters, I encountered a consistent and surprising isolationism - an isolationism that September 11 was supposed to have made obsolete everywhere but the left and right fringes of the political spectrum. Voters I spoke to were concerned about the Iraq war and about securing American interests, but they seemed entirely unmoved by the argument - accepted, in some form or another, by just about everyone in Washington - that the security of the United States is dependent on the freedom and well-being of the rest of the world.

In fact, there was a disturbing trend among undecided voters - as well as some Kerry supporters - towards an opposition to the Iraq war based largely on the ugliest of rationales. I had one conversation with an undecided, sixtyish, white voter whose wife was voting for Kerry. When I mentioned the "mess in Iraq" he lit up. "We should have gone through Iraq like shit through tinfoil," he said, leaning hard on the railing of his porch. As I tried to make sense of the mental image this evoked, he continued: "I mean we should have dominated the place; that's the only thing these people understand. ... Teaching democracy to Arabs is like teaching the alphabet to rats." I didn't quite know what to do with this comment, so I just thanked him for his time and slipped him some literature. (What were the options? Assure him that a Kerry White
House wouldn't waste tax dollars on literacy classes for rodents?)

That may have been the most explicit articulation I heard of this mindset - but it wasn't an isolated incident. A few days later, someone told me that he wished we could put Saddam back in power because he "knew how to rule these people." While Bush's rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy played well with blue-state liberal hawks and red-state Christian conservatives
who are inclined towards a missionary view of world affairs, it seemed to fall flat among the undecided voters I spoke with. This was not merely the view of the odd kook; it was a common theme I heard from all different kinds of undecided voters. Clearly the Kerry campaign had focus groups or polling that supported this, hence its candidate's frequent - and wince- inducing -
America-first rhetoric about opening firehouses in Baghdad while closing them in the United States.

The worse things got in Iraq, the better things got for Bush. Liberal commentators, and even many conservative ones, assumed, not unreasonably, that the awful situation in Iraq would prove to be the president's undoing. But I found that the very severity and intractability of the Iraq disaster helped Bush because it induced a kind of fatalism about the possibility of progress. Time after time, undecided voters would agree vociferously with every single critique I offered of Bush's Iraq policy, but conclude that it really didn't matter who was elected, since neither candidate would have any chance of making things better. Yeah, but what's Kerry gonna do? voters would ask me, and when I told them Kerry would bring in allies they would wave their hands and smile with condescension, as if that answer was impossibly naive. C'mon, they'd say, you don't really think that's going to work, do you?

To be sure, maybe they simply thought Kerry's promise to bring in allies was a lame idea - after all, many well-informed observers did. But I became convinced that there was something else at play here, because undecided voters extended the same logic to other seemingly intractable problems, like the deficit or health care. On these issues, too, undecideds recognized the severity of the situation - but precisely because they understood the severity,
they were inclined to be skeptical of Kerry's ability to fix things. Undecided voters, as everyone knows, have a deep skepticism about the ability of politicians to keep their promises and solve problems. So the staggering incompetence and irresponsibility of the Bush administration and the demonstrably poor state of world affairs seemed to serve not as indictments of Bush in particular, but rather of politicians in general. Kerry, by mere dint of
being on the ballot, was somehow tainted by Bush's failures as badly as Bush was.

As a result, undecideds seemed oddly unwilling to hold the president accountable for his previous actions, focusing instead on the practical issue of who would have a better chance of success in the future. Because undecideds seemed uninterested in assessing responsibility for the past, Bush suffered no penalty for having made things so bad; and because undecideds were focused on, but cynical about, the future, the worse things appeared, the less inclined they were to believe that problems could be fixed - thereby nullifying the backbone of Kerry's case. Needless to say, I found this logic maddening.

Undecided voters don't think in terms of issues. Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the "issues." That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs. Occasionally I did encounter undecided voters who were genuinely cross- ressured - a couple who was fiercely pro-life, antiwar, and pro-environment for
example - but such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them to name their favorite prime number.

The majority of undecided voters I spoke to couldn't name a single issue that was important to them. This was shocking to me. Think about it: The "issue" is the basic unit of political analysis for campaigns, candidates, journalists, and other members of the chattering classes. It's what makes up the subheadings on a candidate's website, it's what sober, serious people wish election outcomes hinged on, it's what every candidate pledges to run his campaign on, and it's what we always complain we don't see enough coverage of.

But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to. (This was also true of a number of committed voters in both camps - though I'll risk being partisan here and say that Kerry voters, in my experience, were more likely to name specific issues they cared about than Bush supporters.) At first I thought this was a problem of simple semantics - maybe, I thought, "issue" is a term of art that sounds wonky
and intimidating, causing voters to react as if they're being quizzed on a topic they haven't studied. So I tried other ways of asking the same question: "Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what's been happening in the country in the last four years?"

These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief - not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.

To cite one example: I had a conversation with an undecided truck driver who was despondent because he had just hit a woman's car after having worked a week straight. He didn't think the accident was his fault and he was angry about being sued. "There's too many lawsuits these days," he told me. I was set to have to rebut a "tort reform" argument, but it never came. Even
though there was a ready-made connection between what was happening in his life and a campaign issue, he never made the leap. I asked him about the company he worked for and whether it would cover his legal expenses; he said he didn't think so. I asked him if he was unionized and he said no. "The last job was unionized," he said. "They would have covered my expenses." I tried to steer him towards a political discussion about how Kerry would stand up for workers' rights and protect unions, but it never got anywhere. He didn't seem to think there was any connection between politics and whether his company would cover his legal costs. Had he made a connection between his predicament and the issue of tort reform, it might have benefited Bush; had he made a connection between his predicament and the issue of labor rights, it might have benefited Kerry. He made neither, and remained undecided.

In this context, Bush's victory, particularly on the strength of those voters who listed "values" as their number one issue, makes perfect sense. Kerry ran a campaign that was about politics: He parsed the world into political categories and offered political solutions. Bush did this too, but it wasn't the main thrust of his campaign. Instead, the president ran on broad themes, like "character" and "morals." Everyone feels an immediate and intuitive expertise on morals and values - we all know what's right and wrong. But how can undecided voters evaluate a candidate on issues if they don't even grasp what issues are?

Liberals like to point out that majorities of Americans agree with the Democratic Party on the issues, so Republicans are forced to run on character and values in order to win. (This cuts both ways: I met a large number of Bush/Feingold voters whose politics were more in line with the Republican president, but who admired the backbone and gutsiness of their Democratic senator.) But polls that ask people about issues presuppose a basic familiarity with the concept of issues - a familiarity that may not exist.

As far as I can tell, this leaves Democrats with two options: either abandon "issues" as the lynchpin of political campaigns and adopt the language of values, morals, and character as many have suggested; or begin the long-term and arduous task of rebuilding a popular, accessible political vocabulary - of convincing undecided voters to believe once again in the importance of issues. The former strategy could help the Democrats stop the bleeding in time for 2008. But the latter strategy might be necessary for the Democrats to become a majority party again.

Purple States

This is a really interesting graph my friend Stu Crawford made after reading our lively Fuck The South conversation.

He graphed the percentage of voters in each state who voted for Bush and found that, in the vast majority of states, even the blue ones, it was pretty evenly split between Bush and Kerry.

