Watched the debates. Got some thoughts:

• Josh Marshall and I had the same thought:

For the first ten minutes or so, my pained reaction was, “Where did we get these two guys?”

I agree with the rest of his post on this, too, though. Kerry settled down and looked very forceful and convincing, while Bush looked weak and fumbling. In the back of my mind, though, I kept thinking that neither candidate was reaching voters on the other side. Kerry might have picked up some undecideds, but I don’t think he turned any Bush supporters.

• I’m with Digby on this one:

Bush keeps saying that changing position on Iraq is a sign of weakness. But, anyone can understand that when things are hurtling out of control you should change direction. Bush is incapable of doing this because he has staked his presidency on a war he wanted to fight instead of the war we needed to fight.

What’s with this idea that being unwavering in your commitment means you don’t ever change your mind? Isn’t changing your mind in response to a changing situation what our military, sports, and business strategies are all inherently based on? I mean, if running backs followed this principle, Barry Sanders would’ve been a lousy running back. A ball carrier shifts, shuffles, and jukes in order to stay one step ahead of his opponents. A fighter pilot changes speed and direction in order to elude an enemy. A business might change marketing or product delivery in response to new information about what their customers want. If any of them were as bullheadedly stubborn in pursuing their initial strategy as this administration has been, they’d be dead – either literally or figuratively. Can’t Bush’s supporters see that?

• A member of the Bush campaign—yes, that’s the Bush campaign, not the Bush administration—apparently helped Iyad Allawi write the speech he delivered before Congress a couple of days ago. (Washington Post, via Talking Points Memo.)

• Perhaps this is the reason why Kerry forgot to list Poland as part of our Iraq coalition. (DeLong)

If I’m incommunicado for a few days, you might want to send a search party. Seems Mt. St. Helens is getting ready to explode again. In the meantime, the following random bits of internet flotsam and jetsam should keep you entertained…

• Via Sid the Fish, check out Florida’s new electronic ballot.
• CBS News reports Bush’s Top Ten Flip-Flops. For my friends at Right on Red, they do Kerry, too.
• From First Draft we learn that George Bush supporters are, apparently, profoundly ignorant of their candidate’s stance on the issues.
• By way of The Poor Man, we find the official website of the Diplomats & Military Commanders for Change, representing 50 former high-level diplomats, generals and admirals who believe you shouldn’t vote for Bush.
• George Soros nails it. Atrios has the quote and the link.
• The Medium Lobster makes an excellent point: ”[The American Left has] decried Iyad Allawi’s address to the US Congress scarcely a month before the election, calling Allawi a “puppet,” a shill for the Bush administration, an exile lackey in the service of a partisan political agenda. To which the Medium Lobster responds: of course he is.” As if Allawi could afford to tell the Bush administration to go screw themselves.
• Brad DeLong points out that, as there are those among Congressional Republicans who are now openly proposing that America condone torture, throwing Bush out of office takes on greater urgency.
• I love it when Kevin Drum gets on a rant. Here he eviscerates Christopher Hitchens.
• I agree with (different) Kevin at Catch: at least Chris Matthews can call bullshit. When will we see other reporters do the same?
• Andrew Cline at Rhetorica rightly notes why people tune in to the Daily Show.
• Play the How Can Gallup? game at DonkeyRising.

Been a little busy this weekend with an outside project. I expect blogging may be light for the next week or so. In the meantime, here are a few links you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• Sid the Fish, who perpetually seems to find fresh takes on the normal Blah Blah Blog subjects, finds Lawrence Lessig exposing the lie behind the flip-flopping meme.
• I wonder at what point we will have killed enough Iraqis to make up for the 3000 Americans killed on September 11? (Brad DeLong)
• Oh, lord help me but I’m a sucker for lightbulb jokes. (Brad DeLong)
• Speaking of jokes, there were jokes four years ago that perhaps former President Jimmy Carter, a longtime observer of international elections, be sent to Florida to observe the process there. Seems he didn’t take it as a joke and he doesn’t like what he’s found. (Via “Atrios)
• Meanwhile, Digby looks back at the 2000 election debacle and finds it’s worse than any of us thought.
• Further south, another American embarrassment is taking place in Haiti. After the catastrophic floods of last week, the big and powerful United States is offering a pathetically insulting $60,000 in aid. (World Socialist Web Site)

Who understands the world today like no one else? Why, The Medium Lobster, that’s who…

As you all know, we were entrusted three years ago by George W. Bush with rings of mystical power, which would harness the awesome energies of Free Emotions such as Hope, Dignity, and Resolve into potent forces to use to break up terrorist cells, secure and stabilize Iraq, and spread democracy throughout the world. And we have indeed been successful. Who could forget when Captain Fortitude destroyed an entire al Qaeda training camp with one blast of his Determination-Vision, or when Freedom Woman used her enhanced Optimism Senses to uncover the location of terrorist cell in Pakistan?

