A few posts back I pointed out how Bush, his people, and his supporters all are using the troops and other honorable people as straw-man scapegoats, falsely suggesting that when Kerry blames Bush, he is actually blaming someone else, like the troops. In effect, Bush is being a gutless coward by deflecting blame onto honorable people just to save his own sorry butt. Well, Bush is at it again:

Now the Senator is making wild charges about missing explosives, when his top foreign policy advisor admits “we don’t know the facts.” End quote. Think about that. The Senator is denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts.

As explained before, Kerry never attacked the troops or the generals, he clearly and singularly attacked Bush. Bush’s lie on the matter echoes RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie’s rather blatant out-of-context misquote of Kerry to the same effect.

Fortunately, I am not the only person to make this observation; I am in good company with the former chief of staff of the Air Force:

Retired Air Force Gen. Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak said in a statement that Bush seems to believe that Kerry should not be criticizing him “since the president thinks he has never made a mistake.”

McPeak continued: “Let’s be perfectly clear: it is the President who dropped the ball. Senator Kerry is being critical of George Bush, not the troops. By embarking on the line of attack, George Bush is deflecting blame from him over to the military. This is beneath contempt.”

Edwards is also sounding the same note:

“Why did George Bush (news – web sites) take three days to finally say something about 380 tons of missing explosives?” Kerry said. “They did nothing, nothing to secure them and now they’re gone. And we don’t know who has them. It’s possible terrorists have them.”

“And, what did George Bush have to say about this? He said that John Kerry doesn’t support the troops.”

In a dubious voice and shaking his head, Edwards asked from his platform in the middle of supporters in a gymnasium: “Aren’t we sick and tired of George Bush and Dick Cheney using our troops as shields to protect their own jobs?”

Kerry also referred to this, citing Bush’s willingness to blame anyone and everyone but himself. I am, to say the least, extremely pleased and gratified that people are calling Bush out on this spineless practice.

By the way, it’s great to be ahead of the curve on this kind of thing–in this case, a full year ahead!

This from Yahoo News:

A top Iraqi science official said it was impossible that 350 tonnes of high explosives could have been smuggled out of a military site south of Baghdad before the regime fell last year.

…

“It is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime’s fall,” said Mohammed al-Sharaa, who heads the science ministry’s site monitoring department and previously worked with UN weapons inspectors under Saddam.

“The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall and I spoke to them about it and they even issued certified statements to this effect which the US-led coalition was aware of.”

Sharaa also warned that other nearby sites with similar materials could have also been plundered.

“The Al-Milad Company in Iskandariyah and the Yarmouk and Hateen facilities contained explosive materials that could have also been taken out,” the official told AFP in an interview.

In other words, the Bush administration knows full well that the explosives were plundered on their watch, were taken because they didn’t think to put enough soldiers on the ground to watch all the places that needed to be watched. And a week before the election, with things so close, they are scared silly to admit the truth, so they have been lying their hineys off.

The al Qaqaa debacle is, at the right time, so perfectly representative of all the debacles the Bush administration has been responsible for; it would be difficult to think of a better story to exemplify the incompetence of this administration, and why we need new governance.

I have written before about the political art of shifting blame to others: when you’ve made a colossal blunder and it threatens your political career or agenda, if reporters ask you if you made an error, then twist the question to make it appear like they are blaming an honorable group of people. Reagan did this when the Marine barracks were blown up in Lebanon, making it appear that any accusation of wrongdoing was equal to dishonoring the soldiers who died, saying their deaths were in vain. In my prior article on the subject, I noted that a FOX reporter tried the same thing on Wesley Clark, implying that if Clark said that Iraq was a sideshow and Bush was missing the real target in Afghanistan, that was equal to belittling the troops in Iraq.

