Wow. Just when we thought Kerry had sealed the nomination, CNN is saying that the race in Wisonsin is dead even. With only 1% of the precincts reporting, Edwards is leading by around 100 votes. Even if Edwards doesn’t hold onto the lead, this will turn into a strong two man race. As expected, Dean’s screwed, but there’s a part of me that thinks he’ll stick around past Super Tuesday just so he can play “bad cop” to Edwards’ “good cop”.

Update : This is goddamn ridiculous. With 23% of the votes in, both CNN and MSNBC are projecting Kerry as the winner despite the fact that their current vote totals are showing Edwards ahead. They’re throwing in the caveat “based on exit polling”. I assume they’re referring the the exit polls that had Kerry up by 8-10%. Wouldn’t it be great if the media was more concerned with being right than being first?

According to what I’ve read about Bush’s National Guard service, after accepting a position on a campaign in Alabama, he was transferred to the Alababma National Guard. When he got there, they didn’t have the plane he knew how to fly, so he ended up sitting on his ass for six months. And that’s Bush’s version of events.

So here’s a question I haven’t seen asked anywhere : Why did the National Guard let him transfer if they knew he wasn’t gonna do a damn thing? Is it normal for the armed forces to transfer people to places where they’re useless in the middle of a war?

Unlike Drudge’s EXCLUSIVE!!!! gossip about John Kerry, liberals are being very coy with their rumors. Here’s what Kos had to say today :

It’s probably too early to declare victory, but it’s starting to look like Drudge’s “bombshell” was a bust.

I could retaliate with juicy rumors floating around the Texas governor’s mansion, but I won’t. I’ll let the real journalists do their job, and leave the baseless rumors to Drudge.

Which is nothing compared to this nugget from Mark Kleiman :

Note that the GWB abortion story died the death without ever seeing respectable print, despite the fact that there were on-the-record witnesses willing to name names. The same is true about a very serious, recent, non-sexual report about GWB’s personal life, which I have heard from two good sources, which is credible on its face, and which, if true, directly bears on his fitness to be President.

Since I’m about as far from well-plugged-in to White House gossip as it’s possible to be without joining a Trappist monastery, I have no doubt that if I’ve heard it, every reporter in Washiongton has heard it. And, if so, I hope they’re trying to get it confirmed. But in the meantime, they are entirely right to keep their big traps shut until they have something worth going with.

But before you think it’s just the bloggers getting in on it, lemme remind you of this promise from a Kerry campaign aide (that predates the Drudge accusations)

Another Kerry adviser was more blunt. “This is not the Dukakis campaign,” the adviser said. “We’re not going to take it. And if they’re going to come at us with stuff, whatever that stuff may be, if it goes to a place where the ‘88 campaign did, then everything is on the table. Everything.”

Man, this election is gonna be nasty.

Mother Jones has a great timeline comparing the service records of George Bush and John Kerry. (link via Pandagon) Some highlights :

John Kerry

December 2, 1968:
Kerry gets his first taste of intense combat, and is wounded in the arm. He is awarded a Purple Heart.

February 20, 1969:
Kerry is wounded again, taking shrapnel in the left thigh, after a gunboat battle. He is awarded a second Purple Heart.

February 28, 1969:
Kerry and his boat crew, coming under attack while patroling in the Mekong Delta, decide to counterattack. In the middle of the ensuing firefight, Kerry leaves his boat, pursues a Viet Cong fighter into a small hut, kills him, and retreives a rocket launcher. He is awarded a Silver Star.

March 13, 1969:
A mine detonates near Kerry’s boat, wounding him in the right arm. He is awarded a third Purple Heart. He is also awarded a Bronze Star for pulling a crew member, who had fallen overboard, back on the boat amidst a firefight.

George W. Bush

February, 1968:
A senior at Yale, Bush takes an Air Force officers test. He scores in 25th percentile in the pilot aptitude portion, and declares that he does not wish to serve overseas.

May 27, 1968:
Bush enlists in Texas Air National Guard. Aided by Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, he jumps over waiting list. He pledges two years of active duty and four years of reserve duty.

June 9, 1968:
Bush’s student deferment expires.

September 1968:
After basic training, Bush pulls inactive duty to act as gopher on Florida Senator Edward J. Gurney’s campaign.

November 1969:
Bush is flown to the White House by President Nixon for a date with daughter Tricia.

John Kerry

April, 1969:
According to Navy rules, sailors that have been wounded three times in combat are eligible to be transfered to the U.S. for noncombat duty. Kerry is transferred to desk duty in Brooklyn, NY.

January 3, 1970:
Kerry requests that he be discharged early from the Navy so that he can run for Congress in Massachusetts’ Third District. The request is granted, and Kerry begins his first political campaign.

June 1970:
Kerry joins Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and becomes one of the group’s unofficial spokespeople.

