The election may be over, but Karl Rove and the Bush Team's lying campaign hasn't ended yet.

Remember "Suit-Gate"?  Remember how a NASA astronomer staked his reputation that there was something under his jacket?  The Bush team completely denied this, and said it was caused by how the suit was tailored.

As it turns out, there was something under there.  And now the public knows.  Only, somebody forgot to tell Karl Rove.

If the Bush team wants credibility at home and in the world, the least they could do is start to tell the truth.  As far as I'm concerned, Karl Rove MUST explain to the American public why he is continuing to lie to us.  If he doesn't, he is unfit to hold such a position of power as he has in Washington.

So we lost.  After all the votes were counted, we got less votes.  Whether this is because of the fundie turnout, or because they manufactured more votes, or whatever, they won.  It's the rules of the game.  I personally doubt there is massive fraud.  Too many of us on the left are plagued by chronic distrust of the right.  We MUST audit the voting machines for next time, but we should give them the benefit of the doubt for this time.

Nonetheless, we all remember from the campaign that "John Kerry has a plan."  John Kerry has a plan to stop outsourcing.  John Kerry has a plan to halve the national debt.  John Kerry has a plan for Iraq.

John Kerry, BE THE PRESIDENT.  Propose your plans in legislation, and force the Congress to look at them.

In all the confusion regarding the election, many things which probably are not true have been taken as true.  I'd like to talk about two of them, one of which is occuring here at Kos, the other in the mainstream media.

At Kos: A Bush Presidency will be the end of the world.

In The Media: The Democrats are the party of liberals in Boston, New York, and San Francisco and are "A National Party No More".

Well, the third quarter fundraising numbers are up at the FEC website. (Three Edits - None of the Senate Campaigns are up, but all the House except for Jeff Seemann's are) You can check any campaign's status by searching at http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/imaging_info.shtml, but there is no easy way to compare candidates.

I've gone through and given the information for the DKos House candidates and their opponents. When the Senate information becomes available I'll update this with that information.

Some observations - Lois Murphy, Richard Romero, and Samara Barend all out-raised their opponents, but only Barend is ahead in cash on hand. Ralph Regula STILL has less than 100000 cash on hand, so Jeff Seemann could have more money than him.

Texas 22:
Richard Morrison - Q3 Contributions - 210931.67
Cash on Hand - 272305.82 Tom Delay - Q3 Contributions - 546179.40
Cash on Hand - 1271674.09

People have been assaulting Sinclair for their plan to run the anti-Kerry film "Why John Kerry is Evil" (or whatever it's called).  This is obviously an abuse of YOUR airwaves, using their GOVERNMENT-ENDORSED monopoly to distribute propaganda for George W. Bush.

So, why can't we reclaim our airwaves?  When a Sinclair station starts ILLEGALLY showing this film, shouldn't they forfeit their right to the airwaves?  And thus, shouldn't we, the people, the OWNER of the airwaves, be able to broadcast whatever we want on the now-unused spectrum?  There MIGHT be issues of interference, but shouldn't you have just as much a right to the airwaves as they do?  Shouldn't they have to prove in a court of law that they haven't ABUSED their airwave privileges?

Of course, the one technical difficulty is that we don't all possess TV Broadcast Antennas and high-power equipment.  If anybody knows of a way to solve that problem, please tell me and I will edit the diary to include this information.

THEY'RE YOUR AIRWAVES!  Reclaim them from the company ILLEGALLY using them!

It's worth a look to every now and then see how Democracy is holding up in other parts of the world.  Today we look at Cameroon, which held elections today.

     

In elections held today, President Paul Biya is expected to win re-election easily.  Complaints about the election included massive purges of voter rolls and the fact that Biya has no single opposition challenger.  However (or perhaps because of the lack of strong challengers), there have been limited complaints of vote fraud.

It isn't quite the audience we are looking for, but our visiting the online polls has affected the news cycle.  This from Xinhua (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-10/06/content_2056601.htm).

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- Instant polls by several news websites showed Democratic Senator Edwards was the winner of Tuesday night's US vice presidential debate.

About one hour after the debate was over, the Democratic vice presidential nominee was regarded in an instant survey by CBSNEWS.com as the winner by 77 percent of respondents, while only 21 percent chose Vice President Dick Cheney as the winner.

(Remainder of article in extended entry)

So, let's keep at this.  The left wing buzz machine is working.  If we can do this "for real" in November, the right won't realize what hit them!

I know that "Typewriter-Gate" is getting rather old, but the Dallas Morning News seems to have another scoop on this.  Basically, Killian's secretary has said that although the content is basically correct, the documents WERE NOT typed at the base.  She mentions the incorrect terminology, as well as stylistic errors and that the base had an Olympia and later a Selectric, neither of which were variable type.

My theory is that somebody had to retype the memos without having an original copy (it being stored somewhere), and typed it in word.  They probably made minor errors in recollection.  Then, CBS thought those documents were authentic, and published them.

The one remaining question is the signature.  Any thoughts on how that works?

(excerpted in Extended entry)

This is inspired by a frightening post from Free Republic (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1212460/posts), where various Freepers talk about what they would do if they were Supreme Dictator (or rather puppet-master).  Some of their ideas include the expected (flat tax, close the borders), and the obscene (BOMB FRANCE back to 1945!, Take over Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, Level Fallujah).

So, what would you RECOMMEND be done, if you were in a position to recommend such to John Kerry and a Democratic House/Senate?

Over the past 30 years, the debate on abortion in this country has developed into a trench war.  The "pro-choice" and "pro-life" sides are both solidly encamped in one political party, with neither side able to make any headroom.

However, most Americans agree on what should be the important issues in this debate.  Most Americans agree that killing babies is bad, and that less abortion is better.  Most Americans also agree that women should be able to determine when they have children.  However, currently neither side in the debate allows for both of these points of view.  I think the time is ripe for one side of the debate to take a slightly different view of the debate, being "pro-choice", but actively trying to reduce the number of abortions in America.

Also in today's elections, G.K. Butterfield (D) defeated Greg Dority (R) in a special election for Frank Ballance (D)'s seat.  He will be sworn in as early as Wednesday.

This was taken as a foregone conclusion, but it's good that it has happened nonetheless.  For those of you counting, the score is Democrats: 3 Special Elections; Republicans: 0.  It was expected in a safe Democratic district, but shouldn't South Dakota have been a safe Republican district by demographics?

If we want to win Congress, we have to make sure we do the little things right.  This is a good start.  (news story excerpt after the jump)

Recently, it seems that there have been more bills where Conservative Republicans and Liberal Democrats are voting together opposite the "mainstream" politicos.  For instance, for today's Patriot Act and Medicinal Marijuana votes, conservative representatives Butch Otter, Roscoe Bartlett, and Ron Paul, among others, were voting with the Progressive Caucus people (Kucinich, Sanders, et al.).  With the George W. Bush wing of the Republican party and the DLC wing of the Democratic party increasingly fighting against their fringes, could there be a realignment of party basis in Washington?

A quick quiz for you all:  Who said these quotes?

"Government governs best when it governs least - and stays out of the impossible task of legislating morality. But legislating someone's version of morality is exactly what we do by perpetuating discrimination against gays."

"The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent."