I’m a Kerry man and I tend to visit way more left-leaning sites than right-leaning ones, so you can take this with a grain of salt, but I’m just getting a stronger feeling as the days go on that we’re about to see a Kerry landslide. I know everyone’s saying this is a tight race, but I can’t help feeling like things are shifting. Call it a combination of portents, intuition, and an abiding optimism in the strength America’s democratic tradition. I don’t think our pride will let us re-elect George Bush. We’ll see, I suppose.

Now, here’s more stuff you should be reading…

• First of all, there’s actually some great conversation going on in the comments section of this very blog! I’m completely chuffed. (That’s a good thing, for those of you not hep to Brit slang.) If you haven’t already, make sure to check out what Graham and Johnny Walker Red have been talking about, vis a vis my last post. You guys are going to blow my whole “Nothing to See Here” tag, but, hey, I can live with that.

I promised I’d post this link on the front page, though. It’s a lay analysis of the Lancet journal numbers by Jeanne over at Body and Soul, a response to Fred Kaplan’s article at Slate. I think Jeanne rightly points out that the thrust of the study is what’s important to acknowledge, and the thrust of the study is that violent deaths in Iraq are up—probably way up—since the start of the war. The US is responsible for many of these deaths and we have to come to terms with this as a country and decide whether this is acceptable for a nation committed to justice. ‘Cause it’s only likely to get worse. (Washington Monthly)

• Juan Cole recommends this al Jazeera translation of the Osama video as fairly accurate. Worth reading for the fascinating glimpse it offers of Osama’s mind. Interestingly, Kuro5hin notes that there are some significant omissions from the CNN translation. (Or are they significant additions in the al Jazeera version? Did I just blow your mind?)

• William Gibson has the shorter OBL:

“Hi. 9-11 was all my idea. And you haven’t been able to catch me, so I’ll do it all over again if I decide to. I know you’re having an election now, but that won’t make any difference either way. In order to make a difference, you’ll have to get your government to stop doing the things they’re doing that keep me wanting to attack you again. ‘Bye.”

• Josh Marshall compares Kerry’s and Bush’s responses to the Osama bin Laden video.

• Of all the responses the the OBL video, this one is incredibly cynical. (The Poor Man) It’s also, as Brad DeLong points out, Orwellian. Which raises this question: “Are people who think this way likely to improve, or degrade the personal safety of the American people?” (Sid’s Fishbowl)

• Josh Marshall has the text of the Bush Pledge that the lefties are a little creeped out by. I’d like to be creeped out by it, too, but I want to see it in context. I wonder if there’s a video of it? The guy’s a Florida state senator; not the brightest species on the planet. Maybe he just got a little over-creative while he was writing his speech.

• The Medium Lobster, once again, sets us straight on the whole voter fraud issue:

The purpose of democracy is not, after all, to select leaders whose policies carry the support and sanction of the public. The purpose of democracy is to select the right leaders – regardless of public intent.

• Greg at The Talent Show makes a key point: fighting al Qaeda cannot be done by declaring war on nations. What’s disturbing to me is that Donald Rumsfeld rightly backs 4G warfare principles of smaller, lighter, highly trained autonomous forces, but apparently fails to understand the core reason for implementing these forces: we’re not fighting our fathers’ wars.

• Greg also transcribes an NPR piece about the Bush administration’s obsession with secrecy.

• R.I.P. Vaughn Meader. I used to listen to my parents’ “The First Family” albums when I was a kid. Brilliant, funny stuff. I probably still copy Vaughn Meader when I do my Kennedy impressions.

• This blogging-related cartoon made me laugh. (Loic Le Meur)

• I caught a little of Josh Rushing’s interview on Fresh Aire the other day. (NPR) Rushing is a former Marine spokesman in Iraq and was featured in the documentary Control Room. Crooked Timber has a rundown of the interview. (via Shrillblog)

I apologize for my absence the last couple of days. I’ve been collecting links, but finding it difficult to post on this new schedule. I’ll sort it out soon. In the meantime, here’s a few days worth of things you should be reading if you know what’s good for you…

• The medical journal Lancet has published a peer-reviewed study of Iraqi civilian casualties (Kuro5hin has a link and password) and estimates that 100,000 Iraqis have died since the start of the US invasion. I hesitated to link to this at first, since the number is an acknowledged guess, but after reading a bit more about how this study was published, it seems to me that the only thing for certain is that the exact number of Iraqi dead is both unknown and very high. The study was heavily peer-reviewed and so it’s not likely to be far too high.

