~ on the topic of our declaration that ‘liberal doesn’t mean anything’, one can look at the particular point that bush was trying to make that kerry is the most liberal senator, as determined by the ‘national journal’ [w]. the journal itself mentioned that this repeated point is inaccurate; they wrote that the theme is “…Disconcerting because the shorthand used to describe our ratings of Kerry and Edwards is sometimes misleading — or just plain wrong.” the rating is based on the percentage of ‘liberal votes’ that are cast by the senators; as kerry has been campaigning and therefore has missed some votes, his rating is unfairly skewed. regardless of this fine point, our overall contention that the generalization is meaningless is also backed with regards to how one determines which is a ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ vote, as the national journal declares that within its methodology “..identifying ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ votes is subjective. National Journal has never claimed otherwise.” furthermore, in the big picture, the reversal of excessive spenders from the reagans to the clintons to the bushes exhibits the topsy turvy world in which we live; the proposed spending of the ‘conservative’ candidate is $3 trillion, while the ‘liberal’ is only $2 trillion. maybe the fact that kerry’s spending, though less, includes health care is what earns it the damning label ‘liberal’. we presume everyone knows about bush’s squandering of the $5.6 trillion surplus that left. how did these republican dudes run corporations?

~ when debates equal comedy gold, who knows what dipshit comment from bush will be a website next week?

• youforgotpoland.com
• offroaddieselengineemissions.com
• needsumwood.com

~ the discussion over the debates is overwhelming; something can always be added, but we find that interest is already saturated. so, avoiding the post-debate debates on policy and style, we will mention a couple of personal points/grievances here, so that one might get a sense of what made us grin and/or hammer the arm rest with a clenched fist:

1. how can bush fail to see the contradiction in his claim that he will only appoint supreme court justices who will interpret the constitution without any personal prejudice, and then demand that they follow his personal belief that the pledge to the flag should contain the clause ‘under god’?
2. when kerry was answering question #12, concerning the environment, he referred to the lady who had asked question #4, which concerned international opinion of the u.s., by her name.
3. bush doesn’t understand the dred scott case
4. are we expected to believe that that weepy eyed question about federal funding for abortion was coming from an ‘undecided voter’? for fuck’s sake are we even still talking about abortion? the plane is about to crash into the goddamn mountain here; can’t we put off this parlour room musing about christ and ethics until we don’t have any real problems? maybe when one out of eight of our fellow americans isn’t fucking living in poverty we can argue about when a fetus is a life and whether it even matters anymore. right now, if you are basing your vote on someone’s opinion about abortion – for or against- then your priorities are sociopathic.
5. to the woman in the red jacket who finished off the questioning, we raise our tea in salute. we noticed that bush did not shake your hand, for that you are toasted a second time.
6. ‘liberal’ doesn’t mean anything, anymore
7. just look at kerry’s response to the supreme court appointment question, and tell us if that does not clinch the decision for you.

here is the aforementioned quote concerning the supreme court, to save you the trouble of rereading the transcript.

john kerry: A few years ago, when he came to office, the president said, these are his words: What we need are some good conservative judges on the courts. And he said also that his two favorite justices are Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas. So you get a pretty good sense of where he’s heading if he were to appoint somebody.

Now, here’s what I believe. I don’t believe we need a good conservative judge and I don’t believe we need a good liberal judge. I don’t believe we need a good judge of that kind of definition on either side. I subscribe to the Justice Potter Stewart standard. He was a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. And he said the mark of a good judge, a good justice, is that when you’re reading their decision, their opinion, you can’t tell if it’s written by a man or woman, a liberal or a conservative, a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian. You just know you’re reading a good judicial decision.

What I want to find if I am privileged to have the opportunity to do it and the Supreme Court of the United States is at stake in this race, ladies and gentlemen, the future of things that matter to you in terms of civil rights: what kind of Justice Department you’ll have, whether we’ll enforce the law. Will we have equal opportunity? Will women’s rights be protected? Will we have equal pay for women, which is going backwards? Will a woman’s right to choose be protected? These are our constitutional rights.

And I want to make sure we have judges who interpret the Constitution of the United States according to the law.

for the sake of equal time, we have included bush’s quote regarding the supreme court and personal opinion. the fact that that the Pledge of Allegiance is not mentioned in the constitution, and is therefore not above being destroyed by the supreme court, not withstanding, it is baffling to us how bush is able to state that he is opposed to personal opinion entering judicial decisions then give his personal opinion on the pledge as a test for who may be a justice, without actually having the lobes of his brain move in opposite directions. in any event, as stated, you can not strictly interpret the constitution concerning the pledge, because the pledge ain’t in there! the issue is about the trappings of a state religion, not about the pledge. as bush might say when someone says they will spend responsibly: ‘it doesn’t make any sense’.

george w bush: I would pick somebody who would not allow their personal opinion to get in the way of the law. I would pick somebody who would strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States.

Uh, let me give you a couple of examples I guess of the kind of person I wouldn’t pick. I wouldn’t pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn’t be said in a school because it had the words ‘under God’ in it. I think that’s an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into the decision-making process, as opposed to strict interpretation of the Constitution.

~ brilliant:

The Pentagon said yesterday it was investigating cockpit video footage that shows American pilots attacking and killing a group of apparently unarmed Iraqi civilians. – independent

~ we are skeptical about the feasibility of the ‘boycott for equality’ [w] plan and about the reliability of amercians when it comes to remembering not to purchase things, but we do like gays and we do like reduction of consumption, so we figure we”ll take part. all you have to do is refrain from buying crap and/or take all your money from an atm (deposit it the next day). there are more particulars at the site.
our skepticism arises when we acknowledge that we will still be buying the same amount of goods for our debate-party vegan dip; we will just have to do so on thursday night.

