The former soldier asked about Allen's unreleased divorce records and his unreleased arrest record.
Allen's staff responded by violently assaulting the man, who is a constituent of Allen's.
Video of the attack is here.
Additional information about the assaults can be found here.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
BREAKING: 3 Staffers for Sen. George Allen (R-VA) Assault Former Marine for Asking Question of the Senator They Did Not Want Asked
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Event: Nashua, New Hampshire to Hold Rally for Peace in Solidarity With Cindy Sheehan's Historic March on Washington, D.C., September 24th, 2005
See here for more details (including directions).
The basics:
Purpose: Nashua (NH) Rally for Peace
Date: Saturday, September 24, 2005
Time: Noon to 1 P.M. (plus optional walk afterwards to Library Hill)
Where: City Hall, Main Street, Nashua, NH
Bring: Signs promoting peace; friends.
The basics:
Purpose: Nashua (NH) Rally for Peace
Date: Saturday, September 24, 2005
Time: Noon to 1 P.M. (plus optional walk afterwards to Library Hill)
Where: City Hall, Main Street, Nashua, NH
Bring: Signs promoting peace; friends.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Judge Roberts on Racism
COURTESY OF SETHABRAMSON.BLOGSPOT.COM
Senator Kennedy pretty much nailed it today in his questioning of Judge Roberts.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but President Bush's nominee for Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, has, in refusing to voice support for the "effects" clause of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (i.e., the said clause in Section 2, as amended in 1982), taken the following view of the nation's legacy of racism (a paraphrase of the upshot, with all the legalese drained away):
It's okay for racist government officials to design and implement voting schemes which purposefully seek to intimidate and/or preclude black citizens from exercising their fundamental right to vote, so long as A) the officials don't get caught doing it, and/or B) the officials do get caught, but there's insufficient proof that they intended what they actually intended.
This is the reason the 1965 Voting Rights Act now has (since 1982, and thanks to Democrats) an "effects" clause: to distinguish between racist "intent" (which, as white conservatives well know, given their august history, is impossible to prove) and racist "effects," which can and routinely are proven to exist in our nation's voting procedures.
It's outrageously shabby and false for John Roberts to speak eloquently of the franchise, on the one hand, and to speak glowingly of Brown, on the other hand, and then refuse to conjoin the two in a vision of voting rights which is anything at all like color-blind. At some point willful ignorance of the ongoing problem in our nation's elections system becomes malevolent ignorance; and at what point is that? When thousands of blacks wait in line to vote in Ohio in 2004--while white folks have no wait at all--or only when hooded Klansman are lynching any dark-skinned citizen they can find in a bygone Civil War-era America?
Is our sense of moral indignation really that narrowly-drawn? Is that really the best we can do, as Americans? Indeed, does that even meet the barest standards of human decency in the year 2005?
Senator Kennedy pretty much nailed it today in his questioning of Judge Roberts.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but President Bush's nominee for Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, has, in refusing to voice support for the "effects" clause of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (i.e., the said clause in Section 2, as amended in 1982), taken the following view of the nation's legacy of racism (a paraphrase of the upshot, with all the legalese drained away):
It's okay for racist government officials to design and implement voting schemes which purposefully seek to intimidate and/or preclude black citizens from exercising their fundamental right to vote, so long as A) the officials don't get caught doing it, and/or B) the officials do get caught, but there's insufficient proof that they intended what they actually intended.
This is the reason the 1965 Voting Rights Act now has (since 1982, and thanks to Democrats) an "effects" clause: to distinguish between racist "intent" (which, as white conservatives well know, given their august history, is impossible to prove) and racist "effects," which can and routinely are proven to exist in our nation's voting procedures.
It's outrageously shabby and false for John Roberts to speak eloquently of the franchise, on the one hand, and to speak glowingly of Brown, on the other hand, and then refuse to conjoin the two in a vision of voting rights which is anything at all like color-blind. At some point willful ignorance of the ongoing problem in our nation's elections system becomes malevolent ignorance; and at what point is that? When thousands of blacks wait in line to vote in Ohio in 2004--while white folks have no wait at all--or only when hooded Klansman are lynching any dark-skinned citizen they can find in a bygone Civil War-era America?
Is our sense of moral indignation really that narrowly-drawn? Is that really the best we can do, as Americans? Indeed, does that even meet the barest standards of human decency in the year 2005?
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Hurricane Katrina: How President Bush Is Contributing to the Largest Natural and Human Catastrophe In the History of the United States
In New Orleans, Says One Cable Journalist, "Corpses...Are Everywhere"; Thousands Believed to Already Be Dead, More Dying Each Hour, No Help From the Government in Sight
The largest disaster in a generation is currently being blogged about by the founder of The Nashua Advocate.
Read about the tragedy of our government leaving tens of thousands of poor Americans to die and rot in the streets of New Orleans here.
To read the above link is to experience disbelief, and then horror, and then an anger too great to be spoken of without the sudden and inexplicable formation of a fist.
The largest disaster in a generation is currently being blogged about by the founder of The Nashua Advocate.
Read about the tragedy of our government leaving tens of thousands of poor Americans to die and rot in the streets of New Orleans here.
To read the above link is to experience disbelief, and then horror, and then an anger too great to be spoken of without the sudden and inexplicable formation of a fist.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Incontrovertible Proof That Supreme Court Nominee John Roberts Knew He Had a Recusable Conflict-of-Interest in Bush's Historic Hamdan Win
Stunning Ethical Lapse Should Lead to Judge's Disqualification As Supreme Court Nominee
COURTESY OF SETHABRAMSON.BLOGSPOT.COM
See here.
This is an outrage.
COURTESY OF SETHABRAMSON.BLOGSPOT.COM
See here.
This is an outrage.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Thank You, Bob Woodward
Washington Journalist Throws Dick Cheney's Jackboots Into the Ring for the 2008 Presidential Election, Without Prior Authorization from the Prince of Darkness Himself
COURTESY OF WWW.SETHABRAMSON.BLOGSPOT.COM
Apparently all the buzz in Washington right now is that Dick Cheney, variously called "The Prince of Darkness" and "Darth Vader" by his enemies (and even some friends, anonymously), may well be enlisted to run for President on the Republican ticket in 2008. If true, it means that the man who started all the buzz--journalist Bob Woodward, who in a recent speech speculated the current Vice-President, despite his protestations, would indeed run for the Oval Office--may have just handed Democrats the keys to the White House in '08.
Frankly, most of the country is either a) scared of Dick Cheney, b) convinced he is a virulent liar, or c) both. There is no way the man will ever be our President, and if Republicans somehow mistake his basement-dwelling approval ratings for a temporary phenomenon, so much the better for the '08 Democratic candidate, be it Hillary, Joe Biden, John Edwards, or (the long-shot candidate) Al Gore.
It's a testament to conservatives' delusory political adherence to the worst presidential administration in the history of the United States that they actually believe a man who's lied not once, not twice, but numerous times on nationally-televised broadcasts could become the President of the nation. [Keep in mind that Clinton's lies were exposed after he'd already been in office and once re-elected; keep in mind, also, that Clinton has always enjoyed substantially higher approval ratings than the sometimes-somnambulent, always moderately-threatening Cheney, largely owing to the fact that the former has at least a hint of personal charisma, and lacks the permanent sneer and bone-chilling beady eyes of the angry senior citizen currently occupying the Vice-President's office].
When you consider, also, that Condoleeza Rice--whose only distinguishing characteristic is her staggering and perhaps unprecedented professional incompetence--and Dick Cheney are the two leading candidates for the Republicans in 2008, and that the next runner-up, Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) not only has the personality of a 2x4 but also, apparently, principles to match (even current Senator and former Majority Leader Trent Lott [R-MS], in a recent autobiography, makes clear he despises him) you realize just how desperate the Republicans are right now.
Meanwhile, Bush's supposedly safe Supreme Court nominee seems to have (in my words) "issues with women," as well as "issues with civil rights," as well as notable ethical handicaps (see my prior post on this), so all bets are off the table now on his successful advancement to the nation's highest court. Indeed, all bets are off for the entire Republican Party right now, except, I suppose, for this: that it seems almost certain someone in the Bush Administration will suffer a federal criminal indictment come October, assuming Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's Valerie Plame investigation continues to proceed apace.
So, a big "thank you" to Bob Woodward and, in the immortal words of George W. Bush himself, "Dick Cheney in 2000! [sic] Dick Cheney in 2000! [sic]"
[The quote above is fabricated; but if you don't think Bush, during the presidential campaign in 2000, awoke in a cold sweat shouting these very words on countless occasions, you've not been following politics closely these last five years].
COURTESY OF WWW.SETHABRAMSON.BLOGSPOT.COM
Apparently all the buzz in Washington right now is that Dick Cheney, variously called "The Prince of Darkness" and "Darth Vader" by his enemies (and even some friends, anonymously), may well be enlisted to run for President on the Republican ticket in 2008. If true, it means that the man who started all the buzz--journalist Bob Woodward, who in a recent speech speculated the current Vice-President, despite his protestations, would indeed run for the Oval Office--may have just handed Democrats the keys to the White House in '08.
Frankly, most of the country is either a) scared of Dick Cheney, b) convinced he is a virulent liar, or c) both. There is no way the man will ever be our President, and if Republicans somehow mistake his basement-dwelling approval ratings for a temporary phenomenon, so much the better for the '08 Democratic candidate, be it Hillary, Joe Biden, John Edwards, or (the long-shot candidate) Al Gore.
It's a testament to conservatives' delusory political adherence to the worst presidential administration in the history of the United States that they actually believe a man who's lied not once, not twice, but numerous times on nationally-televised broadcasts could become the President of the nation. [Keep in mind that Clinton's lies were exposed after he'd already been in office and once re-elected; keep in mind, also, that Clinton has always enjoyed substantially higher approval ratings than the sometimes-somnambulent, always moderately-threatening Cheney, largely owing to the fact that the former has at least a hint of personal charisma, and lacks the permanent sneer and bone-chilling beady eyes of the angry senior citizen currently occupying the Vice-President's office].
