muffy bolding

From The Daily Kos

Nevada Is Fired Up

by Trapper John
Fri Oct 29th, 2004 at 22:15:56 GMT

I’m at the Big Dog rally in Las Vegas, and it’s insane. There’ve gotta be over 10,000 people in line, and God knows how many in the venue. Young, old, brown, white – people in Nevada are ready to win. They’re thirsting for a fresh start for America.

Okay, fine. If no one else is going to say it outloud, I fucking will.

I am positively giddy listening to all of these dignified, professional news reporters and media pundits…as they pause, cringe, and mumble their way through the name “al Qaqaa” when they are forced to pronounce the name during updates about the alleged missing explosives from a military site in Iraq.

They said, “caca.”

Cool.

I am, quite literally, speechless.

Bin Laden threatens more attacks in new tape

CTV.ca News Staff

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has appeared on a new videotape directly admitting to organizing the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and threatening more attacks to come.

Al-Jazeera broadcast parts of the 18-minute-long tape Friday evening.

In his clearest comments yet taking responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden addresses the American people and says the 9/11 attacks were carried out because “we are a free people … and we want to regain the freedom of our nation.”

“We decided to destroy towers in America,” the al Qaeda leader says, adding the attacks were even more destructive than they had hoped.

He ads that he thought of the idea of attacking the U.S. skyscrapers when he saw Israeli aircraft bombing tower blocks in Lebanon in 1982.

Appearing healthy and reading from a sheet of paper, he says the attacks would have been less severe if U.S. President George Bush had been more alert.

“It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the country would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone … because he thought listening to a child discussing her goats was more important,” bin Laden said, referring to Bush’s visit to a school when the attack occurred.

Speaking just days ahead of the U.S. presidential election, he then says the United States could face new attacks because the reasons for mounting the Sept. 11 strikes still exist.

“Despite entering the fourth year after Sept. 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened,” bin Laden tells Americans.

In words that suggest the tape was made fairly recently, bin Laden adds: “Your security is not in the hands of (Democrat Sen. John) Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. And each state that does not harm our security will remain safe.”

Despite the angry rhetoric, the video does not appear to contain a specific threat against American targets but appears to be more of an appeal to the American people.

This is the first video of the al Qaeda leader to surface in two years, though audio tapes of his voice have surfaced since.

U.S. officials say they believe the tape is authentic.

Al-Jazeera did not say how it received the tape. The Qatari-based channel has previously received audio and videotapes from people linked to al Qaeda.

NASA photo analyst: Bush wore a device during debate
Physicist says imaging techniques prove the president’s bulge was not caused by wrinkled clothing.

By Kevin Berger

Oct. 29, 2004 | George W. Bush tried to laugh off the bulge. “I don’t know what that is,” he said on “Good Morning America” on Wednesday, referring to the infamous protrusion beneath his jacket during the presidential debates. “I’m embarrassed to say it’s a poorly tailored shirt.”

Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He’s a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis. Currently he’s engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn’s moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons.

For the past week, while at home, using his own computers, and off the clock at Caltech and NASA, Nelson has been analyzing images of the president’s back during the debates. A professional physicist and photo analyst for more than 30 years, he speaks earnestly and thoughtfully about his subject. “I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate,” he says. “This is not about a bad suit. And there’s no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt.”

Nelson and a scientific colleague produced the photos from a videotape, recorded by the colleague, who has chosen to remain anonymous, of the first debate. The images provide the most vivid details yet of the bulge beneath the president’s suit. Amateurs have certainly had their turn at examining the bulge, but no professional with a résumé as impressive as Nelson’s has ventured into public with an informed opinion. In fact, no one to date has enhanced photos of Bush’s jacket to this degree of precision, and revealed what appears to be some kind of mechanical device with a wire snaking up the president’s shoulder toward his neck and down his back to his waist.

Nelson stresses that he’s not certain what lies beneath the president’s jacket. He offers, though, “that it could be some type of electronic device — it’s consistent with the appearance of an electronic device worn in that manner.” The image of lines coursing up and down the president’s back, Nelson adds, is “consistent with a wire or a tube.”

