Those clever bastards.

Alas, and also alack, georgewbush.com has changed the image on their front page to this:

The future is now.

Photoshop endorses Bush

Maybe it's the year 2594 right now, civilization has crumbled, and you, Earth's last human, perhaps using a miraculously-pristine computer in an old bombed-out library, have stumbled upon our site. In that case, the image on the front page of georgewbush.com has probably changed. In the past, when this post was written, the image looked like this:

That photo, minus the text and the big green bubble, is used in the Bush campaign's new internet ad. Ah, but look closer!

Well, go on. Look at it already.

I'm guessing we no longer have enough marines for a photo-op. Times are tough.

Cheat the Vote! Part VI: City Under Siege

Any good sixth part in a series should revisit the themes of its first and perhaps third installments. That being the case...let's go back to Jacksonville. (Oh, dear.) Be sure to read the following excerpts with your best British accent...

A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.

Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".

It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."

Wow. Just...wow. Remember, this is the same county that disproportionately rejected new black voter registrations. Now it appears they intend to reject black voters as well.

When asked by Newsnight for an explanation of the list, Republican spokespersons claim the list merely records returned mail from either fundraising solicitations or returned letters sent to newly registered voters to verify their addresses for purposes of mailing campaign literature...

There was no explanation as to why such clerical matters would be sent to top officials of the Bush campaign in Florida and Washington.

I'm no expert on fundraising, but I'm sure it's a bad idea to focus your efforts on areas concentrated with people who are traditionally hostile to your beliefs and don't have any money.

Oh, and be sure to check out that bit on the end about the private investigator hired to film early (black) voters. I read about this a few days ago, and it reminds me of the intimidation tactics used on black voters back when they first got the vote. That's Jacksonville for ya -- steeped in tradition!

Alex Ross paints Bush

Only my brother and I will be interested in this Alex Ross Village Voice cover painting. So, check it out James.

Ann Coulter vs. Pie

Evil crackpot lunatic Ann Coulter was recently hit by two delicious, creamy custard pies. Said Coulter after the assault: "Oh, a wiseguy eh? Nyahh nyahh -- woo woo woo woo woo woo! You knuckleheads."

Little known Furdell fact: once, my then-roommate bought a cocunut cream pie and then slammed me in the face with it in the parking lot. Just getting hit with a pie wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't put so much force behind the damned thing.

Cheat the Vote! Part V: You Only Vote Twice

Okay, that title doesn't really apply to what I'm going to write about, but it's hard to find good fifth-in-a-series titles. It was between this and Assignment: Miami Beach.

Right, anyway. Somewhere in Ohio...

The caller interrupting a North Side couple?s dinner earlier this week said he was from the Franklin County Board of Elections.

He told the elderly woman that her voting site had changed and that on Nov. 2 she and her husband should cast their ballots at a South Side precinct.

Not bad, not bad. A good, subtle cheat.

At no time, Elections Director Matthew Damschroder said, does the board call voters...His office has received about a dozen calls since last week from voters checking on similar calls.

Damschroder said there are two scams: The caller tells voters their precincts have changed or the caller offers to pick up an absentee-ballot application, deliver the ballot to the voter and return the completed ballot to the elections office.

Well, this leaves me with some questions. How do the callers know which voters to call? Or is the person behind the calls just some vote-hating bastard who wants everyone to be equally disenfranchised? That would be hilarious. According to Talking Points Memo, the "recipients of the calls seem to be disproportionately elderly." Does that mean anything? I just...don't...know. In any case, the whole scam reminds me of something...

Lest I be accused of missing any stories from my home town that involve turning away black voters, here's a Cheat the Vote! bonus. Free!

Herd Immunity

Way back in the third presidential debate, I thought "President" Bush made a big mistake when he said...

My call to our fellow Americans is if you're healthy, if you're younger, don't get a flu shot this year...I haven't gotten a flu shot, and I don't intend to because I want to make sure those who are most vulnerable get treated.

That statement reminded me of an article from almost a year ago about flu vaccinations and why even healthy young people should get them.

"I'm young and healthy," you might say, "why do I need the shot?"

Whoa, this article is more apt than I remembered.

Even if spending a week violently sick and bedridden doesn't worry you, by immunizing yourself you vastly lessen the chances you will spread the virus to some child or older person (family member, friend, or stranger) who might die from it.

In medicine, this concept is called "herd immunity"?that is, if enough members of a group of animals (including humans) are immunized against a disease, the entire group is more likely to escape infection.

Watching the debate, it occured to me that people running for elected office shake a lot of old peoples' hands and kiss a lot of babies. Isn't Bush putting others at risk by not immunizing himself?

