While the GOP is putting on a big show about how much voter fraud there will be due to duplicate or false registrations by Democrats, none of their accusations have any real evidence to prove any of the allegations whatsoever. So you would think that when the Associated Press came out with a story about how 27,000 voters have duplicate registrations in Ohio and Florida and could vote in both elections, they would jump all over it. After all, this story has actual documentation behind it. But the Republicans are not touching this one with a ten-electoral-vote-pole. Why?

A majority of the double-registrants are Republicans.

11,000 are Republicans and 9,600 are Democrats, with 6,400 independents. And with Democrats out-registering Republicans, that only emphasizes how many more Republicans are double-dipping. Oops.

From the AP, in the SC State:

A new videotape of Osama bin Laden was meant to help elect Sen. John Kerry president, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson says.
…
“There’s no question in my mind, and I think to anybody who knows how close this election is,” Thompson later told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an interview. “Osama bin Laden would not give out a video report 72 hours before the election unless he wanted to influence it.”

The rest of the article shows the depth in which Thompson discusses his belief. The inappropriateness of such a bald declaration by an administration official is staggering; if, say, John Edwards or any Kerry campaign official had said that bin Laden wants Bush elected, we’d be hearing Bush decry the act as “shameful” all the way to election day.

The fact is, Bush has played into bin Laden’s plans–and vice versa–almost so seamlessly that one can hardly fault the conspiracy theorists that believe they are in cahoots. Bin Laden gave a failing Bush presidency a gigantic boost, allowing Bush to get almost every political agenda point he could wish for rammed through Congress, and to this day provides Bush with his strongest rallying point; if Bush wins the election, it will be because of bin Laden. Conversely, Bush has provided bin Laden with exactly what he wanted: an administration with its eye off the ball so that the 9/11 attacks could be carried out (unlike Clinton, who foiled the Millennium attacks), propelling bin Laden and al Qaeda to stratospheric fame; Bush then alienated the U.S. from a sympathetic world, deprived his own people of their freedoms, and let bin Laden escape while they invaded Iraq, an action which drove tens of thousands of new recruits into the waiting arms of al Qaeda, whilst the Bush administration only succeeded in capturing a few dozen noted members of the terrorist organization. In short, both Bush and bin Laden have gotten exactly what they wanted through each others’ actions.

Bin Laden does not want Bush re-elected because he quakes in his boots at the idea of a Kerry presidency; rather, he wants Bush re-elected because Bush’s policies are what bin Laden wants: an isolated America, focused on a fracturing Middle East war that fuels terrorism while it does little to attack al Qaeda directly. Kerry, on the other hand, would bring America back into the world fold, strengthening its ability to fight terror, and would be more sympathetic in the eyes of the people of the Middle East–forming alliances and winning hearts and minds instead of invading nations and turning millions against him. The only way Kerry stands more of a chance to get bin Laden than Bush is in that Kerry will not put all his energy into Iraq or whatever next Big War Bush will get us into. But the whole point is not really to catch bin Laden, but rather to fight al Qaeda. And that’s what Kerry will do better, and that’s what bin Laden would prefer not happen. See this post for a longer explanation of why bin Laden prefers Bush stay in office.

There. I can say that, because I’m not an senior official in either campaign. Thompson is, which is what makes his statement reprehensible and worthy of note and attack by the Democratic side.

Here’s another comparison between the polls today and the polls in 2000 just three days before the election:

Today the TIPP tracking poll was a tie; at this time before the 2000 election, it was +5 Bush.

Today the Zogby tracking poll was a tie; at this time before the 2000 election, it was +3 Bush.

Today, the WP/ABC tracking poll (LV) was +3 Bush; at this time before the 2000 election, it was also +3 Bush…where it stayed, with a brief detour to +4, until its final poll, thereby missing the actual popular vote margin by 3.5 percentage points.

New data from TIPP has Bush moving one point ahead, but another new poll from Zogby has Kerry moving one ahead, so the new data is a wash.

