Happy Hour Discurso

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

This is it. The last weekend before the farce that is the McCain campaign ends forever, one way or the other. The last weekend before an election that could very well break the back of the Republicon party. And what are Republicons doing?

Acting like nitwits and getting the kiss o’ death.

The biggest news today, o’ course, is Darth Cheney coming out for McCain:

George W. Bush has been in hiding lately, but Dick Cheney has been secluded in his undisclosed location even more than usual this campaign season.

It was a pleasant surprise, then, to see the vice president pop up today to announce his support for John McCain. “I believe the right leader for this moment in history is Senator John McCain,” Cheney said, adding, “I’m delighted to support John McCain and I’m pleased that he’s chosen a running mate with executive talent, toughness and common sense, our next vice president in Sarah Palin.”

And given Cheney’s track record, he couldn’t possibly be wrong, right?

Far be it from me to question the wisdom of the Almighty Cheney. I merely point your attention to the right, where you can see an artist’s impression of the effect this endorsement will have on the McCain campaign.

Obama, as you can imagine, is enjoying this news immensely:

Barack Obama, speaking in Pueblo, Colorado, today, had this response:

President Bush is sitting out the last few days before the election. But earlier today, Dick Cheney came out of his undisclosed location and hit the campaign trail. He said that he is, and I quote, “delighted to support John McCain.”

I’d like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement because he really earned it. That endorsement didn’t come easy. Senator McCain had to vote 90 percent of the time with George Bush and Dick Cheney to get it.

But it was really worth it, wasn’t it John?

Hello? John?

Oh, that’s right. He wasn’t available today. He’s too busy campaigning in states that voted for Bush last time round:

The remaining schedules for all the candidates are pretty revealing.

Today, John McCain is in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Sarah Palin is hitting Florida, North Carolina And Virginia.

On Monday, the final day of campaigning, McCain will hit Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Mexico, Nevada, and finally, his home state of Arizona, according to a McCain campaign memo blasted out last night. Palin will visit Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada and Alaska.

As you can see, this means that with the sole exception of McCain’s visit to Pennsylvania, McCain and Palin are devoting their time to a dozen states that are either battlegrounds carried by Bush or were previously reliable red states. (No word on tomorrow’s schedule yet.)

Ask Obama how many Kerry states he’s campaigning in before Election Day. That’s right – none.

Well, when John gets back from attempting to defend states he shouldn’t have had to defend, I’m sure we discover he’s overjoyed to have Cheney’s endorsement at this critical moment.

So I’m sure you’re all dying to know what 11th-hour Hail Mary Smear the Republicons are going to throw in a desperate attempt to stave off almost certain catastrophe. Wonder no more:

Apparently, the political story of the day is about the residency status of Barack Obama’s half-aunt, a Kenyan woman named Zeituni Onyango, who has been living in public housing in Boston despite having a U.S. immigration judge deny her asylum request four years ago.

This is fascinating because … well, actually I have no idea why anyone would find this even remotely interesting.

What is interesting, however, is how this story came to the public’s attention.

Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one a federal law enforcement official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release. […]

A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Kelly Nantel, said the government does not comment on an individual’s citizenship status or immigration case.

No, but the government does illegally leak information about an individual’s citizenship status or immigration case when administration officials decide it might influence a presidential election.

We expect no less from the Bush regime. Lawless to the end. And desperate enough to throw illegal half-aunties at the voting public as if that inane detail is enough to destroy Obama’s chances for election.

If that’s the best they’ve got, they’re in sorry fucking shape. And here’s the sweetest thing: their desperation could land them in vats of hot water:

The leaking of information about the immigration status of Barack Obama’s aunt appears to directly violate guidelines for confidentiality laid out in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by TPMmuckraker.

As we reported earlier, ICE has begun an internal probe into the leak to the Associated Press, which revealed early this morning that Obama’s aunt “is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago.”

The memo, written in 2005 by Joseph Langlois, director of the Asylum Division in the Office of Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations, reads in part:

The federal regulations at 8 CFR 208.6 generally prohibit the disclosure to third parties of information contained in or pertaining to asylum applications, credible fear determinations, and reasonable fear determinations–including information contained in RAPS or APSS1–except under certain limited circumstances. These regulations safeguard information that, if disclosed publicly, could subject the claimant to retaliatory measures by government authorities or non-state actors in the event that the claimant is repatriated, or endanger the security of the claimant’s family members who may still be residing in the country of origin.