I didn't bring it up at the time because, well, it's a quibble. But now I have context!

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), a heart surgeon, sent letters urging his 99 colleagues to get the shots because they mingle and shake hands with so many people, his spokeswoman, Amy Call, said.

In conclusion, don't let George W. Bush kiss your baby.

Ouch.

Why oh why will nobody bid on the Rocky DVD set that I shouldn't have purchased? Do they know my horrible secret? Savvy bastards!

Recent epiphany: I am no longer a comic book collector. I mean, I still have thousands of comic books meticulously stored and ordered. But I don't think about it nearly as much as my rapidly-growing DVD collection, which is much less shame-inducing. If comics were still exactly like they were in the mid-to-late '80s, I think I'd still be all about them. Or maybe if they went back to calling Captain America a commie smasher.

Cheat the Vote! Part IV: Endgame

Time's running out for Karl Rove, and Kerry seems to be pulling ahead in the polls. It's time to kick this fraud up a notch!

In Palm Beach, where nobody ever learns their lesson, Theresa LePore -- who you might remember for designing "butterfly ballots" that confuse old Jews into voting for anti-Semites -- has announced that electronic voting machines there have not yet been tested. Because of a server crash. Yeah, that's not ominous.

This should not be a partisan issue, but for some reason it is. Computer voting machines are illegal under Florida's state constitution, which stipulates that a manual recount must be done in certain circumstances. (Manual recounts can be done when these machines are used, ya see.) Even though the machines are clearly faulty, illegal, and very easily manipulated, Florida's Republican officials have practically insisted on it. Look for all of this to blow up in everyone's face on Wonder Tuesday*.

Ah, but that's not all! Somehow, a pile of Xeroxed fliers found their way into the trashcan of a Tennessee Democrat whose office shares space with the Kerry/Edwards campaign. From there, they mysteriously found their way into the hands of Republicans, who are clearly totally innocent in this whole thing.

The fliers, by the way, are not only crass, but totally unoriginal -- someone just took that image that says "Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics," changed the first part to "Voting for President Bush," and pasted Bush's head onto the retarded kid. I mean, come on. That image has been around for at least three years now. You'd think we could come up with something a little more original.

Beyond the point. It turns out Karl Rove is actually reusing an old trick that worked pretty well for him the last time. Step one: put out a flier that maligns your candidate in an unfair or disgusting way. Step two: ? Step three: profit. After all, who's going to think you actually tried to start a smear campaign against your own candidate?

Yep, there's a lot of evil in the world. With less than three weeks of vote cheating left, expect the dial to be turned up to "11" shortly.

* Originally, this text incorrectly used the term Super Tuesday.

Have you seen this archvillain?

Who is Nathan Sproul?

He's the former head of the Arizona Republican Party and the Arizona Christian Coalition. His GOP-funded organization appears to have masterminded a multi-state anti-Democrat voter registration fraud conspiracy.

But has anyone seen his face?

Furdell.com is asking anyone who knows where Mr. Sproul hangs out or something to take a picture of him with your camera phone. Or something. Because we really want to know what the hell he looks like.

Below is an artist's rendition of what Mr. Sproul would probably look like in shadows from the side while symbolically looming over his conglomoration of would-be tyrannical world conquerors.

Cheat the Vote! Part III: Dream Warriors

Since my attempt at non-politics blogging was by varying accounts whiny and boring, it's back to The Usual, and it's time for the long overdue 3rd segment of Cheat the Vote!^tm

Remember how, in Episode One, we visited James & Andrew's home town of Jacksonville, Florida? Let's check back in on the old boys and see if things have improved down there.

In Duval County, 31,155 black voters had been added to the rolls by the end of last week. [...] But hundreds more could show up at the polls only to find they cannot vote. The office has flagged 1,448 registrations as incomplete, and as of last week had yet to process 11,500 more.

A Washington Post analysis found nearly three times the number of flagged Democratic registrations as Republican. Broken down by race, no group had more flagged registrations than blacks.

This, in a heavily GOP county where records show that the number of blacks added to the rolls since 2000 approximately equals the number of non-Hispanic whites.

Sweet Christmas! How could such a thing happen? Who could possibly be to blame? I think the culprit is pretty obvious. It's the Democrats.

[The Jeb Bush-appointed Republican Secretary of State's office] said the real blame belongs with the Democratic-leaning groups that targeted minority voters and then turned in sloppy and incomplete registrations. The disproportionate number of black Democratic registrations flagged...is a function of "who those groups are targeting."

