Here’s a question the press corpse should ask : What was Scott McClellan referring to when he used the word “munitions” today? (via Atrios)

MR. McCLELLAN: Now, if you go back and look at the Duelfer report that recently has come out, according to the Duelfer report, as of mid-September, more than 243,000 tons of munitions have been destroyed since Operation Iraqi Freedom. Coalition forces have cleared and reviewed a total of 10,033 caches of munitions; another nearly 163,000 tons of munitions have been secured and are on line to be destroyed. That puts this all — that puts this all in context.
. . .
MR. McCLELLAN: I think you need to look at what we have done in terms of destroying munitions. As I point out, we’ve destroyed more than 243,000 munitions, we’ve secured another nearly 163,000 that will be destroyed.
. . .
MR. McCLELLAN: When there are munitions missing, it’s — and we learn about it, it’s always a priority. And as I pointed out, that’s why we’ve already destroyed more than 243,000 munitions and have another nearly 363,000 on line to be destroyed.

Followup questions : Assuming the trumped up figures McClellan is throwing out refer to more than just high-powered explosives of the type that the Bush Administration let fall into terrorist hands, is it customary to quantify destroyed munitions by their weight? Why can’t you get your numbers straight? Are there 163,000 munitions or 163,000 tons of munitions set to be destroyed?

I wonder if he still believes this :

Our nation’s leaders our responsible to confront problems, not pass them onto others. And to lead this nation to a responsibility era, that president himself must be responsible.

- George W. Bush, August 3, 2000

Thanks to Paul in comments for the reminder.

I kinda glossed over this one last night, but this is a big, big deal (via Kos) :

Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CNN the Iraqi interim government reported several days ago that the explosives were missing from the Al Qaqaa complex, south of Baghdad.

The explosives — considered powerful enough to demolish buildings or detonate nuclear warheads — were under IAEA control until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. IAEA workers left the country before the fighting began.
. . .
There was no immediate response from the Bush administration on the IAEA announcement.

But a senior administration official told CNN that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was notified about the missing weapons about a month ago. Iraq Survey Group inspectors are investigating, the official said.

The discovery was not made public sooner because standard intelligence practice is not to let the enemy know such information, the official said.

By “enemy” they mean the Kerry/Edwards campaign.

This is the closest thing to a WMD that the Iraqis seem to have had and the military was unprepared to keep it out of terrorist hands. This failure cuts to the very heart of the Bush Administration’s justification for the war. For more than a year, they’ve gotten away with the excuse that “the Democrats thought there were WMD’s too!,” but they can’t play the “shared responsibility” card here. The Bushies were warned about these explosives and did nothing to protect them.

To paraphrase what I said earlier, if you go to war to protect us from the threat of dangerous weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, you can’t claim a “catastrophic success” when weapons fall into the hands of terrorists. This is exactly the sort of thing that the Bush Administration vowed to protect us from and failed.

Here’s a couple Village Voice covers from an artist every comic geek will instantly recognize :

Not exactly the most subtle messages, but they’re pretty damn funny.

About that “breaking news” that’s all over the TV and internet. One thing I can say for sure is that the President really doesn’t wanna talk about the Supreme Court a week before the election. Sure, the Republicans might bring up that whole “filibuster” thing, but that can be easily parried with “How did you spend Martin Luther King’s birthday this year, Mr. President?” The more important question, however, is “What the hell did you mean when you were talking about Dred Scott during the first debate?” That’s a question Bush is he wouldn’t have to answer until after November 3rd.

Here’s the opening graf of the explosive article that’s gonna derail John Kerry’s Presidential ambitions :

U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by senate presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

John Kerry thought he met someone that he didn’t really meet. I’m less than half his age and this kinda shit happens to me all the time. It’s not that big a deal in “real” life and it cartainly aint that big a deal when we’re talking about picking who’s gonna run the country. (For what it’s worth, Kos says it’s bullshit anyways.)

For a look at the flip side of the coin, let’s take a look at the big news that concerns Bush over the last two days :

Can we win the war on terror? Well, the candidate whose main selling point is his toughness and resolve says “whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up ? you know, up in the air.” If Kerry said something like this, he’d be frothing at the mouth about how indecisiveness makes Kerry ineligible for the Presidency.