If this polling comparison suggested that Bush would be getting more numbers, I’d be worried; but on top of giving Kerry the advantage, we also have the high Democratic turnout, which usually favors the Democrats, then there’s the fact that early voters have been strongly Democratic, the fact that most newly registered voters are Democrats, the fact that the minority vote, strongly for Kerry, will likely be stronger than predicted, and that the youth vote, also for Kerry, is relatively uncounted. On top of that, the bin Laden “gift” for Bush seems to have deflated, and the polls remain steady.

Things are looking good.

Something I’ve been waiting for for quite some time: a fiber optic connection to the Internet. Living out where I do, it usually takes a while for new stuff to get out here. This time, it’s F/O. Though this is probably not straight F/O, more likely vDSL, a combination of F/O to the building and then DSL into the building and to the room. They’ll have a rep here this weekend to take orders. The max claimed speeds are 16 Mbps and 70 Mbps (both “best effort”), and if I can get near even the 16, that’ll be a big improvement over now. Currently, I subscribe to a 26 Mbps ADSL service, but due to my 3km+ distance from the telephone office, the real speed is only 3 Mbps.

It looks like the GOP is going to throw an all-out nationwide election-sized monkey-wrench election derailment in the form of voter “challenges” based on their bogus lists. After stating that they would challenge as many as 35,000 Democratic voters in Ohio, and thousands more in Florida in addition to using copies of the scandalous felon list, they are now going to challenge 37,000 Democratic voters in Wisconsin. I would likely count on the thugs showing up in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and several other battleground states as well. The GOP is basing these lists on mailings sent to Democrats that were returned as “undeliverable” in the mail–assuming that a returned letter means a fraudulent registration, a baseless assumption. We don’t even know if the GOP lists are anywhere near legitimate, just their say-so. But they will be using these lists in force at the polls on Tuesday.

What would this mean? Imagine thousands of Republican “observers” in each of those states, thick in Democratic strongholds, strangling the election process (which will already be jammed up by record turnout) by challenging a sizable percent of the people who walk through the door, demanding voters present identification and them forcing them to fill out a two-page legal form under the threat of prison for perjury, before they can cast a ballot. Can you imagine the chaos that will create?

The key question here is not “will they try it”–that much is established–but rather, “will they be able to get away with it“? What happens when the Republicans get out of line, and force hundreds, perhaps thousands of key heavily-Democratic polling places to become hopelessly jammed? Republican pundits will laugh and sneer, alleging that it proves Democratic election fraud, and see how those pathetic Democrats can’t even vote, while things are going smoothly in Republican districts. Likely these challenges will lead to violence in many places, and this will further be used by conservatives to claim that Democrats are disrupting the process.

But most importantly, Republican officials will stand on the “legality” of the observers and their “right” to challenge anyone they like. If GOP “observer” operatives start abusing their position and jamming Democratic polling places, what will anyone do? Throw them out? That will lead to nationwide howls of protest by the GOP, wild claims of election fraud. What if the GOP operatives create such a mess that lines of Democrats wanting to vote will still be waiting when the scheduled closing time arrives? If any attempt is made to extend the hours for voting, Republicans will again start shouting hysterically about fraud, injustice, illegal tampering, and God knows what else.

In short, just like the fraud pulled off in Florida four years ago, the GOP knows that so long as it can disrupt the Democratic vote on election day, nothing else matters. If by the close of polls Tuesday evening they can succeed in preventing enough Democrats from voting, then there is no returning to it–no do-over, no changing what happened. This is a crime which can and has been committed by the GOP without any fear of punishment after the fact. That is what they are depending on.

Think about it. Let’s say what I outlined happened. Maybe even just 3 or 4% of Democrats are kept from voting because Republican “observers” jam up the polling places, either shutting Democratic voters out or discouraging them from even trying. Then what? What is the recourse? As far as I can see, there is none. Who would be arrested? Very likely no one–on the face of things, GOP “observers” would be “within the law,” however blatantly they abuse it. In short, the damage would be done. The Democrats would be disenfranchised–again–and no legal action could reverse any of that.

This is my greatest fear for the election–more than even a terrorist attack on the same day.

This is a few days old already, but worthy of note: midlevel employees in the Department of Labor produced a study which predicts a Bush win that exceeds all polls and expectations:

The Labor Department has produced a report predicting that President Bush will win reelection on Tuesday.

This extraordinary example of your tax dollars at work was produced on Oct. 22 by the department’s Employment and Training Administration. The report, a weekly installment of the “Briefing on Economic & Labor Market Conditions” prepared for Assistant Secretary Emily Stover DeRocco, a political appointee, begins with a brief review of economic statistics. Then it gets down to business with a four-page section titled: “In Focus: Predicting the Election Outcome.”

The prediction? (Drumroll, please.) A smashing victory for Bush. [source]

The report predicts that Bush will win by 55.7% to 57.5%, rather incredibly optimistic considering all current information at hand. But the outrageously partisan finding of the report is less at issue than the fact that the Bush Labor Department is now apparently in the business of using official resources and taxpayer dollars to fund such a partisan report. Nonetheless, it is perhaps one of the least surprising examples of malfeasance within the Bush administration to date–despite the fact that had it happened under Clinton, it almost automatically would have prompted an official Congressional investigation, aside from all the indignant shouts of protest from the GOP about scandal and more scandal.

It is telling about the atmosphere of corruption that Bush has created that such a thing would be reported publicly, and so close to an election, and yet be almost universally disregarded as simply ‘more of the same.’

Josh Marshall has some new polling news. The good: Kerry is out ahead in key battleground states, under local polls just released: Kerry 49% to Bush 46%, New Hampshire; Kerry 49% to Bush 45%, Iowa; Kerry 49% to Bush 41%, Minnesota.

Boy, either there’s a mistake in the Washington Post, Tucker Carlson has gone mad, or things are much better for Kerry than they look. Rabid conservative Carlson is calling the election for Kerry, 51.5% to 48%, 278 electoral votes to 260. He gives both houses of Congress to the GOP, but his presidential call is still rather surprising. Loonie Ann Coulter, predictably, is calling for an all-out sweep for the Republicans, as much of a landslide as she can push for while not outrageously violating the laws of physics. Other predictions are a mix, but most cede the House to the GOP.

So it’s probably about time I made my own list up. And I do not use the words “made up” without cause: this is not after a careful analysis of the political landscape, and certainly is not the result of a state-by state analysis, especially where congressional races are concerned. I’ve been watching things fairly closely, though, and since I have been repeating the mantra of “turnout, turnout, turnout” for some time now–in short, I’ve been predicting a very high relative Democratic turnout–it’s time to put that into play for my predictions. I’ll probably be overly optimistic, but it’s simply the way I feel. So here goes:

(Map generated by USElectionAtlas.org, colors reversed in Photoshop)

The only two states I have doubts about Kerry winning are Colorado and Ohio; meanwhile, I feel that Nevada and New Mexico could similarly fall into the Kerry category. But I figure that I’ll call it this way based upon the principle that Where the race is within two points, Kerry will take it, especially where minority votes could swing the balance, meaning Ohio and Florida. I think that minority voters are going to have massive turnout partly because of the feelings of disenfranchisement from 2000 and recent reports about suppressing the minority vote this year–and, of course, because Bush has not done well by them over the past four years. But I know that if I had felt that my vote was stolen four years ago, I would, by principle backed by outrage, make it a mission to make damned sure it counted this time.

Other than that, pure galvanization on the left, in addition to the youth vote, will help push Kerry over the top. Already, predictions of extremely high voter turnout are coming out, based upon early voting in many states. In 2000, 51% of eligible voters cast their votes; I’m predicting that it will be up over 60% this election–though i could actually be too low in that prediction–and that Democrats will represent an even larger margin than in 2000, when Democrats outvoted Republicans 39% to 35%; this year, I’m guessing it will be closer to 42% vs. 36% (more polarized). The caveat being that Republicans seem to be getting more and more energized as of late, but I believe when people on the edge actually get to the polls, more moderate-conservative hearts will simply not have it in them to go with Bush again, considering the pains of the last four years.