According to the article, a lot of the registrations are being flagged because of a new directive -- ignored by many counties, but diligently enforced in Duval -- that new voters must both sign an oath and check a box attesting to their citizenship. Failure to do either one is like crossing your fingers behind your back. Thanks, Duval County, for so diligently protecting our rights!

Oh, but the fun doesn't stop there! Let's take a plane to the city named "City We Most Often Fly To" by furdell.com three years running! That's right, it's...Las Vega$!!!

If the stuff in Jacksonville irked you, you're gonna love this...

[An out-of-state firm called Voters Outreach of America, aka America Votes] has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assistant to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Employees "allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands" of registrations got trashed.

As Talking Points Memo has discovered, Voters Outreach of America is "Paid for by the Republican National Committee."

Why does it not surprise me that, when faced with a clear choice between Good and Evil, half of America chooses evil? Don't get me wrong, I think only about 5% of that group realizes what it's doing. But I'm pretty sure Darth Vader could get half the popular vote. And that's even if he was running for reelection after having just exploded a peaceful planet.

***UPDATE!***
That GOP-funded group that was shredding Dem. registrations in Nevada? Yeah, they did it in Oregon too. Oh, and stay tuned -- other states couldn't be far behind.

Sinclair Broadcast Group: Flip-Floppers?

Back in late April, the Sinclair Broadcast Group ordered its seven ABC stations not to broadcast an episode of Nightline that honored America's then-under-600 killed troops in Iraq.

In a statement online, the Sinclair group said the "Nightline" program "appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."

So, showing pictures and saying the names of dead soldiers is a political statement. Fair enough.

Fast forward to nowish. The Sinclair Broadcast Group is ordering its network affiliates -- including "all six of the major broadcast networks in the swing states of Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Pennsylvania" -- to pre-empt primetime broadcasting in favor of an anti-Kerry documentary, Stolen Honor. They will be running the documentary commercial-free and categorizing it as a news item (and not, for example, free political advertising).

Sounds like an in-kind contribution to the Bush campaign. This one's going to be hard to defend -- or is it?

Sinclair Group's Vice President for Corporate Relations on CNN:

However, the accusations coming from Terry McAuliffe and others, is it because they are some elements of this that may reflect poorly on John Kerry? That it's somehow an in-kind contribution of George Bush?

If you use that logic and reasoning, that means every car bomb in Iraq would be an in-kind contribution to John Kerry[...]And that's just nonsense.

This is news. I can't change the fact that these people decided to come forward today.

So it seems that reporting on dead people in Iraq either is, or isn't, an in-kind contribution to the Kerry campaign, depending on what action the Sinclair Group is defending that month.

How Not to Win at Poker

It's October 2004, and every blog has now officially become a political blog. Well, we can't have that. I'll take a break from my usual routine of repeating everything you already read on all the other political blogs, and regail you with a story of my Thursday poker-playing adventure.

Yeah, yeah, I know -- if it's not politics, it's gambling. Well, leave me alone. Thursday's game keeps replaying in my head, largely because I did absolutely everything totally wrong. So read on and laugh at my lack of skillz.

My gambling day started with a $65 no-limit tournament. About one round (or five minutes) into the game, I got a fairly good hand -- an ace with a medium suited kicker. I think it was something like A-8 of diamonds, so not bad. I just limped in. One guy raised, so I called, and only one other guy (reluctantly) called.

The flop came Q(d)-3(d)-3(c). So, two diamonds. I made a large-ish semi-bluff bet (semi-bluff, by the way, means that I have some ways to make a winning hand, but I have nothing at the moment and would love to make everyone fold). The preflop reluctant caller reluctantly calls again, prompting me to wonder what he could possibly have; the preflop raiser angrily folds.

The turn is another diamond. I have the nut flush. I make a sizeable bet, which is once again called. The river is unmemorable. I move all my chips in, and he calls. I tell him the only thing that can beat me is a full house. When he flips over his cards, everyone at the table is quick to remind me that four-of-a-kind also probably beats me.

So, within about five minutes of the tournament starting, I lose everything with an ace-high flush against four threes. That is no way to start your gambling day. After an hour or so of pai gow with other early tournament losers, I unwisely joined the pot-limit game.

When I started playing poker, which I think might have been two years ago, pot-limit games were extremely rare and no-limit games didn't exist in Atlanta. I was in a weekly pot-limit game, but the buy-in was low and the skill level was lower. None of us particularly knew what we were doing, and we were all very happy with that arrangement. People who knew what they were doing were playing with much more professional looking tables, cards, and chips, and they were playing fixed limit games, in which the bet sizes are strictly pre-ordained. These days, thanks no doubt to the Travel Channel's coverage of only no-limit Texas Hold 'Em tournaments, you can actually find no-limit sidegames here. That is insane. What it means is that you can go into most card rooms here, put a couple hundred dollars in front of you, and lose it all instantly. These games are made much harder by the fact that they are populated only half by idiots, and half by people who actually know what they're doing.