According to established guidance, confidentiality is breached when information contained in or pertaining to an asylum application (including information contained in RAPS or APSS) is disclosed to a third party in violation of the regulations, and the unauthorized disclosure is of a nature that allows the third party to link the identity of the applicant to: (1) the fact that the applicant has applied for asylum; (2) specific facts or allegations pertaining to the individual asylum claim contained in an asylum application; or (3) facts or allegations that are sufficient to give rise to a reasonable inference that the applicant has applied for asylum.

It’s worth noting again that we don’t know for certain the leak came from ICE, since people at other government agenicies could have had access to the information.

Still, from the available evidence, it appears ICE is the most likely source. And Dan Kowalski, a leading immigration law expert, told TPMmuckraker that there’s “no question” the leak violated ICE’s guidelines as laid out in the memo.

You can also bet your ass that any other department this leak might have come from will have very similar guidelines. Rep. John Conyers would like some heads on a platter, please:

Rep. John Conyers, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has responded to the Bush administration’s leak of information on the immigration status of Obama’s aunt.

In a hastily written letter, Conyers makes the same connection that we did with the administration’s leaking of information on the FBI’s nationwide investigation of ACORN. Both leaks went to the Associated Press, and appear to have been done for political purposes.

There’s some other news in the letter in regard to that leak about ACORN. Conyers writes:

[I]n recent weeks law enforcement sources leaked information about an alleged investigation of a
community services organization, a leak that the Department of Justice informs me is now under investigation by the Department’s Office of the Inspector General and Professional Responsibility.

So, two internal DOJ offices are looking into the ACORN leak. That’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.

It certainly will. And, seeing as how it’s my turn to order, I’d like filet of Mike Connell, with a side of Take That You Fucking Bastards:

Republican computer expert Mike Connell, who has been implicated as being at the center of vote fraud in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004, has been ordered by an Ohio judge to appear for a deposition on Monday, the day before the election!

This takes out one of the GOP’s most important players – at the most crucial time imaginable!

The full story is available on The Brad Blog here.

It’s looking very much like Karl Rove is going down with this one, too. The Republicons’ attempts to disenfranchise voters and steal elections have finally led to some consequences. How sweet the taste!

Bon appétit!

Happy Hour Discurso
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That's One Way of Doing It

Ian Welsh at Firedoglake, ladies and gentlemen:

At one point I even had a huge fight with my father over the issue of gay marriage and didn’t speak to him for almost 6 months as a result. (He wound up thinking I must be gay since I’m not married and if I weren’t how could I care so much about the issue? I let him think so, since it forced him to rethink his beliefs about gays. My mother, needless to say, did not approve of my methods, but my Dad is now pro gay marriage.)

You know, it’s almost too bad my parents don’t have a problem with equal rights for same-sex couples, because now I so want to emulate Ian!

What’s hiding in the humor of that story is the fact that it’s harder to hate when you know someone who’s gay, or black, or an atheist, or any other disparaged group. It’s tough to condemn someone you love. It’s hard to champion taking their rights away.

Good. It should be.

If you have any friends or family members who are planning to vote away a same-sex couple’s rights this Tuesday, now might be a great time to pull an Ian Welsh.

That's One Way of Doing It

Last Hurrah

Did you all have splendid Halloweens? I do hope so, especially as I’m about to rub your faces in my celebrations.

I had a delightful evening at a live Rocky Horror Picture Show. Local theatre doesn’t get the credit it deserves, damn it. The cast and crew were awesome, a naughty great time was had by all, and I got to meet one of our cantina regulars who’s also one of my favorite bloggers. I was too busy having fun to ask if he keeps his identity a strict secret, so I’ll let him out himself in comments if he so desires. Let’s just say for now, my darlings, that getting to meet one of you live in the flesh was awesome.

Especially in the context. I do loves me some Rocky Horror. I just miss Zog. Zog and I used to get nasty in public. (Among the many joys of having a gay friend is that the two of you can engage in the dirtiest of dirty dancing without having to worry if things are being misconstrued. Which is how we ended up on the stage after the show making even long-time Rocky Horror fans do a double-take. Heh.)