Stu says: "No matter what state you look at, Bush got about half the vote. All this going on about the conservative states and the liberal states, it looks to me like every state is just about 50:50. There are a couple outlyers, Utah being one with 70% Bush support, and Massachusetts being another with 37%, but other than that it is pretty homogenous. I stuck it into Excel, and the 95% confidence limits are only +/- 2.3% (with an average of 53.3%). It is interesting that the rift in American politics is so evenly spread out and doesn't have more of a geographic component."

So it seems as though there's a lot more work to be done locally to evolve political views, rather than just tromping to warmer climates to pass out Darwin and economics textbooks.

Fuck the South

I'm really quite depressed and feeling cut off from everything. But my brother just sent this to me and it's making me feel a lot better:

www.fuckthesouth.com

Also, this is worth checking out. If it is true, it means that almost every single state voted against the economic interests of it's majority.... So much for Adam Smith...

Bush totally stole it.

I know, I know, how predictable. But how could you imagine otherwise? I don't know, honestly, I'm just trying not to believe that most of the people in my country are that moronic.

CNN article on how a voting macine in Ohio was caught giving 4,000 votes to Bush. Which is really a brilliant idea, a few thousand here, a few thousand there, no paper trail to think of....

And more from Greg Plast on strategies for rejecting Democratic voters.

I spoke with a man from Wisconsin who was part of MoveOn's "get out the vote." He said his wife was accosted by thugs who got all up in her face and then reported her on their cell phones in cars with tinted windows. OK, so it's sort of funny that republican vigalantes are pretending to be FBI operatives...but still.

Get yer war on

Ha ha. It's still funny. More.

I love Naomi Klein

This article fucking ROCKS. Naomi Klein in Harpers. Such the dynamic duo...

It tells the story of the restructuring of Iraq as the super exciting escapades of NeoCon utopia building. Exerpt:

But Bremer didn’t give up. International law prohibits occupiers from selling state assets themselves, but it doesn’t say anything about the puppet governments they appoint. Originally, Bremer had pledged to hand over power to a directly elected Iraqi government, but in early November he went to Washington for a private meeting with President Bush and came back with a Plan B. On June 30 the occupation would officially end—but not really. It would be replaced by an appointed government, chosen by Washington. This government would not be bound by the international laws preventing occupiers from selling off state assets, but it would be bound by an “interim constitution,” a document that would protect Bremer’s investment and privatization laws.

Aloha Jim Crow

In Atlanta, 14% of black men can’t vote.
And 34% of black men between the ages of 18 and 34 can’t vote.
This article states that this is most likely representitive of other states as well.

Nuke 'em

US is going to use Microwave guns on Iraqis.

It’s going to be used for crowd dispersal. This is a great quote, “"It just feels like your skin is on fire."

propaganda machine

Republicans Admit Mailing Campaign Literature Saying Liberals Will Ban the Bible

Really, you have to admire their propaganda ability. I think it’s amazing. They’re so good at it. I’m jealous.

Kofi for president

“Those who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it, and those who invoke international law must themselves submit to it.” ~ Kofi Annan at the UN General Assembly

Full speech (it rocks).
__________________________________________________________

As opposed to:
The world reaction to Bush’s UN speech:

“Yet the president put an almost cheerful spin on the turmoil, forecasting success in stopping the violence and in sticking to the January deadline for national elections. The glib, simplistic level of the Iraq portion of his speech was almost insulting, considering his audience, remarked one Western diplomat who was present. The French newspaper Le Monde Wednesday quoted an African official as saying, (Bush) gives us lessons, but he doesn't apply them himself.”

Ashcroft, that bastard!

HOW FUCKING BLANTANT DO THEY HAVE TO BE??? Can you believe this isn't in the news?

This is the American Library Association's response. I think librarians rock and feel confidant that they will fight the fight.

"Ashcroft orders public libraries to destroy law books"

The Justice Department is ordering public libraries to destroy certain books it has deemed not "appropriate for external use."

The Department of Justice has called for these five public documents, two of which are texts of federal statutes, to be removed from depository libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library.

The topics addressed in the named documents include information on how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation. The documents to be removed and destroyed include: Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure; Select Criminal Forfeiture Forms; Select Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes; Asset forfeiture and money laundering resource directory; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA).

Plan B, Columbia

This is an AMAZING article on the Columbian situation. Everyone should read it.

Will Ferrel is a genius

A message from our president.

Anti-republican propaganda

This is a great interview between Michael Moore and Bill O'Rielly.

This is an in teresting article on the history of populism and how the Democrats lost the South.

And below is a great forward to send to that republican uncle of yours:

Things you have to believe to be a Republican today:

* Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

* Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

* A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

* Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

* The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

* If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

* Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

* HMOs and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.

* Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

* A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

* Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

* The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's cocaine conviction is none of our business.

* Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness, and you need our prayers for your recovery.

* You support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have the right to adopt.

* What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.

* Feel free to pass this on. If you don't send it to at least 10 other people, we're likely to be stuck with Bush for 4 more years.

Friends don't let friends vote Republican.

Feaux AKs

Apparently the US is trading fake AK-47s on in the international weapons market. Russia is pissed.

"Russia is suffering losses in income, jobs and damage to the Kalashnikov name, the officials say, and would like the United States to shop for the weapons directly from here."

"Sometimes the weapons have been transferred ... via the solicitation of donations from friendly states as a gesture of cooperation with the Bush administration's war and reconstruction efforts." How nice of us.

Better get used to the AK, the Automatic Assault Weapons Ban expires September 13th! Neat AK factoid: they were named for Russian inventor Mikhail T. Kalashnikov. The article also goes into the global uses of the AK, very neat.

July 26, 2004
Who's a Pirate? Russia Points Back at the U.S.
By C. J. CHIVERS

ZHEVSK, Russia, July 24 - The bazaar in this industrial city shows why Western companies regard Russia as a land of piracy.

Bootlegged copies of new American movies - "King Arthur,'' "Troy'' and "Spider-Man 2'' - sell for $3. Photoshop CS, a $600 program in Western stores, fetches $2.75.

Markets like this, found throughout Russia, have been a longstanding subject of diplomatic complaint. Washington contends Russian intellectual-property pirates cost the United States more than $1 billion a year.

Now Russia is striking back. A Russian industry and product designer are asserting that the United States has been abetting intellectual-property pirates to suit its own needs, by directing copies of Russian merchandise around the world.

The complaint is not about software or music. It makes no mention of movies or video games. It is about the Kalashnikov assault rifle, the most prolific firearm ever made.

"We see a great number of products which are named after Kalashnikov, my name,'' said Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, the weapon's original designer. "They are buying Kalashnikovs from other countries,'' he added.

Since the collapses of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's army in Iraq, the United States has been purchasing or arranging the transfer of thousands of knockoffs of Kalashnikovs commonly referred to as AK-47's, to outfit new military and security forces in Kabul and Baghdad.

These rifles have not been made in Russia, where the arms industry holds patents for the weapon in several nations. Instead they have originated in weapons plants controlled by Eastern European states, each of which was a partner of Moscow's in Soviet days.

So begins an argument at once curious, impassioned and bizarre, involving the legacy of cold war influence jockeying, secretive arms deals, recent efforts to defeat modern Islamic insurgencies, and international business and patent law.

The automatic Kalashnikov, made in a factory here, is in many ways Moscow's Ford. It is a quintessential national product: extraordinarily successful, widespread, a name closely connected to the identity of a state.

It was designed by Mr. Kalashnikov, a former Russian tank sergeant, in classified Soviet weapons trials shortly after World War II, and was promptly embraced by Soviet soldiers for its simplicity and reliability under almost any condition. It is regarded as a weapon that rarely, if ever, fails.