When you consider, also, that Condoleeza Rice--whose only distinguishing characteristic is her staggering and perhaps unprecedented professional incompetence--and Dick Cheney are the two leading candidates for the Republicans in 2008, and that the next runner-up, Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) not only has the personality of a 2x4 but also, apparently, principles to match (even current Senator and former Majority Leader Trent Lott [R-MS], in a recent autobiography, makes clear he despises him) you realize just how desperate the Republicans are right now.
Meanwhile, Bush's supposedly safe Supreme Court nominee seems to have (in my words) "issues with women," as well as "issues with civil rights," as well as notable ethical handicaps (see my prior post on this), so all bets are off the table now on his successful advancement to the nation's highest court. Indeed, all bets are off for the entire Republican Party right now, except, I suppose, for this: that it seems almost certain someone in the Bush Administration will suffer a federal criminal indictment come October, assuming Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's Valerie Plame investigation continues to proceed apace.
So, a big "thank you" to Bob Woodward and, in the immortal words of George W. Bush himself, "Dick Cheney in 2000! [sic] Dick Cheney in 2000! [sic]"
[The quote above is fabricated; but if you don't think Bush, during the presidential campaign in 2000, awoke in a cold sweat shouting these very words on countless occasions, you've not been following politics closely these last five years].
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
John Roberts' Massive Conflict-of-Interest in Critical War on Terror Court Case, Hamdan, Should (But Won't Be) an Obstacle to His Nomination
Highly Decorated Judge Mysteriously Failed Remedial Ethics Test While Judge for D.C. Circuit, Was Job-Hunting With a Litigant While Presiding on That Litigant's Case (Hint: the Litigant Was and Is the Bush Administration)
COURTESY OF WWW.SETHABRAMSON.BLOGSPOT.COM
If you're an attorney in America today and you've one ounce of objectivity on the non-partisan, apolitical, wholly professional issue of ethics in the legal field, you're pretty pissed off at Supreme Court nominee John Roberts right now.
That's because, according to The Washington Post, Roberts was engaged in secret job interviews with top Bush Administration officials--including Vice-President Dick Cheney, Chief-of-Staff Andrew Card, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and Deputy Chief-of-Staff Karl Rove--while one of Gonzales' deputies at the Department of Justice was arguing, before Roberts, perhaps the most important wartime executive powers case of our generation.
Any lawyer worth his salt, who practices in the field and not merely in the schoolhouse, knows this is an ethical violation, as judges--like attorneys, but frankly even moreso--are charged by the legal profession's Rules of Professional Conduct to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in the cases they preside over (or, in the case of attorneys, the cases they litigate).
Roberts failed this test, failed it miserably, and frankly his impeccable judicial credentials--so touted by Republicans in the run-up to his nomination hearings--prove, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that he should have and did know better. Imagine, for a moment, that you're a litigant before the D.C. Circuit Court and your very liberty is at stake. Unbeknownst to you, one of the three judges selected to decide your fate is job-hunting with the party opposite.
No, correct that: much more than "job-hunting."
How about engaging in secret meetings designed to impress upon that party--here, the Bush Administration--your "fitness" to be one of the nine most influential and powerful judges in America?
Do you think the hyper-educated Roberts could have sussed out--you know, if he really thought about it--that one of the credentials that the people he was interviewing with were looking for was that he rule their way on the critical, historic Hamdan case, a central front in Bush's ongoing campaign to repeal and/or re-write the peace- and war-time laws of the United States and the international legal standards of the entire world?
[Which, incidentally, Roberts ultimately did. Agree with (read: rule for) Bush, that is].
As an attorney who's in court nearly every single day of the week, I routinely have judges ask me questions, in court, about pending cases, even when the party opposite (read: the government) has no representative present in the Court. And my answer, if the question is at all a substantive one, is always the same: "Your Honor, I'm happy to wait for Attorney _________ before we get into this." That is the level of duty even a halfway decent lawyer owes the legal system--to avoid, for example, all ex parte conversations about a case--even when no one in the room doubts that the communications will be innocuous, that there will be no actual conflict-of-interest, and that merely the appearance of not having met the ethical standards of the profession will be created.
Consider, for example, the situation we're in now: the Bush Administration wants us to believe there's "no harm, no foul" because the Hamdan case wasn't discussed during the job interviews in question. Well guess what, you absolute morons, there's no way for us to know now what was discussed, is there? Because you won't reveal the details if you're asked (citing executive privilege, no doubt), and even if you did reveal them, we'd have to "take your word for it" that the conversations were not improper. Well, what in the world has the Bush Administration done in the last five years to cause any American to "take their word for it"?
Guess what: that's why lawyers have these clearly-delineated ethical rules--so that we won't be stuck in the sort of inescapable legal and ethical dilemma we're in right now. Roberts has cast a doubt on the Hamdan case there is absolutely no way to remove.
As a lawyer, I'm incensed right now.
This wasn't just an innocent lapse in judgment. This was an egregious and willful example of ethical misconduct by a judicial nominee who, frankly--prior to this--I did not (at least not strongly) oppose. But if this is how lightly this judge views his ethical obligations, he's got no place whatsoever on the highest bench in the land and should be absolutely grilled by Congress when they come back in session.
This judge should have recused himself from this historic and precedent-creating case, and he knows it.
Shame on him, and shame on any lawyer in good standing who sides with him on this.
COURTESY OF WWW.SETHABRAMSON.BLOGSPOT.COM
If you're an attorney in America today and you've one ounce of objectivity on the non-partisan, apolitical, wholly professional issue of ethics in the legal field, you're pretty pissed off at Supreme Court nominee John Roberts right now.
That's because, according to The Washington Post, Roberts was engaged in secret job interviews with top Bush Administration officials--including Vice-President Dick Cheney, Chief-of-Staff Andrew Card, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and Deputy Chief-of-Staff Karl Rove--while one of Gonzales' deputies at the Department of Justice was arguing, before Roberts, perhaps the most important wartime executive powers case of our generation.
Any lawyer worth his salt, who practices in the field and not merely in the schoolhouse, knows this is an ethical violation, as judges--like attorneys, but frankly even moreso--are charged by the legal profession's Rules of Professional Conduct to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in the cases they preside over (or, in the case of attorneys, the cases they litigate).
Roberts failed this test, failed it miserably, and frankly his impeccable judicial credentials--so touted by Republicans in the run-up to his nomination hearings--prove, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that he should have and did know better. Imagine, for a moment, that you're a litigant before the D.C. Circuit Court and your very liberty is at stake. Unbeknownst to you, one of the three judges selected to decide your fate is job-hunting with the party opposite.
No, correct that: much more than "job-hunting."
How about engaging in secret meetings designed to impress upon that party--here, the Bush Administration--your "fitness" to be one of the nine most influential and powerful judges in America?
Do you think the hyper-educated Roberts could have sussed out--you know, if he really thought about it--that one of the credentials that the people he was interviewing with were looking for was that he rule their way on the critical, historic Hamdan case, a central front in Bush's ongoing campaign to repeal and/or re-write the peace- and war-time laws of the United States and the international legal standards of the entire world?
[Which, incidentally, Roberts ultimately did. Agree with (read: rule for) Bush, that is].
As an attorney who's in court nearly every single day of the week, I routinely have judges ask me questions, in court, about pending cases, even when the party opposite (read: the government) has no representative present in the Court. And my answer, if the question is at all a substantive one, is always the same: "Your Honor, I'm happy to wait for Attorney _________ before we get into this." That is the level of duty even a halfway decent lawyer owes the legal system--to avoid, for example, all ex parte conversations about a case--even when no one in the room doubts that the communications will be innocuous, that there will be no actual conflict-of-interest, and that merely the appearance of not having met the ethical standards of the profession will be created.
Consider, for example, the situation we're in now: the Bush Administration wants us to believe there's "no harm, no foul" because the Hamdan case wasn't discussed during the job interviews in question. Well guess what, you absolute morons, there's no way for us to know now what was discussed, is there? Because you won't reveal the details if you're asked (citing executive privilege, no doubt), and even if you did reveal them, we'd have to "take your word for it" that the conversations were not improper. Well, what in the world has the Bush Administration done in the last five years to cause any American to "take their word for it"?
Guess what: that's why lawyers have these clearly-delineated ethical rules--so that we won't be stuck in the sort of inescapable legal and ethical dilemma we're in right now. Roberts has cast a doubt on the Hamdan case there is absolutely no way to remove.
As a lawyer, I'm incensed right now.
This wasn't just an innocent lapse in judgment. This was an egregious and willful example of ethical misconduct by a judicial nominee who, frankly--prior to this--I did not (at least not strongly) oppose. But if this is how lightly this judge views his ethical obligations, he's got no place whatsoever on the highest bench in the land and should be absolutely grilled by Congress when they come back in session.
This judge should have recused himself from this historic and precedent-creating case, and he knows it.
Shame on him, and shame on any lawyer in good standing who sides with him on this.
Friday, July 01, 2005
The Advocate Closes Its Doors (For Now)
Due to funding, personnel, and time issues, The Nashua Advocate will be, for the time being, closing its doors and ceasing publication.
The original founder of The Advocate, Seth Abramson, maintains a personal blog--which can be found here--for those who are interested. We would note, also, that he remains available for free-lance work and media appearances (upon request to The Nashua Advocate e-mail address, which is and will remain functional).
The Advocate's brief, six-month run on-line was not without substantial achievement. In addition to being one of the primary on-line news sources during The Boxer Rebellion (January 2005), Gannongate (February and March 2005), and the Terri Schiavo Affair (March and April 2005), The Advocate was one of the first so-called "blogs" to receive recognition from Google.com as a news source worthy of being listed in that site's news directory--a development which effectively made The Advocate a searchable database for domestic and international news-seekers by the tens (even hundreds) of thousands.
Since The Advocate's ground-breaking achievement with Google News, other lesser sites (such as the ultra-conservative Powerline) have followed suit, for which they have progressive news outlets like The Advocate to thank.
If we do say so ourselves.
During our six months of on-line operation, we received an on-line mention from Rolling Stone, regular appearances by one of our Staff on Air America Radio, and even had an editorial from the site read in its entirety to a coast-to-coast audience by the nationally-broadcast Mike Malloy Show.
At the height of our popularity, we were receiving thousands upon thousands of unique visitors per day.
