Surge in Voter Registration

The numbers to watch are not the national polls. What is going to make the difference is voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. This article from today's New York Times should be very encouraging.

A Big Increase of New Voters in Swing States

By Ford Fessenden New York Times September 26, 2004

C

OLUMBUS, Ohio - A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.

The analysis by The New York Times of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods -new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.

While comparable data could not be obtained for other swing states, similar registration drives have been mounted in them as well, and party officials on both sides say record numbers of new voters are being registered nationwide. This largely hidden but deadly earnest battle is widely believed by campaign professionals and political scientists to be potentiallydecisive in the presidential election.

"We know it's going on, and it's a very encouraging sign," said Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee. The new voters, Mr. Elmendorf said, "could very much be the difference."

Full:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/politics/campaign/26vote.html?th

Banned and allowed

Murdered for Working While Female

"Political Islam’s Crimes against Women in the Iraqi city of Mousul"
From the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq:

In one of the public health sectors in the city of Mousul, the Islamists committed some of their several misogynist crimes that aim relentlessly to possibly extinguish their thirst for blood and hatred for women.

The Islamist terrorist savages could not tolerate women to work and feed themselves and their families. They want them blindfolded, covered by Hijab and heavy rags thrown in the kitchens of their houses serving as slaves. They want them humiliated, with no opinion or character or a normal life like any sane human being of our time.

Political Islam groups exploited the chaos, lack of security and absence of law since the USA ominous war and subsequent occupation to disseminate horror and terrorism across Iraq. Everyday, they add more transgressions to their criminal record against civility and women’s right.

Recently these women were murdered by these Islamists:

1. Lina al-Aswad a medical doctor who has been practicing for the last 10 years. She was shot dead in Al Qayara - Mousul.
2. Hefi Abdul Satar a pharmacist in al-Khansaa Hospital. She was gunned down before her house in al-Noor suburb. Her family is also threatened to be killed by these terrorists.
3. Sanabul Nwel Tabakh a veterinarian killed in Wahda suburb in Mousul while in her way to work.
4. Layla Abdulla al-Haj Said a professor of Law and Dean of the Law Faculty at the University of Mousl. She was gunned down with her husband. She was also beheaded to further terrorize people in that suburb.
5. Iman Abdul Monem Younis, a lecturer at the Faculty of Languages and head of Translation Department at the University of Mousul, was gunned down.
6. Tagrid Abdul Masih a public servant in the town of Bartila.
7. Hala Abdul Masih (Tagrid’s sister) a public servant in Bartila.
8. Tara Majeed Butros a public servant in Bartilla.

Mass killing is practiced against women working as interpreters or as workers with foreign companies. Many were murdered in the last several months in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

Political Islam’s violence against women must be stopped. The terrorist Islamic forces must be expelled from the Iraqi society. This task relies on the will power of women and men who are seeking a world where freedom and security prevail. This goal will only take place if the secular and freedom-loving forces stand up to the Islamic terrorism, which claims the lives of more women every moment merely for being women.

Let us make ending Islamic terrorism against women in Iraq our priority and urgent task.

Join the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq to struggle together to put an end to the Islamic violence against women.

We call on all women and men in Iraq and worldwide to collaborate and struggle to end the Islamic violence against women.

Birthday of a musical giant

September 23, the birthdate of John Coltrane. Listen to A Love Supreme, Giant Steps, and ten other Coltrane classics.

Zeskind on Kobach and FAIR

Must read piece by Leonard Zeskind in KC's Pitch "All's FAIR" . GOP candidate Kris Kobach in Kansas's Third District is relying on racist, anti-immigrant allies.

September 22

Via Norm Geras's Normblog

On this day in 1862 Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in the Confederate States free as of January 1, 1863:

Whereas on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

"That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom..."

Bush's $940 Billion Gift to Wall Street

Washington Post

President Bush's push to create individual investment accounts in the Social Security system would hand financial services firms a windfall totaling $940 billion over 75 years, according to a University of Chicago study to be released today.



Bush has expressed strong support for allowing workers to divert some of their Social Security taxes to accounts that could be invested in stocks and bonds. But he has never embraced a specific proposal to revamp Social Security, even after his own Social Security Commission presented him with three reform options. Goolsbee, an informal Kerry economic adviser, examined the option that is often cited as the most realistic.