April 23, 1971:
Kerry helps to organize a huge anti-war protest outside Congress, earning a place on president Richard Nixon’s “enemies’ list.” He joins a group of Vietnam veterans who throw medals and campaign ribbons over a fence in front of the Capitol.

April 23, 1971:
Kerry testifies before the senate Foreign Relations Committee. He tells lawmakers: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

April 1972:
Kerry moves to Massachusetts’ 5th District to run for Congress again. He wins the senate nomination but loses to Republican Paul Cronin, in part because of his anti-war views.

George W. Bush

June 1970:
Bush joins the Guard’s “Champagne Unit,” where he flies with sons of Texas’ elite.

November 7, 1970:
Bush is promoted to first lieutenant. Rejected by University of Texas School of Law.

January 1971:
The Texas Air National Guard begins testing for drugs during physicals.

Spring 1971:
Bush is hired by a Texas agricultural importer. He uses a National Guard F-102 to shuttle tropical plants from Florida.

May 26, 1972:
Bush transfers to Alabama Guard unit so he can work on Senator William Blount’s reelection campaign. According to his commanding officer, Bush never shows up for duty while in Alabama.

August 1972:
Bush is grounded for missing a mandatory physical.

December 1972:
In D.C. for the holidays, Bush takes 16-year-old brother Marvin drinking and driving. Confronted by father, Bush suggests they settle it “mano a mano.”

Shuttling “tropical plants, dating Nixon’s daughter, too dumb to be an officer? Yeah, sounds about right.

If you’re a right-wing nutcase who’s stupid enough to hate John Kerry because of this photo :

Then shouldn’t you be hate George Bush because of this photo?



If you’re going to hate a person for being near someone else you hate, you should at least be consistent about it.

Scientists in South Korea have successfully cloned human stem cells. As this old article points out, this could lead to breakthroughs in medical research, if the religious folks get out of the way :

Scientists say biomedical research using embryonic stem cells could lead to cures for a host of diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s, as well as treatments for debilitating brain and spinal injuries.

Proponents had lobbied Bush to approve wide federal funding for the studies, including those involving additional stem-cell lines yet to be derived. Fertility clinics, they argued, routinely discard embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization treatments.

But abortion rights opponents urged the president to prohibit funding altogether because the process of isolating the cells results in the destruction of the embryo, which they view as a human life.

Here’s a picture of the cute little babies that pro-lifers are trying to protect :

The one-two punch of the current ban on federal funding of new stem cell lines and the push by Congress and the President to ban all human cloning could mean the premature death of a promising filed of scientific study. Sorry everyone who’s suffering from Parkinson’s, ALS, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, etc., if the President gets his way, you’ll have to find another way to find a cure.

Here we go again…

Late this morning, DrudgeReport.com alleged that a new scandal was about to rock the campaign of senate frontrunner John Kerry: some sort of purported recent marital “infidelity” that involved a woman who once worked for the Associated Press, and has now supposedly “fled the country.” According to the site, this story was being investigated by the AP, The Washington Post, Time magazine and ABC network.
. . .
The Drudge site also declared that General Wesley Clark, in an off-the-record chat with reporters earlier this week, predicted that the Kerry campaign would soon implode due to an “intern.” It would seem strange, however, if he really believed that, that he would drop out of the race, as he did yesterday.

The site added, however, that the Kerry rumor helped explain why Howard Dean did stay in the race and has been increasingly aggressive in his attacks on Kerry this week.

Well, I’ve been waiting for the press to go negative on Kerry, I just didn’t think it would be another one of these. If this is the kinda thing that’s gonna take Kerry down, I hope it does so quickly while we still have a chance to nominate Edwards or Dean.

Are you guys getting sick of this stuff yet? I’m having a hard time keeping up with the minutiae myself, and I live for this kinda crap. Getting nickel and dimed on the details makes things even worse. Just today Bush just released a copy of his dental records and Kevin Drum posted an extensive interview with someone who claims to have witnessed the “scrubbing” of Bush’s military files. Any minute now the backlash is going to begin.

But this is a big deal.

Not because he evaded service when he was young. Lots of people did that during Vietnam. Not because his daddy sneaked him to the front of the line to get into this cushy assignment. And not because he avoided punishment for something other people would never be allowed to get away with.

All those points are valid if you’re criticizing who Bush was, but that’s irrelevant. We’ve all done dumb shit when we were younger. That’s no reason to hate the guy now. This matter is important because it’s a perfect example of what kind of person George Bush is today.

It’s pretty clear that Bush didn’t show up for service and has been lying about it ever since. His autobiography claims ”I continued flying with my unit for the next several years,” when he was actually suspended from duty. Having been confronted for the past couple weeks about all this, Bush promised to release all his records (which would be the best way to put this whole damn thing to rest), yet this week he’s released a few documents that raise more questions than they answer. Sure, these are two lies about a relatively minor incident, but it raises the further question : What else is he lying about?

