Where should I begin?

With less than two weeks to go until the election I don't know if I can make it -- I expect a heart attack or brain explosion any minute. I am going to ramble through several issues in this post. Stay with me, brave reader.

I start the day with a quick look at the Times' headline Big G.O.P. Bid to Challenge Voters at Polls in Key State and I no longer need caffeine to get me going. The Republicans are sending 3,600 people to polling places in Ohio in order to challenge, intimidate, stall, and generally mess with voters.

The attempt by Republicans all over the country to suppress the vote is already big, big story. Whether the mainstream media will be able to really get a handle on it is another matter. Bob Herbert has had several columns in the Times about the attempts to intimidate and disenfranchise black voters in Florida. Yesterday Paul Krugman's Voting and Counting summarizes some of the problems in Florida. But the attacks on democracy are much larger. I will be linking in the coming days to stories as I come across them.

Vanity Fair magazine has a long and scary article in the October 2004 issue (available to students through the library homepage) about the stolen 2000 election. The article details the disenfranchisement of black voters and the other shenanigans that are pretty familiar to those who have followed the story. But it adds some material on the Supreme Court aspect that I had not heard -- basically that the fix was in from the beginning. As anyone who can read the Constitution will tell you the Supreme Court had no basis for stopping the vote -- especially the "conservative" judges who believe in original intent and states' rights -- but the article details how the majority of five came up with their plan to stop the counting of votes in Florida because counting all the votes would lead to a Gore victory. Truly frightening at how partisan they are.

The article also details what has happened in Florida since 2000 regarding voting technology and voting rights. Short answer: things might even be worse this time. And Florida is only one of the trouble spots.

On to lost war #1. Some of you may have noticed that John Kerry has accused the Bush Administration of "outsourcing" the job of getting Bin Laden. You may have noticed the Bushies (including Tommy Franks) calling Kerry a liar. Only problem is, the administration admitted all this back in April 2002. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has the best summary and links back to the original Washington Post article. Check the record and you will see that Cheney and Franks are lying.

Another thing Franks has been denying is that the Bush Administration ordered our deadliest troops out of Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- and a full year before the Iraq War began. From yesterday's report in the Washington Post, Afghanistan, Iraq: Two Wars Collide:

In the second half of March 2002, as the Bush administration mapped its next steps against al Qaeda, Deputy CIA Director John E. McLaughlin brought an unexpected message to the White House Situation Room. According to two people with firsthand knowledge, he told senior members of the president's national security team that the CIA was scaling back operations in Afghanistan.

That announcement marked a year-long drawdown of specialized military and intelligence resources from the geographic center of combat with Osama bin Laden. As jihadist enemies reorganized, slipping back and forth from Pakistan and Iran, the CIA closed forward bases in the cities of Herat, Mazar-e Sharif and Kandahar. The agency put off an $80 million plan to train and equip a friendly intelligence service for the new U.S.-installed Afghan government. Replacements did not keep pace with departures as case officers finished six-week tours. And Task Force 5 -- a covert commando team that led the hunt for bin Laden and his lieutenants in the border region -- lost more than two-thirds of its fighting strength.

The commandos, their high-tech surveillance equipment and other assets would instead surge toward Iraq through 2002 and early 2003, as President Bush prepared for the March invasion that would extend the field of battle in the nation's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

And that's just the beginning.

Which takes us to lost war #2. Yesterday's Times has a report called Estimates by U.S. See More Rebels With More Funds. A very good account of the complicated situation our military faces in Iraq. Don't be fooled by all the rhetoric about "terrorists." Sure, they are there, though they are more accurately called "jihadists." But thre are also Baath Party remnants, various factions of angry Shiites, nationalists, and so on. They are all fighting -- more or less together -- to defeat what they see (rightly or wrongly) as a colonial occupying power.

Finally, if you are still with me, I will let you know why I am really depressed today. Check out this report from the Program on International Policy Attitudes based upon their latest surveys: Bush Supporters Still Believe Iraq Had WMD or Major Program, Supported al Qaeda.

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!