Liveblogging the debates, for fun and profit

Update: Added the pho­to above. The crowd was esti­mat­ed at near 200! In 2000, I only remem­ber 50 or so peo­ple show­ing up.

Jim Lehrer explains the rule.

Bush made it to Ker­ry’s side first! Bush wins.

Ker­ry is tall! Ker­ry wins.

Is Ker­ry allowed to wave?

Can Ker­ry do bet­ter? “Maybe, I don’t have any­thing to say about that. Thanks for invit­ing me though.”

Oops. He thinks he would be bet­ter. Where are the allies? Why won’t they die in Iraq instead of us? Jerks.

Bush looks stu­pid. But his tie is straight. Thanks ABC. Every­one mocks you. Bush thought he was going to be off camera!

But thinks … Flori­da is OK. “Sep­tem­ber 11 changed everything.”

10 mil­lion Afghans, out of 9 mil­lion eli­gi­ble vot­ers, are reg­is­tered to vote! Rock on.

Libya is dis­armed, Iran and North Korea are armed.

Whill Ker­ry make us get hit again? I believe I’ll win. Who cares? I’m a great guy. “Unmer­ci­ful­ly”?

Nev­er waver, nev­er change pres­i­dents. 41% of eli­gi­ble vot­ers in Afghanistan are women? On aver­age, there are more women than men.

“Fos­iferus­ly.”

“We have to be smart” “Let’s invade Afghanistan!”

Bush in the head­lights makes every­one laugh.

Appar­ent­ly, the mil­i­tary is shrill

Q: “What mis­takes?”
A: “Where do you want me to begin?”

“Changed his mind — his cam­paign has a word for that.”

“As a man who has been in combat.”

Bush checks his notes.

Afghanistan is built out of opium!

Sad­dam is 10 times more impor­tant than what’s-his-name, bin Laden.

It’s the hard­est deci­sion a pres­i­dent makes. Almost as impor­tant as decid­ing to go to the UN all by myself.

The world is safer with­out Hus­sein, dammit!

Fuck, where’s the tele-prompter?

Of course we’re after Hus­sein, no, bin Laden.

Bush chan­nels the Medi­um Lob­ster, the way to win this is to nev­er change.

Unisia, mixed sig­nals are bad. Allawi says so.

Will Ker­ry point out that Bush could have killed Zarqawi?

Ker­ry rocks.

Ker­ry gets the close head shots, not Bush. Is Bush splotchy?

What kind of mixed mes­sage does it send to spend all that mon­ey on cops and fire­fight­ers in Iraq when we are cut­ting those ser­vices here?

Ker­ry rocks. I’m gonna do it in four years. Do it all night long, baby.

Bush: But anyway …

“We have to be on the offense.” But the best offense is the best defense.

Patri­ot Act is vital.

Bush is incredulous.

When do we bring our boys home?

When we have an Iraqi army! When they want to pro­tect them­selves! Bust Mr. Prez., we’re killing more Iraqis than insur­gents. They think the insur­gents are pro­tect­ing them from us.

Bush: “I don’t like arti­fi­cial dead­lines, that’s why we trans­ferred ”sov­er­eign­ty“ not lat­er than June 30.”

“Help is on the way!”

Sol­diers to Ker­ry: “We need you!”

Bush’s father is shrill.

Bush decid­ed he wants to change the rules.

“I made a mis­take in how I talk about the war, he made a mis­take in how he ran it, which is worse, bitch?”

Q: “Are Amer­i­cans dying for a mistake?”

A: “Not if I’m in charge.”

“Invad­ing Iraq in response to 9–11 is like FDR invad­ing Mex­i­co in response to Pearl Har­bor, bitch.”

“That’s total­ly absurd.”

Bush: “I know Poland’s lead­er’s name. I rock!”
Bush: “I know how these peo­ple think.”
Bush: “That’s not how you make friends, bitch!”

Bush: “Our mis­take was win­ning to fast. Slow down, bitch! Stop sur­ren­der­ing, cow­ards! I see how hard it is on TV!”

The plan says we’ll have elec­tions in Jan­u­ary, not on some arbi­trary dead­line. Our alliance is strong, that’s why Britain is reduc­ing its troop levels.