But most importantly, we spread accurate information on a wide scale--and did so with pith, accurate sourcing, and passionate, articulate editorializing. We even (despite a shoestring budget and limited personnel) did some investigative reporting, which led to revelations on the Gannongate affair in February and March 2005 (see here, here, and here, for starters) which no other news outlet in America was covering at the time, and which months later larger outlets (cf. Vanity Fair) would broadcast to an audience of millions--without, alas, any citation to or acknowledgment of The Nashua Advocate's vital role in uncovering these stories.
In just six months, we reached the citizens of 96 countries around the globe, and received recognition from (and coverage by) some of the news and editorial sources we ourselves enjoy and admire the most, such as The Raw Story, BuzzFlash, The Democratic Underground, and Daily Kos. The commentaries, news articles, and calls-to-action which appeared on The Nashua Advocate would not have been possible without these sites, as well as other progressive news outlets, Google News, countless progressive bloggers the nation over, and the literally hundreds of thousands of visitors to the site. Our debt of gratitude to all of you is absolutely enormous.
Additionally, we would like to offer our special thanks to those of you who donated to The Nashua Advocate during its half-a-year tenure. Your generosity touched us all more deeply than we can properly or fully express here, and will never be forgotten.
As we sign off for now, we at The Advocate would like to believe that we provided, for a time, an invaluable service in the fight for election reform and, more broadly, in the fight to keep honest an Administration which undoubtedly is the most deceptive and destructive in the nation's long and storied history. The extensive work that we did on this front will continue to appear in our archives, and we encourage those of you who missed some of our most popular articles and commentaries to share them with friends and fellow-travelers as you will and as you like.
For us, the fight goes on: in other venues, other fora, and with other methods. But it does--and always will--go on. The triumph of progressivism is not the past, present, or future of a single movement, it is the inevitability of an ideal whose time is all times, whose place is every place, and whose hope is the hope of all mankind.
So say we,
The Staff
The original founder of The Advocate, Seth Abramson, maintains a personal blog--which can be found here--for those who are interested. We would note, also, that he remains available for free-lance work and media appearances (upon request to The Nashua Advocate e-mail address, which is and will remain functional).
The Advocate's brief, six-month run on-line was not without substantial achievement. In addition to being one of the primary on-line news sources during The Boxer Rebellion (January 2005), Gannongate (February and March 2005), and the Terri Schiavo Affair (March and April 2005), The Advocate was one of the first so-called "blogs" to receive recognition from Google.com as a news source worthy of being listed in that site's news directory--a development which effectively made The Advocate a searchable database for domestic and international news-seekers by the tens (even hundreds) of thousands.
Since The Advocate's ground-breaking achievement with Google News, other lesser sites (such as the ultra-conservative Powerline) have followed suit, for which they have progressive news outlets like The Advocate to thank.
If we do say so ourselves.
During our six months of on-line operation, we received an on-line mention from Rolling Stone, regular appearances by one of our Staff on Air America Radio, and even had an editorial from the site read in its entirety to a coast-to-coast audience by the nationally-broadcast Mike Malloy Show.
At the height of our popularity, we were receiving thousands upon thousands of unique visitors per day.
But most importantly, we spread accurate information on a wide scale--and did so with pith, accurate sourcing, and passionate, articulate editorializing. We even (despite a shoestring budget and limited personnel) did some investigative reporting, which led to revelations on the Gannongate affair in February and March 2005 (see here, here, and here, for starters) which no other news outlet in America was covering at the time, and which months later larger outlets (cf. Vanity Fair) would broadcast to an audience of millions--without, alas, any citation to or acknowledgment of The Nashua Advocate's vital role in uncovering these stories.
In just six months, we reached the citizens of 96 countries around the globe, and received recognition from (and coverage by) some of the news and editorial sources we ourselves enjoy and admire the most, such as The Raw Story, BuzzFlash, The Democratic Underground, and Daily Kos. The commentaries, news articles, and calls-to-action which appeared on The Nashua Advocate would not have been possible without these sites, as well as other progressive news outlets, Google News, countless progressive bloggers the nation over, and the literally hundreds of thousands of visitors to the site. Our debt of gratitude to all of you is absolutely enormous.
Additionally, we would like to offer our special thanks to those of you who donated to The Nashua Advocate during its half-a-year tenure. Your generosity touched us all more deeply than we can properly or fully express here, and will never be forgotten.
As we sign off for now, we at The Advocate would like to believe that we provided, for a time, an invaluable service in the fight for election reform and, more broadly, in the fight to keep honest an Administration which undoubtedly is the most deceptive and destructive in the nation's long and storied history. The extensive work that we did on this front will continue to appear in our archives, and we encourage those of you who missed some of our most popular articles and commentaries to share them with friends and fellow-travelers as you will and as you like.
For us, the fight goes on: in other venues, other fora, and with other methods. But it does--and always will--go on. The triumph of progressivism is not the past, present, or future of a single movement, it is the inevitability of an ideal whose time is all times, whose place is every place, and whose hope is the hope of all mankind.
So say we,
The Staff
Sunday, May 29, 2005
The Nashua Advocate 2008 Presidential Poll: Former Vice President Al Gore Defeats Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, 64% to 36%
Many thanks to the multitude of you who played along at home.
Will Gore run in 2008?
We doubt it--we think the political jetstream has passed him by, alas--but apparently our readership violently disagrees.
We'll see!
Will Gore run in 2008?
We doubt it--we think the political jetstream has passed him by, alas--but apparently our readership violently disagrees.
We'll see!
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Flap Over Allegedly Inaccurate Newsweek Story Raises Serious Questions
But Mainstream Media Reports from 2003 Establish That the Substance of the Story Was True, As the Bush Administration Had and Has Good Cause to Know
An ADVOCATE EDITORIAL
The recent dust-up over a Newsweek article which appears to have inaccurately concluded that Guantanamo interrogators placed the Koran in a toilet during one particular inmate interrogation raises--as the Bush Administration rightly asserts--a slough of controversial, time-sensitive questions.
For example, precisely what sort of harm does a man have to do to this country to be declared the worst President in the history of the nation? Is lying to the nation and the world about a conspiracy to engage in aggressive war in Iraq enough, or does the resulting conflagration need to result in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths to put Mr. Bush over the top? Does lying about a tax cut plan and gay-baiting homophobic Americans gain you the top spot for Most Inept Number One, or must we require leading the country into an entirely unnecessary and avoidable recession? How about a failed education plan, a failed missile defense plan, a plan to destroy Social Security, an Orwellian environmental "agenda," countless base closings, and no health care or anti-poverty programs to speak of? And can we really call a President the worst ever if he's never squandered the largest stock of pro-U.S. goodwill in the history of the world over a bogus military conflict with a nation no more threatening to the U.S. than Guyana?
But this whole Koran-in-the-toilet fiasco raises even more serious questions, and we at The Advocate would be remiss in our duties as social commentators if we didn't tackle them head on. For example, does anyone believe that U.S. interrogators in Guantanamo--many of whom use such devilishly illicit interrogation techniques they take the names of former Presidents and/or cartoon characters to escape detection--would not put a Koran in the toilet if they thought it would "save American lives," whatever the current self-congratulatory military self-reporting has yet revealed or not revealed?
Be honest, you conservatives out there. Don't you just assume that the federal agents in Guantanamo, if they're doing the job you sent them there to do, are routinely burning, tearing up, defecating on, making paper airplanes of, force-feeding with pages from, urinating over, vandalizing, writing on in permanent ink, misquoting, and generally desecrating the hell out of every Muslim Holy Book they can get their hands on?
Does anyone believe that just because Newsweek misunderstood a quote from a U.S. military official regarding this particular incident, that such incidents haven't happened? After all, if U.S. military officials, with the tacit approval of the Defense Department and the White House, are seeing fit to regularly engage in practices which violate the letter and spirit of the Geneva Convention--at least with regard to so-called "terrorists" ("so-called" because 80% or more are released without any such finding)--why in the world would they be reticent to visit unspeakable and unholy acts on a book whose tenets they consider, as an initial matter, to be dangerous and virulently anti-American?
And another query to all you conservatives out there: given your gung-ho, civil-liberties-be-damned, international-law-be-damned, whole-world-be-damned, devil-may-care attitude toward the "War on Terra," isn't the real scandal here the fact that--at least according to the White House--federal agents aren't willing to desecrate in every sense imaginable what you undoubtedly consider little more than an anti-Christian pamphlet--even if doing so would save thousands or tens of thousands of American lives? Why aren't conservatives more outraged about this? You know, that the Koran isn't being desecrated in Guantanamo in order to safeguard American soil?
Since when does the White House, which infamously called the War on Terror (cf. Iraq and Afghanistan; and coming soon to a military theater near you, Iran) a "crusade," have such delicate sensibilities toward U.S.-Muslim relations?
The Advocate herein suggests the ideal time, place, and manner for an apology from Newsweek for its faulty reporting, as well as an ideal context for its retraction of said reporting: precisely sixty seconds after the worst President in American history gets on national television and apologizes to the world and to his people for lying to them over a conspiracy to engage in aggressive war, retracts the numerous lies he told in the furtherance of said conspiracy, and offers himself up to prosecution for war crimes under the Geneva Convention and international laws which most assuredly he and his Administration have flushed down any number of toilets in setting U.S.-Muslim relations back to, say, the 12th Century.
The odious hypocrisy of this White House is outdone only by the curious fact that it still remains in such position--that is, in power, and unimpeached--to criticize a magazine mix-up so much less serious than the best thing this Administration has ever done for the country that, in real-world terms, it's the geopolitical equivalent of a slow day at the doily factory.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Incredible! This editorial has only been up a few minutes, and already the resourceful folks at Democratic Underground are showing us that what we only speculated upon here has already, in mainstream sources, been proven true. That's right, it looks like Korans were regularly being flushed down toilets in Guantanamo in 2003, just as we'd (using merely our logic, our wit, and our common sense) assumed was the case. See here for more discussion of the matter, with hyperlinks to the relevant articles to be found in Post #36].
An ADVOCATE EDITORIAL
The recent dust-up over a Newsweek article which appears to have inaccurately concluded that Guantanamo interrogators placed the Koran in a toilet during one particular inmate interrogation raises--as the Bush Administration rightly asserts--a slough of controversial, time-sensitive questions.
