A mayoral race to follow....

San Francisco's race for mayor is too close to call, but Supervisor Matt Gonzalez has a small lead among those most likely to vote Dec. 9, according to a poll released Friday by CBS 5-TV.

The poll, taken earlier this week by SurveyUSA of New Jersey, gave Gonzalez a surprising 49 to 47 percent lead over Supervisor Gavin Newsom among those certain to vote in the runoff. Among probable voters, Newsom had a 46 percent to 43 percent advantage. Both results are within the poll's margin of error.

For those who don't know it, Gonzalez is a Green Party candidate, while Newsom is the designated Democratic heir to outgoing Mayor Willie Brown.

Brown has disappointed and alienated many of San Francisco's liberal voters with his pro-business stance.

On the other hand, while San Francisco has no viable Republican party to speak of, there remains a staunch corps of conservative voters who may push Newsom over the top.

Complete story here.

This stinks to high heaven and beyond....

It is an unusual charity brochure: a 13-page document, complete with pictures of fireworks and a golf course, that invites potential donors to give as much as $500,000 to spend time with Tom DeLay during the Republican convention in New York City next summer — and to have part of the money go to help abused and neglected children.

Representative DeLay, who has both done work for troubled children and drawn criticism for his aggressive political fund-raising in his career in Congress, said through his staff that the entire effort was fundamentally intended to help children. But aides to Mr. DeLay, the House majority leader from Texas, acknowledged that part of the money would go to pay for late-night convention parties, a luxury suite during President Bush's speech at Madison Square Garden and yacht cruises.

And so campaign finance watchdogs say Mr. DeLay's effort can be seen as, above all, a creative maneuver around the recently enacted law meant to limit the ability of federal officials to raise large donations known as soft money.

"They are using the idea of helping children as a blatant cover for financing activities in connection with a convention with huge unlimited, undisclosed, unregulated contributions," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a Washington group that helped push through the recent overhaul of the campaign finance laws.

Other Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon. Senator Bill Frist, R-TN and Senate majority leader, is planning a concert and reception in conjunction with the convention to supposedly benefit--get this--AIDS charities.

How's he going to square that with his homophobic consitutuents?

These guys truly have no shame.

Complete story here.

Yes...!

I wish these victories were more frequent.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 — After almost 40 hours of wearying, temper-fraying debate, Senate Democrats succeeded today in blocking three of President Bush's nominees to federal appeals courts, and they appeared to be in good position to block more nominations.

The Democrats stymied the nomination of Judge Priscilla Owen of the Texas Supreme Court for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which sits in New Orleans; Judge Carolyn Kuhl of California for the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, and Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

[...]

The White House reacted with anger. "Once again, a partisan minority of senators has thwarted the will of the majority and stood in the way of voting on superb judicial nominees," President Bush said in a statement issued by his spokesman, Scott McClellan. "These obstructionist tactics are shameful, unfair and have become all too common."

What a baby.

The Senate has approved 168 of Bush's right-wing judicial nominations and blocked only six of the most extreme.

Six!

Hardly obstructionist. Unless you're a spoiled rich kid from Texas used to getting you way by any hook or by crook.

Full story here.

Following Bush's footsteps....

We have a president in the Whitehouse who spends more time on vacation and fundraising than he does on the job and now a governor in California who kicks off his inaugural term with a family vacation in Hawaii.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - For many days, aides have portrayed California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites) as hard at work in meetings on his new administration which takes office on Monday.

It turns out that the actor and his wife Maria Shriver have been vacationing in Hawaii with their four children, a person close to the family told Reuters.

"They took the children off to Hawaii," he said on Wednesday, adding that the couple's kids missed some school as a result of the pre-inaugural travels.

Complete story here. (Thanks to Bob Harris over at This Modern World.)

What's the point...?

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — The commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said on Thursday that its deal with the White House for access to highly classified Oval Office intelligence reports would let the White House edit the documents before they were released to the commission's representatives.

The agreement, announced on Wednesday, has led to the first public split on the commission. Two Democrats on the 10-member panel say that the commission should have demanded full access to the intelligence summaries, known as the President's Daily Brief, and that the White House should not be allowed to determine what is relevant to the investigation.

An umbrella group of victims' families joined the criticism, saying the terms of the accord should be public.

While spokesmen for panel refused again to provide the terms, citing the sensitivity of the talks with the White House, its executive director acknowledged that the White House would be able to remove information from the reports unrelated to Al Qaeda and to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

[...]

Administration officials have acknowledged that they are concerned that intelligence reports received by Mr. Bush in the weeks before 9/11 might be construed to suggest that the White House failed to respond to evidence suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning a catastrophic attack. The White House acknowledged last year in response to news reports that a copy of the Daily Brief in August 2001 noted that Al Qaeda might use hijacked planes in an attack.

Why not end the charade and disband the commission right now?
Complete story here.

More bad news from Iraq....


You know things are bad when USA Today is more truthful than the Pentagon and the Whitehouse.

U.S. forces are losing the intelligence battle in Iraq to an increasingly organized guerrilla force that uses stealth, spies and surprise to inflict punishing casualties.