The Bush campaign is in full-gear blame-shifting mode this week. First was the criticism that Bush outsourced the hunt for bin Laden to the local warlords, who let bin Laden escape. Searching for a way to dismiss this cogent and damaging criticism, Bush said:

Now my opponent is throwing out the wild claim that he knows where bin Laden was in the fall of 2001, and that our military passed up the chance to get him in Tora Bora. This is an unjustified criticism of our military commanders in the field. This is the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking.

In other words, if there was a blunder made, it wasn’t me, it was the generals. And how dare he criticize the generals!

But they didn’t stop there. Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the RNC, sent out a mass email to millions of people, claiming that the ultra-super-liberal media was at it yet again, daring to report that the explosives in Iraq were looted after the invasion, when in fact American troops found the cache had been looted already, on Saddam Hussein’s watch, and that an NBC News crew had confirmed it, therefore making Kerry’s criticism and the press coverage of it a howling outrage.

Of course, he was wrong: the troops only stayed at al Qaqaa for the night, they did not look for the weapons (and would not have been qualified to make that determination anyway), and the NBC crew in fact contradicted the claim that the explosives had been found already missing. CNN’s report of the NBC team and the soldiers finding the weapons gone was not even based on an NBC report, it was in fact based on a Matt Drudge story, and we all know how reliable he can be. Josh Marshall is all over the story.

But the point in this entry is that Gillespie used this blame-shifting technique; note carefully the words in bold, as well as Gillespie’s careful use of quotation marks:

John Kerry seized on the New York Times headline to launch a political attack on President Bush, saying U.S. troops “failed to guard those stockpiles” and that is “one of the great blunders” of the war.

Senator Kerry and the New York Times leave the impression that these weapons went missing recently and U.S. troops were derilict in their duty to guard the stockpile — neither of which is true.

Not only does this shift the blame to the troops instead of the president, but it also carefully misquotes Kerry, whose original quote was:

After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this president failed to guard those stockpiles. … Now we know our country and our troops are less safe because this president failed to do the basics, this is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration. The incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk and put this country at greater risk than we ought to be.

Notice Gillespie’s careful and intentional editing of Kerry’s quote, cutting it off just so he can take the blame Kerry puts squarely on Bush, and make it appear like Kerry is criticizing the troops. When in fact, Kerry not once said it was the fault of the troops, and quite clearly blamed the Bush administration, not once but repeatedly–kind of hard for Gillespie to miss.

We know these people are lying bastards, folks… but it’s hard not to use even stronger language when you see such blatant lies such as these–not to mention cowardly attempts to hide behind honorable people in order to save your own sorry political ass.

From The BBC:

A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan – possibly in violation of US law – to disrupt voting in the state’s African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.

Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign’s national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called “caging list”.

It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

The BBC is presenting it as a big deal, indicative of illegal activity; I am not certain about that. It appears to be the same kind of plan that the GOP is outwardly carrying out in Ohio; the Bush campaign claims that it is a list of voters with questionable addresses that they plan to challenge. The charge of illegality is based upon the fact that “US federal law prohibits targeting challenges to voters, even if there is a basis for the challenge, if race is a factor in targeting the voters.” And Jacksonville is predominantly black. Still, intent of racial bias may be hard to pin down in federal court, especially if the Bush campaign can produce similar lists for other counties (which they probably have).

I would be especially interested to know exactly who called it a “caging list”; the BBC article is not specific about that. If it was language used by the Bush campaign, then that word alone could be heavily charged.

When it comes down to it, I see this as yet another plan–just like in Ohio–to intimidate voters at the polling place. The list certainly details how the GOP operatives there plan to stop people, and forcing so many to sign 2-page legal affidavits at the polling place will at the least be a disruption, and at most could discourage a great many people from voting. And while the elections supervisor quoted in the BBC article is a Democrat and so bias must be anticipated, he nevertheless reveals an interesting fact: “not one challenge has been made to a voter “‘in the 16 years I’ve been supervisor of elections.'” Which means that this Republican tactic is a new thing.

