From CNSNews.com:

An African-American civil rights spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the new computerized voting machines "terrify" her, and that blacks are "afraid of machines like that."

Joanne Bland, the director and co-founder of the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma, Ala., told CNSNews.com on Wednesday that the new computerized voting machines are going to intimidate black voters in Florida and elsewhere and suppress their vote in the November presidential election because many blacks are not "technologically savvy."

"The computers really terrify me. The electronic voting -- the new machines -- I think it will turn off a segment in my community, particularly the elderly. We are not as technically savvy, and we are afraid of machines like that, and they (African-Americans) probably won't go [to the polls] and they probably won't ask for assistance, said Bland, who spent the last week in Florida.

"It is going to turn them off totally and I want that to stop," said Bland, who also serves as a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Public Accuracy, which predicts that "several million voters" may be "deprived of voting rights again" in 2004.

First of all; lemme admit something.  When I first started this blog, I meant for it to be a politics and sports blog.  For regular readers, I haven't done alot of sports.  Yes, I still do keep up with it, but when I get in front of this keyboard and start typing sports is usually the last thing on my mind right now.

Why?  Because there is way too much at stake to take my mind off of this election.

I don't think alot of people realize what's really at stake here when we talk about the presidential election.  Oftentimes, conservatives get criticized for not being open-minded.  But when you ask them why they'll vote for John Kerry, it's mainly because he isn't Bush.

Well, they're right.  John Kerry is not George Bush.  In fact, these two are probably the most diverse candidates since Reagan and Mondale clashed in 84.  Back then, it was about the nuclear freeze.  Now it's about internationalism, and how it will dictate U.S. policy in the future.

The London Times reported today that the main culprits of the the Oil-For-Food scandal was Russia and France:

The report largely implicates France and Russia, whom Saddam Hussein targeted as he sought support on the UN Security Council before the Iraq war. Both countries were influential voices against UN-backed action.

A senior UN official responsible for the scheme is identified as a major beneficiary. The report, marked “highly confidential”, also finds that the private office of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, profited from the cheap oil. Saddam’s regime awarded this oil during the run-up to the war when military action was being discussed at the UN.

And don't think Putin was the only one:

A French oil company teamed up with the regime to bribe a UN-appointed inspector monitoring exports of Iraqi oil. The inspector, a Portuguese national working for Saybolt, a Dutch firm, was paid a total of £58,000 in cash to forge export documents.

The French firm is linked to a close associate of Jacques Chirac, the country’s president. A spokesman for Saybolt said it would be investigating the allegations.

France is no surprise.  After all, they tried all they could to sabotage the war with those forged Niger documents.  As for Russia, well, it answers a few questions.  Putin did admit that he had given the U.S. intelligence about Saddam attempts to attack.  However, it's now obvious that money kept them from supporting any mission to oust Hussein as well.   

Now the New York Times jumped on this yesterday with information about a House subcommittee report that added China into the mix:

The paper suggests that France, Russia and China blocked inquiries into Iraq's manipulation of the program because their companies "had much to gain from maintaining'' the status quo. "Their businesses made billions of dollars through their involvement with the Hussein regime and O.F.F.P.," the document states, using the initials for the program. No officials of the three governments could be reached for comment.

The paper also accuses the United Nations office charged with overseeing the program of having "pressed" contractors not to rigorously inspect Iraqi oil being sold and the foreign goods being bought. The program office, headed by Benan Sevan, who is also under investigation by a committee appointed by the United Nations, turned a blind eye to corruption charges, the paper says, because it apparently saw oil-for-food "strictly as a humanitarian program."

But the problem is that the corruption kept money out of the mouths of the hungry and could have helped moderize and rebuild Iraq's infrastructure after the Gulf War.  According to the NYT, Saddam and the Iraqi Government made over $10 billion dollars since that program started in 1995.  And he did it by selling the oil for less than what it was worth to companies and traders who gave him kickbacks for it.  They turned around and sold it for a higher profit.  And the United Nations - who knew about this the whole time - was given hush money and let it happen.

Now let's talk about the election.  The Democratic presidential candidate says he should be elected because he can bring the United Nations in to help reconstruct Iraq. 