Russian arms officials say that no other nation has a valid license to make the AK-47 and its many derivatives and clones, and that to defeat insurgents and terrorists, Washington has been encouraging violations of intellectual property rights. Russia is suffering losses in income, jobs and damage to the Kalashnikov name, the officials say, and would like the United States to shop for the weapons directly from here.

"We would like to inform everybody in the world that many countries, including the United States, have unfortunately violated recognized norms," said Igor Sevastyanov, who leads a division of Rosoboronexport, Russia's state-controlled arms export company. American officials confirm that non-Russian Kalashnikov rifles have been provided with American assistance to Afghanistan and Iraq. Sometimes the weapons have been transferred via purchases on international arms markets, they say, other times via the solicitation of donations from friendly states as a gesture of cooperation with the Bush administration's war and reconstruction efforts.

The officials also say that they are aware of the Russian complaints, which raise questions of provenance that remain unresolved.

"We have taken the position that there are important issues with respect to the production, intellectual property rights and conditions of export of these weapons, and it is important that we strengthen controls in all of these areas," a State Department official said. Officials from Rosoboronexport and Izhmash, the Russian company holding patents on the rifle, say American-coordinated transfers include Kalashnikov clones made in Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian plants that have continued to be sold despite Russian complaints.

Another transfer, arranged by the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq last year, involved the purchase of Kalashnikovs from Jordan. The weapons were believed to be excess stock from the Jordanian army, and to have been manufactured years ago by the former East Germany, another State Department official said.

The transfers have been diplomatically delicate; the Jordanian deal drew complaints from across the political spectrum.

American business representatives have said that American-made rifles should be bought to preserve American jobs. Others questioned the wisdom of shipping more automatic rifles to countries already awash in such guns.

Congressman have asked why American forces did not save money by reissuing to friendly forces the thousands of Kalashnikov rifles confiscated in both wars.

(Last spring, journalists from The New York Times watched United States marines collect tens of thousands of mint-condition Kalashnikovs in a cache in a hospital in Tikrit. The weapons were still in their original packing crates.)

In spite of complaints, the transfers continued, American officials say, in part because the automatic Kalashnikov is inexpensive and requires less training to master than modern American rifles. Several officials noted that many young Iraqi and Afghan men already know how to use it.

Izhmash and Rosoboronexport agree with this position; their officials are even proud that the Pentagon prefers the Kalashnikov for its new allies.

But they say Washington's deals have come at the expense of Izhmash and Izhevsk, where mass production of the rifles began in 1949, and where orders and the work force have shrunk since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.

More than 12,000 people worked on the gun lines then; roughly 7,000 work there today, and at fewer shifts, said Andrei Vishnyakov, an Izhmash official.

The officials noted that the low price of Kalashnikov knockoffs can make it impossible to sell the genuine item, a phenomenon resembling the underselling of software and DVD's, albeit on a different scale.

For example, the Jordanian rifles sold for about $60 each - less than one-fourth of the price of a new Kalashnikov from the Izhmash plant, according to Rosoboronexport data.

"They are selling these rifles at dump prices," said Alexander G. Likhachev, a former Izhmash director who is now an official with the state arms agency.

He added that Russia wants that business. "We are prepared to manufacture the genuine weapons, in big quantities, because we know there is a demand," he said.

The legal standing of Rosoboronexport's complaint is uncertain. American officials, analysts and trade representatives said issues surrounding each transfer would require intensive legal research to resolve.

The task would be daunting. In the 1950's, in a mix of collaborative revolutionary spirit and jockeying against the West, the Soviet Union began exporting the rifles and the technology to manufacture them to states in its sphere of influence. Ultimately, Moscow entered licensing agreements with 18 states, according to Rosoboronexport.

"We transferred and gave them all the technical documentation, all the know-how about the design," Mr. Kalashnikov, now 84, said in an interview at his dacha in the Russian woods. "Representatives of these countries came here. They studied our production line."

Moreover, once the rifle's utility became well known, another 11 countries began making derivatives and clones without Moscow's approval, the state agency said.

Russia says that all former licenses have expired. But to make this case, the old licenses would have to be studied, as would Izhmash's more recently acquired patents as well as intellectual property laws in each Kalashnikov-manufacturing state.

A third American official said several former Soviet-bloc countries that formerly made Kalashnikovs with Moscow's approval contend they retain rights to the weapon today. "There is a dispute among all the parties involved," the official said.

Still, whatever the legal merits, analysts agree: the complaint's symbolic power is great.

"I'm not a big fan of guns, but that said, if the creators of this intellectual property have rights to enforce, I really do hope they can get them enforced in every country," Eric Schwartz, a vice president of the International Intellectual Property Alliance, said in a telephone interview. "And I hope that the United States government would comply and set a good example."

The alliance represents American companies with products protected by copyright laws.

The complaint also faces the unrelenting realities of the market. After decades in production in plants in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, the automatic Kalashnikov has spread far beyond Izhevsk's reach.

Analysts estimate that 70 million to 105 million of the weapons have been made.

It has been used not only by more than 55 state armies, but also by the Viet Cong, militias in Beirut, Palestinian insurgents in Gaza City, guerrillas in Iraq and child soldiers in Asian and African states. A Kalashnikov is on the seal of Hezbollah and the flag of Mozambique. It features prominently in the symbolism of jihad.

Even the United States long ago entered in the Kalashnikov business, in the 1980's, when it surreptitiously bought Chinese and Egyptian Kalashnikovs for Islamic guerrillas battling the Red Army in Afghanistan.

American purchases of Kalashnikovs have continued intermittently since then. A few years ago, according to officials at the State Department and the Pentagon, Washington purchased Kalashnikovs for a Nigerian peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone.

With so many of the weapons in circulation, one analyst said Russia's complaint could prove to be an almost impossible fight.

Rosoboronexport's position is like "the Chinese saying they have a royalty right on every firearm, because that's where it all started with the invention of gunpowder 700 years ago," said Dr. Aaron Karp, a professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia who specializes in weapon proliferation issues.

Mr. Kalashnikov, who said the Russian versions of his rifle are superior, and who expressed deep fondness to Russian workers who have long made them, recognized the difficulties in the state agency's complaint.

He remembered that years ago President Boris N. Yeltsin vowed to defend the weapon from market infringement, to no avail. "President Yeltsin said he would do everything," Mr. Kalashnikov said. "But it's not so easy."

Why poor people like Republicans

(also could be called, "why i'm disenchanted with the left")

There are lots of "Tom's" in this article. Beware.

I think the articles misses some main points though. Mainly, that Democrats lake the "get the government out of my life" attitude that courts so many people who are not elite.

It's a great article, but if you don't want to read the whole thing, good excerpts are in "more."

"The DLC, has long been pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues. The larger interests that the DLC wants desperately to court are corporations, capable of generating campaign contributions far outweighing anything raised by organized labor. "

"The way to collect the votes and -- more important -- the money of these coveted constituencies, "New Democrats" think, is to stand rock-solid on, say, the pro-choice position while making endless concessions on economic issues, on welfare, NAFTA, Social Security, labor law, privatization, deregulation, and the rest of it. Such Democrats explicitly rule out what they deride as "class warfare" and take great pains to emphasize their friendliness to business interests. "

"Besides, what politician in this success-worshiping country really wants to be the voice of poor people? Where's the soft money in that? "

"Liberalism isn't a force of karmic nature that pushes back when the corporate world goes too far; it is a man-made contrivance as subject to setbacks and defeats as any other."

