(From http://www.Americablog.org and http://waldo.jaquith.org/...)

Chris Craddock is a young, ultra right-wing Norquist accolyte who is running for the VA House of Delegates in the 67th district (western Fairfax).  This seat has been held by Republicans for a long time, but Craddock defeated the current incumbent, Gary Reese, in a primary challenge this year.

Mr. Craddock visited a high-school class recently, and apparently in front of this friendly group of students felt "relaxed and comfortable... it seemed like he wasn't worried about offending us. He didn't have a speech prepared and was very open."

So he cheerfully let them know what he really thinks about blacks and gays.

(via First Draft.  -- Home page)

The ACLU has just released the autopsy reports of 44 detainees who died in US custody in Iraq and Afganistan since 2001.  The reports were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and scanned versions have been posted on the ACLU website here.

The news is grim.  In all, 21 of the 44 were listed as homicides.  The cause of death is varied, and to read the list is most disheartening:

A current Mason-Dixon poll has Kaine at 42% of likely voters, Jerry Kilgore at 44%, Potts at 5%, and 9% undecided.

So, according to this, Kilgore is ahead by 2.  He has increased his lead (from 1 point to 2 points) since the September poll.  That's bad.

Here is a story that should shed more light on the wisdom of the 50-state strategy.

Some Virginia newpapers have just released a state-wide poll they commissioned from the Mason-Dixon group.  The bottom line: Bush is tanking in Virginia.

A lot of people have noted that David Paulison, the newly appointed head of FEMA, is indeed Duct Tape Man, the Homeland Security official who suggested on  February 10th, 2003 that we all stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape to prepare ourselves for possible imminent chemical or biological attack.  Panic buying of the stuff ensued, and the warning later turned out to be essentially based on a figment of DHS's imagination.

Everyone remembers that as a silly episode that called DHS's competence into question.  What most people don't remember about that is that it provided a huge windfall to a big Republican contributor, calling into question possible ulterior motives as well.

In case you're not familiar with him, Arthur Silber is a libertarian blogger whose site is called The Light of Reason.  (Pretentious name!  I know.)  A lot of people link to him frequently; for example, he's a favorite of Atrios'.

He's, for my money, one of the most eloquent and insightful writers on the subject of the war and repressive government in general.  I have a hunch that if we had a Democratic government he'd be ragging on the Dems non-stop, but as it is he has been passionately exposing the outrages of the Bush administration and right-wing, neocon, fundamentalist elements.  I find him one of the best sources to turn to for commentary.  For example, he was the first person I saw referring to the religious right's objection to HPV innoculation, and his post on that was brilliant.  I recently cited him on the "Ledeen doctrine" -- I've never seen a more eloquent or striking take-down of the neo-con mind.

Here's an op-ed draft that I submitted to one of our leading dailies on Friday regarding the Rove slander.  If I don't hear from them today, I'll try another paper.  There are no original ideas in this op-ed, but I tried to write it to be very, very punchy and convincing to someone who does not identify himself/herself as a liberal.

I do think that we need to fight on all fronts this slander that liberals don't care about terrorism or national security.  In fact, liberals have been right on national security over and over and the right-wingers in power have been wrong, making crushing mistakes that make the country less safe.  We need to take every opportunity to make the public know about it.  LTE and op-eds may help in this.

The text of my op-ed is below the fold.  Let's see what you think.

We all know of the bizarre firestorm of right-wing rage that followed Sen. Dick Durbin's remarks on abuse of US detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Sen. Durbin's remarks have been twisted to mean that he thinks our soldiers are nothing more than Nazi's, when if you read the actual text it is clear that in fact he is really saying something simple almost everyone agrees with: The torture of detainees is un-American.  It is inconsistent with our values and beliefs.  We expect it from dictatorships but we don't expect it from Americans, because that is not the kind of country we have.

This is, in fact, not only something the vast majority of Americans would agree with - - it is also something that one G.W. Bush said himself quite recently in connection with Abu Ghraib.

I saw this in the local video store, and got quite a chuckle.  It unintentionally expressed a lot of what I have been feeling about a certain nominee for a certain important government job:

This is actually a movie about a painter named John Bolton who specializes in eroticized and macabre images.  Clearly -- not the same guy.  I'd actually like to rent the flick; sounds entertaining.

But I thought you might like the poster for its unintended meaning.

Folks:

I learn from the AFL-CIO that one of the big front groups lobbying for Social Security privatisation, the "Alliance for Worker Retirement Security," is heavily supported by my own bank, Wachovia of NC.  The info is here.  You can click through the AFL-CIO's action alert and send a message straight through to the CIO of Wachovia protesting this, or you can go through the Wachovia site's web page and email them yourself.

I've been hearing a lot lately about Democratic 'negativity.' A number of people have suggested that as bad as Bush's Social Security proposals are, the Democrats are at fault because they haven't proposed an alternative. Joe Klein on the Daily Show last night said that the Democrats are sounding like David Spade in the Capital One commercial (always saying "no).

The Gonzalez nomination is one excellent example of how Democrats should be able to show off their true values and proudly stand up to the moral decay of this administration.  As a result,
this made my blood boil:

Having been rudely reminded by Chris Bowers of the need to "own" the party, I thought I should offer the Senator some input.

Kos presented a table on the front page on teen childbearing in Red and Blue states.  A number of people pointed out that it's rather more interesting to look at teen pregnancy, because differences in childbearing rates could be affected by differences in abortion rates.  I dug the figures on pregnancy up from the CDC, and produced a similar table.

Please note that I don't think this is a useful thing to do so that people can laugh or sneer at people who live in one region of the country or another. People prone to big social problems tend to be poor, disadvantaged folks and we definitely always want to be on their side, regardless of how they vote.  The reason to do this kind of exercise is twofold.  (Continued after flip.)

This
article, by David Bernstein in the Boston Phoenix, describes in calm detail how the Republicans messed with the vote in Ohio in public, low-tech ways, and it attempts to quantify the effect on the outcome.  The author argues that it's highly plausible that more Ohioans tried to vote for Kerry than for Bush.  There are eye-opening details I haven't seen elsewhere.  

For example, everyone expected high turnout, but the Republicans in charge of the process reduced the number of polling stations.  They used the excuse that they were assuming that with new high-tech voting machines the voting would go much more quickly, but in fact, although the state got $133 million from the Federal government to upgrade their machines, the new machines were never bought!  Blackwell gave the excuse that he didn't trust security in the new machines.

People get caught up in the latest job-creation numbers, and this Friday is going to be no exception. But it's really important that people not be allowed to forget about the big picture in job creation.  I have downloaded the basic employment figures for the last four presidential terms from the BLS website and graphed them.  When you do this, the picture you get is just striking. It needs no comment.  My guess is that if every swing voter saw this graph, then Kerry would win in a landslide.