Nelson used the computer software program Photoshop to enhance the texture in Bush’s jacket. The process in no way alters the image but sharpens its edges and accents the creases and wrinkles. You’ve seen the process performed a hundred times on “CSI”: pixelated images are magnified to reveal a clear definition of their shape.

Bruce Hapke, professor emeritus of planetary science in the department of geology and planetary science at the University of Pittsburgh, reviewed the Bush images employed by Nelson, whom he calls “a very highly respected scientist in his field.” Hapke says Nelson’s process of analyzing the images are the “exact same methods we use to analyze images taken by spacecraft of planetary surfaces. It does not introduce any artifacts into the picture in any way.”

How can Nelson be certain there’s some kind of mechanical device beneath Bush’s jacket? It’s all about light and shadows, he says. The angles at which the light in the studio hit Bush’s jacket expose contours that fit no one’s picture of human anatomy and wrinkled shirts. And Nelson compared the images to anatomy texts. He also experimented with wrinkling shirts in various configurations, wore them under his jacket under his bathroom light, and couldn’t produce anything close to the Bush bulge.

In the enhanced photo of the first debate, Nelson says, look at the horizontal white line in middle of the president’s back. You’ll see a shadow. “That’s telling me there’s definitely a bulge,” he says. “In fact, it’s how we measure the depths of the craters on the moon or on Mars. We look at the angle of the light and the length of shadow they leave. In this case, that’s clearly a crater that’s under the horizontal line — it’s clearly a rim of a bulge protruding upward, one due to forces pushing it up from beneath.”

Hapke, too, agrees that the bulge is neither anatomy nor a wrinkled shirt. “I would think it’s very hard to avoid the conclusion that there’s something underneath his jacket,” he says. “It would certainly be consistent with some kind of radio receiver and a wire.”

Nelson admits that he’s a Democrat and plans to vote for John Kerry. But he takes umbrage at being accused of partisanship. “Everyone wants to think my colleague and I are just a bunch of dope-crazed ravaged Democrats who are looking to insult the president at the last minute,” he says. “And that’s not what this is about. This is scientific analysis. If the bulge were on Bill Clinton’s back and he was lying about it, I’d have to say the same thing.”

“Look, he says, “I’m putting myself at risk for exposing this. But this is too important. It’s not about my reputation. If they force me into an early retirement, it’ll be worth it if the public knows about this. It’s outrageous statements that I read that the president is wearing nothing under there. There’s clearly something there.”

In which a slightly wistful Muffalina subtly rewords an old, surprisingly apt 80’s song to fit the current times.

With sincerest apologies to Sir Gordon Sumner:

I Hope The Republicans Love Their Children, Too

How can I save my little boy from Bush and Cheney’s deadly toys
There is no monopoly in common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Republicans love their children, too.

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is that the Republicans love their children, too.

and then get thine tender asses — as well as the tender asses of your mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, wives, friends, lovers, hookers, housekeepers, doctors, drug-dealers, grocery clerks, and other assorted people in your life who are in fortunate possession of a liberty-ridden poontang — out to VOTE, baby:

As Oprah Slaps Bush
With 30 states poised to smack down women’s rights again, the one true savior emerges

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, October 13, 2004

So there she was, the nation’s most powerful and popular public female, kicking butt on a recent installment of her insanely beloved TV show with the help of celeb guests (Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, P. Diddy, Christina Aguilera) and galvanizing stunned women across the nation to participate in this election, or else.

There was Oprah, doing what she does so freakishly well, cheerleading and extolling and impressing upon, getting women up and getting them angry and demanding that they exercise their hard-won right to vote and demanding that they quit dissing their feminist ancestors, the ones who worked so damn hard for suffrage and for freedom of choice and for the right to tell powerful sexist Republican men where they can shove their repressive sexist antichoice bigotry.

This was her fabulous, much-needed message: Take your rights for granted at your peril, ladies. Move, or else. Choose how you want the laws to treat and respect you and your body — or someone else, someone who hasn’t touched a vagina for 30 years and who thinks sex is only tolerable in the dark, fully clothed and with a respectable prostitute, will choose for you.