The BBC article also notes rather suspicious activity by shady characters at the early polling places:

In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every “early voter” – the majority of whom are black – from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows.

The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.

Note: The BBC so far is the only news organization reporting this. None of the US services are mentioning anything about this, 8 hours and more after the story broke.

Just a few minutes ago, another sizable tremor hit, and NHK has just reported that it is yet another powerful aftershock–a “6-” on the Japanese scale, maybe a 6.0 M quake or above on the Richter–at the same location in Niigata, where 31 people died, 3,400 were injured and more than 100,000 were made homeless. This tremor was predicted, but is not good news for those in the area, their situation already made worse by heavy rains yesterday.

It is interesting to note the differences in how the candidates criticize each other. Take, for example, Kerry’s jabs at Bush in a recent speech on improving conditions for women in America:

George Bush’s promise was to protect Social Security. But for four years, he’s raided the Social Security trust fund to pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. And recently, he said that if he was re-elected, he’d “come out strong” to privatize Social Security. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, that means benefit cuts of 25 to 45 percent. But what does it mean for a woman whose only income is a $1100 a month Social Security check? It means cutting more pills in half … it means not being able to buy a birthday gift for a grandchild … it means sitting awake at night, often all alone, worrying about what tomorrow will bring.
…
George Bush likes to talk about how being President is “hard work.” Mr. President, I’m very happy to relieve you of that hard work. And before the President complains about his job, he ought to come here and spend a day with you. He might learn something about how, day after day, the women of this country juggle so much with such grace and strength. What you do every day – now that’s hard work.
…
And I think that’s one of the biggest differences between George Bush and us. We believe that the middle class is the backbone of this country – and that hard-working women are the bedrock of our families. We believe that women deserve more than false assurances and empty promises from their President. They deserve a fresh start with a President who’s going to take responsibility, face reality, and make sure that they don’t just get by – they get ahead. If you give me that chance – I will be that President.

In contrast, here are representative jabs at Kerry by Bush in one of latest stump speeches:

THE PRESIDENT: I’m proud of my running mate, Dick Cheney. (Applause.) Now, look, I fully admit he does not have the waviest hair in this race. (Laughter.) But I want to assure you, I didn’t pick him because of his hairdo. (Laughter.)
…
THE PRESIDENT: My opponent takes a different approach. He believes that instead of leading with confidence, America must submit to what he calls a global test.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: I’m not making that up. (Laughter.) He was standing right about just there when I heard him say it. (Applause.) As far as I can tell — as far as I can tell, that means our country must get permission from foreign capitals before we act in our own self-defense. [He is making that up–ed.]

AUDIENCE: Booo!
…
THE PRESIDENT: On Iraq, my opponent has a strategy of pessimism and retreat. He has talked about artificial timetables to pull our troops out. He has sent the signal that America’s overriding goal in Iraq would be to leave, even if the job is not done.

AUDIENCE: Booo!
…
THE PRESIDENT: He voted against many of the weapons systems critical to our defense build-up.

AUDIENCE: Booo!
…
THE PRESIDENT: Senator Kerry has turned his back on “pay any price,” and “bear any burden.” He’s replaced those commitments with, “wait and see,” and “cut and run.”

AUDIENCE: Booo!

The tone is fundamentally, qualitatively different. Bush’s style includes ad hominen jabs–like implying that Edwards was chosen for the VP slot because of his hair instead of his judgment–and is followed by a litany of distortions: Bush’s “understanding” of Kerry’s words on the global test are patently false (Kerry said the president could act unilaterally and preemptively, and only afterwards his judgment would be tested by international approval); Kerry has always held that the job must be finished in Iraq, the direct opposite of what Bush claims; the tired chestnut of Kerry “voting against” weapons systems is actually based on Kerry agreeing with Cheney’s own cuts; and Kerry has been the one to ask people to pay a price and never to cut and run, while Bush runs up debt as he gets us into quagmires.

