~ colin powell has resigned, which should surprise no one. we await the deluge of liberal whining that with powell goes the only moderate voice of reason on bush’s cabinet. we say that this ‘moderate’ prick had the chance to stand up for what he knew to be true and right many times, especially before walking into the united nations and wittingly lying to the whole world about iraq’s weaponry, but he chose to sell out and tow the company line as the obedient soldier he has been trained to be – although, one might consider him to be a sellout since the days when he attempted to cover up the my lai massacre. good riddance; now bring us condi rice’s head (figuratively, of course).

~ our wordpress [w] install is finally getting hit with as much casino and finance spam as movable type. we have instituted a solution that involves the automatic deletion of a comment based upon the appearance of certain words. we will not tell you what they are, so if your comment doesn’t appear, get a thesaurus and try a new combination. combat comment spam [w] may help some of y’all other wordpress users clean up your site.

~ cnn.com wants to know what internet users have to say to “Do you think sexual preference is a choice?“. does cnn understand tautology? more to the point, do they know that the word ‘preference’ implies a choice being made? if not, then they must also find that gays ‘prefer’ to eat food and ‘prefer’ to breathe clean air. a question about choice is useful is drawing out the president’s prejudice, but in the abstract, this question is a stupid one.
the question is not stupid because ignorant people at cnn and across america do not understand why some people are different than they are; it is stupid because its construction both reveals the opinions of the questioner and directs a certain answer from the listener. why doesn’t cnn ask “are most blacks are uneducated because they are poor, or poor because they are uneducated?” that is about as sensitive and sensible as ‘is preference a choice?’.
we have read the news quite a bit, and we have spoken to a number of our fellow americans; not one of them has the politics of anyone’s sexuality foremost in his or her mind as we approach what many consider to be an election of paramount importance. where does cnn find the notion that americans are frozen in their thoughts until they discover the foundation for the sexual desires and emotions of heteros and homos?
clearly they are trying to milk a few more days out of the kerry/cheney family controversy, in order to futher the meme that kerry is ‘not a good man’, but we don’t think the underlying reason for this controversy is worth a tinker’s damn. getting sidetracked by this bullshit is exactly what the republicans, who want poor and uneducated people to put aside their economic concerns and rely on bigotry to decide their vote. congratulations cnn, on your steadfast position as a political tool.

~ debate three is all about the moderator. let’s thank him for the great questions he conjured. thank you for not wasting time with questions about the environment, cutting of funds for national parks, failing infrastructure, superfunds, poverty in our cities and rural suburbs, the social detachment of the suburbs and exurbs, fuel prices, energy deficiency, voting fraud, corporate power and influence of the gov’t, and the fucked up electoral college. thanks instead of asking about prayer and abortion and about who loves their wife and kids more.

~ we hain’t even heard the vice presidential debates yet, but the bush campaign expects its followers to run around the internet and talk radio tonight , giving a positive assessment of whatever they haven’t heard, as evidenced by a letter [w] they have just sent. it should be expected that the kerry campaign is doing the same thing; if not, their followers are getting ready to do it on their own. in fact, the mere mention of this strategy and of a link [w] to a list of sites, could lead one to believe that the angry red planet encourages the petty involvement in exchanges on online forums and flooding of online polls.

~ “The people who told us That two and two is ten Are now trying to tell us That two and two is five” –bbragg.

thanks to paul bremer for informing us that there were not enough troops in iraq to keep the peace and to prevent looting and the ensuing insurgency. even if john kerry hadn’t told us this last week, most of us could tell there were not enough troops after the invasion because we noticed that the peace was not kept whilst looting and insurgency ensued. the low number of troops was donald rumsfeld’s great idea; he spent a lot of time admonishing retired generals and armchair napoleons who said that the forces were insufficient. perhaps he will now admit that he screwed up by trashing the powell doctrine?

well, for rumsfeld’s part, he decided instead to throw in his information that “[he has] not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two” concerning Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. is not this pretty much what we learned from the new yorker and alternet and the nation and common dreams over two years ago? even teenagers in silver body paint on the streets of new york seemed to have this knowledge years before these old men in ties and jackets.

why do security moms still think that this party is competent to either pursue the war on terror or unravel the quagmire in iraq? the republicans are more interested in micromanaging the conflict with an eye on defense contractors profit margins (see bush’s debate comment that it is too expensive to inspect cargo on planes and ships for bombs or nuclear material) than in achieving victory.

~ there is nothing but hollowness in bush and cheney”s latest desperate attempts to slag kerry by saying that he is unfit to lead because he did not “respect” iyad alawi. their words are hollow because alawi deserves no respect; he is a ruthless killer picked from iraq”s secret police to serve as our strongman. americans shouldn”t think for a moment that this guy is a respectable ally*; the guy is a blood-stained dirtbag and everyone in iraq knows it; the moment our troops and mercenaries aren”t propping him up, expect to see that guy hanging from a bridge over the tigris.

*we will not note the irony of bush”s contrived indignation at the unkind words towards alawi, considering the treatment that real allies like france and germany have received from the bush administration.

~ furthermore, bush is continuing to lie:

“Fewer Iraqi security forces will be fully trained by the end of this year than cited by President Bush…according to Pentagon documents. The documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training.” –Reuters

~ congratulations for dick cheney are in order; he has the dubious honour of having said the most outrageous thing we have heard since jerry falwell told us that the september 11 attacks were our punishment from god for our harboring of gays and the aclu. admittedly, if you were vice president of an administration that has accomplished nothing except no bid contracts to your former company, one which still pays you deferred salary and has not accounted for over $1 billion money it has received from the gov’t, presided over the first loss of jobs since the great depression, the loss of health insurance for 5 million americans, and allowed another 1.3 million americans to fall below the poverty line this year, you’d probably be reduced to threatening americans that if they vote for your opponent that they will be killed, too. the ‘double-digit’ lead reportedly enjoyed by bush for a couple of days was troubling, indeed, but when one watches the incumbents, who were presumably ‘making us safe’ or whatever for the past three years, become so desperate that they tell us we will die without them in office, one is heartened.

we know that republicans try to inspire irrational fears into americans, such as the fear of gays who will destroy the family or the fear that minorities will get to vote or the fear that you will not own a bigger car than your father owned, but this is the most blatant and explicit threat—that of death—that we have seen. we mean, who remembers lyndon johnson’s campaign ad with the mushroom cloud? who remembers the billboards with black hands reaching for a white child under the heading ‘vote republican’?

~ speaking of not ‘making us safe’ after all, if we do get the terrorist attack promised by dick cheney, will we also get a refund on that $200 billion spent on a war in iraq that was supposed to keep the terrorists at bay? “we’ll fight them in mosul, so we won’t have to fight them in macon”…or something.

~ speaking of losing in iraq, some of you may recall that the angry red planet declared that the radical moqtada al-sadr would not be captured alive; and after countless deaths and the annihilation of najaf, we are back were we started. the us army – and some marines – had to watch al-sadr walk away unscathed whilst declaring the delightful news that he was going to ‘enter politics’; he was given a free pass by the iraqi gov’t last month, so his boys were able to kill seven marines this weekend. what are we going to do next year when the iraqi gov’t (supposedly) is no longer appointed by the u.s.?

~ if anyone from npr is listening, could you clarify what you mean when you say ‘moderate radicals’ condemn the killing of school kids in russia? is it ‘radical’ to kill anyone who disagrees with your religion/politics, but only ‘moderate’ if you don’t kill children? our guess is a ‘moderate radical’ only kills teenagers? what if you are a teenage male who kills adults in order to keep their politics out of your religion?

~ You’ll have to take our word for it when we say that we crafted a witty and astute retort to the attitudes and misrepresentations in a recent speech by one of our Senators. However, considering that the senator’s strategy is that he would rather be a pariah of notoriety than a pissant in obscurity, we reckon it would be best to spend no more bytes on his memory. regardless of how well he tore his party a new one, his true dubious accomplishment is that many more folks throughout the rest of the country think that georgians are opportunistic back stabbers. rather than rant and rave about this sellout, we’ll wait until november 2nd and watch him wonder where all of his new found friends have gone.