"Labor unions are on the wane today, as everyone knows, down to 9% of the private-sector workforce from a high-water mark of 38% in the 1950s.

American conservatism depends for its continued dominance and even for its very existence on people never making certain mental connections about the world."

"Sociologists often warn against letting the nation's distribution of wealth become too polarized, as it clearly has in the last few decades. Societies that turn their backs on equality, the professors insist, inevitably meet with a terrible comeuppance. But those sociologists were thinking of an old world in which class anger was a phenomenon of the left. They weren't reckoning with Kansas, with the world we are becoming. "

"As a social system, the backlash works. The two adversaries feed off of each other in a kind of inverted symbiosis: one mocks the other, and the other heaps even more power on the one. This arrangement should be the envy of every ruling class in the world. Not only can it be pushed much, much farther, but it is fairly certain that it will be so pushed. All the incentives point that way, as do the never-examined cultural requirements of modern capitalism. Why shouldn't our culture just get worse and worse, if making it worse will only cause the people who worsen it to grow wealthier and wealthier? "

political conception?

This is the funniest thing I've read in a while. It's an article from teh Wall Street Journal about how democrats are aborting all their voters and that's why they're losing elections. In effect, they're encouraging political parties to outbreed each other. Plus the statistics and logical reasoning are laughable. It could be a fun to have a "find the flaws" sort of game if you want to play.

The Empty Cradle Will Rock
How abortion is costing the Democrats voters--literally.

BY LARRY L. EASTLAND
Monday, June 28, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

More than 40 million legal abortions have been performed and documented in the 30 years since the U.S. Supreme Court declared abortion legal. The debate remains focused on the legality and morality of abortion. What's largely ignored is a factual analysis of the political consequences of 40 million abortions. Consider:

• There were 12,274,368 in the Voting Age Population of 205,815,000 missing from the 2000 presidential election, because of abortions from 1973-82.

• In this year's election, there will be 18,336,576 in the Voting Age Population missing because of abortions between 1972 and 1986.

• In the 2008 election, 24,408,960 in the Voting Age Population will be missing because of abortions between 1973-90.

These numbers will not change. They are based on individual choices made--aggregated nationally--as long as 30 years ago. Look inside these numbers at where the political impact is felt most. Do Democrats realize that millions of Missing Voters--due to the abortion policies they advocate--gave George W. Bush the margin of victory in 2000?

The number of abortions accumulate in size and political impact as the years roll along. Like an avalanche that picks up speed, mass, and power as it thunders down a mountain, the number of Missing Voters from abortion changes the landscape of politics. The absence of the missing voters may not be noticed, but that doesn't mean its political impact disappears. As seen during a famine, what no longer exists becomes as relevant as what does.

Let's begin with the obvious: Children born in any given year arrive at voting age in 18 years; conversely, children not born in a given year are "Missing Voters" 18 years later. Permanently so, unless someone discovers a way to give birth to a teenager in a nine-month gestation period. This table gives the number of Missing Voters from abortion and election years affected:

Table 1: Abortions in the U.S., 1973-90

Years
Abortions
Aggregated Election
Affected
1973-74 1,643,200 1,643,200 1992
1975-78 4,939,800 6,583,000 1996
1979-82 6,202,800 12,785,800 2000
1983-86 6,314,800 19,100,600 2004
1987-90 6,325,400 25,426,000 2008

The question arises: Who would these Missing Voters have been if they had reached voting age? What would their values have been? How would they have voted? What impact would they have had on the great debates in America, including the abortion debate? Here's what we know from several generations of social science research about children:

• They tend to absorb the values of their parents.

• They tend to have the same political views as their family (parents, siblings, immediate relatives) and share common views on political causes.

• They tend to develop the same lifestyle as their family.

I remember the guy at my 30th high school class reunion who looked over the people there and remarked, "I can't believe I came in person, while everyone else sent their parents!"

With these factors in mind, the internationally respected survey research firm Wirthlin Worldwide was commissioned to ask 2,000 respondents in a stratified random sample of adults the following question: "As far as you know, has anyone close to you had an abortion?" The emphasis here was on "close to you" in order to bring to mind only those people inside the respondents' circle of socio-demographically homogeneous family and friends.

Of the 2,000 respondents, 636 responded "yes." The various socio-demographic characteristics of these respondents were then imposed on the abortion statistics (Table 1, above), with a special emphasis on the 2000 and 2004 general elections to see what impact they likely would have made had the Missing Voters been present to vote in those two elections.

There were 105,405,100 votes cast for president in the 2000 general election, representing 51.2% of the Voting Age Population. The Missing Voters would have been 6,033,097 based on that portion of the 51.2% represented by (at their lower voting level) 18-24 year olds. This means that Missing Voters would have been 4.48% of all actual voters in 2000.
Given the extremely close result in 2000, these voters could have been a crucial factor in the outcome. This is borne out when viewed by political party as defined in the Wirthlin survey.

There is a significant difference between Republicans with someone close to them who have had an abortion, and Democrats with someone close to them who have had an abortion:

Table 2: Missing Republicans vs. Missing Democrats
Party % of total abortions % of party w/abortions Party as % of electorate Party loss/gain
Republican 35% 28% 39% +4
Independent 16% 30% 17%
Democrat 49% 36% 44% -5

This tells us:

• Republicans have fewer abortions than their proportion of the population, Democrats have more than their proportion of the population. Democrats account for 30% more abortions than Republicans (49% vs. 35%).

• The more ideologically Democratic the voters are (self-identified liberals), the more abortions they have. The more ideologically Republican the voters are (self-identified conservatives), the fewer abortions they have.

This isn't particularly surprising given the core constituencies of both political parties. But translating percentages into numbers for the purpose of evaluating their impact on politics makes the importance of these numbers real. It's one thing to quote percentages and statistics, it's quite another to look at actual human beings. For example:

• There are 19,748,000 Democrats who are not with us today. (49.37 percent of 40 million).

• There are 13,900,000 Republican who are not with us today. (34.75 percent of 40 million).

• By comparison, then, the Democrats have lost 5,848,000 more voters than the Republicans have.

These Missing Americans--and particularly the millions of Missing Voters--when compounded over time are of enormous political consequence:

Table 3: Missing voters by political party, 2000 general election
Republican 2,096,406
Independent 958,086
Democrat 2,978,605
Total 6,033,097

Let's look at the 2000 election to see what those 6,033,097 Missing Voters meant to its outcome. What would these Missing Voters have meant to the election in Florida?

Table 4: Florida 2000, with and without Missing Voters
Candidate Vote Missing
voters Combined
vote
Bush 2,912,790 107,799 3,020,589
Gore 2,912,253 153,163 3,065,416

In the actual popular vote for president in the 2000 general election in Florida, George W. Bush was declared the winner by 537 votes. But if the 260,962 Missing Voters of Florida had been present to vote, Al Gore would have won by 45,366 votes. Missing Voters--through decisions made in the 1970s and early 1980s, encouraged and emboldened by the feminist movement at the height of its power--altered the outcome of the U.S. presidency a generation later, in a way proponents of legal abortion could not have imagined.

Examining these results through a partisan political lens, the Democrats have given the Republicans a decided advantage in electoral politics, one that grows with each election. Moreover, it is an advantage that they can never regain. Even if abortion were declared illegal today, and every single person complied with the decision, the advantage would continue to grow until the 2020 election, and would stay at that level throughout the voting lifetime of most Americans living today.