For example, precisely what sort of harm does a man have to do to this country to be declared the worst President in the history of the nation? Is lying to the nation and the world about a conspiracy to engage in aggressive war in Iraq enough, or does the resulting conflagration need to result in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths to put Mr. Bush over the top? Does lying about a tax cut plan and gay-baiting homophobic Americans gain you the top spot for Most Inept Number One, or must we require leading the country into an entirely unnecessary and avoidable recession? How about a failed education plan, a failed missile defense plan, a plan to destroy Social Security, an Orwellian environmental "agenda," countless base closings, and no health care or anti-poverty programs to speak of? And can we really call a President the worst ever if he's never squandered the largest stock of pro-U.S. goodwill in the history of the world over a bogus military conflict with a nation no more threatening to the U.S. than Guyana?
But this whole Koran-in-the-toilet fiasco raises even more serious questions, and we at The Advocate would be remiss in our duties as social commentators if we didn't tackle them head on. For example, does anyone believe that U.S. interrogators in Guantanamo--many of whom use such devilishly illicit interrogation techniques they take the names of former Presidents and/or cartoon characters to escape detection--would not put a Koran in the toilet if they thought it would "save American lives," whatever the current self-congratulatory military self-reporting has yet revealed or not revealed?
Be honest, you conservatives out there. Don't you just assume that the federal agents in Guantanamo, if they're doing the job you sent them there to do, are routinely burning, tearing up, defecating on, making paper airplanes of, force-feeding with pages from, urinating over, vandalizing, writing on in permanent ink, misquoting, and generally desecrating the hell out of every Muslim Holy Book they can get their hands on?
Does anyone believe that just because Newsweek misunderstood a quote from a U.S. military official regarding this particular incident, that such incidents haven't happened? After all, if U.S. military officials, with the tacit approval of the Defense Department and the White House, are seeing fit to regularly engage in practices which violate the letter and spirit of the Geneva Convention--at least with regard to so-called "terrorists" ("so-called" because 80% or more are released without any such finding)--why in the world would they be reticent to visit unspeakable and unholy acts on a book whose tenets they consider, as an initial matter, to be dangerous and virulently anti-American?
And another query to all you conservatives out there: given your gung-ho, civil-liberties-be-damned, international-law-be-damned, whole-world-be-damned, devil-may-care attitude toward the "War on Terra," isn't the real scandal here the fact that--at least according to the White House--federal agents aren't willing to desecrate in every sense imaginable what you undoubtedly consider little more than an anti-Christian pamphlet--even if doing so would save thousands or tens of thousands of American lives? Why aren't conservatives more outraged about this? You know, that the Koran isn't being desecrated in Guantanamo in order to safeguard American soil?
Since when does the White House, which infamously called the War on Terror (cf. Iraq and Afghanistan; and coming soon to a military theater near you, Iran) a "crusade," have such delicate sensibilities toward U.S.-Muslim relations?
The Advocate herein suggests the ideal time, place, and manner for an apology from Newsweek for its faulty reporting, as well as an ideal context for its retraction of said reporting: precisely sixty seconds after the worst President in American history gets on national television and apologizes to the world and to his people for lying to them over a conspiracy to engage in aggressive war, retracts the numerous lies he told in the furtherance of said conspiracy, and offers himself up to prosecution for war crimes under the Geneva Convention and international laws which most assuredly he and his Administration have flushed down any number of toilets in setting U.S.-Muslim relations back to, say, the 12th Century.
The odious hypocrisy of this White House is outdone only by the curious fact that it still remains in such position--that is, in power, and unimpeached--to criticize a magazine mix-up so much less serious than the best thing this Administration has ever done for the country that, in real-world terms, it's the geopolitical equivalent of a slow day at the doily factory.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Incredible! This editorial has only been up a few minutes, and already the resourceful folks at Democratic Underground are showing us that what we only speculated upon here has already, in mainstream sources, been proven true. That's right, it looks like Korans were regularly being flushed down toilets in Guantanamo in 2003, just as we'd (using merely our logic, our wit, and our common sense) assumed was the case. See here for more discussion of the matter, with hyperlinks to the relevant articles to be found in Post #36].
Sunday, May 15, 2005
The Nashua Advocate Presidential Poll: Former Presidential Candidates Gore and Dean Will Face Off To Be Named Top Pick for 2008 Democratic Nomination
In Other News, President Bush Conclusively Proven to Have Lied to the World About His Reasons for Engaging in a Unilateral Hostile Military Assault Against a Sovereign Power, Also Known in Obscure Legal Circles As a "War Crime"; Mainstream Media (and Most Americans) More Concerned About Whether Or Not Paula Abdul Did the Nasty With a Contestant on Television's "American Idol"
By ADVOCATE STAFF
Okay, we're going to make voting as simple as possible for all you technophobes out there: pick either Al Gore or Howard Dean as your pick to be 2008 Democratic presidential nominee, and send your vote in an e-mail entitled "TNA Poll" to nashuaadvocate@yahoo.com.
The winner will be announced in two weeks' time.
Now, to briefly recap Week 4: the lovable, affable, and courageous election reform hero, John Conyers, has been banished from the TNA Poll after an astounding sixteenth-seed-to-Final Four performance. Likewise, the articulate, charismatic, passionate and frighteningly (in a good way) young Barack Obama has been sent packing with a clear message: it's not your turn yet kid, but soon.
TNA investigations have concluded that neither man has been guilty of a war crime in the past five years.
Instead of non-war criminals Conyers and Obama, our readers have sent to TNA's National Primary the top progressives from the last two general election cycles. According to The Advocate's readership, one of these men is the Party of Sanity's best hope to head off the angry, virulent, dishonest, and distressingly totalitarian juggernaut which is currently calling itself the Republican Party, and which is missing only the colorful armbands and/or furry Russian caps which would reliably establish, once and for all, said Party's eerie resemblance to two other major political parties of the last century.
TNA investigations have concluded that neither Gore nor Dean has been guilty of a war crime in the past fifty years, or even, incredibly, the past century.
Also, neither man deserves to be impeached and tried for war crimes immediately.
But we digress.
That is, it's not like President Bush was just conclusively proven to have lied to the entire world. Or, um, anything like that. Hey, did you hear that Paula Abdul may have screwed an "American Idol" contestant? Amazing!
Anyway, back to this person some are calling "the President."
If John McCain believes him, why isn't that good enough for the rest of us?
You know, you just don't impeach a President for lying to the world about a unilateral, hostile military assault on a sovereign power--you just don't.
No, you try him for war crimes and incarcerate him accordingly, assuming he's found guilty by one of those twelve-cartons-of-milk-and-a-ham-sandwich outfits the Army calls "a military tribunal."
[And hey, we like those odds!].
You only impeach a President if all he's done is fib in a civil lawsuit on a personal issue ultimately ruled to be irrelevant to the underlying lawsuit.
Or if he screws an intern in a wild bout of wholly consensual adult sex.
So, without further comment, it's game on: Gore versus Dean.
What? Bush versus The World?
That's a different poll: it's called "the President's approval ratings."
And the fact that those ratings are anything over single-digits is proof that conservative Americans are either stupid, lazy, ignorant, hypocritical, anti-American, or any five of the foregoing.
We repeat: game on.
****************WEEK 4 WINNERS****************
Former Vice President Al Gore [D-TN] (76.9%) DEFEATS Sen. Barack Obama [D-IL] (23.1%)
Former Gov./Current DNC Chair Howard Dean [D-VT] (74.3%) DEFEATS Rep. John T. Conyers, Jr. [D-MI] (25.7%)
****************WEEK 4 AWARDS****************
[For past weeks' awards and results, click accordingly: Week 4, Week 3, Week 2, Week 1].
Biggest Upset: None.
Biggest Choke: None.
Biggest Margin of Victory: Gore (53.8%).
Closest Race: Really, none.
Biggest Raw Vote Total (Winner): Gore.
Biggest Raw Vote Total (2nd Place): Dean.
Biggest Raw Vote Total (3rd Place): Conyers.
Biggest Raw Vote Total (4th Place): Obama.
****************MATCHUP: WEEK 4****************
[Original seeds in parentheses].
Gore (5) v. Dean (2)
By ADVOCATE STAFF
Okay, we're going to make voting as simple as possible for all you technophobes out there: pick either Al Gore or Howard Dean as your pick to be 2008 Democratic presidential nominee, and send your vote in an e-mail entitled "TNA Poll" to nashuaadvocate@yahoo.com.
The winner will be announced in two weeks' time.
Now, to briefly recap Week 4: the lovable, affable, and courageous election reform hero, John Conyers, has been banished from the TNA Poll after an astounding sixteenth-seed-to-Final Four performance. Likewise, the articulate, charismatic, passionate and frighteningly (in a good way) young Barack Obama has been sent packing with a clear message: it's not your turn yet kid, but soon.
TNA investigations have concluded that neither man has been guilty of a war crime in the past five years.
Instead of non-war criminals Conyers and Obama, our readers have sent to TNA's National Primary the top progressives from the last two general election cycles. According to The Advocate's readership, one of these men is the Party of Sanity's best hope to head off the angry, virulent, dishonest, and distressingly totalitarian juggernaut which is currently calling itself the Republican Party, and which is missing only the colorful armbands and/or furry Russian caps which would reliably establish, once and for all, said Party's eerie resemblance to two other major political parties of the last century.
TNA investigations have concluded that neither Gore nor Dean has been guilty of a war crime in the past fifty years, or even, incredibly, the past century.
Also, neither man deserves to be impeached and tried for war crimes immediately.
But we digress.
That is, it's not like President Bush was just conclusively proven to have lied to the entire world. Or, um, anything like that. Hey, did you hear that Paula Abdul may have screwed an "American Idol" contestant? Amazing!
Anyway, back to this person some are calling "the President."
If John McCain believes him, why isn't that good enough for the rest of us?
You know, you just don't impeach a President for lying to the world about a unilateral, hostile military assault on a sovereign power--you just don't.
No, you try him for war crimes and incarcerate him accordingly, assuming he's found guilty by one of those twelve-cartons-of-milk-and-a-ham-sandwich outfits the Army calls "a military tribunal."
[And hey, we like those odds!].