But there are two problems with that:

1.  In order to get the U.N. to do anything, you must get all the countries with veto power to agree.  France, Germany, and Russia got veto power, and they have all said they would use it for any resolution requiring forces to go into Iraq.

2.  Why should we try to gain influence with the countries that were right in the midst of corruption with a despot, and won't even admit their wrongdoing?

These are the countries that John Kerry wants to look to before we make a decision.  These are the countries in which John Kerry wants to administer a "global test" in order to determine whether we should use military force.  This is the "internationalism" that John Kerry embraces.  But it should be painfully obvious to anyone that internationalism is not in the best interest of America, nor will it uplift any country.  It will keep the rich richer, at the expense of the poor.

Make no mistake about it; if this was the United States who vetoed U.N. resolutions in order to protect U.S. companies who were conducting illegal business deals with a despot who has killed hundreds of thousands of people and has attacked other countries and our servicemen, you'd never hear the end of it.  ESPECIALLY if it was a Republican president, and ESPECIALLY if it was George W. Bush.  Every two-bit leftist around the world would be calling for his head.

Because these are countries that sided against the war, they get a pass.  It's an ends-justify-the-means approach.  And sadly, there's just enough people that could be hoodwinked into this joke of a candidate and one of the most simple-minded and dangerous ideas that this country could ever face.

I'm doing a quick breeze-through of this debate.  It's late, and I didn't get off of work until 1:00AM and didn't get home until after 2 (I had to stop by Walmart and get some stuff).

I was too busy working and trying to get in commercials during our broadcast of the debate to actually hear alot of it.  I'm watching the feed on Cspan.org right now, but I'm breezing through it.  I plan to have a more thorough analysis - question by question - of the debate once I get home from classes tomorrow.  But I'll give a quick reaction from the time being. 

Tonight, in a sense, was disappointing.  I know both Kerry and Bush wanted a lot of control in this debate, but I think it didn't work.  Now, Jeff Greenfield supposedly said this was the best debate in decades, and he's probably right.  But I feel there should have been more point/counterpoint in it than it was.

At the very least, Kerry came out on a better plane than Bush.  Not necessarily that Kerry won outright, but I think it temporarily stemmed the bad momentum that Kerry has had ever since the Swiftboat ads came out.

I remember posting about this on Okayplayer around the time this happened.

U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington) said this in December 2002:

Murray said, according to the Vancouver paper, that bin Laden has been "out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that."

"How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?" Murray asked.

Leave it to a Democrat to say some of the dumbest things on earth.  And they wonder why the country doesn't trust them to protect the homeland?

Nevermind that several scholars, like Daniel Pipes, have stated that Osama put most of his money into building his terrorist base, not social infrastructure.  What's really insulting is the fact that Murray was all too willing to fit the War on Terror is brazenly into her worldview; thinking that it can be alieviated simply by throwing money into the Middle East and hoping it will sprout peace.  Not only is that silly idea naive, but a review of 20th Century history will tell you it's dangerous.

But now, it's accountability time.  You see, Murray is up for reelection, and George Nethercutt released an ad criticizing Murray for her remarks and said she was excusing terrorists.

Check out the ad.  It's the first one labelled "Different".  If you're in Washington State or knows someone who resides there, tell them it's time to stand up and rid this embarassment from the Senate chambers.  We don't need people like this in D.C. from any state.

I really wasn't going to post about this, until someone posted about it on Okayplayer.  I thought enough people posted about it today, so there was no need to give him any more attention.  But since I wrote about it there, I figured I should say something about it here.

Kos followed in the footsteps of Greg Palast in failing to get any pertinent attention here in the States, hence going to London.  Now the UK Guardian is allowing him to write weekly columns.

Today was his first one, as he whined about the so-called Right-Wing Scream Machine:

What is the Rightwing Noise Machine? Conservatives in the United States have spent the last 30 years building a vast infrastructure designed to create ideas, distribute them, and sell them to the American public. It spans multiple think tanks and a well-oiled message machine that has a stranglehold on American discourse. From the Weekly Standard, Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street Journal, Drudge Report and Murdoch's FoxNews, to (more recently) the mindless drones in the rightwing blogosphere, the right enjoys the ability to control entire news cycles, holding them hostage for entire elections.

In other words, Kos is mad because conservatives are doing something that they want to do, and that's supposedly dominate political discourse in America.