The next question is: What do these numbers tell us about the 2004 election? If we use the seven closest states from the 2000 election as our guide, we can see what these Missing Voters would do to the vote in each state. This is important because most analysts today believe that the 2004 election is likely to be a replay of the 2000 election, except with an incumbent Republican president this time. Given the usual advantages of incumbency, the swing of marginal states from 2000--shoring up Republican victories and tipping the scales from Democrat to Republican in Democratic states--may very well determine the popular and electoral outcome in 2004.
The popular vote in these seven states, with 63 electoral votes in 2000, was less than 1% apart between the two candidates. By adding the votes of the Missing Voters, Democrats could have picked up Florida, and solidified their vote in the other six states (where election challenges could certainly have been seriously considered). The Democrats could have increased their popular and electoral count beyond the scrutiny of the courts and "the court of public opinion."

Table 5: The seven closest states from 2000, with Missing Voters added
State/EVs Bush 2000 Gore 2000 Missing voters 2000/revised 2004 totals
Florida
25 (27) 2,912,790 2,912,253 R: 107,799
D: 153,163 '00: R by 537
'04: D by 45,366
Iowa
7 634,373 638,517 R: 23,556
D: 33,469 '00: D by 4,144
'04: D by 14,057
Nevada
4 (5) 301,575 279,978 R: 10,762
D: 15,291 '00: R by 21,597
'04: R by 17,068
New Hampshire
4 273,559 266,348 R: 9,992
D: 14,196 '00: R by 7,211
'04: R by 3,006
New Mexico
5 286,417 286,783 R: 10,608
D: 15,072 '00: D by 366
'04: D by 4,830
Oregon
7 713,577 720,342 R: 26,536
D: 37,703 '00: D by 6,765
'04: D by 17,932

Wisconsin
11 (10) 1,237,279 1,242,987 R: 45,900
D: 65,216 '00: D by 5,708
'04: D by 25,023
This table shows the actual vote from 2000, then shows what the change would be in 2004 with all else remaining the same, except that the Missing Voters were added. Numbers in parentheses are 2004 electoral votes.

A similar scenario can be constructed for the U.S. Senate races this fall. The Republican advantages are real: more Democrats (19) are up than Republicans (15), more Democrats are retiring than Republicans (and from advantageous states for Republicans), and Republicans usually do better in a presidential election year. Generally accepted "givens" are:

• Incumbents typically win. In fact, 96% of incumbent U. S. Senators win re-election. The McCain-Feingold legislation will not change this. No legislation passed in the name of reform--including the 1974 post-Watergate campaign finance reform legislation--has ever increased the challenger advantage or lessened the incumbent advantage, no matter what the intended goal.

• In open-seat contests, the party vacating the position cannot "hand over" the seat to the new party nominee. Traditional factors are far more important, such as a strong candidate, solid organization, appealing issues and sound finance. Still, long-term party allegiance is a major factor.

Consequently, the impact of Missing Voters could be considerable in states where the electorate is evenly divided between the two parties over a period of elections. Consider the open seats whose incumbents have chosen not to run for re-election. The following figures represent all votes cast in those states in 1996 and 2000 in the last two presidential year general elections for candidates to Congress--a traditional bellwether for predicting base federal candidate vote.

Table 6: Open Senate seats, 2004
State Incumbent Party GOP adv/disadv
Colorado Ben Nighthorse Campbell R (R) 1.122
Florida Bob Graham D (D) 1.202
Georgia Zell Miller D (R) 0.970
Illinois Peter Fitzgerald R (D) 0.941
Louisiana John Breaux D (D) 0.981
North Carolina John Edwards D (R) 1.050
Oklahoma Don Nickles R (R) 1.151
South Carolina Fritz Hollings D (R) 1.096
The party of the retiring senator is listed first; the party of the state's other senator is in parentheses.

If voting patterns in the past two presidential elections (combined) hold true for 2004, then five of these states should be an advantage for the GOP: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Conversely, three states would lean Democratic: Georgia, Illinois and Louisiana.

What do the Missing Voters take away from the Democrats in each state?

Table 7: Missing Voters (net) in 2004 open Senate races
Colorado 12,013
Florida 37,783
Georgia 17,783
Illinois 78,845
Louisiana 15,520
North Carolina 48,980
Oklahoma 20,983
South Carolina 22,005

Most major reporting and analyzing institutions would rate each of the open seats, with the possible exception of Illinois, as "too close to call" at this stage of the campaign. When election time comes, these Missing Voters will be missed. The most expensive campaign a candidate will ever run, the adage goes, is the one he or she loses. For half of these candidates, this will be that most expensive campaign.

Abortion has caused missing Democrats--and missing liberals. For advocates so fundamentally committed to changing the face of conservative America, liberals have been remarkably blind to the fact that every day the abortions they advocate dramatically decrease their power to do so. Imagine the number of followers that their abortion policies eliminate who, over the next several decades, would have emerged as the new liberal thinkers, voters, adherents, fund-raisers and workers for their cause.

Table 8: Missing by ideology

Ideology % of pop % of total abortions % of group having abortions
Liberal 37% 47% 41%
Moderate 5% 5% 31%
Conservative 59% 48% 26%

Look at the results:

• Six out of 10 Americans call themselves conservatives. Only a quarter of them are having abortions.

• A little more than one-third of Americans call themselves liberals. More than four in 10 are having abortions.

• This means that liberals are having one third more abortions than conservatives.

By combining party and ideology, an even sharper contrast comes into focus:

Table 9: Liberal Democrats vs. conservative Republicans
Ideology/party % of pop % of total abortions % of group having abortions
Liberal/Democrat 40% 48% 3 8%
Moderate/Independent 11% 10% 30%
Conservative/Republican 49% 41% 27%

Liberal Democrats are having both more abortions--and more abortions as a percentage of their ideological and political group--than either of the other groupings.

As liberals and Democrats fervently seek new voters and supporters through events, fund-raisers, direct mail and every other form of communication available, they achieve results minuscule in comparison to the loss of voters they suffer from their own abortion policies. It is a grim irony lost on them, for which they will pay dearly in elections to come.

Mr. Eastland is managing director of LEA Management Group LLC, a public policy research organization. This article appears in the June issue of The American Spectator.

770 gays booted from military in 2003

"The justification for the policy is that allowing gays and lesbians to serve would undermine military readiness." Those damn gays take too long to get dressed.

Interesting fact: There are currently about 1.5 million people serving in active duty in the military, and another 1 million in the Reserves.

Article: http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/nation/story/1446212p-8819826c.html

Viagra for Iraq

This is a GREAT article found on Drudge about what the US has give Iraq besides pretend democracy.

"Viagra sales have at least doubled since the war ended. Lives are not good. There's bombs and tension. When you see bodies and destroyed houses, you have psychological disturbances that affect sexual desire."

Paper trail? What paper trail?

Diebold (the company making the electronic voting machines) has decided to ban its executives from making political donations. The company came under fire last year when the president of the company held a fund raiser for republicans and said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

It would be a terrible mistake to assume that this is not a serious problem.

Peace conventions need not apply

US lawyers working for Rumsfeld have surprisingly decided that the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to Bush because, “he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security.” This is hilarious.

The report also advised that if an interrogator "has a good faith belief his actions will not result in prolonged mental harm, he lacks the mental state necessary for his actions to constitute torture."

