QUOTES OF THE DAY

”You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq,” he said.”

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)(Via Vicki Assavero)

A DIEBOLD PROBE AT LAST
CORRUPTION PERVASIVE IN POLITRICKS
ALJAZEERA TURNS TEN

There is something about Halloween that captures the American imagination unleashing creativity in costume and attitude. It’s said that some women use the occasion exhibit their “inner slut” while some men become the women they always wanted to be. The annual Greenwich Village Halloween parade has become one of New York’s largest—a kind of spontaneous combustion that shows the widespread appetite for diversion from all the heaviness in this world.

It was fun, sometimes funny, a citizens spectacle with a minimum of commercial content and an emphasis on participation.

It had its political moments. My favorite slogan was “ATTACK PLAQUE. NOT IRAQ” although people marched in Bush masks and denounced the destruction of the Constitution. New Orleans was represented as was Borat. The Indy journalist Brad Will slain in Mexico was remembered. Crowds with children of all ages lined Sixth Avenue to watch each other and the whole anarchistic combination plate of every race, gender and trans gender—a perfect representation of NY at play. It was risqué, rebellious and a ritual. I remembered joining the late Cesar Chavez when he and the farm workers marched in the parade to support one of their boycotts years ago.

WATCH: Halloween has even invaded the workplace:
http://e.ccialerts.com/a/tBFR86mAHi236AkTOYUAFlgH38i/tvwk3

TRICK OR TREAT

Bush Calls Kerry Remarks Insulting to U.S. Troops

Senator Says President, Not Military, Was Target of Botched Joke
http://letters.washingtonpost.com/WART024EC325A1484F27F335973270

DEMS TOO USE MICROTARGETING IN “TURNOUT” ELECTION

The Wall Street Journal reports:

”WASHINGTON — In the final week before the election, Democrats pushing to convert their lead in the polls into control of Congress are pinning their hopes of success on an increasingly common tactic for pumping up voter turnout: microtargeting.

“The technique aims to identify potential supporters by collecting and analyzing the unprecedented amount of information now readily available — from census data to credit-card bills — to profile individual voters. Political strategists then tailor messages to entice those prospects to the polls, using the same methods marketers use to sell autos or aspirin to consumers.

In this tight election year, microtargeting could make the difference in important House and Senate races in states such as Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Alexander Gage, president and founder of TargetPoint Consulting, an Alexandria, Va., microtargeting firm that works for the Republican Party, estimates that successful microtargeting can bring congressional campaigns an additional 5,000 to 10,000 votes, a number that could be decisive in a House race. “Politics is always won and lost at the margins,” he says.

DIEBOLD: CAN WE TRUST THEIR VOTING MACHINES?

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/11/13/8393084/index.htm?postversion=2006103014

THE IRAQ DIMENSION

With 103 Americans dead this month alone in Iraq, some Democrats are beginning to rethink their stance. Democrats.com suggests that at the rate things are going, and the direction we are going in, we could be there for DECADES:

”After millions of words about Iraq, it all comes down to one word:

Decades.

That’s from the Washington Post’s Baghdad reporter on 10/31/06:

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., predicted last week that Iraqi security forces would be able to take control of the country in 12 to 18 months. But several days spent with American units training the Iraqi police illustrated why those soldiers on the ground believe it may take decades longer than Casey’s assessment.

Decades. Why decades?

Seventy percent of the Iraqi police force has been infiltrated by militias, primarily the Mahdi Army, according to Shaw and other military police trainers. Police officers are too terrified to patrol enormous swaths of the capital…

.
http://democrats.com/decades

ONE SOLDIER AGAINST AN EMPIRE
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=134536

NY TIMES: Iraqi PM Demands Pullback; U.S. Lifts Baghdad Cordon

NY TIMES: THE ROAD TO CHAOS
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/world/middleeast/01military.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

POLITRICKS—THE SEWER IN WASHINGTON

1. Money trails lead to Bush judges

By Will Evans

A four-month investigation reveals that dozens of federal judges gave contributions to President Bush and top Republicans who helped place them on the bench.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15451.htm

2. The Worst Congress Ever

By Matt Taibbi

How our national legislature has become a stable of thieves and perverts — in five easy steps .
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15453.htm

ITS NEWS IN THE UK, BUT NOT HERE: Nuke secrets stolen

THE secrets of Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent are feared stolen, the Sunday Express can reveal.

It is claimed they disappeared from a high-security base in the US.

CIA and FBI agents launched an inquiry after top-secret material was found under a mattress in a caravan near the base during a drugs raid.

Security services fear the material includes details of Britain’s Trident submarine-launched missiles, as well as other nuclear weapons.

Under a pact negotiated during the Cold War, British secrets are kept at the base. The caravan was used by a known dealer who sold drugs to staff at the base in New Mexico…

http://express.lineone.net/news_detail.html?sku=630

CNN: NORTH KOREA WANTS SANCTIONS DROPPED

”North Korea agreed to return to the nuclear negotiating table because it wants to get financial sanctions lifted, a spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry says. In a written statement, he said the move was made “on the premise that the issue of lifting financial sanctions will be discussed and settled.”

BBC: “Hezbollah leader Sheikh Nasrallah says “serious” talks on a prisoner exchange with Israel are under way.

MILITARY MADNESS: THE LATEST
By Joe Dunphy:

” While the commercial news media are covering the velvet-glove aspects of renewed 6 party talks on nuclear issues with North Korea, the noontime TV coverage today did NOT cover the iron fist that was front-page news in Iran, Pakistan, and
Afghanistan.

Iran Daily reports that there was a aerial bombing of a madrassa school in Khar,Pakistan, killing 80. Local clerics claim that the governments of Pakistan, likely assisted by the US, ordered and carried out the attack, including the use of US made Predator drones. The government of Pakistan asserts that the religious school was linked to al Queda, and was sending young men locally and into nearby Afghanistan in opposition to the Taliban and the Pakistani government forces.

“The incident reportedly led to anti-Bush demonstrations in Pakistan, as well as Iran. The unrest caused Prince Charles to cancel a key part of his visit to Pakistan.

As tensions heat up, standard caveats need to be repeated, like warnings on the packages of cigarettes. Governments have been bribing journalists to plant stories, or slant them for propaganda purposes. This is not an eyewitness report. Nevertheless, seasoned press-watchers are looking to see if there is any trip-wire event that can be used as an incident to call for another Gulf-of-Tonkin-like resolution from Congress. If true, the bombing of a religious school so close to the end of Ramadan is likely to inflame Muslim reaction; but only the naive would ignore the real role of some madrassas in promoting anti-Western violence. A responsible press would do well to verify any reports that could lead to war. But with so many networks having cut foreign coverage by two-thirds, the corporate press is a thin reed on which to base hopes of competent and professional coverage.

ARE WE AT THE CLIMATE CHANGE “TIPPING POINT?”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18618