So that leaves Congress. This is a tough one. I would count on heavy Democratic turnout to sway races that way, but there is, on the other hand, Republican voters who may switch for Kerry but vote Republican for Congress as a counterbalance, as well as Republican seat theft in the House, especially from Texas (and I believe in Colorado as well). So here are the numbers I’m calling:

I would like to call more House races than that, and will hope for a Democratic takeover of both House and Senate, but the House takeover is just a bit too far away, even for me. Still, I think we’ll hold an edge in the Senate, and be close enough in the House to make some real differences. I think Kerry will be centrist enough that he will be able to get the moderates to come with him enough of the time, and more importantly, if the Republicans try the same crap with him that they did with Clinton, it won’t fly even half as well,l and they’ll look even more the dividers for it.

So there it is. Everyone coming to visit, please use the comments to make your own predictions. Remember, you don’t need to put your email address, just your name or a handle would be great (though you can put full email and URL info if you want, of course).

Bush commenting on how vile Kerry is to even mention Tora Bora after the bin Laden tape was released, suggesting Kerry was shameful for taking political opportunity from the message:

“Unfortunately — unfortunately, my opponent, tonight, continued to say things he knows are not true — accusing our military of passing up a chance to get Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora. As the Commander in charge of that operation, Tommy Franks had said, it’s simply not the case. It’s the worst kind of Monday morning quarterbacking. It is especially shameful in the light of a new tape from America’s enemy.”

Two GOP officials, meanwhile:

“We want people to think ‘terrorism’ for the last four days,” said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. “And anything that raises the issue in people’s minds is good for us.”

A senior GOP strategist added, “anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush.”

He called it “a little gift,” saying it helps the President but doesn’t guarantee his reelection.

Meanwhile, new poll numbers out partially covering the period after the bin Laden tape was released favor Kerry a bit more than not, meaning the bin Laden tape probably will not have any negative impact. I would not say that it stands to benefit him, as his trend was already slowly upward.

This site is a good one if you want to look at a variety of electoral scenarios. You can play with your own electoral college turnout prediction too. The page shows you where the states are, and you can turn states blue and red (strange–the colors are reversed here) and it’ll show you how the map looks and how things tally up if things break the way you suggest. Fun for the whole family!

Read this article from the right-slanted Washington Times all the way through, and you’ll be treated to the Republicans saying that a U.S. soldier destroyed 250 tons of explosives at al Qaqaa, and besides, there were only 3 tons at the facility in the first place. Or maybe there was 141 tons. But the soldier destroyed 250 of them, so he’s bound to have gotten them all, right?

Of course, the first number they quote–380 tons–is most likely closest to the true amount. And despite the claims of the Bush Pentagon, this new testimony probably has absolutely no relevance to the IAEA issue. The explosives in question had IAEA seals on them, which would have to be broken to access them. The soldier in charge said that “I did not see any IAEA seals at the locations that we went into. I was not looking for that.” Looking or not, he would have had to break the seals, and so would have seen them. Despite that, “Defense officials said they believe the 250 tons of explosives that Army troops destroyed after overruning the facility south of Baghdad included some of the 380 tons of explosives that have been reported missing.”

But let’s imagine that the Pentagon is accurate here; even if the soldier destroyed 250 tons, that leaves 130 tons of explosives (which could be used in building nuclear materials as well as terrorist attacks) left unguarded and probably looted. And it means that they knew the explosives were there, they needed to be destroyed, and yet they stopped short and left the remainder unguarded so looters could get them. But maybe that helps Bush, because it lets him blame the troops.

You may notice that most polls have Bush out ahead by a few percentage points. The question is, how reliably does this predict the outcome? We know that this year, several of the polls have weighted their results much too far to the Republican voter side. But what about four years ago?

Look at this article, just where we are now–four days before the election–from the 2000 election. The polls had Bush ahead by three to six points. And in the actual election, Gore wound up getting half a million more votes than Bush. the difference between then and now:

In short, if past polling is any indication, Kerry could possibly take this one by a few percentage points. And remember, that election had fewer volatiles breaking for the Democrat–this election, the youth and minority votes promise to swing as-yet unmeasured votes Kerry’s way.

