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Josh Rosenau says that while we’re all focused on the big political stage, extremists are making their move at the local level:

One of the great ironies of politics is that the most local offices, the ones that ought to be most responsive to constituent needs, are often the least-known. Presidential elections are hotly debated, even in a state like Kansas where the outcome is fore-ordained. But a local or state school board election can be decided by a few hundred votes, yet draws substantially less interest. That apathy towards local races has made them prime targets for extremists and ideologues…

A disturbing number of local extremists wind up in Congress. Time to start paying a lot more attention.

Respectful Insolence insults chimpanzees.

Ed Brayton has a number of videos of musical comedian Roy Zimmerman. Here’s one of them:

More at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Guess who:

Our men and women in uniform love their country more than their comfort. They have never failed us, and we must not fail them. But the best intentions and the highest morale are undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, and rapidly declining readiness.

… these are signs of a military in decline and we must do something about it. The reasons are clear. Lack of equipment and material. Undermaning of units. Overdeployment. Not enough time for family. Soldiers who are on food stamps, and soldiers who are poorly housed.

That was candidate George W. Bush back on August 21, 2000.

Now he threatens to veto bills calling for the troops to be fully trained and equipped when they ship out to Iraq.

If the Democrats had a time machine and could bring the George W. Bush of 2000 into the present day, they might suppose he would switch parties to join the chorus of voices criticising the way this administration has failed our military. But they would be disappointed. The Bush of 2000 was only kidding when he said “we must not fail them.”

Surely the total disaster of this administration isn’t something that happens by accident.

(Via Crooks and Liars.)

Al-Jazeera television is an influential voice around the world, but the English language version is difficult to find it on cable or satellite TV here in the Land of the Free. Conservative groups have pressured satellite systems and cable operators not to carry the channel.

U.S. Navy Captain Frank Pascual, part of CENTCOM’s Dubai Media Team, thinks this is a mistake. On the PBS program Frontline, he said:

I’ve never been afraid of ideas. And I have no fear that any ideas brought through journalism to the United States would be something that would so harm us that we not only can’t survive it, but can’t learn something from it and do better. And it’s [the Middle East] a part of the world we need to do better in.

The problem with ideas is that they get people thinking. And once you get Americans thinking, this Administration and the rubber-stamp Republicans in Congress don’t have a chance.

Madeleine Albright last night on the Colbert Report:

I understand that there are 100 million Americans who believe in the Rapture … and that they believe that the end of the world will come that way, but Armageddon is not exactly a foreign policy.

I remember when the government worked hard to prevent the world from ending… just yet, anyway. This administration is full of bold new ideas.

Via Slashdot, voting machine manufacturer Diebold is suing Massachusetts for picking a competitor’s product over their own.

Diebold Election Systems Inc., one of the country’s largest manufacturers of voting machines, is scheduled to argue in court today that the Office of the Secretary of State wrongly picked another company to supply thousands of voting machines for the disabled.

Diebold says it will ask a judge to overturn the selection of AutoMARK, a Diebold business competitor, because the office of Secretary of State William F. Galvin failed to choose the best machine.

…

[A lawyer representing Diebold] said Diehold was so stunned it did not get the contract that it now believes “it’s worth the time and money” of going to court to challenge the contract’s award, even though the company at this stage has no hard evidence of unfair treatment.

…

“We want a judge to either order the contract awarded to Diebold, based on his review of the proposals, but if he does not want to go that far, to at least order a reopening of the competition,” he said.

Weisberg said the company is not alleging any improprieties by the secretary of state’s office. Instead, it is saying the office acted in good faith but made a mistake in the selection.

This isn’t Diebold’s first controversy. For example, a former CEO raised campaign money for George W. Bush and sent out fundraising letters saying he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president” in 2004.

Looks like the paranoiacs were right. If Diebold thinks the wrong candidate has been chosen, it will stop at nothing to change the vote.

Wired has a couple “Get a Mac” parody ads from software company Novell, promoting Linux.

Via This Modern World: aren’t you glad we have an “fair and balanced” alternative to the old, biased news media?

I grew up mostly in Bellefontaine, Ohio, about sixty miles northwest of Columbus.

It was a quiet little town. We would get excited whenever Bellefontaine was mentioned on one of the Dayton or Columbus TV stations — that was the Big Time! — and frustrated if they pronounced it Bell-fon-TAYNE. We pronounced it Bell-FOUN-tin.

We were proud of our little town. We had the first concrete street in America — a test of whether concrete made sense as a paving material — and the shortest street in the world. (Wikipedia says the “shortest street” claim is in dispute.)