Bush’s speech cuts at Kerry with a laundry list of other lies–but note the tone. Sharp, cutting, caustic; you can see the smirk every time he makes a crack or a criticism, you can hear the “heh-heh” he adds when he says these things, and the audience consistently booing reflects his encouragement of negativity.

Compare that with Kerry’s style, not depending on personal jabs or taunts, touching on values common to people in need, using solid figures usually from non-partisan sources–but overall, using a softer, less divisive tone. In fact, go to both web sites and read both speeches in their entirety. The difference is palpable, both in straight rhetoric and their more positive statements, as well as their criticism of each other. It is no mystery why Bush has divided this country more than ever before over the past four years. And it is no mistake to assume that Kerry will be far more the uniter–at least as much as is humanly possible, should the Republicans turn on him viciously and make it their mission to tear him apart as they did with Clinton, instead of working together with him in a bipartisan approach.

At least with Kerry, we have a chance at a more united country, so long as the Republicans extend even half the unity and bipartisanship the Democrats have offered over the past four years.

Is it a coincidence that we learn of Rehnquist’s cancer just eight days before the election? I am not, of course, suggesting that Rehnquist scheduled his surgery for this time, but the chief justice has had his malady diagnosed for some time; for it to be publicly announced so close to a contentious election is without question subject to scrutiny. Was news of Rehnquist’s illness meant to galvanize the conservative base, scaring them into believing that if they don’t get Bush elected, then a Democrat could appoint the next chief justice of the Supreme Court? Could this be Rehnquist’s new way of getting Bush elected after he led the conservative-majority court cabal in the 2000 election to stop legal counting in Florida and elect Bush the winner?

Naturally, if that is the case, it could also backfire: liberals could see this as a once-in-a-generation chance to win back seats on the highest court, sending it back to a more equal balance. Rehnquist would have to hang on for four more years if Kerry were elected, and he might not have that choice.

Talking Points Memo is covering it in detail, after the story was broken by the Nelson Report, a private newsletter (no web site) reporting on Asia. Apparently, 350 tons of high explosive was looted early on in the U.S. occupation of Iraq–you remember, the looting which Rumsfeld pooh-poohed as insignificant, looting caused by a lack of sufficient troops which the administration tried to say wasn’t important–and, as Kerry pointed out in the debates, is now being used against our own people every day in Iraq. Explosives which may have killed hundreds of our troops, in the hands of the insurgents because Bush did not do the job right. Apparently this type of explosive could also be used to trigger a nuclear device.

What’s more, it was covered up: it seems that the Bush administration and the DoD did not report this to the IAEA or other bodies that it should be telling, and told the Iraqi government not to inform anyone either. Not to mention that it withheld this information from the American people. Considering the potential political implications of the story, this could be big. Expect it to break in the mainstream press soon. And keep in mind that Kerry was talking about this weeks ago.

Update: The New York Times is now carrying the story. And it seems to be 380 tons, not 350.

From Editor and Publisher:

Sen. John Kerry continued his raid on newspapers that backed President Bush in 2000, grabbing 22 new “flip-flops,” plus The Washington Post, which was a major supporter of the war in Iraq. The Democrat has now won endorsements from at least 33 papers that went for Bush in 2000, while Bush has earned only two Gore papers.

However, Bush got a prize in the key state of Ohio, The Columbus Dispatch.

Kerry now leads Bush 122-69 in endorsements in E&P’s exclusive tally, and he leads by about 14.9 million to 8.9 million in the circulation of backing papers.

These endorsements have been breaking Kerry’s way since the beginning, although admittedly many of them are as anti-Bush as they are pro-Kerry. Still, it’s rather surprising how many that went for Bush have now switched and are going for Kerry. Despite the E&P emphasis on the Ohio paper going for Bush, included among those endorsing Kerry are several in battleground states, including the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, which wrote: “This president has utterly failed to fulfill our expectations. We turn now to his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, with the belief that he is more likely to meet the hopes we once held for Mr. Bush.”