This photo has cropped up already:

And maybe we should check the video closely to see if he’s got a bulge in the back of his robes…

In my last post, I suggested that the bin Laden tape might be his way of mucking with our elections in lieu of an attack, but then my father reminded me that people have said that bin Laden sometimes uses video announcements as signals to sleeper cells to activate.

Hmm.

Many say this is the October Surprise, though neither campaign probably had anything to do with it. This is one of those last-minute variables which probably no one will be able to accurately measure before election day. And in a way, it is almost reassuring–it suggests that perhaps this is the al Qaeda action feared before the election, in lieu of an actual terrorist attack.

What it does, effectively, is to tip the ball in play and set both candidates into an unexpected fight to catch the ball and run with it to the endzone–and the politics of the situation has already begun.

Certainly, it is a surprise–we have not seen any definitive, datable proof that bin Laden really survived after Tora Bora, though we more or less knew that he was still around. But this video shows conclusively that bin Laden is alive and well. And it more or less puts to rest the theory that Bush caught bin Laden and was waiting till just before the election to tell everyone we got him.

So what will people’s reactions be? Will they see this as a serious threat and go running to Bush to save us? Or will they see this as evidence that Bush dropped the ball, failed to get the bad guy, and we need to get someone else to do the job right? Will bin Laden’s sharp criticism of Bush in the video allow Bush to run against bin Laden instead of against Kerry in the last days of the election?

Certainly this all helps Bush in one big way: no one is talking about the al Qaqaa explosives story now. Instead of the ball being carried slowly but surely into Bush’s endzone, it is now up in the air at the 50-yard line.

Four days to go.

…what will happen?

Remember how the Bush administration claimed that when the came to occupy the White House, they discovered all kinds of vandalism, from the alleged missing “W” keys on the computer keyboards to much more serious damaging and pilfering? Remember how the GSA, which maintains the White house, debunked the story, saying that most of the damage claims were false, and the “vandalism” was “consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy”? In other words, it was a Bush administration dirty trick after all–they just made it up as a way to attack the Democrats.

To be honest, I’m not worried about the Bush people pilfering all the “J,” “F” and “K” keys from the keyboards when Kerry moves in. I’m much more worried about what damage his administration will do to the country and to the world in the three months they will occupy power whilst knowing they are leaving, and are going to be bitterly, angrily vindictive about it.

I do not consider Bush’s father, H.W. Bush, to have been even nearly as bitter or vindictive, and yet look at what he did: after spending his entire presidency refusing to engage in any messy third-world quagmires, he chose one month after he lost the 1992 election to order 25,000 U.S. troops into Somalia–without an exit plan. Knowing that the start of the operation would appear victorious, strong, forceful and decisive, just as he knew that it would soon turn bloody, violent, and remorseful–on his opponent’s new watch. Bush Sr. knew without a doubt that “winning” in Somalia was impossible; that if Clinton stayed in for too long that he would get caught in a quagmire, and that if Clinton pulled out, the Republicans could thoroughly attack him for weakness and being a “cut and run” president.

No president, unless under dire necessity, should ever begin such a military action, unilaterally, so close to exiting the White House. It was a low, mean and dishonorable thing to do–and violated the trust a president must keep with the military not to use them for political means.

We know that Bush Jr. has even less a problem with abusing the military to achieve his means. What will this Bush administration do when they know they can hand off any number of messy, bloody situations to an incoming John Kerry administration? Will they refuse to fund Iraq, leaving the troops in the cold, so Kerry’s first move will have to be massive emergency funding for the Iraq conflict? Will they make a plethora of last-minute edicts on controversial issues so that Kerry’s first move will have to be deconstructing presidential orders on flag burning, abortion counseling, the pledge of allegiance and other hot-button issues? Or will Dubya go whole hog like his father did and start a military action in a country where there is no chance of winning–say, the Sudan–leaving Kerry the option of watching our soldiers die in a quagmire, or looking weak by cutting and running?

Personally, I will not put thing one past this Bush administration.

Remember those soldiers that Bush claimed didn’t find any explosives? He was talking about these soldiers:

These soldiers, who are on this video, at al Qaqaa, finding rooms full of explosives:

But hey, those could be any explosives, right? Maybe those are different explosives than the ones that the IAEA was talking about.