I’m having trouble dealing with this number. Does anyone think this is an appropriate response to the threat we faced prior to the war? Do you feel more secure now that the blood of 100,000 Iraqis is on our hands, not to mention over 1,100 US troops? If not, what number of dead will satiate your bloodlust? 200,000? 1,000,000? Where does it end?

• Another shout out to Josh Marshall for the great work he’s been doing lately. The man’s been on fi-yah. See this on Bush’s failure to keep his campaign promise on troop readiness. And this on the missing explosives spin. And this on CNN’s impossible standards.

• The Poor Man also has a thing on the al Qaqaa thing. Especially helpful is the explanation of the Four Pillars of Shrillness: mendacity, malevolence, incompetence, and disconnection from reality.

• Michael Bérubé (who really needs to get rid of those snobby, elitist diacriticals) has a couple worth reading. First, he quotes from and comments on a reality-based assessment of the situation in Iraq. Second, he has a good sum-up of something the left-wing blogosphere in general has been talking about: Slate’s feeble endorsements for Kerry. Michael’s assessment of how the progressives and liberals habitually—almost reflexively—trash their own candidates is worth a read.

• Even if liberals can’t seem to muster reasons to vote for Kerry, conservatives can. (Shrillblog) So can this guy.

• Adam Felber pretty much nails the “WTF?!” Question of the Decade.

• Dr. Cline at Rhetorica notes that the press is a little shaken that bloggers are upsetting their journalistic apple carts. Like all intelligent folk, journalists will try to rationalize their position, to defend the status quo. Over at Jay Rosen’s PressThink, Doug McGill mounts a defense that sounds a little like, “It’s not that wife-beating is wrong, per se, but perhaps beating your wife with a closed fist as opposed to an open palm is wrong.”

• First Draft notes the civil suit brought by four former inmates of Guantanamo. Go get ‘em boys. It’s embarrassing that this is what it takes to get some justice. Where has our government been? Where are our values, fer the love of Pete?

• Love this “Simple Answers to Stupid Questions” from the National Geographic, via The Talent Show.

• The Daily Show hit this theme very well last night, but Wesley Clark got there first.

• Kevin Drum admires the chutzpah.

• There’s an interview with Seymour Hersh over at AlterNet. He pretty much hits on the same themes has has other interviews lately, but they’re vitally important to be aware of, so if you haven’t caught his stuff recently, read this. What he has to say about the war, Abu Ghraib, the NeoCons, and the press is worthy of your attention.

More stuff you should be reading instead of staying up ‘til 2 am like some bloggers I could mention…

• Athenae posts an open letter from overseas.

• More here about the sorry spectacle of Abu Ghraib. I’m not sure what’s more outrageous: that we let this happen in the first place, or that there hasn’t been more of a scandal. I mean, whatever Clinton did on his worst day makes him look like an altar boy next to this mess. (Washington Monthly)

• I just don’t understand how our great democracy, that prides itself on its free and orderly democratic process, could let that process get completely haywire. (The Poor Man)

• Orcinus notes what I have long considered the central weak point in the rational for Bush’s War on Terror: there’s no end to it. There are no parameters. How many grieving relatives do Bush and Cheney think they can brush aside with platitudes and non-answers before even the will of their base starts to drain away?

• And Kevin Drum echoes my concern that the US is starting to act more and more like Stalinist Russia.

• Good timing, then, that the ACLU is advocating for a Civil Liberties Board. (via Brown Equals Terrorist)

• The staff at Pat Buchanan’s American Conservative was split enough that they published a dissenting endorsement for Kerry. The Regular has the money quote:

“Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations.”

In my darkest hours, I take comfort from this thought. A Bush win would be disastrous, but it would force him to sit in the mess he’s made and we could look forward to 30 years of Democratic presidents starting in 2008.

• Speaking of endorsements, The Poor Man has the best endorsement yet.

• More on Digital Rights Management. Tim Oren notes that if you have to implement DRM, you’ve already lost the game.

• Interesting formula for successful blogging by Seth Godin. What do you think?

I’ve changed up my schedule lately so that I can get more work done on my real money project during the day. The result is that I’m waiting ‘til later to post here, and that means I’m tired and not as inclined to spend gobs of time on my blog. It’s probably best in the long run, but it doesn’t quite support what I mentioned a few days ago about wanting to polish the writing here. I’ll see if I can’t find a way to do both.

I have a couple of posts I’m working on and hope to put up here in the next day or two, but for now I’m going to try to keep the “Nothings” brief and get some shuteye.

• Josh Marshall has been on it lately. “It,” in this case, is the story about the 350 tons – and that’s TONS – of high-grade explosives that we left unguarded in Iraq at the start of the war and which have since disappeared. Read here, here, and especially here, or just go to Talking Points Memo and keep scrolling. And Athenae at First Draft zeroes in on the really telling question in all this.

