Twin-Cities.com has a story warning us about the upcoming battle in Fallujah.

The number of dead and wounded from the expected battle to retake insurgent-controlled Fallujah probably will reach levels not seen since Vietnam, a senior surgeon at the Marine camp outside Fallujah said Thursday.

i'm sick and tired of hearing republicans beat their monkey chests demanding that America gave bush a mandate, simply because bush received more votes than any other president in history (like, hello? when you have a record turnout of voters, that's bound to happen), but lets not forget: 55 million people voted against bush, also the most that has ever voted against a winning candidate in history.

but lets look at how europe's treating what happened on tuesday:

"How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" the liberal Daily Mirror asked in a Page One headline. Inside, several pages of coverage were headed "U.S. election disaster."

The Independent bore the front-page headline "Four more years" on a black page with grim pictures including a hooded Iraqi prisoner and an orange-clad detainee at Guantanamo Bay.

The left-leaning Guardian led its features section with a black page bearing the tiny words, "Oh, God." Inside a story described how Bush's victory "catapaulted liberal Britain into collective depression."

Across Europe, many newspapers expressed dismay at the prospect of another term for Bush, a president often regarded as inflexible and unilateralist.

"Oops — they did it again," Germany's left-leaning Tageszeitung newspaper said in a front-page English headline. The cover of the Swiss newsmagazine Facts called Bush's re-election "Europe's Nightmare." "Victory for the hothead: how far will he go?" asked another Swiss weekly, L'Hebdo.

A few British papers welcomed the U.S. election result. "The world is a safer place with George W. Bush back in the Oval Office," the tabloid Sun said in an editorial.

All agreed the result reflected a sea-change in U.S. politics, a victory for neo-conservatives and the religious right.

"March of the Moral Majority" said the conservative Daily Mail, above a photo of Bush with his wife and daughters. "America's moral majority sweeps Bush back into the White House," The Daily Telegraph said.

The Times said Europe "must come to terms, not only with Mr. Bush, but with the nation that has elected him. This is a president who really can speak for America."

YAHOO

this could explain how florida got flushed. from a post on DU:

Okay, here's the story from Florida

I worked in the campaign..you have no idea how many volunteers REALLY
WORKED . worked our buns off.

We didn't have exit polls in places where they should have been.

Broward County including Hispanics went 85% for Kerry

Palm Beach County despite Rabbis and Ministers telling their congregations to vote for BUsh went heavily black, Haitian and Jewish
for Kerry - and I mean heavily.

I was poll watcher at a mostly Haitian site where there were threee precincts and 8 machines.

one machine was broken slowing down voting in that precinct to 2 1/2 hour wait.

And leaving 7 machines for three districts.

Inside poll watcher came out to tell me that in his district, 800 people, everyone standing on line was holding or at the machines using the blue color DEM palm ticket I had given them outside. He was thrilled.

the week before I had handed out about 1500 of these palm tickets in
a Jewish area. They came and asked for them.

Every Haitian or African American that went into vote stopped and took a DEM voting/palm ticket at the polls....I'd say about 2500 to 2700 for the entire three districts.We had to photocopy more because we didn't have enough for the demand.

During early voting which started OCt 18, when you heard there were 3 hour waits, there was and more; I handed out the same palm tickets in Palm Beach. 99% of the people going into those polls - hundreds and hundreds, stopped and took the dem palm ticket from me. Hardly any republicans in either place.

Again there, Theresa Le Poore only placed 12 machines for voters by the thousands and 4 were broken.

Electronic machines, no paper trail.

Early voting in several counties in North Florida also went Kerry (unusual).

60,000 ballots lost in post office. Voting day, thousands arrived at the PO to be sent to absentee voters. Of course they would never arrive in time for voting. These were for shut ins, out of staters etc.

Theresa LePore threw out 14,000 applications for voting early on.

We took Palm Beach County by a landslide. But there was one very very suspicious thing. I was assigned to a "targeted" area. Targeted because it's targeted by the repugnants to stop the black people from voting...