Bush’s Justice Department wrote a memo justifies the CIA practice of moving Iraqi prisoners out of the country for “interrogation”. This is in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, but we already know how much respect the President has for international law.

Remember that war we started because we wanted to make sure that dangerous weapons didn’t land in the hands of terrorists. A funny thing happened…y’see, once we invaded, the military didn’t actually guard some weapons and they…well….fell into the hands of terrorists. To be fair, it’s not like we had enough troops to guard weapons and the oil wells.

And that’s just news from the weekend. There’s no telling what kinda shit’s gonna trickle out this week while all the wingers are yelling to themselves “But he never actually met them!!!” Besides, if we really wanna start talking about meetings that never happened, we should call Richard Clarke. I’m sure he’s got some things to say.

Word on the street is that it’s coming late tonight or early tomorrow. It’ll be something about John Kerry that will apparently make him look bad on foreign policy. I guess the election eve drunk driving revelations about Bush worked so well in 2000 that the conservatives wanted to try a similar gotcha. So brace yourselves everybody and don’t forget to act surprised.

P.S. Is this it?

Hypothetically speaking…if I ran a polling company, I’d do everything in my power to make sure the electorate looked as evenly divided as possible. After all, if one candidate is heavily favored over the other, media outlets wouldn’t be nearly as desperate for new polls to help guide their storylines. The more results within the margin of error, the more frequently you’ll be asked to do additional polls. And that means more $$$$.

For example, there’s no need to do tracking polls in Montana, because Bush is ahead by more than 20 points. Considering how expensive polls are, the news can safely get away waiting a few weeks between polls. But in Florida or Ohio, every poll has the race shifting by a point or two. If you could make the race look closer than it actually is by tweaking the demographics a bit when you’re “normalizing” the results, it would be a safe bet that the media would be desperate for your services.

Not that I’m accusing anyone of anything. I’m just saying if it was a scam, it would be a pretty effective one.

UPDATE : The Left Coaster has a good example of my hypothetical scenario at work. Not that I’m pointing any fingers…..

Abu Aardvark boils it down for us (via Pandagon) :

Vote for this or against it.

It really isn’t that complicated.

The world is watching. The world wants to know which America is the real America: the one which offers a vision of a better world, a more liberal and free world, a safer and more just world… or the one in this picture, a world brought to you by George Bush and his administration and for which no-one of any consequence has been held accountable.

Let me remind you that, despite what you’re seeing on the news this week, this behavior was okayed by the highest levels of our government :

The draft report, which exceeds 100 pages, deals with a range of legal issues related to interrogations, offering definitions of the degree of pain or psychological manipulation that could be considered lawful. But at its core is an exceptional argument that because nothing is more important than “obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens,” normal strictures on torture might not apply.

The president, despite domestic and international laws constraining the use of torture, has the authority as commander in chief to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including torture, the report argued. Civilian or military personnel accused of torture or other war crimes have several potential defenses, including the “necessity” of using such methods to extract information to head off an attack, or “superior orders,” sometimes known as the Nuremberg defense: namely that the accused was acting pursuant to an order and, as the Nuremberg tribunal put it, no “moral choice was in fact possible.”
. . .
The working-group report elaborated the Bush administration’s view that the president has virtually unlimited power to wage war as he sees fit, and neither Congress, the courts nor international law can interfere. It concluded that neither the president nor anyone following his instructions was bound by the federal Torture Statute, which makes it a crime for Americans working for the government overseas to commit or attempt torture, defined as any act intended to “inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” Punishment is up to 20 years imprisonment, or a death sentence or life imprisonment if the victim dies.

“In order to respect the president’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign … (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in chief authority,” the report asserted. (The parenthetical comment is in the original document.) The Justice Department “concluded that it could not bring a criminal prosecution against a defendant who had acted pursuant to an exercise of the president’s constitutional power,” the report said. Citing confidential Justice Department opinions drafted after Sept. 11, 2001, the report advised that the executive branch of the government had “sweeping” powers to act as it sees fit because “national security decisions require the unity in purpose and energy in action that characterize the presidency rather than Congress.”

If you think this is an appropriate way to secure peace in Iraq, then go ahead and vote for Bush.