• Speaking of excellent work, Michael Bérubé serves up a primo smackdown of Camille Paglia’s dumbass doubletalk.

• Sid the Fish reads between the lines of Bush’s appearance on Good Morning America

• A big WTF!? to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, via Catch.

Three from Boing Boing:

• More Jon Stewart video available at C-SPAN. This is from an October 14th discussion at Syracuse University (though I think the video was broadcast on the 23rd). I think people really underestimate Stewart’s acuity. You can’t dismiss him as just an uninformed clown, and he’s not taking himself so seriously that he can’t laugh at himself. To me, he comes off as a caring citizen with a strong point of view.

• This is just too weird. I’ll rip the entire post from Boing Boing:

When a Douglasville, Georgia woman returned home from a 2 1/2 week holiday to Greece, she found that a total stranger had moved into her house, ripped up the carpet, changed the photos on the walls, and was wearing clothes from her closet. The squatter also switched the utilities over to her own name and installed a washer and dryer.

• Also from Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow notes why market-forces can’t correct for stupid Digital Rights Management schemes.

A couple from First Draft:

• Holden is obsessed with the gaggle, and why not? Scottie McClellan is a better contortionist than anyone Cirque du Soliel has to offer.

• Athenae quotes from The New Yorker’s endorsement of Kerry and notes that the magazine has not previously endorsed a presidential candidate in its entire 80-year history.

Here’s more stuff you should be reading after you watch the Jon Stewart interview on 60 Minutes:

• When will we get rid of John Ashcroft and that miserable anti-American Patriot Act? We’re raiding romance novelists, fer chrissakes. What a colossal waste of resources. Haven’t we learned this lesson time and again in our history? There’s a reason why our founding fathers gave us the Fourth Amendment, and it was to prevent crap like this. (Hullabaloo)

• Josh Marshall is all over the administration’s revisionist history of our failure to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora. Visit Talking Points Memo and scroll.

• Josh also details how the US let 350 tons of high explosives just disappear from an Iraqi storage facility. And Sisyphus Shrugged is rightly appalled that we knew about this for a year and a half and actively worked to keep the IAEA from finding out about it.

• Brad DeLong links to Eric Umansky, who is distressed at how poorly we’ve prepared and outfitted our military.

• The new RNC “Wolves” ad has just been getting mocked mercilessly. Adam Felber notes that maybe the campaign picked an unfortunate metaphor. The Poor Man has a great sendup, and there’s nice takedown at Catch, too.

• James Wolcott pops a couple of overblown windbags.

• As Election Day draws near, the bloggers are circling the wagons. The Shrillblog reminds us that we have a simple choice this election, and ponders the Cult of Bush. Meanwhile, Brad DeLong can’t believe that some can remain unconvinced of John Kerry’s ability to do the job, and he reminds us of the major benefit in Kerry’s favor: that he will bring grownups back to Washington.

• On the same topic, Athenae at First Draft – who is my girlfriend even though she doesn’t know it – hammers the point home: We need to fire George Bush and his entire incompetent staff.

I’m pooped, so it’s a late-night link dump. Enjoy…

• This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time: Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog roams Spin Alley after the third debate. 15 MB of must-see comedy.

• A new study purports to show that Bush supporters are staggeringly uninformed about their candidate’s policy positions. (Washington Monthly) The question I think is most dangerous for Bush is, what are all these people going to do when they finally see the truth?

• Atrios reminds us of a civics lesson that is easily forgotten: In a democracy, the rights of the minority are preserved.

• This totally makes sense when you hear the explanation: Under Clinton, the number of abortions was decreasing. Under Bush, the number of abortions has been increasing. The reason? Economics, mostly. The Talent Show has more.

• We had multiple chances to take out al-Zarqawi and we didn’t, because it would have hurt the case for war in Iraq. Kevin Drum has your monthly reminder.

• We could have captured Osama bin Laden, and we didn’t. (Talking Points Memo)

• This Visualize Kerry Winning video does give me a lift, I must say. (Needlenose, via First Draft)

• George Bush has been arrested thrice. Bush Arrest Record | The Regular

• Bush doesn’t understand the war on terror.

• RFID tags in passports is about the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. Bruce Schnier explains why.

• Bush has three responsibilities (The Talent Show.)