You only impeach a President if all he's done is fib in a civil lawsuit on a personal issue ultimately ruled to be irrelevant to the underlying lawsuit.
Or if he screws an intern in a wild bout of wholly consensual adult sex.
So, without further comment, it's game on: Gore versus Dean.
What? Bush versus The World?
That's a different poll: it's called "the President's approval ratings."
And the fact that those ratings are anything over single-digits is proof that conservative Americans are either stupid, lazy, ignorant, hypocritical, anti-American, or any five of the foregoing.
We repeat: game on.
****************WEEK 4 WINNERS****************
Former Vice President Al Gore [D-TN] (76.9%) DEFEATS Sen. Barack Obama [D-IL] (23.1%)
Former Gov./Current DNC Chair Howard Dean [D-VT] (74.3%) DEFEATS Rep. John T. Conyers, Jr. [D-MI] (25.7%)
****************WEEK 4 AWARDS****************
[For past weeks' awards and results, click accordingly: Week 4, Week 3, Week 2, Week 1].
Biggest Upset: None.
Biggest Choke: None.
Biggest Margin of Victory: Gore (53.8%).
Closest Race: Really, none.
Biggest Raw Vote Total (Winner): Gore.
Biggest Raw Vote Total (2nd Place): Dean.
Biggest Raw Vote Total (3rd Place): Conyers.
Biggest Raw Vote Total (4th Place): Obama.
****************MATCHUP: WEEK 4****************
[Original seeds in parentheses].
Gore (5) v. Dean (2)
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
The Final Word on Bill O'Reilly
Everything You Need to Know About the Biggest Empty Suit in America, Including Why He's a Bigger Threat to the Nation Than Clandestine Terrorism
AN ADVOCATE EDITORIAL
The greatest threats to any militarily-secure superpower are neither chemical, nor biological, nor nuclear; instead, such powers--and for the guidance of history in this, treat the Roman Empire as Figure 1--invariably decline because of their own self-inflicted ignorance, coupled, typically, with an extravagant sort of self-indulgence engendered by unearned gravitas.
In the checkered and sordid history of self-inflicted ignorance and unearned gravitas, Bill O'Reilly, of Fox News Channel infamy, is Figure 2.
Had the United States been arrested in its spiritual, moral, technological, geopolitical, ethical, and scientific development around, say, the end of the Eisenhower Administration, Bill O'Reilly would have been as at home on this planet today as a jar of marmalade would have been on the window-sill of a British hamlet in 1923. Instead, O'Reilly is that most curious brand of anachronism, a curio of the past which remains not only unaffected by the last fifty years of human civilization, but--paradoxically--brazenly defiant of it at the same time. It is the ultra-rare sociopath who receives the Word--speaking, here, of the Word which is All Human Progress Since 1959--and fails to be converted.
Take away every recognizable advancement in the field of psychology, every case study and common law decision in the field of criminal justice, every felicitous discovery in the field of medicine, every twice-a-year Enlightenment in the fields of ethics, civics, diplomacy, globalization, and the several hundred sub-categories of the social sciences and humanities now acknowledged, and you are left with an hour-long waft of fetid air (horrifically re-enacted, twice a day) somewhat innocuously dubbed "The O'Reilly Factor."
No single landmark in the history of media, from the Gutenberg Bible to Barbara Walters, has done more to promote arrogant wrongheadedness and willful, self-indulgent stupidity than "The Factor," as it is commonly referred to by its ubiquitous, wrongheaded, self-indulgent, and almost preternaturally stupid host.
To the extent this great nation and the precepts which undergird it should, in the years ahead, falter, or stumble, or embarrass themselves, or lose their adherents, or drift into incoherence, or erode into unresolvable contradictions, or betray their nature, or betray, even, their better nature, it will be due to the sort of insipid tomfoolery and apocalyptically poor judgment which allowed an essentially obsolete intelligence calling itself "Bill O'Reilly" to infect--to poison, to metastasize, to slay--the United States' accumulated stock of intellectual and moral heft.
The terrorists can (and have) assailed our soil, our persons, our institutions, our belief in the invincibility of The American Experience and The American Experiment, but they in no way can indoctrinate the denizens of this plot of land with the sort of habitual thoughtlessness and existential decrepitude that Bill O'Reilly, on a per annum basis, effortlessly foments.
It is the ultra-rare cultural cretin who can comfortably claim to have set his homeland back--morally, spiritually, intellectually, politically, psychologically--an identifiable term of years. And it is the ultra-rare (but not wholly obsolete) Fox News personality who gets paid so extraordinarily handsomely to do so.
As Don King is wont to say: "Only in America."
There is not a single topic on which O'Reilly is loathe to bloviate, and yet, incredibly, not a single topic on which the man's opinions could be considered expert, competent, or even marginally well-informed. Instead, the self-described commentator--whose only formal training is in journalism, a pursuit he admits to not pursue on "The Factor"--books as guests for his daily program the parasitic dregs of their respective professions, so-called "experts" so comically daft, so irrefutably incompetent, and so profoundly disinterested in the mainstream advances of their respective fields that they find themselves helpless to resist the intellectual entreaties of a man no more schooled in their chosen professions than a pair of winter mittens.
The guiding principle of the O'Reilly phenomenon--more broadly defined as the slow decline of American hegemony in the late-20th and early 21st centuries--is not excellence, but self-assurance. That, and a reactionary, know-nothing brand of conservatism which was last fashionable when the Beatles were still learning to play their instruments in Germany, during the infancy of the still-to-be-revolutionary 1960s. Indeed, there is no modern conservative (or neo-conservative) policy position O'Reilly can't criticize for being insufficiently draconian, and no such criticism O'Reilly can't parlay into a laughably fraudulent claim of evenhandedness or better still, when he's feeling particularly sociopathic, "progressivism."
A case in point would be O'Reilly curious and seemingly progressive opposition to the death penalty: an opposition which arises not, he says, because innocents have been wrongly executed, or because the practice has no proven deterrent effect, or because it is disproportionately applied against minorities, or because the poor receive inadequate legal representation in many capital cases, or because the brutalization effect of the penalty adheres to the society which metes it out and not upon those against whom it is worked--for none of these reasons, indeed--but rather because it is too lenient.
O'Reilly favors environmental protection but opposes almost the entirety of the corporate regulatory regimes and consumer actions (cf. boycotts) which would make such protection a viable political reality. He self-reports being progressive on the question of homosexuality--only, however, to the point where he would not tolerate the impaling of gays on the city walls of, say, Houston, or Atlanta, or Jackson, or Memphis. That is, in the view of O'Reilly, gays are free to express the full purview of their sexual orientation--whatever social, moral, spiritual, and psychological manifestations that orientation might give voice to--provided they remain closeted in such beliefs and do not "subject others" (his words) to what he implies are generally deemed foul, odious, and generally disgusting habits and philosophies.
Given a recent sexual harrassment lawsuit (settled out-of-court) and several well-publicized instances of lying, distortion, and/or public vituperation, the notion that O'Reilly is any sort of savant when it comes to the imposition of moral and behavioral discipline on American culture would be an occasion for laughter--were it not, as proposed in the heading of this editorial, profoundly more distressing to the moral and cultural fabric of the nation than, say, mustard gas, or suicide bombings, or sporadic small-arms fire. Those dastardly conventional and unconventional forms of warfare are a potential danger to workaday Americans to be sure, but substantially less dangerous--given the entire lifespan of a geopolitical superpower--than a prevailing view, among the populace of that superpower, that all that is needed to be expert and informed in the year 2005 is a microphone and an opinion.
National Public Radio (NPR), which O'Reilly habitually and predictably derides, presents a valuable counterpoint to "The Factor" worldview. On NPR, a precondition to bloviating on any given topic is having some measure of expertise or experience with same beyond A) having seen an investigative report on television about it, or B) having heard an equally unqualified civilian present a harangue on same on the radio, or C) having been told some immutable truth (or, failing that, a mere anecdote) touching on same by an equally ignorant, slack-jawed, entirely untutored parent or relative born (like, for the purposes of this discussion, O'Reilly) into a 1940s and 1950s society profoundly different from today's. Indeed, the past fifty years of human progress have been simply remarkable, a fact wholly lost on Fox's befuddled superstar, who fails to see that almost every way in which the 21st Century differs from the 1950s--if we only have the courage and requisite longer view to admit it--appropriately puts that long-gone decade in the same box The Enlightenment put The Crusades: at times inspiring (or, more typically, merely educational), frequently embarrassing and ill-advised, and, most importantly, over.
O'Reilly's recent claims that the molestation of children was more effectively dealt with in the 1950s are laughable, as are his submissions that a child can be "made" gay through political indoctrination, that the nation's largest newspapers literally (not even figuratively) hate America, and that Democrats favor socialism as a philosophical/political hegemon (one doubts whether O'Reilly even understands the functioning of a hypothetical socialist state, or could name more than three countries governed by such a political philosophy).
During most of his radio and television broadcasts a listener would be hard-pressed to detect even a single factual assertion made by O'Reilly which is supported by psychologists, lawyers, doctors, scientists, or educators operating in the year 2005, instead of the pre-Kennedy Twilight Zone O'Reilly most assuredly wakes up to every morning.
So: this article is not a "word to the wise," as the wise don't follow Bill O'Reilly in any of the myriad fora this insufferable Neanderthal has inserted himself. It is a word, instead, to those wishing to be wise, and wondering, to the tune of millions of consumers a year, whether the received wisdom reified by O'Reilly's daily bloviating is precisely the right prescription for what ails them.
In a word, it is not.
But we've some thoughts on the matter, following a lifetime of research into the subject.
Finish high school.
Go to college.
If you can't afford the latter, as so many Americans cannot, read avidly--not editorials (including such a one as this is)--but the news sections of newspapers.
Delve into the Classics of world literature.
Travel.
Meet people unlike yourself--and yes, that includes homosexuals and atheists.
Devour studies from the foremost researchers in the fields that interest you. Not pundits with a quick buck to make from disingenuously sensationalizing their experiences or supposed expertise (former prosecutor Jeanine Pirro comes quickly to mind as a legal professional who has prostituted her professional integrity for a book deal) but those with a long, well-documented, and consistent history of seeking the truth for the truth's sake.