Kos knows conservatives don't dominate "entire news cycles".  If we did, do you think Abu Gharib would have been in the news constantly over the spring, even eclipsing the murder of Nick Berg?  Do you think CBS would have ever thought about using forged documents, or highlighting all of those anti-Bush books all over the mainstream media throughout this year?  Would the Associated Press continue to pass off editorials as news articles?

Nah; what Kos is pissed off at is the fact that conservatives have a voice at all, and even more pissed that it's grown in the last eight years.  Fox News's ratings have gone up while newspaper and television audiences have gone down.  Rush's ratings continue to rise as he's the most listened to man in radio.  When Matt Drudge links to a website, the site crashes.  The Wall Street Journal just announced last month that they will start Saturday editions, a sure sign that business is doing well.  And on the blogosphere, Instapundit is still the biggest dog in the yard, and Little Green Footballs and Powerline has been energized by the CBS CYA Scandal.

I can see why he's pissed.  It must suck to be a leftist involved in the media. 

And all of this is going on while the Democratic Party nominates the worst presidential candidate for either party since George McGovern.  Yanno, it's telling when George Soros has to go out and envigorate the base rather than your candidate, despite millions of dollars being poured into these organizations - MoveOn.org, Americans Coming Together (which should be named Millionaires Coming Together), the Media Fund, the NAACP, Media Matters, Air America and others - in order to get people to vote out Bush.

Speaking of money:

Liberal thinktanks sprung up to challenge their conservative counterparts. A new liberal talk radio network was launched. MoveOn.org, created to help Bill Clinton stave off impeachment, went from being a grassroots email list to a multimillion dollar media operation. Americans Coming Together will spend nearly $100m (£55m) to register and turn out Democratic voters this November. Berkeley linguist George Lakoff founded the Rockridge Institute and is making waves in Democratic circles by showing how Republicans have hijacked the language ("tax relief", "partial-birth abortion", "pro-life"), and how Democrats can take it back.

In 2000, Bush outspent Gore $193m to $132m. While Republicans still have a slight advantage in 2004, Democrats won't lose the White House because of money. But Republicans still control the White House, the Senate, the House, the supreme court and a majority of state governorships and legislatures, meaning they can control the agenda, while their Noise Machine can dominate the message and delivery of it.

As I stated on OkayPlayer, this is the main problem with leftists, not only when counteracting conservatives but with their whole political philosophy altogether.  They believe in quantity rather than quality.  They feel they should have the same results because they put in the same amount of resources.  The world does not work that way.

Conservatives have more comprehensive arguments, their beliefs are based on logic and the basis of human behaviors.  In other words, it allows people to be people, and works around that basis.  And most importantly - I hope Kos somehow reads this - conservatism does not make excuses for the problems, incidents, or screw-ups people find themselves in.  It's about accountability, something that leftists have no clue about.

So, when you bring that to the forefront, and compare the two sides, it's not surprising why they spend millions trying to get the same effect that conservatives do with much less.  And nothing this year shows that better than the 527 organizations, as no one will argue that the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth has been more effective than any other 527 organization, despite having only a fraction of the budget that a number of these have.

So Kos can continue to whine in London.  Maybe one day the left will wake up and actually understand and respond to the wishes of the American people instead of looking down at them in frustration as to why they won't listen to their message.  Then again, in order for them to do that, they would probably have to become conservatives themselves.

This time it's Anne Geran discussing how the next president will be able to appoint a slew of judges:

The nine-member high court can be divided into three camps — conservative, middle-of-the-road and moderately liberal — and frequently lines up 5-4 on the most difficult cases.

Only "moderately liberal"?  I wouldn't call Ginsberg and Souter moderately anything.

Now sure...this is only a small statement.  But it's indicative of propaganda pieces like this conducted by the Associated Press.

From the Chicago Tribune (reg required):

Obama, a Democratic state senator from the Hyde Park neighborhood, made the remarks during a meeting Friday with the Tribune editorial board. Obama's Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, was invited to attend the same session but declined.

Iran announced on Tuesday that it has begun converting tons of uranium into gas, a crucial step in making fuel for a nuclear reactor or a nuclear bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency has called for Iran to suspend all such activities.

