Rehnquist has cancer.

Seems the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (William Rehnquist) is undergoing surgery for thyroid cancer. the news shows seem to have been suprised by this news today. Rehnquist has been widely rumored to be the next to leave the court due to his health. expect him to retire soon if bush wins next this year.

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

well this is pretty bad...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished after the American invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."

Administration officials said yesterday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could be used to produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings. The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the material of the type stolen from Al Qaqaa, and somewhat larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. But the other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain. "This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," one senior Bush administration official said.

now add to that the fact that insurgents ambushed and killed 50 iraqi security soldiers yesterday and you can see where we're heading this week. not looking good.

Team America

well...it made me chuckle. a lot. the problem is that it was just funny to see puppets do stuff. the story--on the other hand--was kinda boring. i say wait for the DVD...and even then see if you still care. probably not.

The Safety President!

Our 'wartime president' said, when asked if we can be safe from another terror attack, "Its up in the air".

HEY! hear that? IT'S UP IN THE AIR! Now that that's certainty of leadership. can we? well, i'm glad to know bush has us at a resounding 'hell if i know!?" Now THAT's the sort of resolve you can't argue with? i'll have to remember that when someone asks me about my job. "beats me!" i wonder if the judge would be ok w/ that?

As Good As it Gets!

This is the best weekend in sports for the year. Sox in the World Series...struggling MSU beats ranked florida...Tulane beats UAB and the Saints Beat Oakland by 5.

just perfect.

Bush's Polls Don't look so Good.

Seem like the Bush folks are aware of some numbers that look pretty bad. i was wondering why he'd cut back his trips to 'must win' Ohio where he's lead much of the year. seems we now know...

GOP officials who talked to Bush-Cheney campaign leaders said the leaders have grown more worried about Ohio, Florida and other key states where Bush lacks a lead with just 10 days until the election. A poll by Ohio University's Scripps Survey Research Center, completed Thursday night, found Kerry leading 49 percent to 43 percent among registered voters, with a margin of error of five percentage points

...

The Republican official said polling for Bush showed him in a weaker position than some published polls have indicated, both nationally and in battlegrounds. In many of the key states, the official said, Bush is below 50 percent, and he is ahead or behind within the margin of sampling error -- a statistical tie.

"There's just no place where they're polling outside the margin of error so they can say, 'We have this state,'" the official said. "And they know that an incumbent needs to be outside the margin of error."

Nobody loves me but my mother...

...And she could be jivin' too."

Listening to B.B. king today. so far that's my favorite lyric.

Umm....HOLY CRAP!

Ashlee Simpson was on SNL this weekend and her lipsync got screwed up when the vocal started before she did. hee HAW! she actually just walked off the stage completely busted.

seems the vocal for the WRONG song started up when she was holding her mic no where near her mouth thus letting the audience know what she was trying to pull. SNL shouldn't let that sorta crap even be attempted....you know?

anyway--Ashlee the jerk BLAMED HER BAND for playing the wrong song! yeah. that's what was wrong.

video above!

Bush's Cocaine Troubles.

Well its out. Bush's volunteer work way back when was related to a cocaine bust. he's presented his work w/ the P.U.L.L. organization as just charity work he once did. This week the people that were there w/ him were interviewed to reveal that his work wasn't voluntary--it was forced on him after running into trouble w/ the law over his cocaine use.

SI.com - NCAA Football - MS State and Croom big win against Florida

GOOD LORD!!! MS State finds its pulse! and HOLY CRAP! Tulane won 59-55 against UAB (um...go defense...eh? heh)! if the Saints win tomorrow and the Sox win tonite it'll be perfect.

Movie Night 2.

Battle Royale
erg... A hyper controversial japanese horror/thriller/Action/Drama i've been wanting to see for a while.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
One of the 1st Film Noir movies!

Breathless
A foriegn film by Goddard. The French New Wave is overdue around here.

Big G.O.P. Bid to Challenge Voters at Polls in Key State

HERE iT COMES!

The GOP is putting 1000s to work in Ohio and other states to sit in precincts and challenge voters that seem like democrats. (read: non-white precincts). this is as much about delaying and tying up the polls as it is about anything else. i've dealt w/ these jerks first hand here in MS.

At the Movies.

i watched 2 movies tonite. 1st was "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." it affected me emotionally. enough that it really suprised me.

Next i watched "Ladykillers". i laughed out loud a lot but its not the best movie ever. i enjoyed it. i also had no idea it took place in Mississippi.