Don't be afraid to defer, at the start, to those who know more than you. And don't be afraid, either, of finding out--whether from such more-educated people, or on your own--things which scare you.
Don't be surprised, in fact, if along the way you find out numerous things which scare you, largely due to the amazement you will feel--deep and abiding--when you realize you can't learn the intricacies of, say, the criminal justice system, or the mental health system, or the public education system, or our system of local/state/federal government administration, or form relevant opinions on any of these things, by watching Sean Hannity or listening on the radio to Rush Limbaugh (or, for that matter, Al Franken, or Randi Rhodes, or any other talking head whose jack-of-all-trades routine leads, invariably, to being the master [or even the acolyte] of none at all).
Above all, realize that the pursuit of knowledge has as its central tenet and ineluctable theme the advancement of justice for all mankind, not the validation of a conversation you and your rubber ducky had in the bath at age ten, when Eisenhower was still President and it still seemed improbable women would seek to be a co-equal gender, that (post-Kinsey) academia would throw off the yoke of political correctness and publish emerging truths rather than merely regurgitating time-worn dogma, that beating your child with a belt would at some point cease to be considered a core attribute of effective child-rearing, and that "getting it right" would one day be as admirable a goal as "making ends meet."
Yet today, getting things right is a goal unto itself, and America has been profoundly wrong to allow the elevation to power, authority, and fame a man whose only remarkable quality is managing to fit a necktie around his remarkable ego every morning before breakfast.
Terrorists can sap our strength from time to time, but they cannot reverse or abrogate that profoundly American penchant for (small "r") revolution: moral, spiritual, philosophical, scientific, and intellectual. Nor can they cripple the advancements of the race and the additions to human understanding which just such a penchant has always made not just possible, but indeed probable.
Bombs alone can't destroy a well-guarded civilization.
However, ignorance, self-indulgence, and an unfettered belief in the hegemony of the Self can most certainly do so--in about the time it takes you to turn on your television set.
AN ADVOCATE EDITORIAL
The greatest threats to any militarily-secure superpower are neither chemical, nor biological, nor nuclear; instead, such powers--and for the guidance of history in this, treat the Roman Empire as Figure 1--invariably decline because of their own self-inflicted ignorance, coupled, typically, with an extravagant sort of self-indulgence engendered by unearned gravitas.
In the checkered and sordid history of self-inflicted ignorance and unearned gravitas, Bill O'Reilly, of Fox News Channel infamy, is Figure 2.
Had the United States been arrested in its spiritual, moral, technological, geopolitical, ethical, and scientific development around, say, the end of the Eisenhower Administration, Bill O'Reilly would have been as at home on this planet today as a jar of marmalade would have been on the window-sill of a British hamlet in 1923. Instead, O'Reilly is that most curious brand of anachronism, a curio of the past which remains not only unaffected by the last fifty years of human civilization, but--paradoxically--brazenly defiant of it at the same time. It is the ultra-rare sociopath who receives the Word--speaking, here, of the Word which is All Human Progress Since 1959--and fails to be converted.
Take away every recognizable advancement in the field of psychology, every case study and common law decision in the field of criminal justice, every felicitous discovery in the field of medicine, every twice-a-year Enlightenment in the fields of ethics, civics, diplomacy, globalization, and the several hundred sub-categories of the social sciences and humanities now acknowledged, and you are left with an hour-long waft of fetid air (horrifically re-enacted, twice a day) somewhat innocuously dubbed "The O'Reilly Factor."
No single landmark in the history of media, from the Gutenberg Bible to Barbara Walters, has done more to promote arrogant wrongheadedness and willful, self-indulgent stupidity than "The Factor," as it is commonly referred to by its ubiquitous, wrongheaded, self-indulgent, and almost preternaturally stupid host.
To the extent this great nation and the precepts which undergird it should, in the years ahead, falter, or stumble, or embarrass themselves, or lose their adherents, or drift into incoherence, or erode into unresolvable contradictions, or betray their nature, or betray, even, their better nature, it will be due to the sort of insipid tomfoolery and apocalyptically poor judgment which allowed an essentially obsolete intelligence calling itself "Bill O'Reilly" to infect--to poison, to metastasize, to slay--the United States' accumulated stock of intellectual and moral heft.
The terrorists can (and have) assailed our soil, our persons, our institutions, our belief in the invincibility of The American Experience and The American Experiment, but they in no way can indoctrinate the denizens of this plot of land with the sort of habitual thoughtlessness and existential decrepitude that Bill O'Reilly, on a per annum basis, effortlessly foments.
It is the ultra-rare cultural cretin who can comfortably claim to have set his homeland back--morally, spiritually, intellectually, politically, psychologically--an identifiable term of years. And it is the ultra-rare (but not wholly obsolete) Fox News personality who gets paid so extraordinarily handsomely to do so.
As Don King is wont to say: "Only in America."
There is not a single topic on which O'Reilly is loathe to bloviate, and yet, incredibly, not a single topic on which the man's opinions could be considered expert, competent, or even marginally well-informed. Instead, the self-described commentator--whose only formal training is in journalism, a pursuit he admits to not pursue on "The Factor"--books as guests for his daily program the parasitic dregs of their respective professions, so-called "experts" so comically daft, so irrefutably incompetent, and so profoundly disinterested in the mainstream advances of their respective fields that they find themselves helpless to resist the intellectual entreaties of a man no more schooled in their chosen professions than a pair of winter mittens.
The guiding principle of the O'Reilly phenomenon--more broadly defined as the slow decline of American hegemony in the late-20th and early 21st centuries--is not excellence, but self-assurance. That, and a reactionary, know-nothing brand of conservatism which was last fashionable when the Beatles were still learning to play their instruments in Germany, during the infancy of the still-to-be-revolutionary 1960s. Indeed, there is no modern conservative (or neo-conservative) policy position O'Reilly can't criticize for being insufficiently draconian, and no such criticism O'Reilly can't parlay into a laughably fraudulent claim of evenhandedness or better still, when he's feeling particularly sociopathic, "progressivism."
A case in point would be O'Reilly curious and seemingly progressive opposition to the death penalty: an opposition which arises not, he says, because innocents have been wrongly executed, or because the practice has no proven deterrent effect, or because it is disproportionately applied against minorities, or because the poor receive inadequate legal representation in many capital cases, or because the brutalization effect of the penalty adheres to the society which metes it out and not upon those against whom it is worked--for none of these reasons, indeed--but rather because it is too lenient.
O'Reilly favors environmental protection but opposes almost the entirety of the corporate regulatory regimes and consumer actions (cf. boycotts) which would make such protection a viable political reality. He self-reports being progressive on the question of homosexuality--only, however, to the point where he would not tolerate the impaling of gays on the city walls of, say, Houston, or Atlanta, or Jackson, or Memphis. That is, in the view of O'Reilly, gays are free to express the full purview of their sexual orientation--whatever social, moral, spiritual, and psychological manifestations that orientation might give voice to--provided they remain closeted in such beliefs and do not "subject others" (his words) to what he implies are generally deemed foul, odious, and generally disgusting habits and philosophies.
Given a recent sexual harrassment lawsuit (settled out-of-court) and several well-publicized instances of lying, distortion, and/or public vituperation, the notion that O'Reilly is any sort of savant when it comes to the imposition of moral and behavioral discipline on American culture would be an occasion for laughter--were it not, as proposed in the heading of this editorial, profoundly more distressing to the moral and cultural fabric of the nation than, say, mustard gas, or suicide bombings, or sporadic small-arms fire. Those dastardly conventional and unconventional forms of warfare are a potential danger to workaday Americans to be sure, but substantially less dangerous--given the entire lifespan of a geopolitical superpower--than a prevailing view, among the populace of that superpower, that all that is needed to be expert and informed in the year 2005 is a microphone and an opinion.
National Public Radio (NPR), which O'Reilly habitually and predictably derides, presents a valuable counterpoint to "The Factor" worldview. On NPR, a precondition to bloviating on any given topic is having some measure of expertise or experience with same beyond A) having seen an investigative report on television about it, or B) having heard an equally unqualified civilian present a harangue on same on the radio, or C) having been told some immutable truth (or, failing that, a mere anecdote) touching on same by an equally ignorant, slack-jawed, entirely untutored parent or relative born (like, for the purposes of this discussion, O'Reilly) into a 1940s and 1950s society profoundly different from today's. Indeed, the past fifty years of human progress have been simply remarkable, a fact wholly lost on Fox's befuddled superstar, who fails to see that almost every way in which the 21st Century differs from the 1950s--if we only have the courage and requisite longer view to admit it--appropriately puts that long-gone decade in the same box The Enlightenment put The Crusades: at times inspiring (or, more typically, merely educational), frequently embarrassing and ill-advised, and, most importantly, over.
O'Reilly's recent claims that the molestation of children was more effectively dealt with in the 1950s are laughable, as are his submissions that a child can be "made" gay through political indoctrination, that the nation's largest newspapers literally (not even figuratively) hate America, and that Democrats favor socialism as a philosophical/political hegemon (one doubts whether O'Reilly even understands the functioning of a hypothetical socialist state, or could name more than three countries governed by such a political philosophy).
During most of his radio and television broadcasts a listener would be hard-pressed to detect even a single factual assertion made by O'Reilly which is supported by psychologists, lawyers, doctors, scientists, or educators operating in the year 2005, instead of the pre-Kennedy Twilight Zone O'Reilly most assuredly wakes up to every morning.
So: this article is not a "word to the wise," as the wise don't follow Bill O'Reilly in any of the myriad fora this insufferable Neanderthal has inserted himself. It is a word, instead, to those wishing to be wise, and wondering, to the tune of millions of consumers a year, whether the received wisdom reified by O'Reilly's daily bloviating is precisely the right prescription for what ails them.
In a word, it is not.
But we've some thoughts on the matter, following a lifetime of research into the subject.
Finish high school.
Go to college.
If you can't afford the latter, as so many Americans cannot, read avidly--not editorials (including such a one as this is)--but the news sections of newspapers.
Delve into the Classics of world literature.
Travel.
Meet people unlike yourself--and yes, that includes homosexuals and atheists.