[Goolsbee] estimated that annual management fees would be 0.8 percent, a conservative figure, he said, considering that management fees across the spectrum of mutual funds average 1.09 percent.

The result: Over 75 years, fees would total $940 billion, more than a quarter of the $3.7 trillion deficit the Social Security system will run over that time period. That would be the largest windfall in U.S. financial history, Goolsbee said, more than eight times the revenue loss that Wall Street suffered during the 2000-02 stock market collapse.

Bush's 23, er 27 reasons for war

John Kerry cited the number in his Iraq speech, John Aravosis list them on this Americablog
Here's a press release on the the senior honors thesis of Devon Largio, “Uncovering the Rationales for the War on Iraq: The Words of the Bush Administration, Congress and the Media from September 12, 2001, to October 11, 2002.” And, the study itself, can be found here.

Rock Ethics Institute

When I saw a site entitled Rock Ethics Institute, I was hoping for a site that examined ethics in the world of rock and roll. "A Kantian take on groupies" "Plagarism and royalties"

Or even better a site that applied rock ethics to real life problems.

Turns out it is part of theUniversity of Pennsylvania Penn State [see comment].

A $5 million gift from Douglas and Julie Rock to the Department of Philosophy and the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State established the Rock Ethics Institute in 2001. Douglas L. Rock, a 1968 Penn State psychology graduate, is president, chief executive officer, and chairman of Houston-based Smith International, a worldwide supplier of products and services used to drill oil and gas wells. Rock also is a director and former chairman of the Petroleum Equipment Suppliers Association and a director of Viad Corp.

The Truth of Kerry's Vietnam Testimony

Village Voice

John Kerry is being pilloried for his shocking Senate testimony 34 years ago that many U.S. soldiers—not just a few "rogues"—were committing atrocities against the Vietnamese. U.S. military records that were classified for decades but are now available in the National Archives back Kerry up and put the lie to his critics. Contrary to what those critics, including the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, have implied, Kerry was speaking on behalf of many soldiers when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, and said this:

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

The archives have hundreds of files of official U.S. military investigations of such atrocities committed by American soldiers. I've pored over those records—which were classified for decades—for my Columbia University dissertation and, now, this Voice article. The exact number of investigated allegations of atrocities is unknown, as is the number of such barbaric incidents that occurred but weren't investigated. Some war crimes, like the Tiger Force atrocities exposed last year by The Toledo Blade, have only come to light decades later. Others never will. But there are plentiful records to back up Kerry's 1971 testimony point by point.

Watch on Kobach

Good blog from elsewhere in the state on Ashcroft's favorite house candidate, Kris Kolbach

KrisWatch

And a companion blog:

MooreWatch Watch

When the Klan made marriage a issue

The popularity and mainstream appeal of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s is usually glossed over. The Klan elected mayors, Senators, and Presidents. It many parts of the US it was as much anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic as anti-black and anti-Jewish. One of their causes was the defense of family values and marriage.

True to his promise, [KKKImperial Wizard 1923-39 Dr. Hiram] Evans launched his campaign against Roman­ism and Catholic-marriage practices. In the spring of 1927, Klan publications heralded the effort, while friendly lawmakers introduced Klan-drafted bills into their state legislatures. The proposed laws sought to punish any criticism of civil marriage, prohibited prenuptial pledges concerning the religion of children bom of interfaith mar­riages, and barred interracial unions

--David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. 290

Lockdown rankles unit bound for Iraq

Lockdown rankles unit bound for Iraq

The 635 soldiers of a battalion of the South Carolina National Guard scheduled to depart today for a year or more in Iraq have spent their off-duty hours under a disciplinary lockdown in their barracks for the last two weeks.

The trouble began Labor Day weekend, when 13 members of the 1st Battalion of the 178th Field Artillery Regiment went AWOL, mainly to see their families again before shipping out....

This particular Guard unit was put on an accelerated training schedule — giving the soldiers about 36 hours of leave over the past two months — because the Army needs to get fresh troops to Iraq and there are not enough active-duty or “regular” troops to go around.

Preparation has been especially intense because the Army is short-handed on military police units, so these artillerymen are being quickly re-trained to provide desperately needed security for convoys. And in order to fully man the unit, scores of soldiers were pulled in from different Guard outfits, some voluntarily, some on orders.