The way that Bush has been stonewalling here is indicative of the conduct of his entire administration : the energy taskforce, creation of a department of homeland security, Enron, 9/11 commission, Iraq intelligence inquiry, Valerie Plame, etc. This administration reacts to calls for government transparency the way a vampire reacts to garlic. Is Bush a liar? We don’t know, because he won’t let us know.

Now I dunno why, but of all the crap that Bush has pulled, this is the issue that seems to have the most legs. Considering all the bullshit that Republicans pulled with Bill Clinton, I’m not one to look this gift-horse in the mouth.

It looks like Kos is involved in a little tussle with one of the guys from the Columbia Journalism Review. Here’s what they have to say about Kos specifically (and blogs in general) :

Let’s be clear: You have the right to do whatever you want on your blog. If you don’t feel like meeting basic standards of journalistic integrity, that is indeed your prerogative. But we get to call it what it is.

When conventional print outlets first became widely read, the concept of “ethics” didn’t apply to them either. But it soon became clear that the press exercised an influence on public affairs that was often as great as that exercised by public officials. And so just as public officials were expected to meet certain ethical standards, it was gradually agreed that the press should too.

The mainstream press could have refused to comply. They could have made the same argument that you do: “If our readers don’t like the way we do things, they’ll stop reading our paper.” But most newspapers recognized that it was by agreeing to uphold certain basic ethical standards that they won for themselves the right to play a major role in the national debate — the right, in short, to be taken seriously. That was a trade off they were more than willing to make.
. . .
That’s all fine. But you also relish your “outlaw” status to “gleefully flaunt” the rules traditional media try to follow. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to choose between the rewards of being taken seriously, and the rewards of behaving like a two-year-old who has just discovered he can break things. You don’t get both.

Tell me this : When are journalists going to start ” meeting basic standards of journalistic integrity”? I don’t mean that in a “vast right-wing conspiracy” sort of way, either.

Obviously, the traditional media is getting more and more pissed about the blog world. In some ways, I don’t blame them. It is kinda crazy sometimes. There are no “rules” per se. But on the other hand, as far as I’m concerned, most of them are living in glass houses while we hold all the stones.

If there was one unifying theme among all the political blogs, it’s that the media isn’t doing their job. How else can you explain why blogs are doing a much, much better job of reporting on the Bush/AWOL story than any media outlet. Are reporters unable to fill out FOIA requests? When it comes to journalism, the professionals are starting to see people nipping at their heels that are doing some of the same work for free.

When the medium is primarily consists of opinions expressed in a hostile manner, it’s easy to see bloggers as “unethical”. How is this different than what Bill O’Reilly does? As far as I’m concerned, Bill O’Reilly and I do the exact same thing in different mediums. We both scan the news, highlight the parts that are interesting to us, and offer our opinions in a largely one-sided format (I say “largely” because, unlike Fox News, I have a comments section). The biggest difference between us is that O’Reilly gets paid millions to spew his bullshit, while I spew my bullshit as a hobby.

Welcome to the debate, Mr. President. I see that you’ve decided to take the bigoted asshole side. Well, good luck.

President Bush plans to endorse a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union of a man and a woman in response to a Massachusetts court decision requiring legal recognition of gay marriages in that state, key advisers said yesterday.

Bush plans to endorse language introduced by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) that backers contend would ban gay marriage but not prevent state legislatures from allowing the kind of civil unions and same-sex partnership arrangements that exist in Vermont and California.
. . .
Musgrave’s proposal, called the Federal Marriage Amendment, states: “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.”

The amendment’s authors say it is a compromise that would not stop state legislatures from allowing civil unions. Gay rights groups disagree. Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, which supports marriage rights for gays, said the White House and “the Christian right” are “being deliberately deceptive.” He said the “vague and sweeping language” of the proposed amendment’s second sentence “is intended to deny any other measure of protection, including civil unions and domestic partnerships.”

He’s right, of course. The language is intentionally vague because they want to sneak a blanket of discrimination past everyone.

Now, I’m sensitive to the fact that not everybody is comfortable with the idea of two people of the same sex getting married, but to try to ban civil unions (Make no mistake. That’s exactly what this language does.) goes well beyond “protecting marriage”. It’s gay bashing. Once it’s pointed out that this language is vague enough to ban any laws that automatically confer rights such as inheritance, power of attorney, hospital visits, tax status, etc., I’m confident that there will be a significant enough uproar that Bush will back off some and support a “compromise” amendment (after all, he’s a uniter).

That’s when the hard part starts. Unlike every other time when Bush has gotten away with doing a 360 on some nutty idea of his, the Democrats can’t back off on this one. From the moment that Bush officially endorses this, call him a “homophobe” as loud as you can. If he backs down, use it as an opportunity to publicly question his judgment and his character.

In short, don’t let the Republicans use this as a wedge issue without using it as a wedge yourself. Because you’re not gonna have much time to get your digs in before Bush changes the subject.