Where at the early voting republican poll watchers had been outside harrassing Kerry poll watchers....ON VOTING DAY THERE WERE NO REPUBLICAN POLL WORKERS OUTSIDE THE TARGETED AREAS. I mentioned this to others, wondering what was up. It was highly unusual that not one was there.

Polls stayed open til 7 and as I mentioned it was one wonderful stream of people of color voting, and voting, and young black hip hop guys too, who you wouldn't think would. They did.
you tell me what happened.

At 6 PM with one hour to go of voting, the word was FIRST passed down to us that the electronic machines were not always recording what the people were voting and to be sure to tell them to check the final summary page, showing your choices. A little late, eh what?

Better yet, ask Bev Harriss " Black Box Voting" what happened.

But worst of all Kerry didn't wait for all the military and absentee ballots to be counted - he should have waited 11 days. He was only 2 electoral votes behind the bastid.

Didn't want to divide the country anymore???????

Bullshit. It couldnt be any more divided. He needed to fight for us,
but he did the exact same thing Gore did. Layed down and rolled over.

What are the Gestapo threatening them with? blackmail ? Harm to Family? Doesn't make sense.

He said he would fight and he didn't . He said he had 10,000 lawyers (and believe me, a lot of them were down here, and he didnt use them
to mount legal challenges.

IMHO Voting is now a sham. Democracy in this country is over.


I'm renewing my passport.

i'm sick. the stench is killing me. and i'm 800 miles away from toledo.

ok, 171-112 bush. c'mon God, you promised.

and weeeeeeeere OFF!

i predict a kerry win. and i'll even go out on the limb and say by a landslide - or, over 10pts.

i don't see a lot of concern, much less any attention, to the issue of what it'll be like once kerry is inaugurated. i mean, c'mon. i have only heard one other person even suggest a possibility of letting george have this one, so it will finally piss the democrats off enough to actually stand the fuck up and do something about this criminal enterprise to steal America. but still, nobody's talking about what it'll be like on january 21, 2005.

probably the most funniest thing i've heard yet on the campaign trail. george w. bush says:

"The American people are very wise. They're able to detect whether somebody is trying to fool them or not."

videos of fahrenheit 9/11 & more

notice how whenever the republicons get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, they always find a way of blaming the democrats for making the cookies?

there's all this talk about bush and his repeatedly whining about being president is 'hard work' and it just makes me laugh. the man wouldn't know hard work if it bit him on the ass. take a look at his record in TANG. he's a privileged fart who smells of pompous pussy.

when a man can tell a story
and not utter a word
that is power. pure unadulterated power.

lets see if i got this right now.

republicans cheat.
democrats bitch.
republicans blame democrats for turning off voters with their bitching.

how does that work??

top 10 articles in nytimes tells it all.

1. Top 10 Articles

1) Without a Doubt
By RON SUSKIND
Published: October 17, 2004

2) Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ, WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: October 25, 2004


3) Editorial: John Kerry for President
Published: October 17, 2004


4) The O'Reilly Factor for Lesbians
By FRANK RICH
Published: October 24, 2004


5) The Strategy to Secure Iraq Did Not Foresee a 2nd War
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: October 19, 2004


6) Poll Shows Tie; Concerns Cited on Both Rivals
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER
Published: October 19, 2004


7) After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Law
By TIM GOLDEN
Published: October 24, 2004


8) Op-Ed: Checking the Facts, in Advance
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 12, 2004


9) Big G.O.P. Bid to Challenge Voters at Polls in Key State
By MICHAEL MOSS
Published: October 23, 2004


10) Growing Up With Mom and Mom
By SUSAN DOMINUS
Published: October 24, 2004

it's not that all machines DO do it
it's the fact ... the very SCARY fact that some machines CAN do it.

reich-wingers are using the democrat's record in congress as weapons. don't they realize that they control congress and are responsible for getting anything done?

isn't using scare tactics backfiring on the GOPher boys? think about it now. they're asking for votes from scared republicans.

democrats aren't the ones who are scared shitless and need a baffoon running around the country making promises to keep us all safe, especially after failing to do so on 9/11.