Personally, I don't enjoy high-limit games (a euphamism for pot- and no-limit games). I think there's too much tension, your money doesn't last as long as it should, and luck becomes even more of a factor than in limit games. In other words, I shouldn't be playing in a pot-limit game. Furthermore, nobody should play poker after just getting their ass handed to them in a very heartbreaking way. And yet there I was.

The first sign that I was in way over my head happened when I was dealt 9-9. This may have been my first playable hand, so I raised as much as I could, and just about everybody called. Not a good sign. The flop looked good to me -- no nine, but also no straights or flushes, and the only card higher than mine was a queen. An aggressive player made a $25 bet, and another player called. I wasn't afraid of the bet, but the call scared me out.

The reason this hand put me even further on tilt is not that the river card was a 9, although it was. No, this hand put me on tilt because I didn't even need the 9. The aggressive better just had a flush draw that never came; the caller just had a pair of 8s. Had I stayed in, I would have had a huge pot. I was kicking myself like crazy.

After about three rounds, I still hadn't won a single pot. This is bad. Just on average, your cards should be able to win one pot per round, but I wasn't even getting playable cards. I immediately mucked every card that was dealt to me for one entire round. All of this served to put me even further on tilt. So, when I was finally dealt A-Q, I thought they were the best cards I'd ever seen in my life.

I think I was down to about $80 at this point (after about $120 in sidegame losses). Everyone limped in, so I managed to make a big preflop raise of maybe $15 or so. Aggressive-guy from the other hand raised it right back at me. Everyone folded, so I reraised him all in, and he called with J-J. Admittedly, pocket jacks is only a marginally better hand than A-Q. The people at Travel Channel would tell you that the jacks will win 51% of the time or so. The point is that I went all-in with a slightly inferior hand, and that is bad. Of course, the flop had both an ace and a queen, so I survived (and more than doubled up). But I should have known to quit while I was behind.

After another round, I started daydreaming that the hand I was being dealt was going to be some high pocket pair and that I'd get to make a huge preflop raise. Sure enough, I held K-K. Now, recall that I have been looking at 7-4 pretty consistently for the last few hours. I had forgotten that a deck of cards even had kings. I made my raise, and aggressive guy reraised me again. I was starting to get pretty annoyed by this guy. Another dude called, but I re-reraised, bringing to bet up into the $60 range. Aggressive guy said "I'll put you all in," not even noticing the grumbling call-dude as he quietly mucked his cards. My call made the pot size about $355.

I don't think I was playing too badly at this point, really. I'd seen Aggressive Guy go all in with J-J, and he saw me do it with A-Q. He doesn't need that much to go all in against me, and he should know that. But nobody else was particularly surprised when he turned over A-A.

Hold 'Em's very best starting hand, against its second-best, is not a particularly even match-up. The flop was rags, and I was already out of my seat, ready to leave. "Hey, you still have two outs!" said one guy, helpfully. "No he doesn't. I folded K-Q," chimed in Grumbling Call-Dude, pragmatically. "It's not coming," said I, defeated. The turn was a blank.

Everyone at the table screamed in terror when the river card turned out to be the deck's final king. Even I was horrified, perhaps as I would have been if I saw a horrible train wreck that resulted in hundreds of deaths but somehow profitted me a great deal. Nobody deserves to lose on the river with pocket aces against pocket kings, especially when a king is dead. Helpful Guy later described me as a "2% favorite."

I shook Aggressive Guy's hand and apologized for the way the hand went down. The people at the table didn't seem to understand that, especially the ones who were clearly moneygrubbing jerks. Sure, I profited, but that's no way to win at poker. Then I cashed out and left, because I had gone in with the worst hand not once, but twice. I was doing everything wrong that night. That's how not to play poker. I vow to do a better job this week.

Need some wood?

That was the best line in last night's debate. According to Kerry, Bush's claim that Kerry's tax plan would raise taxes on 900,000 small businesses was a distortion, because that claim loosely defines "small business owner" -- so loosely that, for claiming $84 income from a timber company he co-owns on his 2001 tax form, even Bush himself counts as a small business owner. Bush's response:

BUSH: I own a timber company?

(LAUGHTER)

That's news to me.

(LAUGHTER)

Need some wood?

(LAUGHTER)

I gotta say, it was pretty funny. Unfortunately, the Dems won't be able to get much mileage out of this one. What Kerry said was fundamentally correct: by the standards of the Bush claim, Bush himself counts as a small business owner for claiming $84 from a business he co-owns.