U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials say that after six months of intensifying guerrilla warfare, Iraqi insurgents know more about the U.S. and allied forces -- their style of operations, convoy routes and vulnerable targets -- than the coalition forces know about them. Indeed, U.S. intelligence has had trouble simply identifying the enemy and figuring out how many are Iraqis and how many are foreign fighters.

With local knowledge and the element of surprise on their side, the guerrillas are exploiting their intelligence edge to overcome the coalition's overwhelming military superiority. Insurgents routinely use inexpensive explosives to destroy multimillion-dollar assets, including tanks and helicopters. Using surveillance and inside information, the guerrillas have assassinated many Iraqis helping the coalition, gunned down a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, killed the top United Nations official in Iraq and blasted the heavily guarded hotel in Baghdad where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying.

Sophisticated U.S. intelligence tools such as spy satellites and electronic eavesdropping intercepts have been of little practical use, according to intelligence officials in Washington and military officers in Iraq. And despite an intense search and exhaustive intelligence efforts, deposed leader Saddam Hussein remains at large.

Complete story here.

More on digital voting....

This column by the NYT's David Pogue concisely lays out the case against touch-screen voting.

...Wrong Thing 4: Diebold points out that the software is inspected and tested by election officials before it's certified. There's only one problem: Diebold engineers can slip in and make changes to the software even AFTER it's been certified.

Worse, they do exactly that. A Wired article quoted a Diebold engineer as saying that his team made no fewer than three rounds of software changes to the machines in Georgia's 2002 election for governor--after the machines had been certified but before the election began. (That election "ended in a major upset that defied all polls and put a Republican in the governor's seat for the first time in more than 130 years.")

Read it here.

Hearts and minds....

This, sadly, speaks for itself.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - If Washington doubts there is Iraqi public support for guerrillas killing its troops, it should consider the teenagers who happily watched American blood spill on Wednesday.
 
After a roadside bomb ripped through a military vehicle and wounded two soldiers, Iraqi boys rushed out of their homes to survey the damage.

"This is good. If they ask me, I will join the resistance. The Americans have to die," said Ali Qais, 15. "They are just here to steal our oil."

The U.S. administration has long dismissed the guerrillas as isolated "terrorists" who are Saddam Hussein loyalists or foreign Islamic militants.

But the scene in the Sarafiya district of Baghdad suggests they are winning the sympathy of Iraqis, whose joy at Saddam's fall has been overshadowed by anti-American rage.

Teenage boys were irritated to hear that two American soldiers were just wounded, not killed.

"I saw them pushing their hands onto one of the Americans' chest. They must have died. One soldier's friend was crying," said Abdullah Oman, 18.

His fury has been fueled by what he says is an American desire to humiliate all Iraqis.

He even believes that U.S. troops plant the bombs themselves, risking American lives to terrify and kill Iraqis.

"They are watching us die and laughing. They humiliate us. They handcuffed me and arrested me in front of my parents late one night because I stood on my house porch after curfew," he said.

How can the rank-and-file Right, enamored of books and movies starring outnumbered and outgunned Americans making heroic stands against evil invaders (be they of Satan or, formerly, the Soviet Union) be so blind when it comes to this war? Iraqis are defending their homes. Their way of life. Like the American heroes of those favored fables, they will fight to the last man.

America lost this war before it began. All that remains is to determine how long we will continue the slaughter before we concede that.

Complete story here.

So how are we safer from terrorism...?

...Before the war, President Bush contended that Al Qaeda was active in Iraq. But it was not until several months after the U.S.-led occupation began that Islamic extremists apparently took advantage of the postwar chaos and started launching terrorist attacks.

U.S. officials acknowledge that they are hobbled in their efforts to stem the apparent surge in Islamic extremism because they have little information about the attackers or their activities.

Authorities believe that some of the fighters are Al Qaeda operatives and others are members of extremist groups affiliated with the network. Officials suspect that the groups operate as independent cells but are cooperating to some degree with one another and with Hussein loyalists seeking to regain power.

In September, Bremer told reporters in Washington that 248 foreign fighters had been arrested in Iraq, including 19 suspected Al Qaeda members. It is unclear when the arrests took place.

Bin Laden, who was critical of Hussein while he was in power, has repeatedly called on Muslims to go to Iraq and avenge the U.S. invasion.

"God knows if I could find a way to your field, I wouldn't stall," a voice identified as Bin Laden's said in an audiotape released in mid-October. "You my brother fighters in Iraq ... I tell you: You are God's soldiers and the arrows of Islam, and the first line of defense for this [Muslim] nation today."

[...]

Some officials fear that a growing Islamist movement in Iraq could give a boost to the extremist cause and train a new core of Muslim fighters, just as the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union did in the 1980s.

A senior U.S. intelligence official in Washington said Iraq has emerged as the focal point for Islamic jihad, becoming the most active front in the movement and the top priority for Muslim fighters who want to confront the United States.

The assessment, shared by analysts at the CIA and other agencies, underscores how in a matter of months Iraq has supplanted Afghanistan, Chechnya and other international trouble spots as the focus of the jihad cause.

Complete story here.