Doubts about Kerry? Put them all to rest:

John Kerry - Superhero

Listen closely and tell anyone you know who is still thinking about voting for Bush: has Bush ever, personally, faced down anyone other than with a chant of "Drink, drink, drink"? Has he ever gone against someone who was really, truly powerful in order to place the good of the people above his own good? No. Heroes do that - they don't care what's in their way - they will face down evil, no matter how powerful. And they don't bother with those who are too weak to fight.

The article details how Kerry in fact did personally face down not just one, but three people who were really, truly powerful: Nixon, Reagan and Bush the First. And he did it specifically with the aim of placing the good of the people above his own good. When did the Shrub ever do that?

Dear ABC News: How Stupid Do You Think We Are?

An ABC News article reports that, "A man describing himself as an American member of al Qaeda says a new wave of terror attacks against the United States could come 'at any moment,' according to a videotape obtained by ABC News."

Note, however, the beginning of the 3rd paragraph:

While CIA officials say they have not been able to authenticate the 75-minute tape...

So CBS News is supposed to authenticate its sources, but ABC News isn't required to do so. Yeah, right.

And the fact that this is coming four days before election day? I'm supposed to believe this is just a coincidence, right?

George W. Bush: Mister Security Guy!

LOL:

Bush can't hide from UK surfers

October 28, 2004
Claire Woffenden

Surfers that have been unable to visit the official re-election site of President George W Bush all week can access the site through an alternative address.

International access to www.georgewbush.com appears to have been blocked since the start of Monday, reports net monitoring firm Netcraft.

When surfers in the UK type in the web address www.georgewbush.com, the following message appears: "You are not authorized to view this page. You might not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied".

However, surfers in the UK can still access the site using either https://georgewbush.com or http://65.172.163.222.

[snip]

It is unclear why access has been denied for surfers outside the US and Canada, although some publications report a Bush campaign spokesman as saying: "the measure was taken for security reasons."

That would be the brand of "security" where you try to make yourself feel better by controlling stuff, rather than trying to make yourself actually secure. Heh.

"Uh, we didn't lose the explosives--we just don't know where they are."

Kerry Attacks Bush Over Loss of Explosives

"Last night on this broadcast we reported that the 101st Airborne never found the nearly 380 tons of HMX and RDX explosives,'' Tom Brokaw, the NBC anchor, said. "We did not conclude the explosives were missing or had vanished, nor did we say they missed the explosives. We simply reported that the 101st did not find them.''

Well, the next time Brokaw makes use of the word "is", we might want to ask for clarification. Depends on what the meaning of "is" is, right?

Brokaw's quibble is ridiculous. He's drawing an analogy to the following situation: a boy can't find a favorite toy, which he knows is in his room somewhere. The toy isn't technically lost, because the boy knows that it's in his room. He just can't find it at the moment. This analogy is flawed, because with respect to the missing 380 tons of high explosives, there is no room. The boy doesn't know specifically where to look, but he has some idea of the general vicinity. But with the weapons, they could be anywhere in the world. Furthermore, while we're busy looking for them, someone else might be busy using them.

The US Supreme Court - yet another reason why BUSH MUST GO

Bob Harris provides a nice reminder of one very important reason why we really need the Shrub to lose next week: The Supreme Court, which currently consists of the following people:

John Paul Stevens, age 84. Cancer survivor.
William Rehnquist, age 80. Currently hospitalized for thyroid cancer.
Sandra Day O'Connor, age 74. Cancer survivor.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, age 71. Cancer survivor.
Antonin Scalia, age 68
Anthony Kennedy, age 68
Stephen Breyer, age 66
David Souter, age 65
Clarence Thomas, age 56

If the Shrub is re-elected, it's pretty much certain that he will be able to appoint several new justices. And, if there's any question as to what sorts of people he'll come up with, take a look at Charles Pickering, whom Bush put on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit by recess appointment. Incredibly, the recess in question was the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, which is amazing given this (again, quoted from Bob Harris' new blog):

Charles Pickering, for example, has been consistently hostile to civil rights and voting rights issues while siding with cross-burners (literally) and advocating increased enforcement of Mississippi's laws making interracial marriage a crime.

It's not likely that the Senate would actually approve the nomination of an extremist like Pickering to the Supreme Court, but at the very least, Bush could continue to make recess appointments in defiance of Congress (a practice which really ought to be limited by law, and which should specifically exclude people like Pickering who have previously been rejected).

News Flash: World to End in Fairly Short Order

Well, that sounds like a joke headline, but I wanted to post this link, which I came across last week:

THE PEAK OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION AND THE ROAD TO THE OLDUVAI GORGE

The title is sort of cryptic to non-archaeology buffs, but essentially what the author is predicting is the inevitable decline and fall of industrial civilization on or around the year 2030. Part of this prediction is based on a fairly arbitrary definition of the term "industrial civilization", but nevertheless, it would appear that there are some fairly dark days ahead, unless we can right fucking now start to figure out ways of generating massive amounts of electricity without using fossil fuels. Fossil fuels, as it happens, are not going to last forever, and the point where their supply decreases rather than increases may already be upon us. This is especially problematic in terms of generating electricity, which requires more fuel to generate a given amount of power than simply burning the coal or oil directly. Demand for electricity continues to increase, but the fuels to generate it will become more and more scarce.

As pointed out in the article, new power plants are being built to respond to the increased demand for power, but these new plants are all gas fired. Natural gas is a really stupid way to generate electric power. Why? Because it takes massive amounts of natural gas to boil the water to turn the turbines to generate the electricity. This is because natural gas burns at a lower temperature than, for example, coal. Gas is great for heating homes and cooking food, because in those uses it can be burned directly. Plus, you don't need a flame burning at several thousand degrees to heat your home or boil a pot of water. But if you have a whole shitload of water to boil, as you do in a large electrical power plant, then it sure helps to have a big, several-thousand-degree heat source. Out of the various fossil fuel options, the best in terms of burning hot is coal. Lots of pollution that way, but then again, if that can be adequately dealt with, there's still an awful lot of coal available. Better would be nuclear fission, which is not a fossil fuel at all, and would last us for quite a long time--long enough to develop fusion power, perhaps. With fission, we'd need to secure the plants, and find a good way of dealing with the waste, but these are not unreasonable problems. Of course, increasing the use of fission would generate massive protest from people who fail to grasp the depth of the hole we've dug for ourselves. If we're faced with a choice of A) Letting civilization collapse, or B) Embracing nuclear fission as our primary means of generating electrical power, which would we choose? I'd go for "B" in a second. But there's no telling how the general public will react. All that's certain is that a rational response cannot be counted upon.

So, in light of all this, now might be a good time to start thinking about moving to a warmer, brighter climate, preferably one where I can grow my own food. And I mustn't forget--there'll be a need to defend myself too, from the billions of people who are going to starve to death.

This really sucks--the whole situation has got me sounding like a survivalist whacko. But, ironically, if what the article describes actually comes to pass, it's the survivalist whackos who'll be best equipped to deal with it.

Vote Bush for a more secure America! (yeah, right)

Secure?

I suppose Bush is an expert in security issues, because it takes so much expertise to carefully guard the Iraqi Oil Ministry while simultaneously allowing 380 tons of high explosive to be looted, and then to cover it up. Maybe it's the covering it up part that qualifies him.

Only about a week until election day now. It will be a relief to have this asshat out of office, although I admit to some curiousity about how the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is going to try to impeach Kerry. Count on it--if Kerry manages to survive the inevitable baseless ballyhoo about whether the votes were counted properly (which is not at all a given, in my opinion), the smear campaign against him will begin on the very day that the results are certified.