As members of the unit — drawn mainly from South Carolina’s coastal Lowcountry — looked toward their tour, some said they were angry, or reluctant to go, or both. Many more are bone-tired. Overall, some of them fear, the unit lacks strong cohesion — the glue that holds units together in combat.

Kerry on Iraq

Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry delivered a major speech on Iraq today at New York University.

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0920.html

we must have a great honest national debate on Iraq. The President claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.

This month, we passed a cruel milestone: more than 1,000 Americans lost in Iraq. Their sacrifice reminds us that Iraq remains, overwhelmingly, an American burden. Nearly 90 percent of the troops – and nearly 90 percent of the casualties – are American. Despite the President’s claims, this is not a grand coalition.

Our troops have served with extraordinary bravery, skill and resolve. Their service humbles all of us. When I speak to them… when I look into the eyes of their families, I know this: we owe them the truth about what we have asked them to do… and what is still to be done.

In June, the President declared, “The Iraqi people have their country back.” Just last week, he told us: “This country is headed toward democracy… Freedom is on the march.”

But the administration’s own official intelligence estimate, given to the President last July, tells a very different story.

According to press reports, the intelligence estimate totally contradicts what the President is saying to the American people.

So do the facts on the ground.

Security is deteriorating, for us and for the Iraqis.

All across this country people ask me what we should do now. Every step of the way, from the time I first spoke about this in the Senate, I have set out specific recommendations about how we should and should not proceed. But over and over, when this administration has been presented with a reasonable alternative, they have rejected it and gone their own way. This is stubborn incompetence.

Five months ago, in Fulton, Missouri, I said that the President was close to his last chance to get it right. Every day, this President makes it more difficult to deal with Iraq – harder than it was five months ago, harder than it was a year ago. It is time to recognize what is – and what is not – happening in Iraq today. And we must act with urgency.

Just this weekend, a leading Republican, Chuck Hagel, said we’re “in deep trouble in Iraq … it doesn’t add up … to a pretty picture [and] … we’re going to have to look at a recalibration of our policy.” Republican leaders like Dick Lugar and John McCain have offered similar assessments.

We need to turn the page and make a fresh start in Iraq.

Berube Moves Right

The old Michael Berube.

The new Michael Berube

Maybe, a code to let the insiders know when his latest post is real and when it is parody.

Seriously, Michael Berube has one of the more interesting blogs around. He's proof the cultural studies is not a bar to good politics.

He's promising to post a critique of parts of Tom Frank's message in What's the Matter With Kansas.

In the second pre-critique Berube praises Frank's book as

a chilling tale, full of post-Wichita anti-abortion extremism and some rather passionate intensity over the conviction that the universe is six thousand years old. For his rendering of that narrative, Frank’s book is more than worth the price of admission. Clueless Democrats and quasi-liberal journalists (you know, the kind who think they’re still dealing with reasonable, old-school prairie Republicans like Everett Dirksen out there) need to read this part of the book-- and it’s the major part of the book-- right now. At least by dinnertime today.

On the other hand

Kansas has such a weak Democratic party that there are no brakes on how far the GOP can run to the right. And whatever the national party’s failings-- and they are legion-- it’s hard to imagine that the Kansas Dems can revitalize themselves simply by running on an economic-populist platform. Ah, but this point takes us into those dreaded cultural issues, about which more tomorrow..

Stay tuned.

More Music

Stefon Harris, who may be the next major vibraphonist, is performing at Wichita State University on September 25. He has a very cool, flash-based, website which features his music.

If you are a fan of Blue Note jazz, signup for the very cool Blue Note Radio.

Barry Gaston, jazz host on KMUW (89.1 FM), has compiled a list of 89 essential jazz CDs.

It's a very good list, but not quite definitive. He leans a little too much on compilation, best ofs.
I don't think I would have included Stan Kenton or Buddy Rich. Instead, Count Basie, Essential on Columbia and Jay McShann. Hard to understand how MJQ, Django Reinhardt, and Art Pepper didn't make the cut, but Charles Earland, Ray Bryant, Les McCann, and Eddie Harris did. I would have included the Third Stream classic Jazz Abstractions. Johnny Smith instead of George Shearing. Now, I'll probably be stuck with making my own list of 89 essential albums. It was trying enough to take responsibility for the 15 greatest albums in a Norm Geras poll.

Preview John Fogerty's new CD Deja Vu All Over Again. In stores on September 21.

Third Whitest Place in America.

What is a bluegrass festival?