However, the Medium Lobster has not come to celebrate old victories. Indeed, we face a grave danger in Iraq – one that can no longer be ignored. As violence in the country has increased dramatically, we must act, while there is still time, to bolster the spirits of the American public. For the project of Freedom in Iraq is endangered not by armed guerillas and terrorists, but by the deadly force of Pessimism.

For just as Hope, Dignity, and Resolve are focused through our mystical power rings to become intense and powerful beams of super-force, so is Pessimism channeled by the dark and powerful mystics of our foes into terrifying powers.

Indeed, it was only last week that the evil Doctor Jihad used his Crystal Orb of Negativity to summon massive car bombings throughout the country. And it was only within the last few days that the maniacal Islamobot used its deadly Press Accounts Of American Casualties Ray to decapitate more American hostages.

Iraqis recognize the danger, and they are refuting Pessimism. For they know that negative attitudes, and not a massive, violent nationalist and religious insurgency, are the true threats to freedom and democracy within this new and independent state.

Just time for a quickie tonight. It’s been a long day. Now go read this stuff and stop bothering me…

• E-Voting is broken. (Wired News)
• This retired War College prof says the government has declared war on us. Dude, that is so broken.
• The War in Iraq is broken. (Atrios)
• President Bush’s stance on the war is broken. (Atrios) Really broken. (Washington Monthly) Or is it Bush himself that’s broken?
• Kerry’s response to Bush’s stance on the war could be fixed. (First Draft)
• Of course, he’s already come up with one fix. (First Draft)
• This is why President Bush doesn’t give more press conferences. (First Draft)
• John Kerry apparently can’t even flip-flop right. (Talking Points Memo)
• George Bush’s economic policy is broken and nobody seems capable of telling him this. (Brad DeLong)
• The Constitution isn’t broken. Leave it alone! (Obsidian Wings)
• What, is Tucker Carlson in high school? (The Talent Show)

More stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• Is Diebold completely incompetent or are they intentionally trying to screw up voting? (Wired)

• Good question and part of an answer via Brad DeLong: “What have our 1,000 troops died for?”

• Wanna know the difference between Dan Rather and George W. Bush? Head over to Sid’s Fishbowl.

• Wanna know the difference between me and John Ashcroft? I have just as many terror convictions to my credit. (Washington Monthly)

• Wanna know how John Edwards is like a waiter? M’boy can bring it! (Hullaballoo)

• Guess who about to call, ”........................................Action!!!!”?

More stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• Via Shrillblog, Seymour Hersh applies Occam’s Razor to the Bush administration and concludes that the simplest explanation is that they actually believe their own bullshit.

• Digby has a nice critique of George Lakoff which I rather agree with.

• Via Political Animal, EJ Dionne takes on the hypocrisy around the tug of war over George Bush’s service record.

• Good, hard-hitting speech from John Kerry yesterday. See The Talent Show’s condensed version or read the whole thing.

• On reading this at Brad DeLong’s blog on a particular case of abuse at Abu Ghraib, I am reminded that our government’s response to this has been pathetic. A few bad apples or not, doesn’t a responsible leader express outrage and disappointment and engage in some sort of contrition?

• According to First Draft, the Bush administration has a plan to convert almost $3.5 billion of Iraqi reconstruction money from infrastructure to security. Stupid, stupid, dumb, stupid dumb… The insurgency is going to get worse if the infrastructure doesn’t get better.

• It’s disgraceful, also, that no one has asked this question: “Who—I ask you, WHO—has asked why tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children had to die so that America could avenge the deaths of three thousand in New York?” More, including a link to the original piece, at Sid’s Fishbowl.

• Interesting note at The Washington Monthly on the split between urban and rural political sensibilities.

• Everything I Ever Needed to Know About the Movement of Chess Pieces I Learned One Night In A Bar. (GapingVoid)

• The new BBC production of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” premieres tonight. As long as their servers can handle the load, you can stream the episodes here. (via Slashdot)

Whew! Thank goodness that’s over. As Adam at Fanatical Apathy discovered, a big underground explosion and fire in Baltimore knocked out power in that city since the early morning. Since that’s where this site’s servers are located, I imagine that my ISP was affected. We hope everything will now get back to normal, and that you will click on the following links instead of wasting further time reading this lousy blog…

• Thank god for the kids at News Hounds. Their motto is, you know, “We watch FOX so you don’t have to.” God bless ‘em. They posted this transcript of O’Reilly interviewing Jon Stewart in which the Fox host calls TDS’s viewers drunken, stoned slackers. Of course, Stewart got the best of O’Reilly. I’m really impressed with Stewart. He manages to keep some perspective about who he is and what he does and he manages to deflect these ridiculous assertions by joking about them, rather than engaging in full frontal aggression.