• Vote for Bush… and die. (The Talent Show)

More stuff you should be reading instead of… this…

• (Warning: Blashpemy) Oy. This is all over the blogscape: Is Pat Robertson a liar, or did George W. really say that God told him there would be no casualties in Iraq? And, of course, since nobody else will, I’ll ask the obvious followup: Is President Bush disappointed in God for lying to him? Or does he think he’s still doing an excellent job? (First Draft)

• Damn. John Le Carré can have my vote. Although, come to think of it it’d be kind of a waste, ‘cause it looks like we’d both be voting for the same person. From the LA Times:

While Bush was waging his father’s war at your expense, he was also ruining your country. He made your rich richer and your poor and unemployed more numerous. He robbed your war veterans of their due and reduced your children’s access to education. And he deprived more Americans than ever before of healthcare.

• I know I link to Sid’s Fishbowl a lot, but damn... m’boy’s all on top of it. You can read his take on the Pat Robertson thing here. Also he points to the alternative to the “Reality-Based Community” slogan, 19th Century Bush. Hmmm… I think we’re on to something.

• Mr. DeLong, Mr. The Poor Man, if I may… Ahem: Bush’s own relatives are shrill:

Jeanny House (Wisconsin): I’m voting for John Kerry because I’m a Christian. I know that my second cousin, George Bush, claims that he is the anointed leader of the American people and that God told him to run for office. I believe he may even believe that. I don’t.

Read the rest. It’s brilliant.

• Speaking of shrill, the Shrillblog notes that the WaPo, despite years of throwing in with Bush, can’t take it anymore. They argue that we should – get this! – treat prisoners humanely!

• Very interesting article at Washington Monthly comparing the Jimmy Carter Democrats and the George Bush Republicans. The author argues that the modern GOP is where the Democrats were in 1980 and makes a very persuasive case that the Republicans might be at the apex of their pendulum swing. (via Kevin Drum)

• Damn. Back to Iraq has a quick report and a video of a firefight in Mosul. This is what combat is like over there, folks.

• Bush is outsourcing our security. (Sisyphus Shrugged)

• Finally, The Al Franken Show blog takes apart Bush’s domestic terror-fighting record. If any of you right-wing types drop by, perhaps you can point us to a refutation of this?

Two more weeks. Hang in there, babies.

• I don’t know what to make of this. The LA Times’ Robert Scheer reports that a CIA report on 9/11 that was requested by Congress is being suppressed until after the election. (LA Times; use BugMeNot.com for username and password.) The report is apparently damaging to the Bush administration because it names names and places the blame where it belongs, presumably on the shoulders of very high level officials. I’m not going to get too agitated yet because the details are still kind of skimpy at this point, but if this report does exist and if it is being suppressed by the administration, decent people ought to be outraged. The report is the result of an internal CIA investigation by an 11-member team who labored for 17 months on the project. The only reason not to release such a report would be the damage it might cause to the current government. Don’t we deserve to know the whole truth about the job this government has done before we decide whether they get to stay or go?

• You know, this is the thing with The Medium Lobster: he’s not funny. See, funny is when you flirt with the truth. When you strip the truth naked as a jaybird and make it stand on a tabletop, it’s just uncomfortable. Here, he lays bare George Bush’s certainty, and it ain’t pretty.

• Josh Marshall bangs his head against the wall at the administration’s daffy claims about our military readiness.

• Digby bangs his head against a different wall; or should we say, same wall, different place. The administration’s complete inability to look reality in the eye is New Age fundamentalism at its worst.

• For those of you with high-speed connections and thick skins, there are a couple of videos you might want to see. First, Mark at Boing Boing points us to a mashup of the President’s “funny” slideshow bit from earlier this year with scenes from the real consequences of Bush’s War. (BBC/Buzz Flash) Second, a bit of juvenile catharsis at Bush’s expense. (Thanks, Danielle, for the link.)

• Michael Bérubé updates his “What do you like about Bush?” quiz. It’s a very revealing look inside the partisan mind.

• If you’re the type that’s swayed by endorsements, you might be interested to know that Kerry’s newspaper endorsements outstrip Bush’s by 3-2. However, Bush has been endorsed by Pat Buchanan, Vladimir Putin, and now by Iran! (Obsidian Wings) Now, what about Poland?

• Are you a patriot? Take the Patriot Pledge! (via Sid’s Fishbowl)

• The Al Franken Show blog has more cuttings from Monday’s Gore speech. Full text available here. The closing’s pretty on the mark:

It’s late, so let me just throw a few links out there.

• The Army is sending their elite training unit into combat. Phil Carter of Intel Dump notes that this is akin to “eating your seed corn.” (Brad DeLong)

• Read John Cleese’s new joke. Read John Cleese’s new joke NOW! (William Gibson) (Apologies to Giblets)

• The Left has found its rallying cry. (Matthew Yglesias)

• I’m not sure how Catholics have managed to keep their faith with the pedophilia scandals over the past couple of years, but the ones who have are facing a bizarre choice this year. (First Draft)

• Kevin Drum makes the case for Kerry as the man to handle our foreign policy for the next four years.