bush is at the fairgrounds here in town. the local station is carrying the event live. i have my 4 tickets to go sitting right here.

i'm so glad i didn't go. having to sit in a crowd of dummies for more than an hour is more than i can take.

who in their right mind can really believe with such unwavering certainty that we are preventing another terrorist attack in the United States by bombing fallujah.

i mean, with a straight face no less - which means, they really have no doubt - these people will paint a picture that is so absurd, that it becomes believable.

the power of religion.

i'm surprised more people, bloggers especially, haven't come out with a 'what will happen after january 20th' when john kerry is inaugurated. i've seen some suppositions injected into stories on the issues, but nothing like a floor-map of what the changes will bring.

something is getting a whole lotta attention from corners i would never have dreamed of. the new york times' magazine has a piece that, in the words of buzzflash:

Reveals an Administration on a Radical, Extremist Runaway Train that Endangers America and the World

but will things like this curb the support for bush?
sadly, i doubt it.

if any media types out there that had the power to make their network a God send, they would step up to the plate, and balance out sinclair's decision to air whatever it is they're lying about again, with a commercial-free (moveon paid?) airing of fahrenheit 9/11. that, in my eyes, and i watch a helluva lot of television, would make them kings of the road.

the problem with republicons is that everything's a mission to them. democrats however, win wars because they don't see them as missions.

today's NYT (from Slate's Today's Papers) has a story about the stepped up assaults in Iraq with a quote:

"The Americans are just arresting whomever is in front of them at the mosques," said another cleric. "They're behaving in a strange manner."

well DUH! our election day is only weeks away.

if terrorism isn't a law enforcement issue, then why did they enact the sweeping patriot act?

note to john kerry: honesty will get you 20 points.

here we go... got so wrapped up in this new Mac G4 client brought over... God i gotta get me one!

i wish crossfire could see my blog. they would know that the right-wing stand-in for tucker carlson, a woman who is some flak for capital gang, continues to spew out karl's talking points, never venturing far into her own assessment, and makes about as much sense as a doily on a coffee table without a book.

she neglects to say that john kerry first doesn't see the same intelligence that the president sees, with all his caveats. the senate is sold a bill of goods that the administration wants them to see. so when kerry 'supported' the war, he was supporting the 'war' on the intelligence WITHOUT THE CAVEATS. why is it so hard for people to understand this? because you have media shoving a completely different set of syllables down our throats, and unless joe Q. public digs into the indymedia, foreign press, and other sources - like blogs, he pretty much knows what the media is spoon feeding them. and who's spoon feeding the media these days? you got it. the administration.

the media in this country has lost every ounce of credibility they had only just a few years ago. how did that happen? because the republicons couldn't allow them to ignore what they wanted to have put out. they wanted only their message posted, and anything else would be destined to the librul-bias trashcan. it's that simple.

i'm only sorry that the real old school republicans are caught up in this civil war going on in their party. the neocons vs the republicans. one is nothing like the other. and the problem with republicans is that they believe in loyalty so much that they'll sacrifice the right way, for the wrong way simply because the neocons have been able to make the issues about loyalty, not substance. the my way or no way. with us or against us. black and white. republicans didnt' have much color in their previous incarnations, but they had a lot more than the ungrey black & white neocons are serving up.

ok, clothes have to get out, i wish i could write more. and i will.

doesn't anybody get it yet? here the reich-wing is bashing the u.n. (the oil-for-food program i guess has been exposed to be rampant with corruption), and obviously forgetting that WE ARE PART OF THE U.N.

by their own logic, such bashing is un-American and un-patriotic.

pete williams on msnbc, fact checking. 1st up, cheney. the connection. and there is the proof he lied. 2nd up, halliburton. edwards' charge about how they got the contracts. "20 billion, 7.5 billion to halliburton.", oh, it's the no-bid contact. 'more like nobody else 'could bid'... so it wasn't really no-bid.. 3rd up, casualties in iraq. williams' response: how each man uses the available stats from iraq.