Bellefontaine is near the highest point in Ohio — which is also the highest point between the Allegheny and the Rocky Mountains. When I lived there, the two local radio stations were WOHP (Ohio’s Highest Point) and WTOO (Top Of Ohio), so you can tell we were proud of that, too.

The Bellefontaine Opera House opened in 1880, and when I was growing up I was told that, in its time, many prominent performers had played there, including the great W.C. Fields.

But maybe I got that last part wrong.

I just got this collection of W.C. Fields movies and watched The Old Fashioned Way. Except for an early train sequence, the whole movie is set in Bellefontaine, Ohio. Fields is The Great McGonigle, head of a theatrical troupe who perform at the Bellefontaine Opera House. I thought it might be a Bellefontaine in some other state, or a purely imaginary Bellefontaine, but the address on a letter delivered to McGonigle at the end of the movie removed all doubt.

What a surprise! What a thrill! I’m sitting on Top of Ohio! This is the Big Time!

I’m only sorry that, through the whole movie, everybody except one Pullman porter pronounced it Bell-fon-TAYNE.

Drat!

GrrlScientist has a TV exchange between Diane Sawyer and Tony Snow:

Diane Sawyer: Why not let Karl Rove go up there and show he has nothing to hide? Testify, under oath, and with a transcript? Let everyone see it?

Tony Snow: This is what I love, this Karl Rove obsession. Let’s back off. First, the question is: Do you want Karl Rove on TV, or do you want the truth?

Diane Sawyer: Why can’t you have both?

I’m surprised. Apparently Diane Sawyer doesn’t know who Karl Rove is.

Via Bob Geiger’s weekly round-up of political cartoons, here’s Nick Anderson’s look back at four years in Iraq. This group covers 2002-2005.

Via Atrios, Iraq War veteran and Democratic Congressman Patrick Murphy:

We had a saying in the army: Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Well, the past four years, the Republican-led Congress followed.

They had their chance, and they followed lock-step as this president led our country into an open-ended commitment refereeing a religious civil war.

For the last four years this Republican Congress followed lock-steps as my fellow soldiers continued to die in Iraq without a clear mission, without benchmarks to determine success, without a clear timeline for coming home.

…

To those on the other side of the aisle who are opposed, I want to ask you the same questions that my gunner asked me when I was leading a convoy up and down Ambush Alley one day. He said, “Sir, what are we doin’ over here? What’s our mission? When are these Iraqis gonna come off the sidelines and stand up for their own country?”

So to my colleagues across the aisle: your taunts about “supporting our troops” ring hollow if you are still unable to answer those questions now, four years later.

Trex takes the long view and says maybe we shouldn’t be hasty: (Warning: strong language.)

Given that the Republican Party has roughly the same prognosis as Terri Shiavo in the upcoming elections and that we may see the GOP brand sullied and disgraced for a generation as a result of the Bush Administration, I think we may be acting a bit hastily on this proposed roll-back of Executive Powers. … Just think what President Obama could do with those powers. …

Or let’s say President John Edwards has just been sworn in and he decides it’s time for a little payback. He picks up the phone and calls his people at the NSA and says, “I need to see all of Bill Donohue’s cell-phone records, taxes, credit card transactions, and checking account records for the last ten years. Oh, and freeze his assets. I think he may be involved in terrorist activity.”

…

“But please!” Donohue would beg, “Let me speak to an attorney! Let me at least know what charges are being brought against me!”

Nope. Too bad, so sad, but all that went out the window when the Bush administration gutted habeas corpus.

Or say that President Hillary Clinton is tired of Tom DeLay’s lip. So she decides to have his money-laundering trial moved to a military tribunal at the Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay. No jury, no cameras, no witnesses, and the tribunal won’t kick off until, oh, 2012, or whenever we get around to it. It would be perfect.

See? Life with a Democrat Unitary Executive could be great! President Kucinich could rule by decree … He could have Bush and Cheney imprisoned in an undisclosed location indefinitely! And wouldn’t that be fun?

So, please … lay off on the challenges to Bush’s god-like powers of the Imperial Presidency. He’s only going to be around for a few more months, and then once he’s gone, we’ll be in charge. And what use will due process, checks and balances, and the Constitution be to us then?

Democrats, embrace you inner autocrat! You have nothing to lose but your souls!

And it might just be a way to get more Republicans to stand up for Constitutional rights.

George W. Bush today denounced a House vote to limit the Iraq War as an act of political theater.

If there’s anything George W. Bush hates, it’s political theater.