Other key papers switching from Bush to Kerry include Allentown Morning Call in Pennsylvania, the Quad City Times in Davenport, Iowa, the Iowa City Press-Citizen, The Sun and the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin in Washington, the Wausau Daily Herald in Wisconsin, the Billings Gazette in Montana, and the Bangor Daily News in Maine.

Not really, but you get the feeling that that is where he’s headed. First, as his campaign decried “scare tactics” on the part of the Kerry campaign, Cheney claimed that a Kerry presidency would lead to a terrorist attack. then he claimed that the U.S. would be nuked if Kerry won. Now he’s saying that if Kerry had been president in the 80’s, the Soviet Union would still be in power. In addition, Saddam Hussein would probably control the Persian Gulf today. So, essentially, a vote for Kerry will lead to Soviet terrorists in league with a Super-Giant-Mega-Saddam Hussein, nuking us right and left.

What’s precious about Cheney’s Soviets-in-power claim is that he bases it on Kerry’s votes against certain weapons systems. Except that it was Cheney himself who made the decision to cut those precise weapons systems in the first place!!

From The Columbus Dispatch:

“Any political party supporting candidates on the ballot … may appoint one person to each polling location as a challenger during the casting of ballots…. Any person voting may be challenged…. Voters’ eligibility may be challenged on four grounds: they are not U.S. citizens, they haven’t lived in Ohio for at least 30 days before the election, they do not live in the county where they are voting, they are not at least 18 years old. Voters who are challenged must sign an affidavit responding to the reasons challenged.”

The affidavit, it turns out, is even more intimidating than it at first sounds:

Voters who are challenged will be asked to fill out a two-page form stating their name, if they are a U.S. citizen, where they were born, if they have resided in the state 30 days, the names of two persons who know where they live, the county and precinct in which they live, and if they are of legal voting age.

The bottom of the form contains the following warning in bold type: “Whoever commits election falsification is guilty of a felony of the fifth degree.”

All of this begs the question: how the heck will they be able to spot people to challenge? What does a person who has not lived in Ohio for 30 days look like? Could you spot someone from a different county? It is not hard to predict that the Republican challengers will be well-trained to spot the most vulnerable voters and force them to go through all of this in order to vote. Voters who appear to be in a hurry will doubtless be targeted as well. And it is without doubt that the GOP challengers will spot the Democrats chiefly by their color.

Additionally, the GOP is challenging 35,000 newly registered voters in Ohio–Democrats, of course, mostly minorities–before they even get to the polling places. The GOP is claiming that a mass mailing they did to new registrants generated a large number of returned mail, suggesting incorrect addresses, in turn suggesting bogus registration. However, there is grave doubt as to the legitimacy of these claims; the GOP has most likely simply found a new way of keeping Democrats from voting. Those Democratic areas being challenged are now being thrown into turmoil, with tens of thousands of Democrats being forced to appear at hearings to prove that they are truly eligible to vote. In short, the GOP found a new way to legally intimidate voters, making them jump through hoops before they can be allowed to vote.

Not that they’ll admit to it, of course; in order to make their intimidation appear legitimate, they have been claiming to the press that this is all about voter fraud on the part of the Democrats; for example, they claim that many false registrations were made by a man who “was paid in crack cocaine for his registration efforts by a representative of the NAACP.” There are truly no depths that they will not lower themselves to.

Well, it seems that the protest against the Sinclair broadcast intended to smear Kerry was successful; at least from the far-right perspective of Freepers, judging from their strangled, frustrated whining, the show was relatively balanced. Their bald ambition to have it be a savage attack on Kerry is undisguised:

Seriously though, I’m mad. This is stupid, and it’s not making Kerry look bad. Then they showed a little hit piece on President Bush. Did Sinclair cave or what??——————This thing sucks. Anything postive for the POWs and vets is “BALANCED” by whack jobs for kerry. Now they’re doing the Bush AWOL thing – I am blocking SINclair on my box – what a setup! – It’s on tape but I think I’ll burn it. ARRRRRRRRRRRGH!——————Sinclair is apparently a bunch of linguini-spined cowards who decided to chop up the documentary and insert so much cognitive dissonance as to make it useless. Shame on them! SHAME!