how can we forget?

court is now in session
and john edwards is the best trial lawyer to put dick on trial.

here we go

they finally got gay.

there's an interesting piece in the nytimes today about the afghan elections, where teachers of democracy are explaining how to vote in secret:

"Suppose you are faced with a commander or very rich person and he wants you to vote for the person he wants," Muhammad Eklil, a civic educator, tells them. "You can tell him 'O.K.,' but when you go to vote, no one can see what you do, and when you come out, he will not know who you voted for. Secret voting and democracy, this is it."

imagine if thousands of democrats were to say they were voting for bush, and then suddenly at the polls vote according to their hearts.

can you imagine george w. bush ever saying "i'm truly sorry"?

God should be fun. absolutely.

watching nbc's dateline, pastor rick warren looks to be one of those gems in American society. i'll have to research more on his 'saddleback' trip to make a final determination, but from what i'm seeing, and hearing (we all know how neglectful television can be), i'm hoping that he's the real deal.

well, the debate wiped out bush's lead. 49-46 now on newsweek. it's october. you can be sure there will be some surprise this month.

why has nobody bothered to define the difference between a terrorist and insurgent? could it be that it would mark the end of a congame?

there's a new threat. just in time. kerry got the trophy today for last night's performance. this is like the 3rd time we've gotten threats from al-qaeda, and none of them have involved bin laden. why is nobody asking where he is.

they want you to be safe. we want you to be safe AND free.

a bulldozer could not keep up with the shit being forced down the American people's throats by cnn. judy woofwoof is trying her best, but the desperation is taking a serious toll on her. the wrinkles are starting to get deeper.

Challenged about his views on sexual morality, Justice Scalia surprised his audience at Harvard University, telling them: "I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."

*giggle*
gives a whole new meaning to the 5-4 decision.

well, john, you disappointed me. i expected more hammering. i expected you to put george on the defensive. it almost appears as if you were unprepared. i sure hope the next debate takes on a more stand-up-and-say-we're-not-gonna-take-it-anymore tone.

here we go folx.

note to candi crowley: you overweight twit. how in the hell can you say with a straight face (actually there's nothing straight about your mug) that what john kerry has to do tonite is to decide how his plan is different than 'president' bush's ...
when bush hasn't got a plan to be different from.

cnn, you are sooooo busted. playing volume and crowd tricks with the camera is indeed sneaky, deceptive, and evil.

are you really glad you sold your collective souls to the darkside?

putt putt putt ... the schooichildren are doing their homework, while they're watching a video, and probably streaming some shoutcast at the same time. there's gotta be a better way on this distribution plan. nobody's wanting to say what the limit is on these nodes. but its safe to say, uptown and downtown, are two different scenarios.

anyway, what was i going to write about now. dammit. i think i had some suggestion again for kerry. he seeems to be hiding from them since he'd have broken out of that 'save me' shell already. c'mon now, it's been what? 5 months?

plenty of time. this first debate, if you can call it that, but the event tomorrow, getting contracted to fox for excusive camera coverage. surprise. lesson 1; who can out smart who here.

the pages are 35 of rules and sometimes the desires, of each campiagn, but i suspect taht it was more pushing on the bush side, then there was on the kerry side.

i wish these people would get it: your liberal base is not going to piss all over you like pissed off republicons who just saw the truth on a blog when you fire back with a one-two punch. forget the three-four-five followup/interjections and other such frivioty. it alienates the people you need to reach toniite/tomorrow nite.

and they can be. how? by pointing to honest. honest people make mistakes. evil people make mistakes. there has got to be a difference of mistakes. what the people want to hear, and i say like 5 workds, just how are those mistakes going to be dealt with.

with honesty. with truthfulness. for the people.
equate those assets and you will win.
'

the problem with the right (er, reich) wing is that everything to them is right-wing, left-wing. good and evil. black and white.

there's no color in them.

and that's sad. God is a rainbow.

kerry needs to get short
and direct.

the less words, the better. America has been dumbified too much for all this mind-speak right away.