Obama said the United States must first address Iran's attempt to gain nuclear capabilities by going before the United Nations Security Council and lobbying the international community to apply more pressure on Iran to cease nuclear activities. That pressure should come in the form of economic sanctions, he said.

But if those measures fall short, the United States should not rule out military strikes to destroy nuclear production sites in Iran, Obama said.

Ha!  I'm going to get a kick out of watching leftists squirm over their mulatto rock star.  First it was his opposition to gay marriage and now this.

Here's what he said Friday:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama said Friday that his Christian beliefs dictate that marriage should be between a man and a woman, although he supports civil unions that give legal rights to gay and lesbian couples.

Republican candidate Alan Keyes accused Obama of trying to have it both ways on the issue.

"I think what we are seeing on this issue is deceit,'' said Keyes, who has made his opposition to gay marriage a cornerstone of his campaign. "He is deceiving the voters.''

Throughout the campaign, Obama has said that he opposes gay marriage but is in favor of civil unions.

During a taping of WBBM-AM's "At Issue,'' he was asked his personal views on gay marriage.

"I'm a Christian, and so although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman,'' Obama said.

This won't make his boys over at The Black Commentator too happy.  Remember; they were the ones that pressured Obama to take his name off of the Democratic Leadership Council website because he did not want to be affiliated with any "moderate" parts of the Democratic Party.  It will be interesting how they'll respond to his stances in the last couple of days.

I'll say this, however; it does show that Obama has some kind of backbone.  Possibly even more than the current Democratic leadership.  This is, for right now.  Sooner or later his leftist base will start crying foul, and then we'll see how he reacts.

I'll tell you what, folks...if someone needs only one reason to reelect George Bush, one would not have to look any further than to see the spoiled nutjob that is John Kerry's wife, Theresa Kerry-Heinz.

First, she calls Dick Cheney "unpatriotic" for getting the same deferments that her husband tried twice to get.  Then she tells a reporter to "shove it" because he questioned her for stating something she denied, but was caught on tape saying.  Next, she yelled at a Kerry rally that Bush supporters want 4 more years of hell if Bush is reelected.

Fast forward to today.  She attended a fundraiser today in Arizona, and she tried to spin the outlook of the polls looking bad for John Kerry.  Here is the video of that interview:

Heinz-Kerry:  Most of the poll numbers, the polls are tracking, that Sen. Kerry would handle the economy better.  My question is, why hasn't that transferred overall in the poll numbers?

Heinz-Kerry:  It has, of course.  Of course it has.

Reporter:  He's still down.

Heinz-Kerry:  He is not.  Did you see the polls today?  did you see Zogby and ARG?

Reporter:  He's still down in Arizona.

Heinz-Kerry:  Oh, who cares?  One state is not a whole state.

Now please note, that this is in light of the fact that Kerry just pulled all ads out of Arizona today, DESPITE her being in town for a fundraiser.  I'm sure the people of Arizona can be very pleased by statements like these.

Here's what Arizona state Republican chairman Bob Fannin said today:

"The Arizona Democratic Party has become little more than an ATM for the national Democrats," said Fannin. "Democrats have realized that Napolitano's election and Jim Pederson's soft money are not enough to save the Kerry campaign in Arizona."

Precisely.

But she wasn't done today.  She also stated this at the fundraiser:

In regard to the hunt for terror leader Osama Bin Laden, Heinz Kerry said she could see the al-Qaida chief being caught before the November election.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he appeared in the next month," said Heinz Kerry, alluding to a possible capture by United States and allied forces before election day.

This shouldn't be surprising, since her husband has been rehashing conspiracy theories with Halliburton, Enron, the Saudis, the draft, and anything else he could mention to try to muster his poll numbers back up.

If Kerry doesn't put a muzzle on her mouth he won't get anywhere.  Then again, we know who wears the pants in that family.

There's an email spreading among college students talking about the possiblity of a military draft, stating this:

Mandatory draft for boys and girls (ages 18-26) starting June 15, 2005, is something that everyone should know about. This literally effects everyone since we all have or know children that will have to go if this bill passes.

There is pending legislation in the house and senate (twinbills: S89 and HR 163) which will time the program's initiation so the draft can begin as early as spring, 2005, just after the 2004 presidential election. The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections, so our action on this is needed immediately. Details and links follow.