Another great point, “The March memorandum also contains a curious section in which the lawyers argued that any torture committed at Guantánamo would not be a violation of the anti-torture statute because the base was under American legal jurisdiction and the statute concerns only torture committed overseas. That view is in direct conflict with the position the administration has taken in the Supreme Court, where it has argued that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are not entitled to constitutional protections because the base is outside American jurisdiction.”

The Reunification of Church and State

House introduces bill so that churces can donate more to political parties.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/politics/08church.html

World War

This is a link to an interactive map of all the wars all over the word.

Shoot to kill

Shoot to Kill orders are a possibility for Georgia’s G8 conference, and then possibly the RNC.

Ok, I’m just spreading paranoia. But it is a possibility and last week a bunch of activists who post information about people who attempt to shut down a lab (Huntingdon Life Sciences) in which numerous animal welfare violations have occurred were arrested as “terrorists.” What is the definition of “terrorism” you may ask? Well, the activists aim to cause "physical disruption to the functioning of HLS, an animal enterprise, and intentionally damage and cause the loss of property used by HLS." INENTIONALLY CAUSING PROPERTY LOSS of a CORPORATION is now considered terrorism.

“Only nut cases want to be president."

Kurt Vonnegut on the USA.
Nothing like an old man to tell it like it is.
He should hang out with Tom Waits.
Seems like there are a lot of cool guys named Kurt.

Do you feel a draft?

Draft legislation for 2005 in progress.
You know, Canada is not that bad of a place to live….

reality.

i woke up this morning and heard this on the news: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/international/middleeast/19CND-ISRA.html

i got into school and saw this on my homepage:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040519/D82LPPNO0.html

i went through my emails and read this EXTREMELY important article:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/perlstein.php

for some godforsaken reason i did a google search and came up with this:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/

i don't know what to do anymore. i can't do my work. it just feels wrong.

my father suggested it would be more constructive to go down to florida or something and register people to vote rather than the RNC and fuck shit up. but i'm so angry. i feel like we owe it to the world. in montreal some guy had a shirt with an american flag that said, "a nation of sheep, lead by wolves." voting is so minimal. it's so useless and litterally the least anybody can do. part of me is insluted by the idea of working my ass off to register people to vote in a country that very well might opt to keep this murderous administration in power. how could i knock on a door and remain rational when this shit is going on and people might actually like it? you know last week the single most searched for thing on the internet was the video of that american getting his head chopped off. that's what people want to see. we're a nation of sick people. distracted and entertained. we prefer some one smiling and giving the thumbs up while simultaniously doing his best to destroy all non-corporate or religious aspects of government and bring about the rapture. people want positivity regardless of reality. even kerry can't decide if he's going to speak straight up or try to put a positive spin on everything. and this is how most people will vote, who is the nicest guy, who would i have over for dinner..and these people bitching about kerry, like it matters who kerry is! why even spend the energy to think about it? talk him up! send him your money and get his ass in office! canadians too, you think this isn't your problem? this is the ENTIRE world's problem at this point. wearing a t-shit, marching around in a circle, and feeling good about yourself does not cut it anymore. honestly, i don't think the RNC is that important. it's just a place to express some pent up shit. but i just don't know what else to do.

seriously, i feel hopeless and desperate. please send me an email to make me feel better. even if it's just to tel me you feel like this too and want to do soemthing.

What a way to hide from debt

This is a really interesting statement by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and is an obvious reason behind the US economic expansion.

scholastic priorities

Secret Service Investigates Teen's Art Project Depicting Bush As Devil

fiscal priorities

More Treasury Department agents are tracking Castro than Bin Ladden:

http://truthout.org/docs_04/050104F.shtml

Bush Knew

One woman who's not fighting the fight:

"White House officials acknowledged that U.S. intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks that bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes." ~ Condoleezza Rice [ABC News, 5/16/03].

Bush supports illegal sweatshops (suprise!)

By Dan Bollerman
March 20 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's re-election campaign purchased clothing that was manufactured in Myanmar, the New York Times reported.

A merchandiser that sold ``up to 10'' fleece pullovers with the campaign logo said the merchandise was imported before Bush signed a law banning imports from Myanmar on Sept. 1, the newspaper said. The restriction was part of an effort to put pressure on Myanmar's military dictatorship.
Ted Jackson, the president of the Spalding Group, told the Times that a supplier, Colorado Trading and Clothing Co., sent the pullovers by accident after being told to deliver only made in the U.S.
The Long Island, New York, newspaper Newsday reported Friday that one of its reporters received a fleece pullover from the Bush campaign that had a ``Made in Myanmar'' label after ordering it from the campaign's Web site. Newsday reported it hadn't yet received merchandise ordered from the campaign Web site of U.S. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic Party nominee, to see if it was made domestically.
Jackson told the Times that only two of 60 Bush-Cheney pullovers he had in stock carried ``Made in Myanmar'' labels. The others said they were manufactured in the U.S.

www.warprofiteers.com

It's pretty much self-explanatory.

RNC Song

And this is a *great* song to practise for the RNC! It's sung to the tune of "My country tis of thee." I like how it breaks down in the 3rd verse and gives up on rhyming...

My City, 'tis of Thee,
Sweet Land of good coffee,
Of thee I sing;
Land of Al Sharpton’s hair,
Falafel and street fairs,
From every skyscraper
Give Bush the finger!

Home of the Mitzvah Tank
Porn shops and Mets and Yanks,
Thy name I love;
I love thy lesbians,
Diners and hot dog stands,
Stoop sales and punk rock bands,
Ashcroft fuck off.

Your politics are full of sleaze,
You’d cut down all the trees
Just for a buck;
Let New Yorkers awake;
Let all who care partake;
Let us our silence break,
Republicans, you suck.

New York is too smart for your
Hysterical fear mongerers,
Your war is bullshit.
There were no WMDs,
You just couldn’t cash in on peace,
Why couldn’t Scalia and Cheney be
Shot by those ducks!

My City, 'tis of Thee,
Sweet Land of good coffee,
Of thee I sing;
Land of Al Sharpton’s hair,
Falafel and street fairs,
From every skyscraper
Give Bush the finger!

Barter for Kerry

This is a great idea and money raising plan thought up by my friend Michael to raide money for Kerry. If you do not have time to donate, please try to think of ways to promote the site.

Dear friends,

I am writing to tell you about a new website I just designed called
www.barterforkerry.com. I believe this site could become a powerful tool for
raising funds to defeat Bush in November and to take our country back.

The idea is simple: individual citizens offer their services‹from
photography to cooking, from web design to guitar lessons, from house
painting to massage therapy‹in exchange for a check made out to John Kerry
for President.

If just two hundred citizens in each state--music teachers, auto mechanics,
plumbers, carpenters, lawyers, housecleaners, accountants, yoga instructors,
babysitters, tennis teachers, massage therapists, web designers--pledge to
donate just one hour of their services a month in exchange for a donation to
John Kerry for President, at an average hourly rate of $50, these ten
thousand concerned citizens can raise $4 million for Kerry by the election.
Now THAT's people power!

If these same 200 citizens in each state instead pledge one hour a WEEK,
they could raise $16 million to kick Bush out of office on November 2nd.
Isn't restoring our beloved country to sanity worth an hour a week?