What I love about Seattle crowds is that audience members and cast alike ad-lib political barbs and hurl them happily at Republicons. We got our digs in. BUSH is now the official 4-letter word meaning asshole. Damn, I love this audience!

I even got to hang out with Gandalf:

Gandalf and Death of the Endless… combining my two all-time favorite fantasy characters in one go. Brilliant!

Do you like my costume? I hope you like my costume. It took me bloody ages to get the makeup right, and it’ll take ages more to get the gel out of my hair.


That was actually what the hair was supposed to do. It only did it when I was looking down. My hair, you see, is utterly unimpressed by styling products. I swear I could tease it up with superglue, and it would still ease back to its usual position within half an hour. But hey, the eyes turned out well:

So did the cardboard-and-tinfoil ankh I had to whip up at the last minute because my own dear ankh wasn’t where I thought it was, a sad fact I discovered far too late to remedy via the usual means.

So, that’s me as Death, and I got to sing a lot of Rocky Horror songs and meet excellent people and have a good session at the bar afterward. That was it. My last hurrah.

Because, you see, it is now November 1st.

It is (drumroll of doom please) NaNo time.

For the next four weeks, I shall be stuffed in my house, planted in my chair, getting too little sleep and courting carpal tunnel to write a complete book by the end of the month whilst keeping this blog alive. This means you’ll probably get some rather skimpy Sunday Sensational Science posts, hit-and-run political pieces, and a crap-ton of book excerpts.

My heart-sister NP and several of our cantina regulars are putting themselves through the same hell. Wish them survival, sanity and success, not necessarily in that order.

And have fun for the lot of us, will you? We’ll be too busy.

Last Hurrah

Right There With Ya

I know how you mean, Steve:

An astute reader named chrenson raised a good observation yesterday.

Steve, I think I’m sensing some desperation in your closing comments on these posts. Coming up with new ways to express how very f***ed up the McCain campaign has become must be one hell of a burden. Especially since each instance of bulls**t way outdoes the one before.

Chrenson’s right. It’s one thing to point out some of the absurdities of the presidential campaign, but it’s altogether more challenging to find different adjectives that sufficiently capture the madness emanating from McCain campaign headquarters. Reading today that McCain is going after Obama on tax breaks for Big Oil is just the latest evidence that the Republican presidential ticket is engaged in some kind of satirical performance art, and I’m just not in on the joke.

I’ve noticed, over these past few weeks, that Steve Benen’s legendary good temper has become a bit frayed round the edges. Nearly every post now ends with a scramble through the thesaurus to find a fresh new way to call McCain the most dishonest, disgusting, depressing, disgruntled, disorganized dumbfuck ever to disgrace a presidential ballot.

I think all of us are having a hard time coming up with the words to express just how we feel about this fucktarded former flyboy.

Bush infuriates me, and I know he does the same for Steve. So I can imagine that our emotions are running on parallel tracks here as we both stare with jaws agape at something we never thought possible: a presidential ticket that makes Bush/Cheney seem like a mere prelude to catastrophe. It’s really fucking hard to find the right words to express your horror and outrage, your contempt and disgust, with the two assclowns currently bringing out the worst in the Republicon party.

And trying to keep on top of the relentless fuckery coming out of that campaign is a task beyond an army of bloggers. Chrenson called it: it is a burden. It feels like a gigantic leaden weight pounded repeatedly into the chest. Add to that the fact that Republicons everywhere are clammoring to outdo their candidate in spectacular assclownery, and it’s enough to make a blogger burst into tears. How do you sort out the stuff that needs highlighting when all of it is equally noxious?

I’m lucky. I don’t get paid for this shit. I don’t have editors breathing down my neck, and I don’t have an audience of thousands. I can take a break, take a breath, and divert my attention elsewhere for a post or two for the sake of my own sanity.

Steve Benen, however, cannot.

And so, it is with the utmost gratitude and sympathy that I raise my glass high, and say:

“Steve, and all of you political bloggers treading madly in this sea of insanity hoping to stay afloat: you’ve almost made it to the island of reason. We’re ready to pull you ashore. Thank you for doing the impossible.”

Salud.

Right There With Ya