Ker­ry: “The truth is what good pol­i­cy is based on, bitch!”

Talk about mixed mes­sages, ie, North Korea.

Q: “How has he lied?”
A: Niger, coali­tion too small, did­n’t exhaust diplo­ma­cy, “rushed to war,” “mis­lead… mis­lead… mis­lead.” “I’ve worked with for­eign lead­ers since you were a pup, bitch!” “We need to be smarter, bitch, like Ron Rea­gan and Kennedy!”

Bush: “A com­man­der-in-chief nev­er changes his mind.”

Bush: “Ker­ry: ‘I’ve had one posi­tion, to have no position.’”

“Nev­er mis­take the war for the warrior.”

“Can I have 30 seconds? … … … … …”

Appar­ent­ly, Ker­ry was in com­bat, or something.

“He’s mis­lead again this evening, bitch! No, not you Jim, you rock.”

Stop mak­ing fun of my pup­pet. We only make fun of the lead­ers of old Europe.

Live blog­ging is fun, but tiring.

“I know Osama attacked us!” Ker­ry smirks.

“I’d have done it dif­fer­ent­ly.” Bush is shocked. “That’s unpos­si­ble,” he says.

Bush: “Being pop­u­lar does­n’t make sense.”

Q: “Can diplo­ma­cy solve N. Korea and Iran?”
Bush: “I hope so. DIa­logue sure won’t, bitch.”

Ker­ry knows more about Iran and NK than Bush. I like him. For­eign lead­ers “bewil­dered and embarrassed.”

Dar­fur:
Ker­ry: Let’s give logis­ti­cal sup­port and maybe troops.
Bush: We gave them food, and even­tu­al­ly the rain will end.

Bush: Ker­ry is a good father, and Yale is OK.
Mixed mes­sages suck.

Ker­ry: Bush girls are stu­pid, Lau­ra is HOT.
Cer­tain­ty: It’s one thing to be cer­tain and be wrong. It’s anoth­er to learn from your mis­takes, bitch! Stem cells!

Ker­ry: I’m no wilt­ing vio­let, bitch.

Biggest threat?
Josh: Osama bin Laden.
Ker­ry: Nuclear weapons.
Bush: John Ker­ry Osama bin Laden nooc­u­lar wepuns weapons of mass destruc­tion relat­ed pro­gram activ­i­ties. No, bal­lis­tic mis­siles! But only if ter­ror­ists have them.

I like the lights. I like know­ing whether he’s wind­ing up or tak­ing up a new topic.

Flip-flop­per, first you look into Putin’s soul and think he rocks, now he sucks?

Just because the pres­i­dent says it can’t be done, does­n’t mean it isn’t true. He’s lied before.

I’m a pret­ty calm guy. We looked at the wrong inac­cu­rate intelligence.

Ker­ry rocks. Bush’s writ­ers’ are much better.

That’s that.

How to lose a war

Talk­Left has an arti­cle about a car bomb killing 35 chil­dren in Bagh­dad. The oth­er day, Knight Rid­der report­ed that more Iraqis have been killed by Amer­i­can forces than by insur­gents. Mark Dan­ner’s lat­est in the New York Review of Books quotes a trans­la­tor say­ing, “I always knew the Amer­i­cans would bring elec­tric­i­ty back to Bagh­dad. I just nev­er thought they’d be shoot­ing it up my ass.”

The piece is about the Fay and Schlesinger reports on Abu Ghraib, but the por­trait it, and pre­sum­ably they, paint is hor­rif­ic. Abu Ghraib “lacked inter­preters, inter­roga­tors, guards, detainee uni­forms, and just about every­thing else, includ­ing edi­ble food, and that, at its height, was stag­ger­ing under an impos­si­ble pris­on­er-to-guard ratio of sev­en­ty-five to one, all the way up to the com­mand staff of Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Ricar­do Sanchez, which lacked, among oth­er vital resources, two thirds of its assigned officers.”