Devour studies from the foremost researchers in the fields that interest you. Not pundits with a quick buck to make from disingenuously sensationalizing their experiences or supposed expertise (former prosecutor Jeanine Pirro comes quickly to mind as a legal professional who has prostituted her professional integrity for a book deal) but those with a long, well-documented, and consistent history of seeking the truth for the truth's sake.
Don't be afraid to defer, at the start, to those who know more than you. And don't be afraid, either, of finding out--whether from such more-educated people, or on your own--things which scare you.
Don't be surprised, in fact, if along the way you find out numerous things which scare you, largely due to the amazement you will feel--deep and abiding--when you realize you can't learn the intricacies of, say, the criminal justice system, or the mental health system, or the public education system, or our system of local/state/federal government administration, or form relevant opinions on any of these things, by watching Sean Hannity or listening on the radio to Rush Limbaugh (or, for that matter, Al Franken, or Randi Rhodes, or any other talking head whose jack-of-all-trades routine leads, invariably, to being the master [or even the acolyte] of none at all).
Above all, realize that the pursuit of knowledge has as its central tenet and ineluctable theme the advancement of justice for all mankind, not the validation of a conversation you and your rubber ducky had in the bath at age ten, when Eisenhower was still President and it still seemed improbable women would seek to be a co-equal gender, that (post-Kinsey) academia would throw off the yoke of political correctness and publish emerging truths rather than merely regurgitating time-worn dogma, that beating your child with a belt would at some point cease to be considered a core attribute of effective child-rearing, and that "getting it right" would one day be as admirable a goal as "making ends meet."
Yet today, getting things right is a goal unto itself, and America has been profoundly wrong to allow the elevation to power, authority, and fame a man whose only remarkable quality is managing to fit a necktie around his remarkable ego every morning before breakfast.
Terrorists can sap our strength from time to time, but they cannot reverse or abrogate that profoundly American penchant for (small "r") revolution: moral, spiritual, philosophical, scientific, and intellectual. Nor can they cripple the advancements of the race and the additions to human understanding which just such a penchant has always made not just possible, but indeed probable.
Bombs alone can't destroy a well-guarded civilization.
However, ignorance, self-indulgence, and an unfettered belief in the hegemony of the Self can most certainly do so--in about the time it takes you to turn on your television set.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Week 4 of The Nashua Advocate's Presidential May Madness: Finally, The Final Four Has Arrived
Week Three Features the Demise of Hillary Clinton, the Disqualification of General Wesley Clark, and the Narrow Defeat of The Nashua Advocate's Top Pick for Darkhorse Presidential Candidate, Russ Feingold
[EDITOR'S NOTE (5/8/05): Scroll down past Introduction for brackets and voting instructions].
By ADVOCATE STAFF
As most of those participating in The Nashua Advocate's Presidential May Madness are aware, General Wesley Clark was disqualified from the Poll this week due to persistent double-voting by his supporters. The Advocate has since learned of similar accusations against Clark supporters as to other on-line polls.
As Staff has previously (even laboriously) noted, we regret the exclusion of valid Clark votes, in no way imply that this disqualification casts a shadow on General Clark himself, and acknowledge that the solution employed was imperfect but--given the technical limitations of our vote-counting procedure--the best we could possibly do under the circumstances. This Poll continues to operate on the honor system, though we also reserve the right to disqualify illegal votes (read: multiple-voting).
Interestingly, when all the invalid Clark votes were discounted, Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean nevertheless emerged victorious, albeit in the closest race TNA's May Madness has seen thus far. Small consolation to those who legally cast ballots for Clark, we know--that is, it will do little for their present ire that their favored candidate would have lost this week's match-up in any event--but we note it regardless, for what it's worth.
[And to head off at the pass those who would surmise that Dean pulled ahead after Clark's disqualification--because voters eliminated Clark from their ballots--Staff notes that the rate of balloting for Clark remained constant both before and after his disqualification].
Of more immediate note is the defeat of Hillary Clinton, "real-world" favorite to nab the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, at the hands of former presidential candidate and Vice President Al Gore, the top vote-getter in this week's Poll. Staff speculates that it was Gore's CSPAN-televised speech at a MoveOn.org event--in which the former Democratic star sounded resolute and articulate and looked (sans beard, albeit still hefty) somewhat closer to national palatability--that vaulted him into "front-runner" status going into our Final Four.
That said, did we mention that current Democratic superstar Barack Obama is still alive after this week's polling? It will be interesting to see whether Advocate readers predict the first black President in our nation's history for 2008--and even more interesting to see if that black President is not Obama, but John Conyers, the senior-citizen with zero presidential ambitions who nevertheless (as a sixteen-seed!) has made a curious and improbable march through our Poll.
Is this the week Democratic voters choose realism over fantasy, the young (or relatively so) over the elderly?
And does Al Gore have one more presidential campaign left in him?
Will Howard Dean jump ship at the DNC to make a second run for the Presidency?
The questions are endless--but that's why we love national politics here at The Advocate.
In any event, without further ado, here are the winners and losers from Week Three, along with the week's highlights and awards. Also below are the brackets for Week Four--the Final Four of the contest--which officially begins right now.
Instructions for voting are at the base of this article.
[We note here, for all you technophobes out there, that voting is easy, and requires merely sending an e-mail with your picks to our e-mail address, nashuaadvocate@yahoo.com].
Week Four voting will close, and all Week Four results will be posted, in one week.
Let the voting begin!
[EDITOR'S NOTE (5/8/05): As with last week's polling, this week you will once again find active links to information on each of the candidates who survived Week Three, and who therefore now face elimination (or advancement to the Championship) in Week Four.
Please remember, also, that we invite, separately from your Week Four votes (albeit in the same e-mail), your nomination of any person for "Top Write-In Candidate for 2008."
****************WEEK 3 WINNERS****************
Former Vice President Al Gore [D-TN] (71.4%) DEFEATS Sen. Hillary Clinton [D-NY] (28.6%)
Sen. Barack Obama [D-IL] (67.9%) DEFEATS Rep. Dennis Kucinich [D-OH] (32.1%)
Rep. John T. Conyers, Jr. [D-MI] (57.1%) DEFEATS Sen. Russ Feingold [D-WI] (42.9%)
Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark [D-AR] (48.3%) DEFAULTS TO Former Gov./Current DNC Chair Howard Dean [D-VT] (51.7%)
****************WEEK 3 AWARDS****************
Biggest Upset (Winner): Conyers DEFEATS Feingold (16-versus-5)
Biggest Upset (Runner-Up): Gore DEFEATS Clinton (5-versus-1)
Biggest Choke (Winner): Clinton (loses to five-seed by 42.8 points)
Biggest Choke (Runner-Up): Feingold (loses to popular sixteen-seed by 14.2 points)
Biggest Margin of Victory (Winner): Gore (42.8 Points)
Biggest Margin of Victory (Runner-Up): Obama (35.8 Points)
Closest Race (Winner): Dean/Clark* (51.7%/48.3%)
Closest Race (Runner-Up): Conyers/Feingold (57.1%/42.9%)
* Disqualified.
Biggest Raw Vote Total (Winner): Gore
Biggest Raw Vote Total (2nd Place): Obama
Biggest Raw Vote Total (3rd Place): Conyers
Lowest Raw Vote Total (Winner): Clinton
Lowest Raw Vote Total (2nd Place): Kucinich
Lowest Raw Vote Total (3rd Place): Feingold
Best Performance by a SENATOR (Winner): Obama (67.9%)
Best Performance by a REPRESENTATIVE (Winner): Conyers (57.1%)
Best Performance by a GOVERNOR (Winner): Dean* (51.7%)
Best Performance by OTHER (Winner): Gore (71.4%)
* Former governor.
Win-Loss Record of SENATORS (Week Three): 1-2
Win-Loss Record of REPRESENTATIVES (Week Three): 1-1
Win-Loss Record of GOVERNORS (Week Three): 1-0
Win-Loss Record of OTHER (Week Three): 1-1
Staff's Pick for Biggest Surprise (Winner): Conyers DEFEATS Feingold
Staff's Pick for Biggest Surprise (2nd Place): Gore DEFEATS Clinton
Staff's Pick for Biggest Surprise (3rd Place): Obama DEFEATS Kucinich
Staff's Pick for "Name to Watch Closely" in Week Four: Obama
Staff's Pick for "Best Match-up" in Week Three: Gore-versus-Obama
Staff's Pick for "Most Likely Upset" in Week Three: Conyers DEFEATS Dean
Staff's Pick for "Will Hillary Survive This Round?" Game: N/A
Staff's Pick for "Oddest Match-up" in Week Three: Conyers-versus-Dean
Staff's Pick for "Best Dark Horse Right Now": Obama
****************MATCHUPS: WEEK 4****************
If you're playing along at home, your brackets should look like this right now (with original seeds in parentheses):
Bracket 1
Obama (7)
Gore (5)
Bracket 2
Conyers (16)
Dean (2)
With that in mind, here are the match-ups for Week Four (lower seeds listed first, for clarity only):
Gore (5) v. Obama (7)
Dean (2) v. Conyers (16)
****************HOW TO PLAY****************
1. Pick a candidate from each two-person matchup.
2. Put your picks in an e-mail entitled "TNA March Madness." Arrange your picks in the e-mail as a top-to-bottom list, following the order the names appear in the "Matchups" section above.
For example:
Pick from 1st matchup
Pick from 2nd matchup
Pick from 3rd matchup
Pick from 4th matchup
And so on.
3. Send the e-mail to nashuaadvocate@yahoo.com.
4. Feel free to make comments in the comments section, below. As per usual, you are requested to keep your comments civil.
[EDITOR'S NOTE (5/8/05): Scroll down past Introduction for brackets and voting instructions].
By ADVOCATE STAFF
As most of those participating in The Nashua Advocate's Presidential May Madness are aware, General Wesley Clark was disqualified from the Poll this week due to persistent double-voting by his supporters. The Advocate has since learned of similar accusations against Clark supporters as to other on-line polls.
As Staff has previously (even laboriously) noted, we regret the exclusion of valid Clark votes, in no way imply that this disqualification casts a shadow on General Clark himself, and acknowledge that the solution employed was imperfect but--given the technical limitations of our vote-counting procedure--the best we could possibly do under the circumstances. This Poll continues to operate on the honor system, though we also reserve the right to disqualify illegal votes (read: multiple-voting).
