Stop on by during the Great Debate in the Show-Me State for LIVE thoughts and opinions from myself and anyone else who cares to stop by in an Open Thread during the proceedings!

The debate tonight is from boyhood home of St. Louis, Missouri! So I'm sure the citizens asking questions in tonight's Oprah-style debate will do us all proud...(Please read that with a healthy dose of cyncism!)

See ya here at 6pm PT, 9pm ET tonight! I'll try to open up the thread about 30 minutes or so prior to that for any pre-debate thoughts/commentary!

P.S. You may now use (and point your friends to) the easier to remember www.BradBlog.com!

P.P.S. Got some deadlines I need to hit today, so unless I get really outraged about something (has been known to happen) new posts may be few and far between from now until tonight's open thread...but as I say, we'll see...

Holy cow...If this is for real, it's amazing...

Below is part of a scan from a Michigan absentee ballot received recently by a voter. Note how selecting/completing the arrow that points to Kerry/Edwards would actually end up as a vote for Bush/Cheney since the arrows seem to be misprinted next to the names! It's only only the Presidential section of the ballot (full ballot scan is here)

(Click on ballot for full scan of entire ballot)

Add this to the latest developing Florida mess. What the hell has this government been doing for the last four years that they couldn't clean up this nonsense once and for all?! (don't answer that) Unbelievable.

(Thanks Corey for the tip!)

UPDATE: Further investigation reveals this item has been out in the blogosphere for the last coupla days. Mostly on the right side of Blogistan where they see the error as a potential anti-Bush error, instead of an anti-Kerry error. But it seems Kos ran a piece on this as well. In truth, it just seems like a mess to me. Here's an update from someone who claims to have Emailed the Michigan Secretary of State about the error and was told the error only went out to 69 voters. Hmmm...Vigilance.

UPDATE: Now Missouri! How hard could this possibly be people?!

I hate hitting refresh on this page every day. Yet I do it. Virtually every day, the number increases. Today the count of dead U.S. Troops in Iraq jumped tragically from 1064 to 1067.

Even that awful and ever-growing number does little justice to properly remind Americans of the disaster that we've been put through by this horribly failed Administration. I'm not sure that anything but the Bush Legacy as viewed by History years from now, once all the partisans have moved on a bit, will ever properly put things in the perspective they deserve.

Even if Bush is removed from office --- and unless outside events change things, I believe that he will be --- it's unlikely that Americans will ever receive the explanation and apology they are owed for the extraordinarily cynical and corrupt manipulation of the good will and benefit-of-the-doubt that we, as a country, had entrusted in these deadly Snake Oil Charlatans.

It's been revealed that Cheney presided over only two Tuesday Senate Sessions (the same number that Edwards did so as well), contrary to this claim in the Veep Debate:

Adding to the previous information we have of Cheney hanging out with Edwards in the past, does it strike anyone as odd that Republicans don't seem quite as concerned about public officials lying as they once were...say, during the years of 1992 to 1998 for instance?

Anyway, here's proof that Cheney did show up at least once in the Senate, and incidentally, another instance of Cheney "not" meeting Edwards...Sigh...

(Courtesy of Jesus' General.)

Well, they've finally come out and admitted what many of us have known for years. According to "a Bush advisor" in today's Washington Post:

...That as yet another new "Terror WARNING!!!" is released, cynically aimed squarely at those "Security Moms" to capitalize on their fear for the safety of their children. The "Security Moms" they had last week...and that they're beginning to lose this week. Right on schedule, the "WARNING!!!" coincides predictably with Bush's slide into the annals of a shameful chapter in American History.

Aravosis' has the full story.

(Via Fin at What We Know.)

Incredibly, AP (not The Onion) just released this headline: "Cheney: Weapons Report Justifies Iraq War"

Good lord. They're gonna fall all the way on their sword over this one. Which is fine by me. Keep digging, boys.

Meanwhile, back in Reality Land...

Documenting the many lies, fibs, misstatements and misdirects of the Veep has become a mini boom industry. Here's a few samples:

The effects of all of that and the continuing array of crappy news for Bush is starting to show more and more as all his chickens come home to roost just in time. The latest AP Poll of likely voters now puts Kerry over Bush 50% to 46%. Perhaps Good really will prevail over Evil after all.

Now that the U.S. House of Representatives has defeated the Gay Marriage Ban Amendment and Louisiana courts have overturned the ban on gay marriage in that state, it does not mean you must marry a homosexual.

That goes for heterosexuals in any state that may allow gay marriage in the future.

To be clear: Heterosexuals needn't feel threatened by gay marriage since there will be no requirement that they must marry someone of the same sex. That will be optional.

As well, you needn't feel that gay marriage is a threat to your heterosexual marriage. Such marriages will still be allowed just as they were before gay marriage was allowed. You will not need to change your marital status in any way, shape or form.

I hope I've cleared up any confusion and helped to put you at ease.

Dear Bush Supporters:

Please read the following carefully...

Hans Blix was right. David Kay was right. Scott Ritter was right. Your "President" was wrong.

There were no stockpiles of WMD.

There were no WMD.

There were no WMD programs.

There were no WMD related program activities.

Is that now clear?

If it isn't, please take another swig of Kool-aid or refer to the FINAL Report of the United States' Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq.

Thank you. We'll now consider this matter closed.

(If you still haven't gotten the message, please go here and be with the other sad, confused and deluded people like yourself who are now officially in a perpetual state of denial and/or dementia. Please consult a doctor before November 3rd for your own safety. Good day.)