Well, wouldn’t this be an ironic way to win?

If President Bush wins West Virginia, one of the state’s five Republican electors says he might not vote for Bush to protest the president’s economic and foreign policies.

South Charleston Mayor Richie Robb said based on his research, an elector has “qualified discretion” when it comes to casting a vote.

“There is an implied duty to vote for your party’s candidate. But I don’t think it’s an explicit duty or responsibility,” said Robb, a moderate Republican who has a reputation of being a maverick in the state party.

Still, Robb calls it “highly unlikely” that he would cast a vote for Democrat John Kerry. He said he might cast his vote for Vice President Dick Cheney or another Republican instead as a protest against Bush, meaning the president would lose out on one electoral vote.
. . .
Robb’s dissatisfaction with Bush stems from the president’s decision to invade Iraq and economic policies he says have caused the loss of nearly 1,000 high-paying chemical and manufacturing jobs in his town of about 13,000 residents.

Lewis Lapham notes in the current issue of Harpers why this Richie Robb is given the authority to betray the will of his fellow citizens.

The American people don’t choose the American president; the decision rests with the Electoral College, which, as was made plain four years ago in Florida, may or may not reflect the popular will. The variance is deliberate, intended by the framers of the Constitution as a defense against the corruption of a federal legislature too easily bought and sold and as a check on the ignorant passions of an unlettered populace widely dispersed in what was still a wilderness. The Electoral College in the late eighteenth century recruited its members from among the most elightened citizens in each of the states, men “free from any sinister bias,” as well read as they were well traveled, admired for their “virtue,” “discernment,” and “information”. By 1828 the theory of appointing wise counselors had given way to the practice of employing partisan stooges, but the Electoral College continues to exclude ordinary, run-of-the-mill Americans from the privilege of direct participation in the naming of the individual to whom they entrust the administration of their government.

A more positive way of looking at this is to say the situation described above is exactly the sort of scenario the Founding Fathers had in mind when they devised the Electoral College. After all, we’ve got a populace that’s ill-informed about the choice they’re about to make, why not have an educated person come in and save us from ourselves?

Awww…who am I kidding? The Electoral College is elitist bullshit. Just because the peculiar math that marks the way we “choose” our leaders may give us a win on a technicallity, it doesn’t mean this system is any fairer now than it was in 2000. I wanna win, but I’d rather not win like this.

This is hilarious. Apparently the main bad guy in the next Star Wars movie pilots a ship called “The Invisible Hand”. I always suspected George Lucas was a lefty, I just didn’t realize he was gonna use his movie to take a jab at conservative economists. Then again, his last movie contained subplot about an evil ruler tricking a legislative body into granting him emergency powers in the midst of a crisis. That sounds so familiar….

Wow. That was fast. WolfpacksforTruth.org is here, and they’re pissed. (via Josh Marshall)

Other reactions to “brilliant” (yawn) wolf ad include fits of laughter from the audience on Crossfire, a thorough debunking from Slate, a response ad from the Democrats with an eagle and an ostrich, and this AP headline that perfectly sums up the tepid response the ad has recieved :

Animals Appear in New Bush, Kerry TV Ads

I still stand by my estimation that the crux of the ad really pushes the boundries for this political season. Even if it was delivered in an unintentionally laughable way, the Bushies are still trying to scare people into thinking that electing John Kerry will result a terrorist attack.

I know it happened almost two years ago, but I still think of this from time to time and think “What the hell?!”

George W. Bush has mentioned Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by name in stump speeches sixteen times this week, but not once in the two previous weeks. Is there a reason why he’s spent the last five days doing so much terrorist name-dropping? Could it be related to the day off he’s taking tomorrow? Is it really an October Surprise if we can see it coming?

Okay, here’s the dilemma. We’re ten days from the election and we’ve got conservative friends and family members that you know won’t bother reading any books or articles that you mail them. Knowing they’re more likely to watch a DVD than read, what’s the best way to convince them to vote for John Kerry (or against George Bush) using a credit card and an Amazon.com account? Fahrenheit 9/11 and Going Upriver seem like the obvious choices, but I wanna hear some pros and cons here. Is there another great DVD that I’m overlooking?