Sound like a cliché? Same ol’ quasi-feminist rally message? Not exactly. Not this time. Just imagine this:

Imagine Bush filches another election in November. Nations mourn, black clouds gather, children cry, colons spasm, the remaining shreds of the American experiment wither and die.

And within a very short time, as many as 30 U.S. states have recriminalized abortion and made repressing women and hating sex fun again, as young American females everywhere who thought their right to choose was pretty much incontrovertible and indisputable and unfailing and who therefore didn’t bother to vote in ’00 or ’04 suddenly go, oh holy freaking hell.

Hello, 1950s. Hello, coat-hanger surgery. Hello, millions of despondent daughters of uptight parents. Hello, dead or mutilated teenage girls who suffer botched procedures. Hello, a fresh national nightmare, revisited, regurgitated, reborn. And hello again to smug right-wing males who’ve wanted to put women back in their place for the past 50 years. Check that: 200 years. Check that: forever.

Just a silly nightmare? Utterly impossible? A ridiculous liberal daydream? Not even close, sweetheart.

It’s all about the Supreme Court, of course. Fact is, our next president will almost surely get to appoint a number of new high-court justices to replace those who will likely retire after enduring Bush’s toxic first term. They hung in there, these few — especially stalwarts Sandra Day O’Connor and moderate, pro-choice John Paul Stevens — hoping to disallow the nation’s highest judiciary from becoming overly stacked with homophobic self-righteous right-wing neocon wingnuts (hi, Justice Scalia!) who would have us revert — morally, sexually, spiritually, misogynistically — to 1953. Check that: 1853. Check that: 1353.

With the exception of nearly useless neoconservative sycophant Clarence Thomas, not a single justice now serving on the court is under 65. Many insiders say Stevens, O’Connor and bitter old man William Rehnquist (almost 80) are all likely to retire before 2008. BushCo’s chosen replacements could easily tip the scales of the court the other direction, from its very precarious 5-4 progressive tilt to a very sneering 6-3 conservative one, a court that would then very easily overturn parts or even all of Roe v. Wade. Talk about a malicious legacy.

It gets worse. It gets nastier, more widespread. Because should Shrub swipe another term, he will also be on his way to naming more federal trial and appeals judges — hundreds, by most counts — than either Clinton or Reagan, the last two-term presidents. Bush could, in short and for all intents and purposes, stack the nation’s courts with enough neoconservative, antichoice, antiwomen crusaders to make Strom Thurmond giggle in his grave.

Which brings us straight back to Oprah. Say what you will about the often weirdly effusive and overtly gushy and often slightly smarmy woman who just gave away 276 Pontiacs to her entire studio audience (hard to tell if that was an act of astounding generosity and beneficence, or some sort of weird punishment — I mean, they were Pontiacs), but the woman can electrify and inspire and educate her millions of devoted viewers like nobody’s business.

And if there’s one famously disenfranchised and alienated and apathetic voting bloc that needs to get off its collective yoga butt and stand up and make itself known this election lest it lose an even larger chunk of its basic human rights than it even realizes, it’s youngish women.

This is, after all, what so many women don’t seem to know. That the Bush administration has already, in just a few short years, managed to roll back a truly astounding number of their basic rights, making it more difficult, for example, for doctors to perform abortions, or making it illegal for schools to discuss contraception or for hospitals to discuss pregnancy-termination options.

From demeaning and ineffectual abstinence-only programs to biased counseling to cutting all funding for international women’s health organizations that provide care to poor women in third-world nations (hell, Bush hacked that one away in his first month in office), Dubya has done more than any president in the last 100 years to smack women upside their sexually empowered heads.

Oh and by the way, that suggestion currently being floated by some in Congress that the Iraq war has become so nasty and desperate that we might very well need to reinstate the military draft? That draft includes young women. And oh yes, Bush has already upheld the ban on abortions for servicewomen stationed overseas, even if they pay for it themselves. Feeling patriotic yet?