Given Cheney's silly attempt at bait-and-switch last night attacking Edwards for not including Iraqi casualties in his statement about America "having taken 90 percent of coalition casualties", I thought I'd dig a bit.

Though Edwards said "coalition casualities" clearly all three times he used the phrase, it didn't stop Cheney from using a strawman attack on Edwards' stating that his comments were "beyond the pale" because he didn't count Iraq amongst the coalition casualties apparently.

So does the White House themselves now count Iraq as part of the "coalition of the willing"?

Checking the White House website's own report on "RENEWAL IN IRAQ: The Coalition" is revealing!

The report (linked above) offers several links to several supporting documents/pages. Strangely enough however, the link on that page to "Who Are the Coalition Members?" now leads to a "The file you have attempted to access cannot be found." error page!

All the other links on the page work fine. But the list of "Coalition Members" has seemingly been scrubbed from the website.

Thanks to the Wayback Machine, we can check the originally linked file however.

That file, apparently last updated and archived by the Wayback on February 2, 2004, but still dated "April 3, 2003" lists a coalition of 49 countries. Needless to say, several of them have since pulled out of the coaltion (Spain, Costa Rica, etc.)

I understand why they might wish to update the page at the White House website as coaltion members come and go. But deleting it entirely certainly raised my eyebrow.

I don't know when the page officially came down, if it was before last night's sleight-of-hand about coalition casualties or not. But isn't it a bit deceptive and/or cynical to simply disappear the page entirely from the historic record?

There is a "Press Release" I found that is still on the site dated "March 21, 2003" which lists 48 countries as part of the coaltion. But the page from their "Policies in Focus > Iraq: Special Report" is gone.

I'm sure the folks in Blogistan will correct me if any of the information above is somehow inaccurate. But in the meantime, I'm left wondering what other official pieces of information once posted to the White House website (theoretically owned by the people of the United States of America) have been scrubbed as well from the historical record?

UPDATE 10/22/04: Hooray! Mainstream media finally picks up on this story!

From last night's V.P. Debate:

Meanwhile, back in Reality Land, where at least 3 meetings by Cheney and Edwards have already been verified, it is now revealed that Cheney has actually only provided over the Senate on two Tuesdays over his entire tenure! No wonder he doesn't recall meeting Edwards in the Senate!

Incidentally, that's the same number of Tuesdays that Edwards himself has presided over the Senate! Daily Kos has the embarrassing details this time from Reality Land...

This thing is becoming a disaster for Bush/Cheney. Cheney may have given the Dems a gift as good as Bush's performance last week! Made-to-order, Cheney has in one fell swoop demonstrated on video, and in front of a national audience, everything that is wrong with both the Bush/Cheney campaign, and their four year reign of error, misleads and misinformation. Thank you, Mr. Cheney. A job well done.

DEBATE #1 · "Bush: Still Misleading" · "Miserable Failure" · "How Bush Did" · "This or That" · "Song and Dance" · "It's Hard Work" · DEBATE #2 · "Bush's Top 5 Moments" · "Greatest Hits and Misses" · DEBATE #3 · "Smile!" · "Still Misleading America" · V.P. DEBATE · "Cheney: Still Misleading" · "Cheney's Heart Breaking Resume" · IRAQ & 9/11 · "BRAD BLOG's Anything to Win" · "BRAD BLOG's Wrong Choice" · "Bush Reads My Pet Goat" · "Rumsfeld Busted on Face the Nation" · "Fear at the RNC" · "Lone Wolf" · "A Mother's Tears" · "Right Track" · "Hold Them Accountable" · "Seymour Hersh on Abu Ghraib" · "Not There" · "Bush's Hysterial Joke" · FOX NEWS · "O'Reilly: Shut Up!" · "Who Runs Fox News?" · OTHER · "BRAD BLOG's Take Your Country Back" · "Bush's Mis-State of the Union" · "Bush on OB-GYN's" · "Restoring the Promise" · "Bush's New Director of the CIA" · "Enron: Got the Power!" · "A Man of His Word" · "The Two Faces of Bush" · "Bush: The Ten Year Difference" · "Jon Stewart on Crossfire" · "Asshole" · ELECTION DAY INSPIRATION! · "Angry? Start Over!" · More soon...

It occurs to me that on the day after Election Day, the Bush/Cheney sycophants may well acknowledge a Kerry/Edwards landslide but then try to tell us "Bush/Cheney, however, actually won the election on substance."

Now I realize each partisan side is more likely to believe their candidate won whichever debate on the substance since they likely agree with what their candidate said. But in the two debates so far where Republicans have been unable to claim a clear victory with a straight face (obviously, even less so in the first Presidential Debate), they keep falling back on this "but he won on substance" canard.

Given that Bush, in the first debate, seemed almost devoid of actual "substance", even proving to have a difficult time explaining many of his Administration's own policies, and Cheney's demonstrable twisting of facts and logic in his debate, how can Republicans even suggest that either Bush or Cheney won either of those debates on "substance"?

In order to do so, they are required to twist, turn, remove context, and otherwise prevaricate on just about every point which was made in both debates. So on which points, in either of the first two debates, did Bush/Cheney manage to make a "substantive" point that Kerry/Edwards was unable to effectively rebut? I am unable to think of any off-hand, but I look forward to being proven wrong. Please try and do so using "substance" in your comments if you have any...not style, twisted logic or out-of-context and/or inaccurate quotes. Please stick to what was actually said. Here's the transcripts from Debate #1 and the V.P. Debate for reference.

(Thanks Desi for the tip!)