Unfortunately, Kerry's likely (and ironic) source, factcheck.whatever, made a mistake when it described the company, Lone Star Trust, as a timber-growing enterprise. It is in fact an oil-and-gas concern. So, the Dems can't use the "Need some wood?" soundbite, alas.

Dot Oops

In the grand tradition of youforgotpoland.com, a website has sprung up in the aftermath of the Vice Presidential debate. According to Slate...

In response to a series of attacks from John Edwards on Cheney's tenure as CEO of Halliburton, the vice president said that Kerry and Edwards "know the charges are false. They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton." One problem with Cheney's rebuttal: He misspoke. He meant to say "factcheck.org.," rather than ".com." George Soros capitalized on Cheney's error, snatched up the URL, and now if you type "factcheck.com" into your browser, you get redirected to a page titled, "Why we must not re-elect President Bush: a personal message from George Soros."

Open Letter to an Undecided Florida Swing Voter

Dear friend,

As I promised you, I will not reveal your name to people who would otherwise have your head on a pike, because I am the soul of charity. However, I didn't say anything about posting open letters on the internet. So that's just what I'm going to do.

I was shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that you are undecided. As you know, I'm a Florida voter too. In the interest of making my vote count twice, I shall endeavor to help you make up your mind in a way that totally agrees with me. Join me, won't you?

Now then, first things first. In our conversation yesterday, you implied that you were thinking about not voting at all. Well, we can't have that.

Take a look at Electoral Vote. The guy who runs the site takes all the most recent polls by state, averages them together, and comes up with some idea of what the election might look like if it was held today. It's fun to follow, but the reason I want you to look at it is to take a peek at Georgia. Georgia, as you may or may not know, is a "red state" -- we knew months ago that its 15 electoral votes are going to Bush, and there's not much anyone can do about it. Even the 350,000 new registered voters probably won't make more than a dent.

People here take it for granted that their vote -- be it for Bush, Kerry, or anyone else -- doesn't count. You get the sense that they feel like they don't get to participate in the national election, and it's kind of true. An extra Bush vote is wasted here where it could make a difference in another state; a Kerry vote here is simply worthless.

Florida, meanwhile, is the fourth-biggest state in terms of electoral votes, and the very biggest swing state. It's the swingiest state of them all. [Assuming your vote is fairly counted,] Florida votes count more than other votes. In short, you'd be a fool to throw away that kind of power. Americans in 28 states -- including the 3 biggest by population -- only get to watch the election on television, and you get to actually participate.

As if that wasn't enough impetus, voting happens to be your civic duty. A lot of people think of voting as a right, but it isn't -- it's considered a civic responsibility, like paying taxes or showing up when they draft you or serving in jury boxes or what have you. It's part of the price you're expected to pay for living in the most powerful, wealthy country in all the land.

In sum: vote, dammit. If you absolutely insist on voting for neither candidate, you can always go with a 3rd-party candidate who reflects your views, or even cast a blank ballot if you think that will make a statement, but vote.

Next imperative: you must keep yourself informed in order to make the right decisions. It seems to me that you're using the wrong news filter (friends? family?), because you weren't sure whether Bush or Kerry won the first presidential debate. In fact, there's virtually no question on the subject -- blues and reds alike agree that it was a particularly bad day for Bush. You mentioned that your family taped the debate -- off the Fox News Channel of all places! -- so I encourage you to watch the tape and make up your own mind.

I certainly thought Kerry was the clear debate winner, but in last night's VP debate I was a lot less certain. Both candidates were confident and prepared, and neither of them said anything particularly stupid. I called it "too close to call," but I'm seeing evidence that people saw this debate as a major Dem. victory as well. Keep that in mind when you hear talking points that say the exact opposite.

That's all for now. You have some homework to do in the form of presidential-debate-watching, and there will be a quiz. I'll be badgering you some more in this forum, and don't even think about not reading it, or I will release your identity to people who are a million billion times more obnoxious then me, and you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Ever yours,
Andrew

Mizzzz!

This weekend, while laundering my laundry at the laundromat, I achieved a personal high score of 150,210 in Ms. Pac-Man. I usually consider it a good game if I get to see Act III ("Junior," in which a stork delivers a teensy Pac-Person to the Pacs), but over the course of this game I saw Act III three times.

Interesting Pac-fact that I did not know (and that cost me a life): when you get to a certain stage, which I think was level 19, power pellets have no effect. Eat one of the four giant dots on the screen, and the ghosts don't change even for an instant. Ouch. So look out for that, when you get to level 19 of Ms. Pac-Man.