It ends today:

Vote: Find Your Spot And Hit It

Feels good to do, and your local hipster bar will probably give you a free beer later if you get the "I Voted" sticker.

I think everything's going to work out, just as long as we really do work it. I'll be on the phone and on the blog starting in about 9 or 10 hours.

Here's what's making it possible to sleep tonight: Early Voting, the Gallup polling company (and their lovable bias), and most of all cellphones.

Yeah, it's like that. We got Ohio all up in check I think. And with Ohio, I'm pretty sure we win. So sleep tight and kick ass tomorrow.

Leave It To Bush! Episode 2

Seems a little more hasty and over-the-top compared to the great subtlty and amazing well-cut voices of the Gary Busey debut. Still gets a weird laugh though.

Guardian 'The liberal elite hasn't got a clue'

The novel - researched, as usual, down to the last expletive - concerns a young world speaking "fuck patois", loaded with creatine and cocaine, numbed by PlayStation 3, and charged by alcohol, the "vile spleen" of rap and, above all, ubiquitous sex between the heirs and heiresses to privilege in America.

See, Tom, here's the thing. Playstation 3 doesn't exist. And a lot of that other stuff sounds like the kinds of overdrawn (a.k.a. "made up") characterizations that a generation gap breeds. So either you don't have your facts straight, or you're writing science fiction. But Golly, that's not really the result of "painstaking research" in the same way your early work was, now is it? Back when you had resepect; when people dubbed your and Terry and Hunter's work, "The New Journalism?" No. I'm afraid it's not.

What happened, Tom? You used to be cool. Back in the day you revealed stuff that really happened. Now you're an old man writing about college students.

The Littlest Prisoner at Abu Ghraib; oh man.

You did it, you glorious massholes. Hats off.

Lunar eclipse, Boston wins, Sharon passes withdrawl from Gaza, Kerry looking good to unseat Bush?

Bring on the rain of frogs!

The inestimable Pandagon kids point me to The Rude Pundit:

Kerry's done a fuck of a lot more than pull a guy out of a river. And the fact that America doesn't know that says a great deal about how we negotiate our desolate political landscape.

The whole thing is worth a read. It's still painful to watch Kerry on the stump; he's just not my style, and he's obviously not lovin' being out there. But fuck that. What does it have to do with being president? His record is clearly exemplary. He went up against Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Sr, all quite admirably. That these facts aren't a part of this race says a lot about how timid the Democrats have become -- which leads back to the qualms I have with Kerry. I'll still be voting for the man, and you should too, but also still wish he'd gone the whole hog ala Howard Dean.

But for anyone out there who really thinks Kerry "blows with the political wind," and is "spineless," you're missing the point. He's a Senator. He's voted stragetically. That's what you do if you're a Senator. He's also a serious big-league politician who wants to win an election in America. Just like Bush -- or any candidate -- he's made a few choices that seem calibrated toward the end of winning the election.

Personally I think he could have taken more of a stand in the past few years, but if I were working out of DC and had only media reports and polling data to go on, and I wanted very badly to believe that there's real good to be accomplished through the political process, I could see why he'd do what he did.

Kerry got played by Bush on the war vote, but that doesn't make him weak-willed. He took on Nixon when he was fucking 27 (which cost him his first Congressional race), and Reagan when he was still wet behind the ears as a Senator. That's not "spineless." That's displaying remarkable political courage; and it's still in there.

One of the reasons I'm liking Kerry is that the more I see him the more I realize he hates campaigning. And I'd hate campaigning too if I had to do it in the early 21st Century stye. So believe, and don't let anyone vote for Bush for stupid ass reasons. If we finish strong here, we win.

DEAD LETTER OFFICE: GeorgeWBush.org: Bush/Cheney in 2004!

So the people who own georgewbush.org aren't working for the BC/04 campaign. They used the website to post a satire of Bush's campaign, but the real gold mine appears to be their catch-all email account combined with some republicans' error-prone addressing skills. Any GOP email mis-sent to anyone@georgewbush.org -- a lot of CCs -- ended up in the satirists email box, and they've posted the best of for all the world to see.

The Daily Kos is covering the kind of scandalous revelation that a lot of county people in Washington state think they're violating campaign finance law. This is a pretty serious accusation, actually. You know, I have friends who work for the Democratic party, and I don't really get to talk to them all that much any more except by reading their public blogs. We sweat this sort of thing because it is a legal liability; and it's kind of, you know, "wrong" for people to be "breaking the law" and "know it."

May I request that you or someone on your staff send directions regarding what Counties can and cannot do as it pertains to newsletters and phone banks usage for federal candidates.

There is a great deal of ignorance out here and many counties are violating the campaign law as I understood it from you. God help us if the Democrats find out.

That seems to be the proverbial "Money Quote." It's an ugly term, but it's a fine one in this case; what's been uncovered here is the political equivalent of pornography. Who knows how the mainstream will react, but for addicts it's one more spectacle to wank over.

Personally I'm actually more interested in some of the odd attachments, the more "human interest" type stuff like internal phone-bank reports, attack manuels from Newt Gingrich, photos of young republicans frolicking in New York during the convention, some guy saying he'd look good with Bush's hotter daughter (Barbara, obviously)... none of it's terribly shocking or sensational, but it's very interesting to peek into much more honest communications from GOP people. It's the literary erotica of the situation, I like to think.

I'm sure on some level my personal email would hold a similar morbid curiosity for some of them, assuming they don't have friends in the FBI who can let them read it already. That's sort of a joke; they can read your email if you send it unencrupyed (fix that, if you like), but I doubt very much that mine's interesting enough in a tactical sense to risk inappropriate coordination between the FBI and a politcal campaign. On the other hand, I hope for the sake of the future that the Kerry campaign uses PGP.

I'll post some more about the offbeat stuff that's in the archive later if I find anything really interesting.

Abu Aardvark: The Election Made Simple. It's bushian simplicity, but I don't think it's inaccurate:

For or against?

The Talent Show can explain in more words why it really is that simple. For those of us who actually care about human rights or our international reputation, I think this election was decided for you when torture was considered and then legally authorized, probably originally presented via a powerpoint presentation sometime in early 2002 along with the coffee and krispy kremes.

Oh, and we invaded a country for no good reason.

Tucker Eskew is an advisor/spokesperson for the Bush/Cheney campaign, and seems to have started a blog. Unlike the Bush (or Kerry) blogs, this seems to actually be a blog, rather than a series of press releases. Kudos to Tucker for venturing out with a more open kind of spin, disagree with it though I might.

I'll probably pick some of the messages apart later.