Hee hee, that’s fun to read. Serves ’em right. This is the same crowd that howled bloody murder when the Reagan miniseries was to show–getting it bumped to cable–and that wasn’t about a candidate and it wasn’t two weeks before an election. With that miniseries, as you’ll recall, Republicans demanded to screen the miniseries beforehand, and if they didn’t like it, then they would demand a scrolling subtitle be constantly shown to emphasize that the series was fiction. Not so it would be balanced, but so it would be either sympathetic to their views or fully discredited as untrue. If they can justify that but then rail against this, they are quite clearly raving hypocrites.

Clearly the pressure put on Sinclair was effective. After their stock fell and their advertisers scattered, they announced that they were planning a “balanced” show after all–but no one doubts that if not for the protest, they would have shown only the smear documentary, possibly followed by a panel show, as they had originally announced. But even then there would have been the question of legality; it might have been more than fear of losing sponsors, if Sinclair had aired the anti-Kerry doc as originally planned, they could have been hit with lawsuits and possibly even lost their license.

It should also be noted that maybe the show wasn’t quite son easy on Kerry as the Freepers feared; after all, their wing-nut view may just make them feel that the show wasn’t an anti-Kerry screed; one of them points out, “It doesn’t suck; it’s just not slash and burn. Try to remember that the rest of the world isn’t quite as strident about John Kerry as we are.” To say the least.

It’ll be interesting to see what the non-far-right-loony reaction is. But reading through the hundreds of posts by screaming, outraged Freepers is fun.

No, I’m not kidding:

Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.

In the meantime, Democrats recruited 3,600 people to protect those same voters from Republican intimidation. The Republican intimidation drive and the Democratic defense against it are taking place primarily in “heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities.” This is not a two-sided attempt by both parties to intimidate voters on the other side–this is purely offensive on the part of the GOP, hoping to scare off as many Democratic voters as possible.

This is reprehensible. But not unexpected. The GOP is now running scared, and is evidently willing to stop at nothing to win this one by hook or crook.

This web site via Josh Marshall. Very amusing, if the target of the site is anything but.

We are in the process of being hit by a string of strong earthquakes right now. At least one is a 6.8 (Richter scale, it seems) centered in Niigata, but it was felt strongly here. About 3-4 minutes later, I felt another smaller one, and then just now, another strong one, just as strong as the first. And these are up-and-down, not side-by-side quakes.

More as it comes in.

Update: just a few minutes later, I’m on the phone with my brother, and another one hits. that’s three fairly good-sized quakes, ranging from at least 5.5 and up to 6.8 on the Richter. I would not want to be in Niigata right now.

NHK is reporting that the last quake was also a 6+, though they only say it’s a 5.9 on the Richter.

Update (6:20): Tenki.jp is reporting that the second big quake I felt was a 6.2 on the Richter. They also report the other two quakes.

Update (6:35): Another one! This one just past 6:30, and it felt stronger than the others! I heard the NHK guy in Niigata on TV report it first, camera shaking and all, and then felt it here just a few seconds later.

Damn.

One TV station says it was a 6.3 (NHK concurs), [update: another quake I didn’t feel here but was a 5.0 in Niigata; another also hit later] making the sequence:

5:56 pm: 6.8 M
6:03 pm: 6.2 M
6:12 pm: 5.9 M
6:34 pm: 6.3 M
6:36 pm: 5.0 M
6:51 pm: 5.1 M

No reports of damage or injury yet, but this quake hit in the countryside some miles south of Niigata City, so it could be a few hours before we get solid info on exactly what the damage is up there.