Oops.

According to the reports, the troops found “bunker after bunker” full of the explosives, having to break the IAEA seals to get into the buildings, the facilities left behind unsealed and unguarded because not enough troops were available, and with Iraqi civilians freely going in and out of the facility.

Meanwhile, Republicans are sinking to new lows to try to shift blame. After RNC chairman Ed Gillespie and George W. Bush himself falsely claimed that Kerry was blaming and denigrating the troops, GOP footsoldier Rudy Giuliani went on the NBC “Today” show and said the following:

”No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn’t they search carefully enough?”

Enough said.

From the New York Times:

Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday.

The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and later heaving unwanted items off the trucks.
…
But the accounts make clear that what set off much if not all of the looting was the arrival and swift departure of American troops, who did not secure the site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it.

“The looting started after the collapse of the regime,” said Wathiq al-Dulaimi, a regional security chief, who was based nearby in Latifiya. But once it had begun, he said, the booty streamed toward Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Bush & Co. is desperately trying to throw up any and every theory about how the explosives were taken before the invasion–and failing badly. They tried to claim that soldiers who stayed overnight at the facility on April 10 with an NBC News team found the explosives missing, only to have that story contradicted and torn to shreds. The Washington Times is now trying to push the story that Russian special forces removed the explosives (is this or is this not sounding more and more desperate–Russian special forces? Please), but already that story has been shot down–the source is thoroughly discredited, and the Russian embassy in Washington is flatly denying that any Russian forces were in Iraq at all during that time frame.

So what next? Well, there was a group of other soldiers who went through the al Qaqaa complex on April 3, which the administration is now using. They say that those other troops “saw no signs” of the explosives. Case closed, right?

No, of course not. Josh Marshall, as usual, has the goods. It turns out that there was an April 5 news story, “the 3rd Infantry Division entered the vast Qa Qaa chemical and explosives production plant and came across thousands of vials of white powder, packed three to a box.” The looted explosives, RDX and HMX, are white powders. An AP story the same day reported that “troops at Iraq’s largest military industrial complex found … a white powder that appeared to be used for explosives. … A senior U.S. official familiar with initial testing said the powder was believed to be explosives.”

In other words, Bush & Co. are claiming that the troops found no evidence of the looted explosives. However, they did find explosives that look exactly like the ones that were looted.

Really, I don’t know if Bush & Co. really care at this point–I believe that they are just flinging out story after story, hoping that (a) people will have heard “it’s not Bush’s fault” so many times that they’ll believe it, or at least they won’t remember that all claims were thoroughly discredited, and/or (b) that they can keep the ball in the air–that is, produce a line of explanations that will take time to debunk–so that they can continue to say “it’s not a fact” until the election goes by.

However, the debunking–especially by bloggers like Marshall–are acting so quickly that each story only survives a very short time, and as the explanations fly, the story gets bigger and bigger.

Bush’s Reality Distortion Field is on Maximum Power, folks–set phasers to “disintegrate.”

In recent months, some have compared Kerry with the accursed Boston Red Sox–both come from Boston, both were believed to not have a chance ow winning. And yet here we are, the Red Sox coming back from a 0-3 cellar in the Playoffs and winning the World Series in 4 games.

Will the prognosticators who foresaw Kerry’s doom in the Boston curse now apply the same comparison to the election, just less than a week away?

Well, I am happy to report that the scheduling of Japanese Holidays has made it possible for me to closely monitor the U.S. elections next week: it turns out that Wednesday, November 3rd is Culture Day in Japan, and the day is free. And with time zones and all, that means that the election results will be coming in throughout the day here. After DST takes effect in the U.S. on October 31, 8:00 pm EST will be 10:00 am here in Tokyo. Polls should close in Hawaii by 4:00 in the afternoon here, and unless it’s really close, the preliminary results will be coming in by early evening. Perfect timing. And, of course, I’ll be blogging like a madman throughout, most likely. I am already up to 953 posts on this blog, and #1000 may well come around on election day–rather fitting, if it’s so.