~ we also acknowledge that it is lame and otherwise disappointing that john barrow has declared his support for federal jurisdiction over marriage. again georgia has a choice between a piece of shit republican and a piece of shit democrat. yet people still wonder why the angry red planet votes for nader.

~ let’s not shit ourselves, but more on the aforementioned possibility that georgia might bring it, backed up with numbers, is written up in creative loafing [w]

~ the vice presidential debate makes our brains hurt. it seems contradictory that cheney says that marriage is an issue for the states, then immediately criticizes massachusetts, a state, for advancing marriage in that state. anyway, cheney did not say much that we agreed with, but there was one thing in which we can’t find fault:

CHENEY: They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton.

we agree that you should peep out the site he recommends. trust us: http://www.factcheck.com

also, we hope that ms. ifill is forced to forfeit what they paid her for moderating; whatever it was, it was too much.

~ we hain’t even heard the vice presidential debates yet, but the bush campaign expects its followers to run around the internet and talk radio tonight , giving a positive assessment of whatever they haven’t heard, as evidenced by a letter [w] they have just sent. it should be expected that the kerry campaign is doing the same thing; if not, their followers are getting ready to do it on their own. in fact, the mere mention of this strategy and of a link [w] to a list of sites, could lead one to believe that the angry red planet encourages the petty involvement in exchanges on online forums and flooding of online polls.

~ “The people who told us That two and two is ten Are now trying to tell us That two and two is five” –bbragg.

thanks to paul bremer for informing us that there were not enough troops in iraq to keep the peace and to prevent looting and the ensuing insurgency. even if john kerry hadn’t told us this last week, most of us could tell there were not enough troops after the invasion because we noticed that the peace was not kept whilst looting and insurgency ensued. the low number of troops was donald rumsfeld’s great idea; he spent a lot of time admonishing retired generals and armchair napoleons who said that the forces were insufficient. perhaps he will now admit that he screwed up by trashing the powell doctrine?

well, for rumsfeld’s part, he decided instead to throw in his information that “[he has] not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two” concerning Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. is not this pretty much what we learned from the new yorker and alternet and the nation and common dreams over two years ago? even teenagers in silver body paint on the streets of new york seemed to have this knowledge years before these old men in ties and jackets.

why do security moms still think that this party is competent to either pursue the war on terror or unravel the quagmire in iraq? the republicans are more interested in micromanaging the conflict with an eye on defense contractors profit margins (see bush’s debate comment that it is too expensive to inspect cargo on planes and ships for bombs or nuclear material) than in achieving victory.

~ could georgia be getting ready to bring it? it’s unlikely, as this is the home of newt gingrich and bob barr, where even our democrats give speeches at the republican national convention. nonetheless, we have atlanta’s large gay community pouring out to vote against the proposed anti-marriage amendment, and many blacks are turning out, excited to support denise majette, inhabitant of our native stone mountain and georgia’s first chance for a black woman in the senate. fortunately, georgia’s registration forms do not have affiliation indicators, and so they can not be easily trashed based on the party of the voter like they are in states such as florida.

“If you walk into our mail room, we have stacks and stacks of new forms coming in,” said Kara Sinkule, spokeswoman for Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox, who oversees elections. “It”s a great problem to have.”

Her state is on pace to see a 50 percent increase in new voters for this presidential election compared to 2000. In the past year, 371,376 new voters registered, with 87,110 new voters in September alone. And the surge grew even bigger in the first few days of October.
–msnbc

regardless of what happens next, the anecdotal evidence collected by the angry red planet during our forays into metro atlanta neighborhoods for the sake of registering voters includes many thrilling conversations concerning issues such as free trade, immigration, and the overextension of our military, which leads us to believe that folks out there are really listening in numbers great enough to allay our fears. thankfully, it seems that they haven’t fallen victim to the proven falsehoods on fox [w].

~ red state or pink state, we learned during the above mentioned forays that jehovah’s witnesses do not vote in earthly elections.

~ happy birthday to jimmy carter, georgia state senator, founder of the carter center, and author of ‘The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer’. you can break off a greeting to him at his website [w].

~ y’all know how non-partisan we are here at the angry red planet and how much contempt we have for the contrivances of electoral campaigns such as the highly orchestrated presidential debates, but how tight was the line about the cuban missle crisis and current u.s. credibility?

…We can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle.

And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, “Here, let me show you the photos.”

And DeGaulle waved them off and said, “No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me.”

How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we’ve done, in that way?
–john kerry

that is the broad view of the nation as something more than a playing field for political teams which we appreciate more – though only slightly – than localized swipes such as Kerry’s “…today, there are four to seven nuclear weapons in the hands of North Korea. That happened on this president’s watch.”

admittedly, it was nice to hear kerry acknowledge that he visits the angry red planet, as evidenced by his mention of our najaf policy.

~ it appears that there is a large group of people congregated at our neighbor’s home. they have filled the rooms and have moved onto the balcony; the volume of the stereo set which is playing recorded music has been increased accordingly. at irregular intervals, empty glass bottles marked ‘miller lite’ are thrown and clatter into the plastic container on the sidewalk. it is curious that they are not adding features to their work websites [w] at this hour.