Update (7:00): The quake is now being reported in the international press, the best item issued by The Scotsman. Trains have stopped across the region (not a weekday, but still a heavy traffic time).

NHK is now reporting some building damage in Niigata, a broken water main, and a minor train derailment, possibly a bullet train. At least five injuries in one area have been reported, but no fires.

Update (7:22): Correction, ten people with injuries and counting. Reports of mudslides and collapsed houses are trickling in.

Update (7:48): At least one death has been reported, as well as a number of fires. 50-60 people are now reported injured. We are hearing of collapsed walls and fences and other damage. Some areas are affected by a power outage, other reports have electricity on but street lights out. The derailment was indeed a bullet train, with cars #1 and 9 going off the tracks, but it seems like there’s not much damage there, no injuries on the train. There is also a report of a partially collapsed expressway. The train left Tokyo at 4pm, and was scheduled to arrive in Niigata at 6. Aftershocks–some of them over 5 on the Richter scale–continue to rock the area. A 5.2 hit at 7:36, and now reports are coming out of a low-6 quake hitting at 7:46.

From Reuters, October 19:

“Instead of articulating a vision or a positive agenda for the future, the senator is relying on a litany of complaints and old style scare tactics,” Bush told a rally in New Port Richey.

From ABC News, October 22:

Bush suggested his Democratic rival “does not understand the enemy we face and has no idea how to keep America secure.” His campaign reinforced that theme with a new television ad with chilling imagery of prowling wolves in a dense forest. “Weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm,” an announcer says.

Ever since Mozilla started blocking pop-up advertisements on web pages, I’ve had a great deal of success avoiding them. In fact, I hadn’t gotten a single one for a few years–until recently. I just experienced the second one now, and it’s becoming apparent to me that the spammers are breaking through here as well–they’re somehow figuring out ways to get around pop-up blockers.

Ironically, it is partially due to Microsoft. In the recent Service Pack upgrade to Windows XP, Internet Explorer was improved to block pop-up ads–likely copying exactly what Mozilla has been doing for so long now. And since IE has such a huge chunk of the market, advertisers felt compelled to find away around it–and in doing so, got around the Mozilla protection as well.

Here’s a story which explains it.

So we were doing great until IE moved in. There goes yet another neighborhood…

From the Des Moines Register, October 21:

President Bush touted himself as a man of his word Wednesday, reminding a crowd of 4,000 supporters about promises he made four years ago when campaigning in Iowa, and maintaining he’s fulfilled them.

“I kept my word,” Bush said repeatedly at a morning rally held at the North Iowa Fairgrounds in Mason City.

From Knight-Ridder, October 20:

President Bush will end his four-year term having fulfilled about 46 percent of the [178] promises he made during the 2000 presidential campaign, according to an analysis by Knight Ridder. … A similar Knight Ridder analysis found that, during his first term, President Clinton had fulfilled about 66 percent of the 160 commitments that he made during his first presidential campaign.

This Reality Distortion Field Bush puts up is not a mistake; he very much wants people to believe things that are patently untrue–and it’s working. According to PIPA, most Bush supporters have a completely mistaken idea of what Bush stands for. A slight majority are correct on his standing on defense spending (increase), and 70% know that he wants the U.S. to do nation-building in Iraq. But fewer than half know his standing on missile defense, the international court and even (unbelievably) the Kyoto accords–and fewer than 25% know that he opposes nuclear weapons testing bans or the land mine treaty. Only 13% know that he opposes labor and environmental conditions in trade agreements.

Kerry supporters, on the other hand, know their man much better. On only one topic–defense spending–do a minority understand his position, and that’s 43%. On all the other above-mentioned topics, a majority of his supporters know where he stands: International court, 65%; Missile defense, 68%; Kyoto accords, 74%; Nuclear test bans, 77%; Land mine treaty, 79%; Role in rebuilding Iraq, 80%; and Labor/environment in trade agreements, 81%.