Sol­diers would respond to a mor­tar attack by cor­don­ing off the near­by blocks, then arrest, appar­ent­ly at ran­dom, any­one they found. They fig­ured some­one else would sort through the peo­ple. Once the pris­on­ers reached Abu Ghraib, it was assumed that they were guilty, since the sol­diers would­n’t have sent peo­ple to prison if they did nothing.

One wom­an’s account of the tor­ture at Abu Ghraib was pub­lished in the Guardian. A neigh­bor was black­mail­ing her, threat­en­ing to rat her out to the Amer­i­cans if she did­n’t pay him. She tried to head him off, went to the Amer­i­cans with her broth­ers, explained the sit­u­a­tion. After talk­ing for a while, the offi­cer arrest­ed her and sent her and her broth­ers to Abu Ghraib. 

Alaza­wi says that US guards left her sit­ting on the chair overnight, and that the next day they took her to a room known by detainees as “the tor­tur­ing place”. “The US offi­cer told us: ‘If you don’t con­fess we will tor­ture you. So you have to con­fess.’ My hands were hand­cuffed. They took off my boots and stood me in the mud with my face against the wall. I could hear women and men shout­ing and weep­ing. I recog­nised one of the cries as my broth­er Mu’­taz. I want­ed to see what was going on so I tried to move the cloth from my eyes. When I did, I fainted.”

Like most Iraqi women, Alaza­wi is reluc­tant to talk about what she saw but says that her broth­er Mu’­taz was bru­tal­ly sex­u­al­ly assault­ed. Then it was her turn to be inter­ro­gat­ed. “The infor­mant and an Amer­i­can offi­cer were both in the room. The infor­mant start­ed talk­ing. He said, ‘You are the lady who funds your broth­ers to attack the Amer­i­cans.’ I speak some Eng­lish so I replied: ‘He is a liar.’ The Amer­i­can offi­cer then hit me on both cheeks. I fell to the ground.

Alaza­wi says that Amer­i­can guards then made her stand with her face against the wall for 12 hours, from noon until mid­night. After­wards they returned her to her cell. “The cell had no ceil­ing. It was rain­ing. At mid­night they threw some­thing at my sis­ter’s feet. It was my broth­er Ayad. He was bleed­ing from his legs, knees and fore­head. I told my sis­ter: ‘Find out if he’s still breath­ing.’ She said: ‘No. Noth­ing.’ I start­ed cry­ing. The next day they took away his body.”

The death cer­tifi­cate said he died of “car­diac arrest of unknown etiology.” 

I can’t find this online, but Antho­ny Lewis’s NYRB piece from 15 July relates these stories:

The Human Rights Watch report describes, in lan­guage that is if any­thing under­stat­ed, such things as the killing of Iraqi mil­i­tary offi­cers who were in Amer­i­can cus­tody and were being inter­ro­gat­ed. One was Major Gen­er­al Abed Hamed Mow­housh, who had been the chief of Iraqi air defens­es. He was cap­tured in Octo­ber 2003, and died on Novem­ber 26, 2003, in a US deten­tion facil­i­ty in Iraq. At first the Pen­ta­gon released a death cer­tifi­cate say­ing that he had died of “nat­ur­al caus­es.” But after a Den­ver Post sto­ry ques­tioned the cir­cum­stances of his death, the Pen­ta­gon admit­ted that an autop­sy report said Gen­er­al Mow­housh died of “asphyx­ia due to smoth­er­ing and chest com­pres­sion” and said there was “evi­dence of blunt force trau­ma to teh chest and legs.” The Pen­ta­gon said a homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tion was underway.

Anoth­er Iraqi offi­cer, Lieu­tenant Colonel Kareem ‘Abd al-Jalil, died on Jan­u­ary 9, 2004, while at an inter­ro­ga­tion facil­i­ty. The orig­i­nal death cer­tifi­cate said he died of “nat­ur­al caus­es … dur­ing his sleep.” After sto­ries on the Den­ver Post and on Ger­man tele­vi­sion indi­cat­ing that Amer­i­can sol­diers had “danced on his bel­ly,” the Pen­ta­gon issued a new death cer­tifi­cate describ­ing his death as a homi­cide from “blunt force injuries and asphyxia.”