This plan, among other things, eliminates higher education as a shelter and includes women in the draft. Also, crossing into Canada has already been made very difficult.

Actions:

Please send this on to all the parents and teachers you know, and all the aunts and uncles, grandparents, godparents. . . And let your children know

- - it's their future, and they can be a powerful voice for change!

Of course, this is very misleading.  First of all there has been statements made by both sides that a military draft bill would never get bipartisan support, particularly in the House of Reps, and probably wouldn't get out of committee in either house.

Second, they state "The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections."  As far as I know, the bill hasnt been analyzed by any committee. 

Also, a major thing that's missing out of this is that this bill was drafted and co-sponsored by Democrats, namely Charles Rangel.  And the reason why he drafted this bill was to engage in class warfare, not because the military actually needed it.  Bush and Donald Rumsfeld have both dismissed the idea of a draft.

Of course, that didn't stop John Kerry from encouraging paranoia:

Answering a question about the draft that had been posed at a forum with voters, Kerry said: "If George Bush were to be re-elected, given the way he has gone about this war and given his avoidance of responsibility in North Korea and Iran and other places, is it possible? I can't tell you."

This, along with his new stance on Iraq, shows a campaign that is desperate to gain some kind of momentum to get back into this race. 

So what if he is lying through the skin of his teeth?  It's not as if he hasn't done it before. 

Deacon over at Powerline got irked when he read the story that Time Magazine did on the Powerline guys when they labelled it  as a "right-wing" website.  So he put up a pretty good post clarifying the difference between right-wing and conservative:

"The dichotomy between the 'right' and the 'left' comes from European politics and applying it here isn't particularly helpful except to those who want to diminish American conservatives. In Europe, 'right-wing' connotes a statist and somewhat authoritarian philosophy to which anti-Semitism is often attached (although nowadays such sentiment is far more prevalent within the European left). This philosophy has nothing to do with the main strand of American conservatism, with its strong optimism and libertarian tendencies. Instead, the fundamental divide in our politics is best captured by the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative.' I believe that the attempt to re-characterize the debate as between the 'right' and the 'left' is really part of a marketing strategy used by liberals to make up lost ground. During the 1990s, polling showed that the electorate viewed liberals (the 'L' word) negatively. This was not due to the word itself (which has a solid pedigree) but rather to the failed policies of liberalism as practiced in the 1960s and 1970s, and to liberal opposition to the successful and popular conservative policies of the 1980s. Liberals needed new jargon, and they found it in the European concept of the 'right-wing.'

"My teen-age daughters were taught that the spectrum runs from the far left, occupied by communists, to the far right, occupied by fascists and nazis. They were also encouraged to believe that these two extremes somehow merge when pushed to their limits. This is nonsense. A useful political spectrum must be based on a continuum of ideology. I can't think of any such continuum in which communism and fascism are polar opposites. The most meaningful continuum is based on the two fundamental and related questions of political philosophy -- how much power should the government have and how much freedom should the individual exercise. On this spectrum, as Balint Vazsonyi has pointed out, communism remains at one extreme, while the other extreme is occupied not by fascists but by pure libertarians. The fascists and the nazis (short, after all, for National Socialists) are situated right next to the communists because, as Vazsonyi has explained, their views on government power and individual freedom are quite similar. In other words, the two 'merge' not as the result of some cosmic paradox but because they were nearly the same from the beginning. On this spectrum, mainstream American conservatives, with their belief in effective but limited government, are located on the libertarian end, but at a distance from pure libertarianism."

This is probably the best clarification on conservatism that I've ever read, particularly when Deacon dismisses the idea that conservatism is a lighter side of Nazis and fascism.  It's also interesting because in order for communism to exist, fascism must be implemented.

Fascism is simply the elimination of individual rights for the good of the whole.  Communism does precisely that, and takes your resources to be split up among the populace.  The main reason why you have seen little to no opposition in communist societies is because if it is allowed to exist and manifest it would end communist societies.  Communism mandates that widespread participation of the populace, if not the entire populace, has to participate in order for the society to survive. 

In fact, the only difference that can be seen between fascism and communism, based on ideology alone, is probably the nationalist tendencies that exist in fascism.  But that's about it. 

Anyways, I thought that might be something you guys would get a kick out of.