In short, people who support Kerry do so because they know that Kerry stands with them on the issues, while Bush has hoodwinked his own supporters into voting for him by making them think that he stands with them on the issues when he really doesn’t.

Finally, it’s off in the mail. I went to the FedEx shipping center in Fuchu, Tokyo today to drop it off.

Federal Express has a special standing offer to Americans living overseas: bring your absentee ballots to us, and we’ll ship them for you–free of charge. You have to drop it off at a manned station here in Japan, all of which are listed here (click on the location link for a map and phone numbers), but note that the free shipping offer is only good for FedEx offices in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka, and not in Tohoku or Hokkaido. For more details and instructions, call 0120-003-200 (toll free), or 043-298-1919.

I waited this long because I was waiting for a good-weather day when I had the chance to get things done. I decided to go to FedEx because, quite frankly, I didn’t want to trust the Japanese post office with this one, not after what they pulled with my request for my ballot: after paying extra to send it registered mail, it took them a month to deliver it, and an additional two months to send the receipt. No thanks to that. FedEx has Internet shipment tracking, and its free. And fast.

When you ship it at FedEx, they have you fill out the Air Waybill form. The rep there (who spoke English) expressed disappointment that I’d already sealed the envelope–she said she needed to staple one of the waybill copies to the ballot itself. However, seeing as how the envelope is signed and everything must be official, I’d have been more than a bit nervous having her put other stuff in there as well. As it was, she stapled the waybill to the edge of the official envelope.

They were prepared for a variety of eventualities, by the way–I had not brought the phone number of the Elections Office, which it turns out is needed for the waybill, but the rep had a list of all the phone numbers for all the election offices in the U.S., ready to go. Though I got the feeling that I was the first one to bring a ballot into that particular office…

I should be able to track it from tomorrow morning–I turned it in too late for today’s shipments. It’ll be good to know that the vote is on its way.

So I’m walking to the train station, I see the elevator opening while I’m still a little distance from the entrance, and I take off at a jog to catch it.

Suddenly, something hits my left calf muscles hard. Like a small, heavy metal ball had just been thrown at high velocity smack at the center of the calf. I turn around to see who did that, but no one is there, and within a second I realize sickeningly that nothing hit me–rather, something in my leg had just snapped. Never a jolly thing, that.

It’s not that bad at first, just like most muscle strains and pulls I get, but I know that it’ll hurt like heck in the morning. By the time I get home, it’s already too painful to walk on anymore. No swelling or bruising, just debilitating pain, that’s all. I ice it, bandage it up, and elevate it on an old bundled-up blanket while I sleep, after figuring out (okay, my father figured it out) that it was the popliteal muscle, or tendon, or ligament or whatever, not that I’m too sharp on how those are different from each other. My level of understanding is, essentially, something snap bad go ouch, hurt long time no walk. This kind of thing apparently happens when you start off on a run or the like, and is more likely if you suffer pains in the muscle beforehand, which I had, twice in as many weeks.

The next morning I wake up early and go to the hospital, and the doctor turns out to be more of what I expect from the Japanese medical schools than the doctors I have been lucky enough to get recently. This guy essentially echoes everything I told him that I found out already on the web, but he gave me painkillers and crutches. Not much else he could have done, I suppose. He did seem willing to do an MRI, but I figured it would be way expensive and in the end would mean pretty much nothing.

All this as typhoon #23 is starting to hit, meaning I can’t depend on traveling in good weather, and with crutches, that means no umbrella. And I have to get to the station from home, from the other station to work, from the main office to another school a good 15-minute brisk walk without crutches away, then to the station, and then station to home. So I took five taxi rides. That or get soaked and have both my arms be incredibly sore tomorrow.

Hopefully, the tendon or whatever will heal quickly (my dad’s research says it’s a vestigial muscle anyway, and we can do without), and this will be the last d*mned typhoon in a way-too-long-and-wet typhoon season.

Sorry. I’m just not a rain person.