Accord­ing to Dan­ner’s lat­est, there have been five deaths def­i­nite­ly attrib­uted to inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods, and 23 oth­ers under investigation.

This is how we lose. We piss off every­one, kill more Iraqis with back­room tor­ture and bomb­ing res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods. This won’t get bet­ter until there is a whole­sale change in leadership.

Ohio voyage

Last week­end I took a trip to vis­it Unisia in Ohio. Pic­tures are at my Fot­ki site.

When­ev­er I vis­it Unisia in Colum­bus, we try to go to the Colum­bus Zoo. It’s a real­ly nice zoo and it’s a fun way to spend a nice day.

The pet­ting zoo is always fun, since they have lambs and kid goats and Unisia seems to enjoy it more than many of the lit­tle peo­ple. I most­ly just tried to take pic­tures of sheep look­ing noble or cute.

After that much excite­ment, we sped over toward the ele­phant house. You see, last time we were there, we saw a baby ele­phant that was stun­ning­ly cute (pho­tos in a dif­fer­ent album). Now, it’s a few months old­er, and still cute.

The baby ele­phant was remark­ably hairy. If I had a prop­er tele­pho­to lens, you’d be look­ing at the fuzz on it’s back, but for now, you just have to believe me. It also liked play­ing around with it’s keep­ers, try­ing to sit on their laps and shak­ing hands with them. There’s some­things dis­turb­ing about the idea of any­thing weigh­ing 700 pounds sit­ting on you. Then again, giv­ing birth to some­thing that weighs 400 pounds is scary, as is the idea of gain­ing 17 pounds a week. And yet, ele­phants are any­thing but scary.

Odd­ly, this lion was even less scary. After we left the ele­phants, we wan­dered past lions and bears and prairie dogs and prong­horns and rhi­noc­er­os­es and wolves and some gib­bons hav­ing sex right in front of dozens of small chil­dren. There was many a “Look at the cute mon­keys. [beat] Actu­al­ly, look over there,” from parents.

After that excite­ment we had some lunch, corned beef sand­wich­es from a great Jew­ish deli.

Out the oth­er direc­tion, we hit the flamin­gos, then the rep­tile house. I got fas­ci­nat­ed by reflec­tions of kids. They had a python out for peo­ple to han­dle, and it’s always fun to see how peo­ple react to snakes. There’s an ini­tial fear, man­i­fest­ed in these boys as kid­ding, and then amaze­ment that the snake feels noth­ing like you expected.

They were feed­ing the pen­guins out­side, which is always fun to watch. Appar­ent­ly pen­guins mate for life. I won­der if peo­ple have done genet­ic stud­ies of the parent­age pat­terns. Since they spend months apart, there are copi­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties for extra-pair cop­u­la­tions, but that sep­a­ra­tion is after the eggs are hatched.

We fin­ished in the new Aus­tralia sec­tion. Kan­ga­roos rock, even though they pre­fer to rest all the time. They also have a koala, which they were, for some rea­son, feed­ing from a bot­tle. Inside, there was a kiwi, and a jun­gle cat, which moved too fast for the low light.

Fur­ther on, we saw orang­utans, a Komo­do drag­on, and some otters. Otters are beyond cool.

Even­tu­al­ly we saw a baby colobus mon­key, some trop­i­cal birds, and a baby goril­la. The moth­er had aban­doned it, so the nice lady you see in that pic­ture spent all day hold­ing it. That does­n’t sound total­ly awful, although she seemed to be ner­vous about shift­ing around even a lit­tle bit. It was very cute. It was hold­ing one hand in the oth­er, and one foot in the oth­er foot, and just rest­ing sweet­ly after, appar­ent­ly, stay­ing up all night. Even­tu­al­ly they’ll put back into the troop, whether to its moth­er or to a sur­ro­gate gorilla.

We fin­ished up by walk­ing past the okapi, but it was being secre­tive.

The next day we went to some caves at Hock­ing Hills. It’s this neat region that must have been scoured by glac­i­ers prob­a­bly some odd inter­ac­tion of sand­stone and ground­wa­ter left odd caves and val­leys. We had been to Rock House last time, and it was pret­ty much just us. Now it was packed, which is less thrilling.