Interestingly, when all the invalid Clark votes were discounted, Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean nevertheless emerged victorious, albeit in the closest race TNA's May Madness has seen thus far. Small consolation to those who legally cast ballots for Clark, we know--that is, it will do little for their present ire that their favored candidate would have lost this week's match-up in any event--but we note it regardless, for what it's worth.
[And to head off at the pass those who would surmise that Dean pulled ahead after Clark's disqualification--because voters eliminated Clark from their ballots--Staff notes that the rate of balloting for Clark remained constant both before and after his disqualification].
Of more immediate note is the defeat of Hillary Clinton, "real-world" favorite to nab the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, at the hands of former presidential candidate and Vice President Al Gore, the top vote-getter in this week's Poll. Staff speculates that it was Gore's CSPAN-televised speech at a MoveOn.org event--in which the former Democratic star sounded resolute and articulate and looked (sans beard, albeit still hefty) somewhat closer to national palatability--that vaulted him into "front-runner" status going into our Final Four.
That said, did we mention that current Democratic superstar Barack Obama is still alive after this week's polling? It will be interesting to see whether Advocate readers predict the first black President in our nation's history for 2008--and even more interesting to see if that black President is not Obama, but John Conyers, the senior-citizen with zero presidential ambitions who nevertheless (as a sixteen-seed!) has made a curious and improbable march through our Poll.
Is this the week Democratic voters choose realism over fantasy, the young (or relatively so) over the elderly?
And does Al Gore have one more presidential campaign left in him?
Will Howard Dean jump ship at the DNC to make a second run for the Presidency?
The questions are endless--but that's why we love national politics here at The Advocate.
In any event, without further ado, here are the winners and losers from Week Three, along with the week's highlights and awards. Also below are the brackets for Week Four--the Final Four of the contest--which officially begins right now.
Instructions for voting are at the base of this article.
[We note here, for all you technophobes out there, that voting is easy, and requires merely sending an e-mail with your picks to our e-mail address, nashuaadvocate@yahoo.com].
Week Four voting will close, and all Week Four results will be posted, in one week.
Let the voting begin!
[EDITOR'S NOTE (5/8/05): As with last week's polling, this week you will once again find active links to information on each of the candidates who survived Week Three, and who therefore now face elimination (or advancement to the Championship) in Week Four.
Please remember, also, that we invite, separately from your Week Four votes (albeit in the same e-mail), your nomination of any person for "Top Write-In Candidate for 2008."
To find the original post for Week One, click here. For the original post for Week Two, click here. For the original post for Week Three, click here. To everyone: enjoy the game, and vote wisely!]
****************WEEK 3 WINNERS****************
Former Vice President Al Gore [D-TN] (71.4%) DEFEATS Sen. Hillary Clinton [D-NY] (28.6%)
Sen. Barack Obama [D-IL] (67.9%) DEFEATS Rep. Dennis Kucinich [D-OH] (32.1%)
Rep. John T. Conyers, Jr. [D-MI] (57.1%) DEFEATS Sen. Russ Feingold [D-WI] (42.9%)
Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark [D-AR] (48.3%) DEFAULTS TO Former Gov./Current DNC Chair Howard Dean [D-VT] (51.7%)
****************WEEK 3 AWARDS****************
Biggest Upset (Winner): Conyers DEFEATS Feingold (16-versus-5)
Biggest Upset (Runner-Up): Gore DEFEATS Clinton (5-versus-1)
Biggest Choke (Winner): Clinton (loses to five-seed by 42.8 points)
Biggest Choke (Runner-Up): Feingold (loses to popular sixteen-seed by 14.2 points)
Biggest Margin of Victory (Winner): Gore (42.8 Points)
Biggest Margin of Victory (Runner-Up): Obama (35.8 Points)
Closest Race (Winner): Dean/Clark* (51.7%/48.3%)
Closest Race (Runner-Up): Conyers/Feingold (57.1%/42.9%)
* Disqualified.
Biggest Raw Vote Total (Winner): Gore
Biggest Raw Vote Total (2nd Place): Obama
Biggest Raw Vote Total (3rd Place): Conyers
Lowest Raw Vote Total (Winner): Clinton
Lowest Raw Vote Total (2nd Place): Kucinich
Lowest Raw Vote Total (3rd Place): Feingold
Best Performance by a SENATOR (Winner): Obama (67.9%)
Best Performance by a REPRESENTATIVE (Winner): Conyers (57.1%)
Best Performance by a GOVERNOR (Winner): Dean* (51.7%)
Best Performance by OTHER (Winner): Gore (71.4%)
* Former governor.
Win-Loss Record of SENATORS (Week Three): 1-2
Win-Loss Record of REPRESENTATIVES (Week Three): 1-1
Win-Loss Record of GOVERNORS (Week Three): 1-0
Win-Loss Record of OTHER (Week Three): 1-1
Staff's Pick for Biggest Surprise (Winner): Conyers DEFEATS Feingold
Staff's Pick for Biggest Surprise (2nd Place): Gore DEFEATS Clinton
Staff's Pick for Biggest Surprise (3rd Place): Obama DEFEATS Kucinich
Staff's Pick for "Name to Watch Closely" in Week Four: Obama
Staff's Pick for "Best Match-up" in Week Three: Gore-versus-Obama
Staff's Pick for "Most Likely Upset" in Week Three: Conyers DEFEATS Dean
Staff's Pick for "Will Hillary Survive This Round?" Game: N/A
Staff's Pick for "Oddest Match-up" in Week Three: Conyers-versus-Dean
Staff's Pick for "Best Dark Horse Right Now": Obama
****************MATCHUPS: WEEK 4****************
If you're playing along at home, your brackets should look like this right now (with original seeds in parentheses):
Bracket 1
Obama (7)
Gore (5)
Bracket 2
Conyers (16)
Dean (2)
With that in mind, here are the match-ups for Week Four (lower seeds listed first, for clarity only):
Gore (5) v. Obama (7)
Dean (2) v. Conyers (16)
****************HOW TO PLAY****************
1. Pick a candidate from each two-person matchup.
2. Put your picks in an e-mail entitled "TNA March Madness." Arrange your picks in the e-mail as a top-to-bottom list, following the order the names appear in the "Matchups" section above.
For example:
Pick from 1st matchup
Pick from 2nd matchup
Pick from 3rd matchup
Pick from 4th matchup
And so on.
3. Send the e-mail to nashuaadvocate@yahoo.com.
4. Feel free to make comments in the comments section, below. As per usual, you are requested to keep your comments civil.
Monday, May 02, 2005
Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark Disqualified From Nashua Advocate Poll Due to Persistent Double-Voting By His Supporters
New Voters Should See Post Directly Below This One for Week Three Voting Brackets and Instructions for Voting
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Since the beginning of The Nashua Advocate's Presidential March Madness, we have been tracking the participation in our poll of supporters of General Wesley Clark, the vast majority of whom have come to our site via several Wesley Clark-related websites. In the first two rounds we suspected over-sampling of Clark supporters via possible double-voting, but had sufficient confidence in the accuracy of our procedural filters to believe that the resulting votes were nevertheless accurate--at least, that is, as accurate as a non-scientific poll can be; in this most recent round we have now confirmed that Clark supporters, at least some of them, are double-voting. Thus we can no longer confirm the accuracy of the Dean/Clark match-up for Week Three, and are forced to pass Dean through this round by default. What we would ask of potential Clark voters who have not or would not have double-voted is that, first and foremost, you accept our apologies and trust that we, too, believe the General is a valid presidential candidate in 2008, even if he will not be winning our Poll, and understand that we acknowledge that this disqualification reflects poorly not on him but on those of his supporters who do not believe in the nation's "one man, one vote" policy; secondly, we'd note that, if you strongly oppose Howard Dean winning our Poll and somehow wish to express that opinion via your future votes, you still have two weeks of voting left to remedy any artificial boost the former Governor has received from the disqualification of his Week Three opponent--though, to be fair to Governor Dean, the disqualification of General Clark was hardly his fault or his doing, or the fault or doing of his supporters. Indeed, we received no complaints regarding double-voting from either Dean supporters or any other candidate's supporters, but instead uncovered the unfortunate use of this tactic ourselves, as the recipients and collectors of all Poll ballots. In any event, The Advocate stands by the results of all the other races in the Poll, in both this round of voting and previous rounds, and begs its readers to, going forward, show the sort of class and decorum for which Democrats are rightly known. One vote per person, please].
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Since the beginning of The Nashua Advocate's Presidential March Madness, we have been tracking the participation in our poll of supporters of General Wesley Clark, the vast majority of whom have come to our site via several Wesley Clark-related websites. In the first two rounds we suspected over-sampling of Clark supporters via possible double-voting, but had sufficient confidence in the accuracy of our procedural filters to believe that the resulting votes were nevertheless accurate--at least, that is, as accurate as a non-scientific poll can be; in this most recent round we have now confirmed that Clark supporters, at least some of them, are double-voting. Thus we can no longer confirm the accuracy of the Dean/Clark match-up for Week Three, and are forced to pass Dean through this round by default. What we would ask of potential Clark voters who have not or would not have double-voted is that, first and foremost, you accept our apologies and trust that we, too, believe the General is a valid presidential candidate in 2008, even if he will not be winning our Poll, and understand that we acknowledge that this disqualification reflects poorly not on him but on those of his supporters who do not believe in the nation's "one man, one vote" policy; secondly, we'd note that, if you strongly oppose Howard Dean winning our Poll and somehow wish to express that opinion via your future votes, you still have two weeks of voting left to remedy any artificial boost the former Governor has received from the disqualification of his Week Three opponent--though, to be fair to Governor Dean, the disqualification of General Clark was hardly his fault or his doing, or the fault or doing of his supporters. Indeed, we received no complaints regarding double-voting from either Dean supporters or any other candidate's supporters, but instead uncovered the unfortunate use of this tactic ourselves, as the recipients and collectors of all Poll ballots. In any event, The Advocate stands by the results of all the other races in the Poll, in both this round of voting and previous rounds, and begs its readers to, going forward, show the sort of class and decorum for which Democrats are rightly known. One vote per person, please].
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