Voter Suppression Watch

Someone is calling Ohio voters--particularly elderly and democratic leaning voters--and telling them their precincts have been moved to another location. Of course--they haven't.

And so it starts...

New Features!

Mr. Mooch added some mail icons for each post. If you click on the envelope and you can send a post you find here on this site to any of your friends (or enemies)!

Win Back Respect

YOW! A pretty strong campaign ad.

This shows the comedy film bush made where he's looking around his office for WMD's. It was a comedy reel played for a joke at (i think) the Radio and Television Correspondent's Dinner (oh yeah, this is really happened).

However, the ad then cuts to the sister of a Soldier who died in Iraq. she doesn't think it's too funny that Bush is joking about not being able to find WMD's when her brother Died trying to find WMD's.

Ah...those College days.

A Raccoon Coat, Pennant, and a straw hat called a 'Boater'. oddly enough, you were suppose to wear a boater at political shindigs such as party conventions and the like.

i used to be facinated by the universal cartoon convention that this is what a college kid looked like (according to Looney Tunes).

23 Skiddoo!

So Bush is in the Lead?

Sorry to just pile on to what others have said but this is worth pointing out. Despite many (most) of the polls out there show kerry or bush in the lead but not beyond the margin of error. this margin shows that the actual number can actually be higher or lower than what's shown by the amount listed in the margin of error. technically if you are within the MoE you can't trully know who is ahead.

That being said--why is it when ikerry is in the 'lead' the race is called a toss-up and when bush has the 'lead' they claim he's leading the race? evidence below:

AP
AP Poll: Bush, Kerry in Dead Heat [...] In the AP-Ipsos Public Affairs poll, the Democratic ticket of Kerry and Sen. John Edwards got support from 49 percent of those who said they were likely to vote, and the Republican team of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney got 46 percent, within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Reuters
Reuters Poll: Bush Grabs One-Point Lead on Kerry [...] President Bush opened a slight one-point lead on Democratic rival John Kerry in a tight race for the White House, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Thursday.

Bush chides kerry for using the 'Politics of Fear'

He s hould talk to Cheney:

'The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us -- biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans,' Cheney said.

'That's the ultimate threat. For us to have a strategy that's capable of defeating that threat, you've got to get your mind around that concept,'

GOP Voter Supression.

Here a Republican talks about how disgusted he is with his party and their methods in supressing the vote in order to win. South Dakota's Bill Janklow talks about how this sort of thing has become a component of the GOP election day plan.

I personally witnessed Mel Thomson, a Republican, ill and in severe pain, force himself up from his seat to shake hands with then recently elected Democrat Gov. Jeanne Shaheen. He did it because he was a gentleman, but he also did it to show respect for the governor and for the people who elected her in a fair election a few months before.

That was yesterday.

Today we hear news that Charles McGee, the former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, and Allen Raymond, a GOP consultant, pleaded guilty to federal charges stemming from their involvement in the jamming of telephones on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2002. Democrats' computer-generated calls to get out the vote were blocked and thus voters did not receive the intended message due to illegal action by some in the Republican Party [...]

This is a far cry from the party of Lincoln that proudly and correctly stood on principle to outlaw slavery. It is a far cry from the party of great and principled statesmen like Mel Thomson, Norris Cotton, Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt. What a contrast between those great Republicans and current party leaders, who refuse to speak out against this despicable action by pathetic
political hacks.

James Tobin, President Bush's 2004 New England campaign chairman and the Northeast political director of the Republican Senatorial Committee in 2002, said, "These allegations date back to years and have absolutely nothing to do with the present campaign."

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

Mr. Tobin, these allegations have everything to do with the present campaign because the people must feel confident that the 2002 election fraud will not be repeated. The best way to restore confidence is for all those involved to tell the truth now.

Both parties have a right to expect a fair election result even if it is not always a favorable one. Tobin also said, "It is disappointing, indeed, to see the opposition party (Democrats) manipulate the court system in a blatant attempt to influence the election."

What a mind-numbing hypocritical answer that is! Who is trying to influence
elections, Mr. Tobin? Please do not insult us further.

New Hampshire Democrat Party Chair Kathy Sullivan said, "The public should know Tobin's role in this, along with the roles of any other high-level GOP officials."

Kathy and I have not agreed very often, but she is absolutely correct. We need the truth now to restore confidence in the coming election. She has a right to be angry. Can you imagine the Republican outrage if the Democrats had been guilty of similar conduct? Does a party that refuses to tell the truth before Election Day deserve our vote on election day?