At the end of the transcript, the News Hounds suggest writing to O’Reilly to let him know what we thought of the interview. My question is, “Why?” Is anyone really outraged about this? Why do we give these people the attention? Why not, like Stewart does, just laugh this off and move on?

• Ten cuidado del nombre Bush. Beware of the name of Bush (via Atrios)

• First Draft linked to this interview with Stanley Hilton (audio available here). Here’s the relevant paragraph from the interview:

Our case is alleging that Bush and his puppets Rice and Cheney and
Mueller and Rumsfeld and so forth, Tenet, were all involved not only in
aiding and abetting and allowing 9/11 to happen but in actually ordering it
to happen. Bush personally ordered it to happen. We have some very
incriminating documents as well as eye-witnesses, that Bush personally
ordered this event to happen in order to gain political advantage, to pursue
a bogus political agenda on behalf of the neocons and their deluded thinking
in the Middle East. I also wanted to point out that, just quickly, I went to
school with some of these neocons. At the University of Chicago, in the late
60s with Wolfowitz and Feith and several of the others and so I know these
people personally. And we used to talk about this stuff all of the time. And
I did my senior thesis on this very subject – how to turn the U.S. into a
presidential dictatorship by manufacturing a bogus Pearl Harbor event. So,
technically this has been in the planning at least 35 years.

Now, I’m not sure I totally buy this guy’s story. It seems a little too whacko, and I have yet to see any hard evidence. Also, appearing on a whacko talk show doesn’t really help your credibility. Here’s the thing, though: If there were a secret cabal planning to subvert the Constitution and turn the US into a “presidential dictatorship,” I’d be hard pressed to see how events would play out any differently.

Avast, Matey! It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day today, sez I. So unless yer a lily-livered land lubber, ye’ll be smartly drinkin’ the followin’ sweet grog instead o’ payin’ heed to this ship’s bilge. Arrrr…

• Arrr, me beauties, don’t forget your Talk Like a Pirate Day official iPatch. (Thanks be to BoingBoing)

• I guess this is why Polly and I never played much o’ The Sims; we’re not twisted enough. (Nematoddity)

• Arrr, Deckhand Marshall wonders why the FB-Aye is avoiding the Joe Wilson Niger forgery scandal like a scurvey rat in a tank o’ sharks.

• Arrr, mateys, Dirty Digby brings a tear to this old salt’s eye by reminding us o’ Captain Kerry’s enduring record o’ service to vets and his general heroicism and all.

• This be bad, for sure: At least one National Guard unit be feeling more stress than a mains’l in a hurricane as they prepare to ship out for Iraq. (Thanks be to First Draft)

• The scurvy rats at the Arrr-NC be scaring West Virginia voters silly with falsehoods and lies, sez Kevin Drum.

• Aye, what “Bones” Cline sez be true: If the lazy lubbers that be in our current mainstream press would only verify the facts, we’d all be happier pirates.

Today’s batch of stuff you should be reading instead of this lousy blog…

• I think this is the must frustrating, sickening, galling thing I’ve heard in years. Wouldn’t you think that after September 11, the CIA would beef up its anti-al Qaeda department? Au contraire, mon frere. (Brad DeLong)

• But, hey, let’s not be pessimists, people. (Talking Points Memo)

• As Atrios would say, Oy=.

• Oh, god help me but I do love the snark. Digby explains why we should listen to the analysts.

• And, oh, god help me but I do love it when a real writer rants. James Wolcott goes off on Richard Cohen.

• Dr. Cline thinks reporters should be a bit more skeptical. So should we all.

• I really think Greg at The Talent Show is on to something. Bush is trying to weasel out of a third debate. Greg has been calling the President chicken. (Weasel, chicken… what’s the diff?) I’m sure Kerry couldn’t flat out call the president chicken, but maybe there’s a politically acceptable way to point out that, for all his bluster, this President is, well, a scaredy-cat. He runs from debates, he won’t hold press conferences, he stocks his audience with dittoheads. If Kerry could find a way to call this guy out, I think we might see a little bit more movement in those polls.

• Unbelievable. Atrios alerts us to a guy who’s apparently staged getting assaulted for three straight presidential elections,

• Official US casualty figures can be found on this page at the DoD Press Resource website.