~ this is not about our senator, but about the reaction of the delegates to parts of his speech: why does a Republican delegate cheer when someone says something like “the b1 bomber dropped 40% of the bombs” on anyone. is it just to disturb those of us who do not find titillation in the violent death of others?

karl rove has a dry erase board somewhere in texas that contains a matrix with the following elements: 1. the lie. 2. number of minds swayed by the lie. 3. number of minds swayed by reaction to the lie. 4. embarrassment of being caught in a lie. if number 3 is less than number 2, then number 4 is wiped from the board and from consideration.
regardless of the fact that the “swift boaters” campaign has been proven to be a fraud, the percentage of voters who are voting based on kerry’s war record has fallen from 41% to 22% since the convention. the lesson here is that it doesn’t matter how many times democrats prove the accusations false; the psychological effect is the same. don’t we remember the calls that were made in south carolina in 2000? “if you heard that john mccain fathered an illegitimate black child, would it make you more or less likely to vote for him?”..”he did that?”..”i’m not saying that he did, but if he did, would you vote for him?”.
note that we are not saying that we might as well let the republicans continue to tell lies; we are only pointing out that the micromanaging of debunking every salvo is not successful. should we lie in return? or should we ignore them and tell other truths? probably neither of these are the answer.
kerry wasted a lot of time talking about shit that happened in vietnam 30 years ago; in return for that, we all wasted a lot of time talking about the swift boat veterans who were talking about shit that happened in vietnam 30 years ago. partisan politics aside, bush’s presidency has been a disaster; he is the first president to hold office over a loss of jobs since the great depression, the number of americans without health insurance has risen to 45 million, ‘no child left behind’ remains unfunded, 1.3 million more people have fallen into poverty for a total of 35.9 million impoverished amercians,… hell, you know there are a thousand reasons [w] to vote against bush; we don’t need to list them all here.
for these past three weeks, we could have been talking about any number of these failures, but instead we all bickered over stupid shit like how many bullet holes are in john kerry’s boat and whether he turned the boat left or right. with bush’s dismal lack of accomplishment, his opponent should be mopping the floor with him right now; our fixation on whether or not kerry acted like rambo or like sir robin 30 years ago is a good reason why kerry pathetically can barely break even with bush. there’s a war in iraq today that we could discuss; or are we going to wait 30 years until an iraq veteran makes guard duty in kirkuk the focus of his campaign? the republicans’ control of our debate has doubtlessly left a smiley face doodled on that texan dry erase board.

~ an addendum to yesterday”s kerry vs. vietnam rant: perhaps if kerry”s braggadocio about serving in vietnam was tempered with some regret at the entire debacle which cost the lives of 58,000 americans and two million vietnamese, it would be easier to take. instead of talking like vietnam was a great opportunity for someone to demonstrate that he/she can be a bad ass, maybe he could simply state that, though the vietnam adventure proved to be a mistake, he served as honourably has he could while still trusting his government. it isn”t like he has to explain his slitting of sleeping women”s throats, like senator bob kerrey has done. kerry doesn”t have to say “i acted dishonourably” or even “i didn”t kick ass”, but it would be helpful if he mentioned that the entire scene was regrettable and a shameful part of u.s. history – kind of like he did in the 1970″s. there must be some way for kerry to pretend to be as tough of a guy as bush pretends to be – without telling us that vietnam was a lot of fun.

~ for our confused, non-atlanta-based readers, ponce is not a thing, it is a place. it is short for “ponce de leon avenue”, which is a thoroughfare from midtown atlanta out to decatur and eventually stone mountain. ponce cuts through the upscale residential area of druid hills, which was laid out by frederick law olmstead of new york city’s central park fame. the stretch of ponce between briarcliff and decatur still contains the lush linear parks and the nationally registered homes that were built according to the plans of olmstead and his son, j.c.olmstead. the western stretch of ponce, between downtown and briarcliff, where “the incident” occurred, is less pastoral; it is highly developed and congested and inhospitable to human life.
another feature of ponce is that it once served (and still does to some extent) as the unofficial dividing line between whites and blacks in eastern atlanta; the names of streets change as they cross ponce, so that whites and blacks would not have to live on the same street; briarcliff becomes moreland, monroe becomes boulevard, charles allen becomes jackson. you can also see this phenomenon in new york city at 110th street, in case you can”t make it to the south.