• The Talent Show looks at the Enron-style accounting tricks that have been used to mischaracterize Kerry’s Senate voting record.

• Michael Bérubé has a couple of words for any progressives thinking of breaking ranks this year.

• John Kerry says that President Bush has broken at least three promises. (The Talent Show)

• The Memory Hole discovers that after the Vice Presidential debate, the White House removed a page from their website that might have been embarrassing to the Vice President.

• Speaking of Vice Presidents, Gore can still bring it. In fact, I wish he’d brought it a long time ago, but there you go. Gore today: “This was not an unfortunate misreading of the available evidence, causing a mistaken linkage between Iraq and al-Qaida,” Gore said. “This was something else—a willful choice to make a specific linkage whether evidence existed or not.” (via Talking Points Memo)

More stuff you should be reading instead of this l…. this lou…. this lovely blog…

(Whew. Change is hard.)

• I would have been prepared to believe that maybe our post-war planning was slipshod or rushed, but nonexistent!? From Warren Strobel and John Walcott, two top-notch reporters for Knight-Ridder Newspapers, we learn the following:

WASHINGTON – In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration’s plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.

Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon’s plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners’ parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material – and for good reason.

The slide said: “To Be Provided.”

A Knight Ridder review of the administration’s Iraq policy and decisions has found that it invaded Iraq without a comprehensive plan in place to secure and rebuild the country. The administration also failed to provide some 100,000 additional U.S. troops that American military commanders originally wanted to help restore order and reconstruct a country shattered by war, a brutal dictatorship and economic sanctions.

[—-snip—-]

The U.S. intelligence community had been divided about the state of Saddam’s weapons programs, but there was little disagreement among experts throughout the government that winning the peace in Iraq could be much harder than winning a war.

“The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq is real and serious,” warned an Army War College report that was completed in February 2003, a month before the invasion. Without an “overwhelming” effort to prepare for the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the report warned: “The United States may find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of new problems of America’s own making.”

A half-dozen intelligence reports also warned that American troops could face significant postwar resistance. This foot-high stack of material was distributed at White House meetings of Bush’s top foreign policy advisers, but there’s no evidence that anyone ever acted on it.

“It was disseminated. And ignored,” said a former senior intelligence official.

[—-snip—-]

Gen. John Keane, the vice chief of the Army staff during the war, said some defense officials believed the exiles’ promises. “We did not see it (the insurgency) coming. And we were not properly prepared and organized to deal with it . . . . Many of us got seduced by the Iraqi exiles in terms of what the outcome would be,” Keane told a House committee in July.

Rumsfeld’s office “was utterly, arrogantly, ignorantly and negligently unprepared” for the aftermath of the war, said Larry Diamond, who was a political adviser in Baghdad from January to March of this year.

Read the whole piece here. My friend Johnny Walker Red over at Right On Red reassures me that we can still win in Iraq, and I don’t doubt it. I have faith in our military, but the civilian leadership’s appalling lack of preparation for an attack of this magnitude is shocking and utterly demoralizing. (via Atrios)

• Matthew Yglesias notes the creeping Putinization of America.
• From the unspeakably brilliant Michael Bérubé, we discover two new literary works of note: a science fiction account of “a Messianic madman [who] takes over the United States in a disputed election” (NYTimes) and an alternative history in which George W. Bush wins the presidency (It’s All One Thing). Most frightening (and oft-quoted) quote from the science fiction piece:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

• I don’t think the assault on our constitutional liberties is over—not by a long shot—but I continue to see signs that all hope is not lost. A panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals restricted officials in Columbus, Georgia—in absence of a specific threat—from setting up metal detectors at a planned protest. (via Boing Boing) The court decision read in part:

“We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War of Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over,” Judge Gerald Tjoflat wrote for the three-member court. “September 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country.”

• In reflecting on the New York Times’ endorsement of Kerry for President, Athenae captures the sentiment perfectly. We might have sailed great oceans with the emotion and sentiment of 9/11 at our backs. Instead, we stayed in port and manned the guns. (First Draft)
• Also at First Draft, Holden notes that, no, our president did not supply the troops with everything they needed.
• Is this my country? Is this who we are… unrepentant torturers? (NYT, reg req’d)
• Fred at A VC gets his back up when Frank Baranko says “Almost nobody reads blogs.” And with good reason. After all, 8 million nobodies can’t be nobody.
• Adam Felber goes all Jon Stewart on the media’s collective ass.