With this email, I am proposing a national movement of average, concerned
citizens coming together to donate one hour of their time a week from now
until the election. I'm taking the plunge right now: I'm a salsa dance
instructor, and I hereby pledge to donate one salsa dance lesson a week from
now until the November 2nd election, 32 lessons, for a $75 donation to John
Kerry's campaign each lesson.

That means that I, one simple individual who can't afford to donate more
than a few hundred dollars out of my own pocket to Kerry's campaign this
year, can raise $2,400 for his campaign in the next 8 months, just by
donating an hour of my time a week doing something I enjoy. And because I'm
donating services, not money (the check comes from the person receiving the
services, not from me), there is no legal restriction on how much I can
donate and raise. Think of how much money we can raise if everyone in this
country who wants Bush out (that's a large number!) harnesses their skills,
talents, hobbies, abilities and passions in this simple way.

The site will also contain listings for people willing to donate their
services--from web design to entertainment to cooking to childcare--for
local John Kerry fundraising events. If you are holding a local Kerry
fundraising event, check out the page for your state and you will find
people listed there who will help you out for free.

Currently, there is only one service provider on the site, me (in CA), but
that will change soon--the site is only a few hours old and word is
spreading rapidly.

So, with that said, I invite you to visit BarterForKerry.com If you like
what you see, there are several ways you can help this effort:

1) Make The Pledge. Through the site, pledge an hour (or more!) of your time
a week using your skills to help beat Bush. Choose one of the skills
categories listed, or submit your own in the "other" box‹be creative here!
Even if you can't pledge an hour a week, just an hour a month can still make
a difference.

2) Use other service providers in your area listed on the site. Even if they
charge more than the average market rate, it's worth it. ALL the money goes
to support Kerry's campaign, 100% of it.

3 ) Please tell your friends about this site. Word of mouth is the best
publicity. Better yet, forward this email to all your friends (with a
personal note at the top), and encourage them to forward it to their friends
with a personal note, and so on. (Don't send an email to anyone who might
not be interested‹spam is never a good way of promoting anything.)

4) Join the BarterForKerry.com email list. This list will send out
occasional (less than once a week) emails with important updates about our
movement, progress reports, stories from real-life BarterForKerry.com users,
and media stories. I will NEVER let anyone else have access to your email
address and your email address will not be used for ANY OTHER purpose EVER.
You will receive NO SPAM from joining this list. To join, send a blank email
to michael@barterforkerry.com with the word "list" in the subject heading.

5) As you will tell, I'm a pretty lame web designer. If we want this to be a
national movement, we need a professional website. Do you know anyone who
would be willing to donate web, graphic, or database design services to take
the site to the next level? If so, please contact me at
michael@barterforkerry.com.

6 ) The best way to make this movement grow is through media exposure. I am
already conducting a national media campaign. However, I can use all the
help I can get on this front. If you know anyone in local or national media
outlets (newspapers, radio, television, magazines, websites) who might be
interested in running a piece on BarterForKerry.com, please forward their
info to me at michael@barterforkerry.com (I will never give this information
to anyone else) or have them contact me at that address.

7) Although this is a grass-roots movement of average citizens working to
defeat Bush, I would love to get a some celebrities involved. Imagine how
much money we could raise for Kerry and how much publicity we could generate
for Kerry if we could get, say, a famous musician to donate a one-hour
private guitar or voice lesson each month, or a famous athlete to donate a
one-hour private sports lesson a month, through this site, in exchange for a
$2,000 donation to Kerry each lesson. If anyone knows any celebrity
musicians, athletes, authors, actors, or other celebrities who might be
willing to join the movement in this way, please contact them on our behalf
or contact me at michael@barterforkerry.com about this possibility. It would
be great publicity for Kerry, for the site, and for celebrity, as well as an
effective way to raise money for Kerry.

Thank you! Together, we're going to beat Bush on November 2nd.

Michael Ellsberg
michael@barterforkerry.com

modern propaganda

I like how law prohibits money for propaganda not approved by
congress...haha.

U.S. Videos, for TV News, Come Under Scrutiny

March 15, 2004
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, March 14 - Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines.

The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare law on Dec. 8.

The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, which called them video news releases, but the source is not identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."

But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired her to read a script prepared by the government.

Another video, intended for Hispanic audiences, shows a Bush administration official being interviewed in Spanish by a man who identifies himself as a reporter named Alberto Garcia.

Another segment shows a pharmacist talking to an elderly customer. The pharmacist says the new law "helps you better afford your medications," and the customer says, "It sounds like a good idea." Indeed, the pharmacist says, "A very good idea."

The government also prepared scripts that can be used by news anchors introducing what the administration describes as a made-for-television "story package."

In one script, the administration suggests that anchors use this language: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare. Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details."

The "reporter" then explains the benefits of the new law.

Lawyers from the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, discovered the materials last month when they were looking into the use of federal money to pay for certain fliers and advertisements that publicize the Medicare law.

In a report to Congress last week, the lawyers said those fliers and advertisements were legal, despite "notable omissions and other weaknesses." Administration officials said the television news segments were also a legal, effective way to educate beneficiaries.

Gary L. Kepplinger, deputy general counsel of the accounting office, said, "We are actively considering some follow-up work related to the materials we received from the Department of Health and Human Services."

One question is whether the government might mislead viewers by concealing the source of the Medicare videos, which have been broadcast by stations in Oklahoma, Louisiana and other states.

Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity or propaganda purposes" not authorized by Congress. In the past, the General Accounting Office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government or its contractors without identifying the source.

Kevin W. Keane, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said there was nothing nefarious about the television materials, which he said had been distributed to stations nationwide. Under federal law, he said, the government is required to inform beneficiaries about changes in Medicare.

"The use of video news releases is a common, routine practice in government and the private sector," Mr. Keane said. "Anyone who has questions about this practice needs to do some research on modern public information tools."

But Democrats disagreed. "These materials are even more disturbing than the Medicare flier and advertisements," said Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey. "The distribution of these videos is a covert attempt to manipulate the press."

Mr. Lautenberg, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and seven other members of Congress requested the original review by the accounting office.

In the videos and advertisements, the government urges beneficiaries to call a toll-free telephone number, 1-800-MEDICARE. People who call that number can obtain recorded information about prescription drug benefits if they recite the words "Medicare improvement."

Documents from the Medicare agency show why the administration is eager to advertise the benefits of the new law, on radio and television, in newspapers and on the Internet.

"Our consumer research has shown that beneficiaries are confused about the Medicare Modernization Act and uncertain about what it means for them," says one document from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Other documents suggest the scope of the publicity campaign: $12.6 million for advertising this winter, $18.5 million to publicize drug discount cards this spring, about $18.5 million this summer, $30 million for a year of beneficiary education starting this fall and $44 million starting in the fall of 2005.

"Video news releases" have been used for more than a decade. Pharmaceutical companies have done particularly well with them, producing news-style health features about the afflictions their drugs are meant to cure.

The videos became more prominent in the late 1980's, as more and more television stations cut news-gathering budgets and were glad to have packaged news bits to call their own, even if they were prepared by corporations seeking to sell products.

As such, the videos have drawn criticism from some news media ethicists, who consider them to be at odds with journalism's mission to verify independently the claims of corporations and governments.

Government agencies have also produced such videos for years, often on subjects like teenage smoking and the dangers of using steroids. But the Medicare materials wander into more controversial territory.

Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, expressed disbelief that any television stations would present the Medicare videos as real news segments, considering the current debate about the merits of the new law.