We spent the after­noon at Ash Cave, which is this big half dome with a water­fall (as you can see). I saw some neat cray­fish and a cou­ple sala­man­ders. I also took a bunch of pic­tures of water.

We stopped at an orchard stand and got some cider and apples and apple but­ter. I also took pic­tures of var­i­ous gourds and pump­kins.

Torture

The Faf­blog is pissed. It seems Con­gress wants to out­source tor­ture. In the bill work­ing its way through the House that imple­ments a watered down ver­sion of the 9–11 Com­mis­sion’s rec­om­men­da­tions, some­one slipped an amend­ment that would allow depor­ta­tion of pris­on­ers to coun­tries that allow tor­ture with the intent that the pris­on­er be tortured.

Inter­na­tion­al law for­bids that, but we’re all neo-cons now, so we don’t care. At least, it seems that way some­times. Luck­i­ly, there are good peo­ple like Ed Markey stand­ing up against stu­pid­i­ty. He has an amend­ment that would reaf­firm our nation’s his­tor­i­cal oppo­si­tion to tor­ture, and for­bid such “extra­or­di­nary rendition.”

The post that start­ed this all points out that we already got in trou­ble for send­ing Maher Arar to Syr­ia, where he was born, to be tor­tured and beat­en for almost a year before being repa­tri­at­ed to Cana­da, where he is a cit­i­zen. Is it even worth point­ing out that no evi­dence exists that he ever did any­thing wrong?

No, because tor­ture is always bad. It nev­er serves a pur­pose, and it low­ers us to the lev­el of thugs. I’ve got bar­rels of steam­ing bile to spew over Abu Ghraib, but that was “unof­fi­cial.” This crap would be out in the open.

Ted at Crooked Tim­ber has a sam­ple email against the bad amend­ment. Every­one should write, email, fax and call your Con­gress-crit­ters. If this gets into the bill that comes to the floor, no sen­si­ble politi­cian will vote against it. This issue has to be resolved now.

Just in from Boyda

This morn­ing, Boy­da swung back at Ryun.

My oppo­nent has repeat­ed­ly lied in a des­per­ate attempt to mis­lead vot­ers about his fail­ures in Con­gress. This week, my cam­paign will high­light one of his lies to his con­stituents every day, and today, I’m start­ing with his biggest, most appalling lie of all: the insin­u­a­tion that I oppose the war on Osama bin Laden. Mr. Ryun, if you’ve sunk so low as to ques­tion my ded­i­ca­tion to pro­tect­ing Amer­i­ca, I think it’s clear that your ded­i­ca­tion to pre­serv­ing your seat in Con­gress far exceeds your ded­i­ca­tion to truth, to the war on ter­ror, or to the hon­est debate that pro­vides the back­bone of democracy.

Now we just have to get Ker­ry to hit back like this.

Jim Ryun and Corruption

In pok­ing around Jim Ryun for my pre­vi­ous post, I looked at what The Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics would tell me about the mon­ey race. As of the last fil­ings, he and Nan­cy Boy­da are pret­ty much tied. He has a bit more cash on hand, but both have tak­en in around half a mil­lion dollars.

Then I looked at who was giv­ing. It turns out that he got $10,000 from Amer­i­cans for a Repub­li­can Major­i­ty, Tom Delay’s lead­er­ship PAC. Those fol­low­ing the news know that var­i­ous peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with Delay’s fundrais­ing have been indict­ed for mon­ey laun­der­ing in Texas. Var­i­ous com­pa­nies gave to ARM, which laun­dered the mon­ey and gave it to Tex­ans for a Repub­li­can Major­i­ty. TRM gave mon­ey to can­di­dates for the Texas leg­is­la­ture. This is all ille­gal because cor­po­rate con­tri­bu­tions are ille­gal under Texas law. So Delay’s cronies are alleged to have cir­cum­vent­ed that law by laun­der­ing mon­ey through these oth­er PACs.

Boy­da has called on Ryun to return that dirty mon­ey, and he should. He won’t.