This has been the GOP’s message to women since, well, forever: Be like Laura Bush — submissive, matronly, heavily shellacked and ever flashing a disquieting mannequin grin, off in the corner reading stories to the kids and cutting lots of pretty ceremonial ribbons and keeping quiet about the Important Stuff and never having sex and always be standing just out of the spotlight, secondary and inferior and in the background. You know, right where you belong.

Truly and sadly, few indeed are the powerful and articulate public female voices in our major media to counter this ideological poison. Who, Barbara Walters? Not exactly hotly connected to youth and issues of the day. Katie Couric? About as female empowering as a terrier. Martha Stewart? Busy designing barbell cozies for the prison gym. The wholly queasy pseudo-feminists on the wholly awful “The View”? Please.

And while plethoric are the powerful women working behind the media scenes, execs and pundits and writers, senators and world leaders and even forthright, independent wives, and while there are plenty of strong-willed, outspoken female celebs making their voices known, in terms of visibility and raw power and sheer reach, nobody can touch Oprah. Which is exactly why her message was so wonderful.

Here’s the bottom line: 50 million eligible women didn’t vote in 2000, and 22 million of them were single and nearly every one of them probably thought their vote doesn’t matter and it isn’t really worth it and who cares anyway because no matter who wins, everything’s still pretty much run by rich powerful men anyway. Which is, you know, sort of true. But not quite.

Because as Oprah knows, there are powerful men who get it and who love women and who understand their issues and who have cool articulate daughters and opinionated self-defined multilingual firebrand wives (Hi, Teresa), and there are aww-shucks antichoice Texans with lifeless token wives who think your body is government property and you should just pipe down and keep your damn legs closed and go pray to an angry Republican God to forgive your plentiful vagina-induced sins.

Hey, it’s your choice. But not for long.

I just listened to a wonderful program on NPR where the discussion was about the youth and minority vote in this country. Russell Simmons — black entrepreneur, political activist, and dignified cultural champion — who is currently on the road delivering the message of the importance of every single vote…said that the latest word on the street is that there is going to be a FULL-ON young minority “bum-rush” at the polls on Tuesday.

I have never laughed so hard, cried so hard, and cheered so hard in my life.

We are so gonna win.

Mark and remember:

From http://www.electoral-vote.com

“Several lawyers have contacted me about the issue of what to do if you show up to vote and the election officials say you are not registered. Here is the procedure. First, be absolutely sure you are in the correct precinct. If you are in the wrong precinct, in most states, your vote won’t be counted. If you are not 100% certain of your polling place, go to http://www.mypollingplace.com and check. Alternatively, call the toll-free number 1-866-OUR-VOTE or your county clerk. If you are sure you are in the correct polling place and the officials claim you are not registered, ask for a provisional ballot and fill it out correctly. You are entitled to one by law. Politely, but firmly, insist on being given a provisional ballot.

Revelation 13:18 THIS, insane neo-con christian motherfuckers.

I got your beast HANGIN’.

Kerry tied to ‘666’?
Images of Democrat in Iowa show ‘beastly’ number all over TV screen
October 27, 2004

Was it a biblical warning or just imaginations running wild?

During his presidential campaign in Iowa today, Democrat John Kerry was surrounded by a sea of handheld signs displaying the number six on them.

That caught the attention of WND reader Michael of Kaufman, Texas, who happened to record this evening broadcast of ABC’s “World News Tonight.”

“You can imagine my surprise, when they broadcast a video of John Kerry finishing a speech in Iowa to the acclaim of hundreds of people waving signs with the number six on them,” he said. “The imagery of 666 appearing everywhere was too much to be ignored. I had to rewind my TIVO and shoot these photos of the TV screen.”

According to the book of Revelation in the Bible, the number “666” is associated with an end-time beast power.

“Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” Revelation 13:18

The signs actually are part of a final-week campaign countdown, and read: “6 More Days To A Fresh Start.”

Kerry, himself, was photographed with six fingers in the air, reminding supporters that time is short until Election Day, which is next Tuesday.

there simply are no words.

…..