"Those to me are just the next thing to fraud," Mr. Kovach said. "It's running a paid advertisement in the heart of a news program."

Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting for this article.

bring it on.

prediction: 1 million.
Yee haw.
We're gonna shut it down.
I'm flying back for it.
You should come too.

Also, related information on political oppression:

We already knew Chalabi was a stooge but to pay him for it? Geesh...

Ms. Jackson if you're nasty.

a great article regarding ms jackson's wardrobe malfunction.

Frank Rich: My Hero, Janet Jackson

February 15, 2004

It may be a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. Two weeks after the bustier bust, almost no one has come to the defense of Janet Jackson. I do so with a full heart. By baring a single breast in a slam-dunk publicity stunt of two seconds' duration, this singer also exposed just how many boobs we have in this country. We owe her thanks for a genuine public service.

You can argue that Ms. Jackson is the only honest figure in this Super Bowl of hypocrisy. She was out to accomplish a naked agenda - the resuscitation of her fading career on the eve of her new album's release - and so she did. She's not faking much remorse, either. Last Sunday she refused to appear on the Grammys rather than accede to CBS's demand that she perform a disingenuous, misty-eyed ritual "apology" to the nation for her crime of a week earlier. By contrast, Justin Timberlake, the wimp who gave the English language the lasting gift of "wardrobe malfunction," did as he was told, a would-be pop rebel in a jacket and a tie, looking like a schoolboy reporting to the principal's office. Ms. Jackson, one suspects, is laughing all the way to the bank.

There are plenty of Americans to laugh at, starting with the public itself. If we are to believe the general outcry, the nation's families were utterly blindsided by the Janet-Justin pas de deux while watching an entertainment akin to "Little Women." As Laura Bush put it, "Parents wouldn't know to turn their television off before that happened." They wouldn't? In the two-plus hours "before that happened," parents saw not only the commercials featuring a crotch-biting dog, a flatulent horse and a potty-mouthed child but also the number in which the crotch-grabbing Nelly successfully commanded a gaggle of cheerleaders to rip off their skirts. What signal were these poor, helpless adults waiting for before pulling their children away from the set? Apparently nothing short of a simulated rape would do.

Once the deed was done, the audience couldn't stop watching it. TV viewers with TiVo set an instant-replay record as they slowed down the offending imagery with a clinical alacrity heretofore reserved for the Zapruder film. Lycos, the Internet search engine, reported that the number of searches for Janet Jackson tied the record set by 9/11-related searches on and just after 9/11.

"That a single breast received as much attention as the first attack on United States soil in 60 years is beyond belief," wrote Aaron Schatz, the columnist on the Lycos Top 50 site. (Though not, perhaps, to the fundamentalist zealots who attacked us.)

For those who still couldn't get enough, the cable news channels giddily played the video over and over to remind us of just how deplorable it was. Even though by this point the networks were blurring the breast with electronic pasties, there was still an erotic kick to be milked: the act of a man tearing off a woman's clothes was as thrilling to the audience as whatever flesh was revealed therein, perhaps more so. But to say that aloud is to travel down a road that our moral watchdogs do not want to take. It's the unwritten rule of our culture that the public is always right. The "folks," as Bill O'Reilly is fond of condescending to them, are always the innocent victims of the big, bad cultural villains. They're never complicit in the crime. The idea that the folks might have the free will to tune out tasteless TV programming or do without TV altogether - or that they might eat up the sleaze, with or without young 'uns in the room - is almost never stated on television, for obvious reasons of fiscal self-interest. You don't insult your customers.

Since the public is blameless for its role in creating a market for displays like the Super Bowl's, who should be the scapegoat instead? If you peruse Mr. O'Reilly's admonitions in his first three programs dealing with the topic, or the tirades of The Wall Street Journal editorial page and right-wing direct-mail mills like the Parents Television Council and Concerned Women for America, you'll find a revealing pattern: MTV, CBS and their parent corporation, Viacom, are the exclusive targets of the invective. The National Football League is barely mentioned, if at all. To blame the country's highest-rated sports operation, after all, might risk insulting the football-watching folks to whom these moral watchdogs pander for fun and profit.

But the N.F.L. is in the sex business as assiduously as CBS and MTV, and for the same reason: it wants those prurient eyeballs. It's now been more than a quarter-century since Super Bowl X, when the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders first caught the attention of the nation. "The audience deserves a little sex with its violence," Chuck Milton, a CBS sports producer, said back then.

The N.F.L. has since worked tirelessly to fill that need. This year was not the first MTV halftime show that the league has ordered to try to expand its aging audience beyond the Levitra demographic. The first such collaboration, Super Bowl XXXV three years ago, featured Britney Spears all but falling out of a halter top and numbers in which both Mr. Timberlake (then appearing with 'NSync) and Nelly grabbed their crotches. There was, to my eye, twice as much crotch-grabbing then as there was this year, but that show generated no outrage whatsoever.

It did, however, attract two million more viewers than the game itself. The N.F.L. wanted more of the same for 2004, which is why the league's commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, released a statement saying, "We're pleased to work again with MTV" when announcing the encore. Or pleased up to a point. When MTV proposed that part of the show be devoted to a performance of the song "An American Prayer" by Bono to increase awareness of the horrific AIDS epidemic in Africa, the N.F.L. said no - even though Bono had done the league the favor of giving the 2002 Super Bowl halftime show a dignified musical tribute to the victims of the 9/11 attacks.

The mention of a sexually transmitted disease might dampen the libido of the salacious MTV show that the N.F.L. wanted this year and wanted so badly that the league remained silent even when MTV's pregame publicity promised that the performance would contain "some shocking moments." As one participant in the production told me, the N.F.L. saw "every camera angle" at the show's rehearsals and thus was no less aware of its general tone than CBS and MTV were. You don't hire Ms. Jackson, who's been steadily exposing more of her breasts for over a decade on magazine covers, to sing "Rock Your Body" if you have a G-rated game plan. Nonetheless, Joe Browne, the league's flak, pleaded total innocence after the event, releasing a hilarious statement that the N.F.L., like the public, was the unwitting victim of a show that it had both commissioned and helped supervise: "We applaud the F.C.C.'s investigation into the MTV-produced halftime. We and our fans were embarrassed by the entire show."

That investigation, piggybacked by last week's Congressional hearings, is an election-year stunt as full of hot air as the Bud Light horse flatulence ad. "Like millions of Americans, my family and I gathered around the television for a celebration," declared Michael Powell, the F.C.C. chairman, upon announcing that the entire halftime would be examined. A celebration of what, exactly? Didn't Mr. Powell, the nation's chief television regulator, watch the previous MTV halftime show?

He promises to conduct the investigation himself - a meaningless gesture, though it may gain him an audience and perhaps a photo op with Ms. Jackson. Mr. Powell's real agenda here is to conduct a show trial that might counter his well-earned reputation as a wholly owned subsidiary of our media giants. Viacom has been a particularly happy beneficiary of the deregulatory push of his reign, buying up every slice of the media pie that's not nailed down. Should CBS be found guilty of "indecency" by the feds, the total penalty would amount to some $5 million, roughly the price of two 30-second Super Bowl commercials. Congress's new push to increase those fines tenfold is just as laughable. Viacom took in $26.6 billion last year.

Not for nothing did the company's stock actually go up the day after the Super Bowl. The halftime show was great merchandising for both MTV and CBS, the go-to network for "Victoria's Secret Fashion Show." Not to be left without a piece of the action, even NBC got in