Ryun has oth­er ques­tion­able con­tri­bu­tions. Wes­t­ar Ener­gy, a Tope­ka based ener­gy com­pa­ny that sup­plies my elec­tric­i­ty, got in big trou­ble last year for attempt­ing to bribe Delay and his allies to pass an amend­ment that would save Wes­t­ar big bucks. In the end, it all came out, the CEO got in hot water, and var­i­ous peo­ple gave back mon­ey. Not Ryun, though. When the CEO was indict­ed for defraud­ing the com­pa­ny and rate-pay­ers of mil­lions of dol­lars, Ryun kept his Wes­t­ar money.

Nan­cy Boy­da is right to go after this guy for tak­ing dirty mon­ey. You’re known by who you spend time with.

Boyda for Congress

Nan­cy Boy­da is run­ning for con­gress in the Kansas 2nd. She rocks pret­ty hard, for a for­mer Republican.

Jim Ryun is a do-noth­ing slack­er. I just saw his attack ad yes­ter­day, and it pissed me off. He claims that by oppos­ing the war in Iraq, Boy­da under­mined the war in Afghanistan.

If Boy­da is smart, and she is, she’ll come back say­ing that Ryun under­mined the war on al Qae­da by autho­riz­ing a war on Iraq before we caught bin Laden.

Ryun claims that Boy­da attacked first, which is true in some sense. She asked why Ryun vot­ed against a pro­pos­al to lim­it insur­ance com­pa­nies abil­i­ty to rip off sol­diers. It’s a good ques­tion, and one which Ryun should answer, and he cer­tain­ly can try. To claim that they won’t pull an ad that claims Boy­da sup­ports bin Laden is fac­tu­al though, is going way too far.

It says a lot that on his web­site (which I refuse to link to) he does­n’t have a link to his vicious attack ad.

I hope that Boy­da goes on the offen­sive. I hope she explains that noth­ing is more sup­port­ive of troops than mak­ing sure we’re right before we send them to their deaths. So far thir­teen Kansans have died in Iraq (scroll down). Ryun is on the Armed Ser­vices com­mit­tee, so he has direct over­sight of a war that is a dis­as­ter. I have more to say about that lat­er, but let’s just note that the plan for this war was flawed from day one, and Con­gress did too lit­tle over­sight of the process.

A Lex­is-Nex­is search reveals that there are 4 bills which Ryun wrote which were con­sid­ered in the House. The first is in 2001, so either he slept through his first few years, or Lex­is isn’t going back that far. The bills most­ly passed, and were meant to: name a post office after some guy, give a Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom to some guy, estab­lish a com­mis­sion to com­mem­o­rate the Brown vs. Board of Ed. rul­ing, and cre­ate Nation­al Speech and Hear­ing Month.

There are a total of 41 bills that he wrote which Lex­is knows of. All but four died in com­mit­tee. He sits on the Bugdet and Armed Ser­vices com­mit­tees, but nev­er seems to have writ­ten a bill to do any­thing for sol­diers. He rep­re­sents Fort Riley, a huge base, and in 8 years, nev­er wrote a bill on the military!

More on Ryun later.

Spring cleaning

Some lit­tle tid­bits are drib­bling out, just to get them off my chest.

It’s the Harvest Moon

Who knew? Har­vest moons are real.</p?

Har­vest Moon from the album “Har­vest Moon” by Neil Young.

Politics trump science in protecting Florida panthers

A sto­ry about how a US Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice employ­ee named Andy Eller is being fired because he is work­ing too hard to pro­tect Flori­da pan­thers. He want­ed to deny per­mits to devel­op­ers because the cumu­la­tive effect of their actions would harm the pan­ther, even if one or two acres here or there don’t mat­ter. Even if one does­n’t mat­ter, it can add up to a heap of difference.

Rather than shar­ing his alarm, Eller says man­agers at the wildlife ser­vice told him not to raise the cumu­la­tive effects issue when review­ing pro­posed devel­op­ment projects. “My super­vi­sor told me that if I did [raise the issue], he would give me a poor per­for­mance eval­u­a­tion,” he says.

Eller adds that he was also instruct­ed to use inflat­ed pan­ther pop­u­la­tion esti­mates and was warned against writ­ing any­thing in his reports sug­gest­ing a project might jeop­ar­dize the panthers.