My version of Carson's Karnak routine.

Regardless, I'll be at the Walnut Valley Festival on Saturday which is held in my hometown of Winfield Kansas, about 45 miles south of Wichita where I know live. The WFV has been going on for 33 years. Insiders like my brother Roger count a few more unofficial festivals which were held at Southwestern College.

The festival draws 10,000 or more , just about doubling the size of Winfield. Many camp at the fairgrounds, beginning with a landrush for prime spots a week before the festival.

If you are bluegrass fan, this is the place to be.

Some bluegrass is pretty eclectic and there are some acts that should be classified as acoustic or roots rather than bluegrass. One act I plan to catch both times they play on Saturday is the Hot Club of Cowtown, a trio that is sort of cross between the Western Swing of Bob Wills and the gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt.

Worse Than Vietnam?

Sidney Blumenthal in the Guardian

according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."

Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan."

General Odom said: "This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."

Terrill believes that any sustained US military offensive against the no-go areas "could become so controversial that members of the Iraqi government would feel compelled to resign". Thus, an attempted military solution would destroy the slightest remaining political legitimacy. "If we leave and there's no civil war, that's a victory."

General Hoare believes from the information he has received that "a decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday in November. That's the cynical part of it - after the election. The signs are all there."

He compares any such planned attack to the late Syrian dictator Hafez al-Asad's razing of the rebel city of Hama.

If Hoare is correct, there could be no more egrigious instance of winning the battle and losing the war.

In a related story, the New York Times features a classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July says that Iraq could descend into civil war by the end of next year--a far more pessimistic outlook than the Bush administration has been pushing publicly.

Question of God Questioned

Jeff Sharlet on The Revealer website

PBS’s latest God offering -- "The Question of God,"... will no doubt be a well-researched program centered around the ideas and interpretations of its two stars -- Freud and C.S. Lewis -- and the man who has pitted them against one another, Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr. of Harvard. But both PBS and Beliefnet, which has interviewed Dr. Nicholi, are letting the good doctor avoid hard questions about the faith assumptions underlying his work. What does Dr. Nicholi, as the referee and rule setter of this imaginary debate, actually believe?

As it happens, I came across Dr. Nicholi a few years ago while researching some other topics. The documents ... suggest a history of deeply conservative Christianity combined with a polished presentation style designed to make such beliefs suitable for public consumption.

...

This was not the first time Dr. Nicholi had proposed that Christianity could combat student dissent. At a Feb. 18, 1968, the speakers at a meeting for conservative student leaders held at the Washington headquarters of International Christian Leadership (ICL) based their directions on a talk Dr. Nicholi had given for ICL at the Swiss embassy not long before. ICL was a network of powerful men in Congress, the military, and business who had committed themselves to "militant liberty" in pursuit of a "world-wide spiritual offensive," also referred to by the group’s leader as "World War III." The goal was a "new world order" -- a phrase coined by ICL in 1945 -- based on a government of "Jesus plus nothing" with Washington, D.C. as its "world capital."

According to Sharlet, Congressman Todd Tiahrt and Senator Sam Brownback are part of this cult. See his article in Harpers.

Boyda Hits Ryun on Insurance Scam

Nancy Boyda, a moderate Demoratic, is running against far-right Congressman Jim Ryun in Kansas' 2nd Congression District. It's a race that should be winnable. It has been held by Democrats for long streches in the recent past and by Democratic Governor Kathleeen Sebelius and Attorney General candidate Chris Beggs in 2002. She has done a good job of fundraising.

Now, she may have a issue that drive home that Ryun for all his talk about family values has done a better job of taking care of big business--even shady insurance companies--than representing the interests of working families.

Lawrence Journal World

Democrat Nancy Boyda on Friday accused incumbent U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun of running interference for companies that have used devious, hard-pressure tactics to sell American soldiers expensive and unneeded insurance policies and other financial services. Ryun denied the accusation.
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"I just feel that our soldiers deserve better," said Boyda, who is challenging Ryun, a Republican from Jefferson County, for the 2nd Congressional District, which includes western Lawrence.

Boyda noted a July investigative report by The New York Times that said Ryun was one of three members of the House Armed Services Committee who urged the Pentagon to allow insurance companies and agents to continue to sell policies to soldiers despite numerous complaints that agents misled military personnel. The report about predatory sales tactics on service members has sparked political outrage and prompted a congressional hearing.